#battle mat

[brewerssupplies]

Bought some more research material for the kaiju field guide and last night one of my players dropped off this cool as heck dry erase battle mat!

[storiesandstories]

I guess it's time to come clean that I play DnD with some regularity now. In fact, I led my first session as a Dungeon Master over the holidays, and drafted up these isometric dungeons to mark the event. A pain in the ass but a blast to play through.

[inkedadventures]

Inked Adventures Fold-Away RPG Grid Pocket-sized dry-erase battle mat for 1 inch scale roleplaying.  One side depicts flagstone flooring - originally hand-drawn line-art, and the other is a useful standard grid.  It all packs away in a playing card sized clear plastic box.  Hand made for the Inked Adventures Etsy store: 

https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/InkedAdventures

Some smoothing and weighting down at the game table may be required. ;)

[orwin-dm]

When you are gonna release the kraken, you need a big battle mat. 3x3 footer? Nah. 6 ft? Newb shit. stand back nerds! 4x8 feet of table top grid space.

[boardgamingftw]

Here is a short & happy story that’ll tug right at your role playing heart.

When I was eight or nine years of age I discovered a few cardboard boxes in my grandmother’s attic. Now, when you are this age you feel as if these packed boxes are full of treasure. It also helps that I had watched the Goonies within the previous year so my snooping skill had been leveled up.

Back to the story. These boxes were pretty special because who knows what be in them. There were things that could have belong to my grandfather who had just passed away. Could there be some old things from the Korean War that he had kept hidden or could my grandmother just put away some old junk she had been saving?

I remember unfolding the flaps of one of the boxes & it was full of Mad Magazines & some old school papers from when my uncle Jeff was in high school. Nothing more to that box so I just put everything back & looked in the box under it.

I took the first box & set it aside & opened the one beneath it. Again there were some Mad Magazines & then I hit some treasure. I found the rule book for something called Dungeons & Dragons. Then I found not one, not two, but three campaign books. I wasn’t exactly sure what I had found but I knew it was something that was going to change my life.

I don’t know if I ever told my grandmother that I found Dungeons & Dragons books in her home. She would have definitely never allowed these, because she was a pretty religious person & it probably would have made her very angry. This would have been considered evil in her eyes. Well, she didn’t like me playing Dungeons & Dragons years later when she found out that I had been playing after school with some friends.

Then several years later in junior high school I would play a weekly game of Spelljammer with some of the older students at school. Then it would be another twenty-five years until I would jump back into any RPG.

You may be asking yourself what all this has to do with what this review is about. Are you? Well, if you are then let me tell you that in all my years of playing role playing games maps are the most consistent thing about any of the games I remember.

Last month I was sent a huge, no, giant book full of battle mats of all types. In all my years of playing any type of RPG I have only come across maps that were made of graph paper, mats that were laminated for use with of dry-erase marker, or the fold-out maps that was specifically produced for a role playing game (I have a few for Pathfinder).

Now I have in my possession a book full of different maps that can be wiped clean when using dry-erase markers. This book is known as the Giant Book of Battle Mats from Loke Battlemats. The Giant Book of Battle Mats was the People’s Choice Award for Best Accessory at the 2018 UK Games Expo.

This awesome book has sixty-two awesome pages of battle mats for every occasion from the typical dungeon, to dark forests, desert campaigns, & there is even a map that looks like a throne room (this is one of my favorite ones). There are also a few pretty basic maps in the book no theme at all.

For almost three decades I have been working on storylines that interweave with each other. I created these stories for a multiverse of characters I created back in grade school.  A few years back I started using these stories & characters in my own role playing system.

I know, not the greatest looking map but I’m not into the art of role playing, I’m into the storytelling.

Since I received the Giant Book of Battle Mats I haven’t had to draw a super detailed map. This has saved me time to create better stories instead of using too much of that time drawing.

Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy coming up with maps of everything that is going on, but with this book I have the time to choose where & want the campaigns to take place.

The Giant Book of Battle Mats is a great tool to have around. When completely open, the book measures 16 1/2″ H x 23 1/4″ W & each square is 1″ square. You will also find thirty-one different battle mats in this book & it can be wiped cleaned when using dry-erase marker.

If you are interested in the award winning Giant Book of Battle Mats you can find it on the Battle Mats website. This book will set you back about $43 plus shipping but is well worth it. There are also a lot of of great gaming accessories & books available through the Battle Mats shop.

The Giant Book of Battle Mats is an awesome tool full of wonderful maps. It is a much needed accessory for any GM that wants to keep things fresh when it comes to playing most RPGs.

Get ready to create, erase, & game on!

-Christopher Richter

Twitter: @Boardgaming_FTW

Facebook: Board Gaming For the Win

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A Giant Book for Your Role Playing Pleasure Here is a short & happy story that'll tug right at your role playing heart. When I was eight or nine years of age I discovered a few cardboard boxes in my grandmother's attic.

[cadianshockblog]

Welcome back me! To get started I have a review of the fantastic Sector B-12 Gaming Mat from Warzone Studio. So lets get started on 2018’s hobby with this Warzone Studio Review.

It’s been a while since my last post, months in fact. Mainly due to the birth of my second daughter in October! Anyway, onto the important stuff 🙂

Purchase Options

This mat is available is a variety of sizes in either vinyl or laminated vinyl.

72 х 48″ (6 x 4ft)

72 x 36″ (6 x 3ft)

48 x 48″ (4 x 4ft)

36 x 36″ (3 x 3ft)

30 x 30″ (2½ x 2½ft)

Prices vary, but a 6 x 4ft vinyl mat is around £40 + £15 postage to the U.K. from Russia. Too much? Split it between you and your friends. The cost becomes a lot better once it split it between two or three of you.

