I’ve had my eye on the roads from Blotz for some time, but never could justify paying the shipping when the only mat I had for Dropzone already had roads printed on it, nice as adding a third dimension would be. Well, with a new mat to try out, on came the roads.
I picked up one of the flyover bundles, and assembly was fast and easy. I went with the flyovers rather than the roads, as it looked like you could use them both raised on the columns and flat on the ground, while roads only provide the latter choice. My only complaint here is that I wish they had one lane flyovers in their bundle options as well, as now I’d like to pick up a few more to expand my layout options.
Painting is mostly just a series of sprays; gray for the base, a textured paint to give the MDF just that, then mists of tan and black for color variation. A drybrush of light gray, then painting the road lines with the same, and done. I debated with myself over painting the lines, reasoning that road paint would erode away in the timescale that the overgrowth/decay my terrain has would take to develop, but the roads need it to give them more visual flare.
For now, I just did the roads themselves, and left the columns for later. I also didn’t bother with the on/off ramp at the moment as it wouldn’t be useful until I completed the columns anyway.
Once the painting was done, just a light sprinkle of some flock here and there to get some overgrowth, and it’s done. These took about two hours total over the course of two nights.
In terms of usability for Dropzone, there’s only two small problems I’ve found.
The standard infantry base doesn’t quite fit horizontally in one lane. The large flying bases do, at least.
If you want a table that has both the monorail and this road system crossing each other, you’ll have to keep the roads on the ground. While set up on the columns, there isn’t enough space between the two for vehicles to pass underneath. Blotz does sell 4 and 6 inch supports, but I’m fairly sure the 4 inch would result in a monorail train colliding with the bottom of the road, so the 6 inch columns would be necessary.
Both minor issues, and I’m happy enough with these that I’ll likely get one more set of pieces.
Also, completed the Warstrider box a little while ago.
Not a fan of how the gates were placed on the Widow ECM/alien magic/whatever pieces, necessitating filling and filing, but otherwise good times with this box. Only other comment on the box is that it’s a bit odd that it only comes with the ability to build one Leopard and one Dreamstrider. Normally that kit provides the option to build either, and all the other boxes I’ve gone through from them provide all the bits a model usually comes with. Doesn’t bother me but I imagine someone could be disappointed by that if they wanted dual Leopards out of the box.