"Do Average Gamers Know What COBBLESTONES Are?" Topic

Clay bricks, large stone blocks for walls, clay pavers, tiles, flagstones, cobblestones, etc. …

In your wanderings on YouTube and other tutorials, do you get a sense that most gamers and even terrain makers know anything about what these basic things are?

For example, do you get the feeling that everything on a wall is automatically a "brick" and everything on the ground is a "cobblestone"? And sometimes there are people who just call everything a "brick" – everything -, no matter the material it's supposed to be made from, or where it's used.

Even if they've never seen these things in person, if they are making a tutorial, you'd think they would at least take a look at some pictures of what it is they're making, and know the very basic names for it, right?

Or is that just too much to expect from a terrain tutorial? :)

Dan
PS. I'm not even going to get into how they think those things are laid down and what colors they pick out to paint them.

Well it all depends on the Y-tuber and Where in the world hes from. Most Terrain coloration is exaggerated to make it stand out. My Two favorites are Middle ages castles with stone work showing ( they plaster them over) and Greek/Roman temple being white ( they were brightly painted)

Well, true to my heritage, I certainly know what Irish Confetti is!

If you have visited Germany in the early '60s, imbibed one to many cervesa, and then stubbed your toe on one, then you know what a cobblestone is!

It's something the minis stand on to make them look kewl, right?

I'm good old stock with a cobble rock--and a length of gas pipe, too!

Bonus points if you remember the song, Dan!

It's what you line the fire pit with to make cherry cobbler, right?

From rivet counter to cobble counter?

I don't have a survey information about the average wargamer, but anecdotally paperboys who ride bicycles over cobblestone, brick, concrete slab, and asphalt streets know the differences.

Many streets in my area are paved with 'cobblestones' although in fact they are actually 'granite setts'.

A cobblestone is a fairly natural irregular shape whereas a sett is cut to a specific shape in a quarry.

Cobbles can be very annoying. I've noticed in Europe there is some effort to use the flatish sides of cobbles for paving. Not universal but to a large degree.

Some places in Mexico they like to use round ones. River rock basically. It is terror on cars and spines. I've been told a lot of it was ship ballast, especially on the most sandy islands of the Caribbean.

We call the ones on the streets of Old San Juan PR "adoquines". Most of them were quarried near Cadiz, Spain, and brought over to our island as ballast little by little over centuries.

Dan
PS. I really like the metallic blue stone that some of the streets still have.

I tend to think that all the attention and research gets lavished on the figures rather than the terrain and architecture. A shame really as it's the terrain and buildings that give the game a sense of place. The notable exceptions to this tend to stand out.

I live in Vancouver, BC Canada, one of the youngest cities on the planet and when the asphalt wears away some of our streets reveal brick or granite cobblestones.

Every Philadelphian knows what cobblestones are, so if you don't stop by for a visit.

Saw a group of workmen in Piran setting 'cobblestones' (actually 'setts' per JimDuncanUK) in a street in the old quarter of town while visiting Slovenia years ago.

They had packed sand for a base then tamped the stones in place. Edge to edge with no fill between.

Uniform color, flat faced, and hexagonal.

And Denver, CO has areas where the brick pavers show through when the asphalt wears away.

They often say a picture is worth a thousand words …

But if anyone needs the words …

link

Dan

In Portuguese it is paralelepipedo. Though driving through the streets of small towns in Brazil it is not very parallel. The cobble stones are very bumpy and based on Dan's pictures, these paralelepipedo have no sets, no flags, no curbs, just dirt on the outside, though if you get tot he center of town you might find curbs and sidewalks, some of which are also made of cobblestones.

I live in Vancouver, BC Canada, one of the youngest cities on the planet and when the asphalt wears away some of our streets reveal brick or granite cobblestones.

Are you sure? I've read that Vancouver streets were originally constructed from wooden blocks:

link

In the cycling world it's called Pave

Ouch.

Dan

Sydney (Aust) definitely had wooden paving blocks in the streets from way back, they didn't bother to dig them up, just laid tarmac over the top. It was a common occurrence up to the 1970's for children to build bonfires in the middle of the street for 'Cracker Night' (eqiv. to 4th July) which could burn through the tarmac and set the wooden blocks alight – and as they were saturated in molten tar it was difficult to put them out.

Around 1963-4 when I was a kid in St. Louis, Missouri, the old waterfront was torn up as part of a grand renovation project (Gateway Arch). One night my dad took his Ford station wagon, my brother and I on a "raid" to get some of the cobblestones that lined the waterfront area (you can see them in old pictures of the area). Now these were granite setts that were being pried up and set aside. They weren't supposed to be removed though I don't recall why (hence the night raid). We filled the back of my dad's station wagon with 2 or 3 layers of these granite cobblestones. I well remember the car's springs were fully compressed so it looked like a low rider. The next day we unloaded the car and made a new "parking area" in front of our house next to the road. Even though it seemed to us that we had taken lots of cobblestones, the actual amount only "paved" an area slightly bigger than a standard picnic table. It made me really appreciate just how many cobblestones had been on that waterfront!

I thought he was a miniature sculptor. Mark, isnt it?

=-0

Belgium here, cobblestones everywhere, the toughest and best in the world.

In other countries it is oil magnates or computer geniuses who become billionnaires, over here it's people who sell suspensions and repair bike tyres that have more money than God because our roads have killed more suspensions and tyres than the worst death trails in the most remote corners our planet has to offer.

Visit Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and you'll get to experience some real cobblestones.

I really like it when terrain builders call flagstones, well, "flagstones":

link

Dan
PS. I specially like it when they show you how to make it look like you put some thought into it:

I'm an "above average gamer" so I DO know what cobblestones are.

What is so disappointing is, according to recent research, that no less (fewer?) than half of all wargamers are (is?) below average.

That is why maybe I never take to it and just paint and collect. Setts, I agree and they look far better in a diorama

A google image search for 'Mermaid Street, Rye' will give a good example of a street in the UK that can be challenging to some footwear.

If the example on the right is wrong and after 20 years of paving experience I´d agree…why is it done that way in the main pic?