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Gaming mats, what to choose


Dantay VI

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Hi all,

 

I wonder if you can help me please. I got a little birthday money and this year I decided to invest it in a table and a battle mat of some description.

As some may know I play Space Wolves and I would like to break from the norm and avoid ice and tundra but go for a more desert theme.

 

I want to go for a desert urban kind of look, so I can recreate Prospero.

 

Here are some of my pictures so you can see how I have been basing my models thus far.

 

Hidden Content

 

I had seen this mat from Battleboards and fell in love with it

 

http://battleboards.co.uk/shop/battlemats/battlemat-urban-desert-4ft-x-6ft/

 

However a little expensive it could be worth it, I have tried contacting the company via the website, by email and got no response, I tried calling but they do not accept incoming calls, so I reckon this is a non-goer.

 

So that leaves all the rest.

 

Which is where you fine frater can help.

 

I have a few problems:

 

Chief of which is that I have never purchased a product like this before, so I need your guidance and experience.

 

Which is better heavy vinyl or mousemat?

 

What is the quality generally like?

 

Who would you recommend?

 

So far I quite like the look of fallout zone and medieval tow or sands of time by gamemat.eu.

 

I also like ruined city and barren wasteland by FAT mats

 

However none of these are desert urban, but close for some. If this goes well, someday I would like to expand it a little and maybe get some more mats, so hopefully they coud be placed alongside each other without it being too jarring.

 

Your help and advice will be gratefully received.

 

Many Thanks

 

Danny

 

 

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I've got Fallout Zone from Gamemat.eu...  love it to bits. 

 

Here's a photo of it in action.   It's quite a brown-red. Like Mournfang brown.  The weird "star streaks" on it are from overhead lights. 

 

4doZMal.jpg

 

It's more brown than desert, although if you do a deserty brown base and a Rhinox Hide base rim, it will blend well enough. 

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My gaming group have four of the first generation of Frontline Gaming mats,AT mats, (Urban, Industrial, and 2 space), and two (one 4x6 and one 4x4) Plains from deepcutstudios. http://www.deepcutstudio.com/product/wargames-terrain-mat-plains/

 

All mousepad, no vinyl. The deepcut ones are slighty flimsier (harder to store standing up, but that's about it) due to being thinner I think. But they are probably a bit lighter as well.

 

Quality wise all are really good, and I'm happy we forked out the extra for mousepad over vinyl. One thing I dislike about deepcutstudios is that they seem to have taken photos and just used those as maps, so you need to check the close ups to make sure you dont have giant grassstraws all over it (looking at you grass map), but that's my only complaint. 

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That looks great Silentz, very nice board. Thanks for the colour description, as in some pictures it looks quite brown and in others yellow

 

Oxydo, I hadnt considered deepcut studios, so I will take a peek. Thats what I mean, there are so much out there, you do not know what you might miss.

Why is the mouse mat better than vinyl, just out of curiosity?

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That looks great Silentz, very nice board. Thanks for the colour description, as in some pictures it looks quite brown and in others yellow

 

Oxydo, I hadnt considered deepcut studios, so I will take a peek. Thats what I mean, there are so much out there, you do not know what you might miss.

Why is the mouse mat better than vinyl, just out of curiosity?

 

Mousepad is never going to get bent in a certain direction due to being rolled up. No idea how the vinyl would stay on our boards, but the mousemat ones sticks to the surface really well.

 

Dice rolls nicely on them too (basically no sound either), and I suspect vinyl might make the dice bounce around more, due to being denser.  Not sure which of the two will weigh more though, but the mousepad ones are pretty heafty (transporting 4 at once isn't the best idea I've had).

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Lol, It will stay laid out in the garage 90% of the time, unless I  need to take it to a friends house for a game (unlikely he has 2 flocked tables)

 

Thank you for letting me know the difference between the kinds of mat.

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I wouldn't get anything except the mouse pad variant.   You sit there thinking "OMG it's £15 more" or whatever but you will never regret having the better one.  Unless, I guess, you need to carry it around a lot?  

