A Fancier Bridge

Our bridge has been shaping up pretty well, but it is about time we started adding to it. First stop: stairs! Why stairs you ask? Stairs are actually a very common element on large bridges. And, it opens up some nice outflanking opportunities à la A Bridge too Far.

This set of pieces consists of an end piece and a straight piece, as well as outside and inside corners. The slope is twice what the bridge ramp sections are. This means they gain twice the height in the same amount of length. For this reason we will eventually do half pieces (length wise) so that the bridge and stair height can be made to match up with any configuration.

These pieces are made to be completely compatible with the other bridge pieces so that they can be combined in lots of interesting ways. Of course, there are lots of non-bridge ways to use them, like the stairs on a large government building.

Stairs in wargaming are always a compromise with no perfect solution that makes everybody happy. Because of this, we are planning for these stairs to be easily used in several ways. The first option is the realistically scaled stairs. They look the best, however they are the hardest to play on since the treads are only ½” wide. You will have to place an appropriately sized die on the stair below your models in order to get them to remain upright. By using a simple spacer block it will also be easy to do the second option.  The oversized stairs look rather clunky, however they are much easier to play on since most models will easily fit on them.

The third option is the ladder, as long as your bases aren’t too thick you just tuck a corner of the base under the next step to keep the model from falling over. This method is my personal favorite, but that’s because I don’t usually use very thick bases for my models.