Workbench: Homebrewed Battle Mat

One of the things that I have really been frustrated by is the lack of any really gaming board.  Back in Vegas I had a full 4' x 6' desert board for a while (thanks to my days doing demos for Starship Troopers) and also a really handy 2' x 3' (small for units games but it was great for small games like Song of Blades and Heroes).  Unfortunately as I've mentioned elsewhere, all of this had to be dumped when we moved and though I've planned on making new ones in the five years since then... yeah, it just never happened.

It was during that time that the neoprene battle mats really hit the market and I've thought about grabbing one of those instead of building a full board.  More cost but less initial time investment which balances out but I've never pulled the trigger on one, just perused them online.  It was while looking for mat reviews that I actually stumbled across Creative Twilight and their post on making a DIY Wargaming Table and Terrain Set.  I looked through this article and they had some interesting ideas, especially what type of cloth to use for the gaming surface. I've dug around a number of times trying to find a suitable cloth but their recommendation really hit the nail on the head; tie dye blizzard fleece from Jo-Ann Farbics.

For their article, the guy at Creative Twilight used a khaki tie dye but I decided to go with the more traditional green and I really like how it looks.  Here it is with a basic terrain set up.

While it's certainly not the be all end all of terrain mats, I only spent $17 for a piece that is about 9' x 5' which more than I can see needing for a table.  I even cut off a foot or so for some quick terrain basing material like on the larger wooden discs I picked up to mark area terrain.  I'm even thinking about picking up another piece down the line in khaki so that I can throw out a quick desert table as well but for now rolling green will do.

As for the whole set up in the picture, this is a board that I threw together at the hotel for another game of Antares featuring the Algoryn vs the Concord.  It seems like the Concord are just getting soundly thrashed each time I've put them on the table so for this game I'm going to focus on Tactical choices to see if that makes a difference.  I did throw in a medic team for the AI just to balance out the points but for the most part its a straight up infantry battle.  So how did it turn out this time?  You'll have to come back to find out.  Until next time...