Saturday 19 December 2015

Gaming mats

     It's been another couple of weeks with very little hobby to put to my name, a mix of extra hours at work and spending time trying to bond a newly adopted rabbit to our current pair, but that doesn't mean I haven't got anything done.

     A couple of months back I backed a gaming mat kickstarter from a company called Ceri Designs. The guy behind it wanted to make great quality, versatile, but most importantly, affordable, cloth mats and as I have been on the verge of buying some mats for a while, I took the plunge, backing it for 2 of the 3x3 mats. First things first, this is the first kickstarter that I have backed that has delivered on time, that definitely deserves a mention, secondly, much as he has taken a bit of slack for the designs being fairly modular (you'll see that on my second mat) it's not something that I am overly worried about, the actual printing quality is really good and if his claims are anything to go by these things are wash proof and game proof, I'm not sure you can go too far wrong. These are definitely some of the better quality mats I have ever seen, so I am looking forward to seeing them in bigger sizes next.

     The first mat I picked was a modern urban one, I have a slowly growing collection of urban buildings that I am building and painting/spraying as and when I get enough time, my lead mountain now includes a secondary mdf peak. The mat itself is a simple crossroads, which is the basic layout I generally prefer, you can make sure both sides have a fair game, but can block off roads to get rid of lanes of fire if you want.

ceri designs urban batman gaming matt

batman wargame knight models board

sarissa precision tt combat batman board wargames

tt combat court pokecentre wargames batman

       The second mat I got was the basic flagstones mat that every gaming mat company has to have on their books. I picked the most basic one in the range, simply because I felt I could get more use out of a basic one used well than shoehorn a more specific mat into other uses. I can definitely see this being used for small games of VBCW, Frostgrave, Open Combat and maybe even Lion's/Dragon's Rampant.

ceri designs flagstone wargaming mat

ceri designs flagstone wargames mat

medieval fantasy town wargames scenery boardwargames statue

wargames scenery rooftops town open combat

open combat scenery terrain wargames board

Thanks for reading

*Edited* - The website is now live; http://www.ceridesign.xyz/

8 comments:

  1. Well they certainly look good to me, the flagstones look particularly effective when the buildings are on top. Now where did you get the museum with the columns from in the top left hand corner of the second picture?

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    1. Thanks Michael. That's the law court from TT Combat, with some slight modifications. The pillars are from a cake shop and they stand on plinth bases from fenris, plus a layer of foam board as they didn't quite fit . . . Going to do a post about it if I ever manage to finish it.

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    2. Wow, just checked that out on eBay, a great price. I would certainly love to see a post about how you adapted yours when you get the chance.

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  2. Both mats look very good dude! I could really do with something like these.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Bob. I think this company's website goes live in January and they are a really good price.

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  3. Very nice! Love the court building and the 'fantasy' village looks great.

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