These sizes give you a good selection and mean this mat is great for not only Warhammer 40K, Necromunda and Shadow War: Armageddon but many other model war games played at the ~28mm scale.

Mat Overview

Delivery

As well as the Sector B-12 Gaming Mat I also got two MDF buildings (not yet built – review coming later). The buildings (flat packed) and the mat’s tube came tightly taped together and wrapped in brown paper. An odd shape but it worked and all items arrived intact from Russia to the U.K.

The tube that the mat was inside had taken a little bit of a battering in transit. But that has had no negative effect on the contents or my ability to use the tube to store the mat in for the future. A sturdy tube!

Tube & Lid – Warzone Studio Review

Storage

The tube is made of thick card, has a metal lid which fits snuggly into the top and a carry string too – which is handy. I can hook the string around one finger while carrying my board or a few cases of miniatures. You know when you’re trying to make it from the car to the gaming table in one trip, in the rain, in January.

The Warzone Studio logo appears on the tube – which is a minor but nice touch – it makes the mat easier to locate when you have a few. Or when you’re rummaging in a dark loft or garage.

Warzone Logo – Warzone Studio Review

Deployment & Use

Setting up the mat is easy, as you would expect. It unrolls easily but does not seem to maintain its rolled curl as much as some other mats I have used. This is a good feature of the vinyl. The edges only slightly peel upwards so pinning them down with tape or BluTak is easy and takes seconds. In fact, with some decent/specific placement of terrain it won’t need securing at all at the short edges or corners. The long edges naturally stay down on the table top.

Edit: During my first game with the mat the edges were stuck with BluTak, some of the edges came away from the BluTak, as expected – BluTak is not great. But where this happened the edges did remain relatively down and against the table. It seems that the vinyl gradually moves itself to being flat anyway over the course of a game.

The material is a thin vinyl which is smooth on the top side and slightly rough on the underside. Its light too, lighter than PVC versions and much much lighter than the mouse pad material used by some mats. Despite its lightness it doesn’t shift easily once placed down.

Mat Edges – Warzone Studio Review

I thought it would be fairly hard to describe how the mat moves, rolls and reacts to touch. So I made a simple and short video of it being manipulated on my 6 x 4ft board. I think it shows how the material moves and reacts when manipulated with a human handy much better than words can describe.

  Visuals

Design wise the mat is superb. Battle mats I generally think of coming in two different types. Structured or Loose. This mat is what I would called structured or designed. Its pleading with you to place buildings and terrain in specific areas because of the way it is laid out.

The other type is a generic or loose mat. Their surfaces tend to be all the same and represent a generic type of battlefield such as a desert or swamp – terrain fits anywhere on these types of mats. Both types are equally good and useful.

The Sector B-12 Mat has dusty/desert/arid areas which are neatly split up with a number of scorched roads that have varying widths and markings on them. An off centre fortification in the shape of a triangle/star makes for a nice central piece or perhaps some narrative play. Aegis Defence Line anyone? The cracked effect on the arid areas breaks everything up really nicely so that even the largest areas of dust are interesting and not flat or plain.

The “Narrative Star” – Warzone Studio Review

The dusty terrain, roads and markings make the Sector B-12 Mat a perfect battlefield setting for a military base, airport or sea port. A few buildings, cargo containers, industrial debris and you’ll be good to go!

“Port” – Warzone Studio Review

While the mat is designed and structured in such a way that you’re almost forced to place terrain into certain areas and not others. The disjointed nature of the design means that no game would be the same.

Its not a grid like city with clear lanes of fire. But a perfect canvas for you to create a battle scene fit for your own purposes.

A battle scene fit for Cadia – Warzone Studio Review

I write this on the eve of my first game using the Sector B-12 Mat and I cannot wait to paint it with Eldar blood! Not literally of course. Eldar blood is a xenos material and must be turned over to the nearest Inquisitor, always. A Guardsman MUST NEVER paint with xenos blood.

Summary

In short the mat is great. Its various roads and asymmetric design means that there is a lot you can do with the mat and your terrain. The vinyl is a thing and lightweight material which easily lays flat on your table top. Its easy to store and put away in 30 seconds of rolling.

Warzone Studio Review – Gallery

Tube lid

Inside tube

Warzone Studio Logo

Carry string

Tube overview

My blank board

Overview

Detail

Detail

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Detail

Detail

Detail

Detail

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Detail

Slight edge curl after unrolling

Slight curl

  Links

Main Web Site: Warzone Studio.

Etsy: Warzone Studio Etsy Store.

My Board: Making a 6 x 4ft Game Board

Warzone Studio Review – 6 x 4ft – Sector B-12 – Warhammer 40K Blog Welcome back me! To get started I have a review of the fantastic Sector B-12 Gaming Mat…

[w6-tabletop-blog]

Games Workshop: Age of Sigmar Skirmish Neuheiten vorbestellbar

Games Workshop: Age of Sigmar Skirmish Neuheiten vorbestellbar

Ab sofort kann man bei Games Workshop eine neue Erweiterung für “Warhammer: Age of Sigmar” vorbestellen, neben dem Regelwerk gibt es auch neue Bundles und eine neue Battle Mat. Hier die Übersicht: (more…)

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[w6-tabletop-blog]

Games Workshop: Neuheiten für Samstag 29.10.2016

Games Workshop: Neuheiten für Samstag 29.10.2016

Kommenden Samstag, den 29. Oktober 2016 wird es folgende Neuheiten von Games Workshop zur Vorbestellung geben: (more…)

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