I hope I am not breaking any rules by asking about brands. The club is thinking about buying a few gaming mats so we can get some serious games going and organizing som tournaments. Right now we have one from microartstudio and we have been looking at some of deepcutstudios mats that looks great. What other good brands are there? They should be made out of mousepad as we think that's the best option, looks good, feels good, flat and quiet. Since there are other games played here like warhammer and flames of war (too few fow for my test but what can you do) we need them to be 6'x4'. Suggestions? cheers, MAlgol
I have a personalized mat at home, I got it from a printing business on the same material they use for those "plastic" banners at conventions, essentially a flat printed surface. It was much more economic than a gaming mat, and it's a way I suggest to people organizing tournaments from scratch regardless of the game (Warzone, Star Wars...), with the plus that you can edit the image before sending it to the printer.
There are several on the net, and a guy assembled his "custom" mats from D&D and Pathfinder (remember both have a Sci Fi line) PDF and images used for their battlemats, and scanned some of the ones that come with the cardboard scenery CB sells adding some corp icons here and there (it was a Warzone tournament). The business I bought mine from accepted files sent by clients, and you could scale down or "cut" the image to size, so I only printed a 120x120 part, which was like 1/8 of the image, at 100% scale ^^U The final product looked really good, and it's on Infinity's scale.
Mousepad material is the only way to go nowadays IMO due to the fact they're non-slip and can be stored for long periods without creasing. I've also found that if you contact the manufacturs directly they'll often do discounts for clubs or large orders. Antenociti's Workshop, Gamemat.eu and Deep Cut are all excellent quality, I really like my Micro Art mat but they don't do 6x4. I've no personal experience with FAT mats but heard good things.
I can vouch for FAT Mats. Our local Game Store has six of those and they are amazing and durable. I got one too 6x4. The price tag is a little high, but that's the price of high quality, I guess. I also have a 4x4 Micro Arts Moto.Tronica Mat and I love it. It's lighter and a tad thinner than the FAT mats, but very good material ad just as sturdy.
I'm actually somewhat in the market for a better Mat. I bought a Snow Mat for 4x4ft thinking my Ikea tables would suffice, except they don't because the table is 120x120cm so there are a few centimetres around each edge. I took a knife to it rather than returning it because reasons but the results aren't ...perfect. I'd like it to be perfect. Furthermore the mat came tinted pink and not closer to white like I was hoping for, so the fake snow i've been adding to buildings really exaccerbates the tinting issue. So, does anyone have any suggestions for manufacturers that would send me a mat that is actually the correct size? Most sites I look at use 120cm and 4 foot interchangably to describe the same item and I can't have that kind of imprecision, it needs to be exact!
I use the TriCity 4'x4' mat from Gamemat.eu. It's excellent for sci-fi use but dont have any paved roads that limits the way you place terrain, plus they are made from mousepad material, so you can store it for ages and it will still lay flat. My Corrigidor said gaming mat. :)
Edster of the Mars Attacks thread guided me towards these. THink they look really good. https://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/undertown-isometric-gaming-mat-1800mm-x-1200mm/a-2502/ https://www.antenocitisworkshop.com/undertown-modular-gaming-mats-1200x1200mm-1200x600mm/a-2501/ @Zewrath Good taste in faction and I myself are waiting for a big box of ZenTerrain. =) And they are in metric @Superfluid =) Speaking of cm vs. inches. My club is using inches because it seems to be the default and what most people and tournaments use. Is it so or is cm used an much?
Depends, here in Spain no one uses inches, even in national CB-sponsored tournaments. Seems to me that this is USA-only but could be wrong. Then again this feels like a matter of taste, use what you guys feel more comfortable with.
We always use inches as we're used to it cause other Tabletop games we used to play. Our German rules however are in cm, the reason I only use the english ones, also to have a better grip on international game media. But its no problem if you use cm and your opponent inches. Whats good about inches too is your s2 base is 1inch
Well it is sort of a problem since 8" is longer then 20 cm, not by much but sometimes that's all it takes. If a go to another club or tournament it doesn't matter if they use cm or inches as long as everyone there is using it. The problem we have is that all our boards we have here to play on are in cm, 1800*1200 and so on. Its odd since almost every game here is using inches. Could of course be that almost all the big mdf/plywood is using cm since its standard, we didn't find 6'x4' until recently.