 

Mouse pad variant also deadens dice rolls so they don't clatter.   

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Cheers.  It's a bit of a hotchpotch of styles and stuff but I can make a game out of it.   The closest two pieces - the hill things - are from ebay and are almost perfect for 8th edition...  a bit of area terrain, proper LOS blocking, and different levels/elevations.

 

This is the seller: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/2009braggminiatures/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from= 

 

Mostly brown as well so match this type of board, rather than being the more typical grey. 

Edited by Silentz
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Uhhh  #tableenvy

 

The green plants on the scenery really make it pop.  

 

World eaters are so clean as well. I like a good bit of weathering in many cases, but those look amazing. 

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I am either going to put a board over the top of my pool table.

 

Or make a basic 8x4 frame and put the plywood on that, if I get fancy I might stick supports on the lower legs and use another sheet of ply as a shelf for storing scenery on when not in use.

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Oh I forgot to ask, what are the other 2 designs?

I've got the lava planet one, which is pretty trippy to look at in person because the 3D effect is really striking. You can't see it at all in the pictures, but in person i kept reaching out to feel it, lol.

The other is one of their grass ones, which was the first one i got. Looks like this...

gallery_92768_11638_218832.jpg

Uhhh #tableenvy

The green plants on the scenery really make it pop.

World eaters are so clean as well. I like a good bit of weathering in many cases, but those look amazing.

Thanks man. I had the terrain commissioned by Green Leaf Terrain. He is really awesome, turned it around in a week! Everything shipped from canada without any damage whatsoever.

What are you using for the table itself? I'm in a similar boat and want to get a board up and running too.

I built the table with plywood and 1x3s, more or less following the how-to on miniwargaming's website.

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Oh sorry missed that part.

 

Nope they do not offer urban combat 2 as a 6 x 4 any more. Or at least not on their UK/EU or US/Can website.

 

I have emailed them about it though.

 

For terrain I am considering some of TT combats stuff, plus another guy who does LED lit buildings :)

 

Similar prices to your stuff Silentsz, altough looking at that too, for adding some non urban terrain or city limits/ defence points.

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Hmmmm......

 

Received an email from battleboards.

 

Seems they haven't gone bust after all, just in the middle of a change of premises.

 

So I could potentially get he mat I wanted (in vinyl) but at £85 including shipping it is about £15 more then a mousemat from FAT mats or gamemat.eu

 

They do have a mousemat version which is not yet officially released yet. Not sue how much that will cost.

 

So this:

 

http://battleboards.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Urban-Desert02-5.jpg

 

This 

 

http://cdn2.bigcommerce.com/server1400/3141f/products/291/images/928/Ruined-City-6x4-TableWar-FatMats__99211.1485196585.1280.1280.jpg?c=2

 

Or this

 

5938199_230-230-true.jpg

 

Gah!!

Edited by Wolf_Priest _Dantay.
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I have Fallout Zone one, and can vouch for it. Also vouch for the brown colour.

 

At a certain point it seemed an academic argument between GameMat and FATmat in terms of quality, really.

 

A club I was involved in needed terrain and mats, and the low overseas shipping on a significant order (4-5 mats and a box of terrain) that GameMat could offer made them stand out from FATmat, even though the latter was technically closer.

 

Living a bit out off the beaten track (rural Ontario, Canada), it's often the shipping cost that discourages me from buying something : P

 

All best in your search; I don't know how I ever gamed on my old surface... once you make the plunge I'm sure you'll be pleased.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

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can I ask, If you are going to make a board / plywood thing to put the mat on, why not make the board yourself? You could use insulation foam for depth and so on, and really have something beautiful as well  as a hobby project, or even just paint directly onto MDF if storage depth is a thing. Especially, as you say, you won't be carting it round much

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Because using a mat makes it easier to change up your terrain and lets you switch out one type of terrain for another easily. You can lay down your snow mat one day, then your city mat the next and then bust out your grass mat on the third day.
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