[WM] Fleece Wargaming Mat

[industrialtrousers]

I'm not unhappy with the caulk mat I made a couple of years back but it's a bit of bastard to store in London housing. I thought I'd have a a crack at a fleece mat as they seem to look the part. The commercial mats available look great but only make any sense if you're playing regularly.

So, I bought a chocolate brown fleece. I've had a few dabbles at it now and I'll grab some photos tonight and post over the next week. I think It'll come up OK and be easier to store than the other. I'm figuring I probably need to buy a couple more paints to get the coverage but the whole thing shouldn't cost me more than £20. And that's with buying a fleece new - as the wife pointed out - I could have spent a fiver at the boot sale instead.

The only small concern is that having been on a bit of a drive to get some proper terrain made up, it won't really fit in with the mat. So there's probably a bit of care required there on my part to make sure thing blend in. I'll see what it looks like at the end but I'm considering adding some static grass and builders sand to blend it with scenery bases.

[Dave]

Intereted in seeing it. I scoured online and other fabric stores looking for something close to the old GW green fleece mat and came up empty.

[industrialtrousers]

Here's what it looked like this morning. I've started on the greens on what is the reverse side of the fleece as it had a bit more pile than the 'top'side.

[industrialtrousers]

Here's it after a bit of attention. I've had to crop that down a fair bit and some of the paint isn't dry here.

[industrialtrousers]

With my original caulk mat on the right.

[industrialtrousers]

Not exactly as I had thought it would turn out but it's certainly fit for purpose. I will almost certainly give it another run over to try and blend this together and make it a bit lighter but it may not need it.

Rug was £11 and spent about £4 on paint. Photo of tools/paint below.

At some point in the next month or two I will have to get a few shots of it properly made up with scenery. One thing I suspect is that hills will need to be more formed for the fleece before they're put under it. With the caulk mat it is stiffer so it's less of an issue.

[dry_erase]

It looks promising - more like lush grassland than the caulk mat.

My recommendation is that you give it a proper test run by battling my Empire or Undead army on it. What do you say?

[industrialtrousers]

That sounds the most reasonable course of action. I'll find a likely looking weekend and get in touch this week with possibilities.

[marell le fou]

Throughout years, i have tried to make several mate.

My best one based on a large tissue layer was to add some silicon to texture and add reliefs.

But i never tried a furr one. I fear it will sometime cause problems to maintain figurines up, but well you will see how it goes.

[industrialtrousers]

Set up for Empire vs Grimgors Lads.
Only two issues found during game play:
the hills underneath need to be completely contoured. As suspected the fabric is too light to have units sitting on it.

You really need something to roll the dice on/in. Not a huge issue but there were occasions where dice needed to be rolled again as it was unclear.

So if you were looking to make a mat yourself I would advise a fleece. The advantages regarding storage and portability combined with probably half the cost of the canvas/caulk mat utterly outweigh the disadvantages.

[dry_erase]

I thought it looked great - as you say, hills and dice rolling are the only issues... and the hill problem seems to apply to most terrain that doesn't have a very shallow slope.

The paint looks particularly effective at that scale.

[Stormwind]

It seems a worthwhile project!