Road Wheels & Road Wheel Recommendations?

I did consider Royce, but thought that if I was to not go the CK route, I could go Hope and at the same time go for matching headset/BB/seat collar and have a nice matching set.

Dura Ace...there's something I hadn't even considered. I forgot that they do regular hubs in addition to their factory ones. Will look into that.

As usual dura ace stuff is great, and built to last. Also consider Tune if you want to shave some weight (though parts are a bitch to get which makes servicing them awkward). I often almost buy hope hubs but they're a bit of a halfway house. They fall between a 'nice' hub I would use for fancy wheels and a 'cheap' hub I would use for a winter build.