Setting the Table – Selecting a Table Topper
By Tyler Stone
I recently finished up a collection of ‘Blood & Plunder’ terrain for demo games at my local game shop. I gleaned more than a few insights during the labor-intensive slog (tile grout makes better sand than actual sand does!) but I’d really like to start at the foundation; choosing a surface to put your terrain on.
Yeah, that’s right. Pour it on – I can take it!!One of the benefits of living in this crazy age is that there is no shortage of options for the base of your terrain layout, from the old standbys of teddy-bear fur or felt, to newfangled neoprene mats. A few of you lunatics might even make fully-realized 3d landscapes to wage tiny virtual war over. So, in light of the ongoing , let’s take a look at some of our options, together.
A Cigar Box Battles fabric beach mat set up for ‘Blood & Plunder’Option 1 – Fabric Mats
Since it was Cigar Box and their excellent cloth mats which got us here in the first place, let’s start with fabric mats. Fabric mats have been around in gaming for forever. A lot of us here, especially the old greybeards, probably started out with a colored tablecloth. The inventive among us may have even used spray paint or an airbrush to add some gradients, roads or other flat features.
It’s 2019 though, and through the wonders of technology, the humble cloth mat has become far nicer than even your most artistic spray can endeavors.
Cloth mats are lightweight, and can be folded to save space. They’re also washable, which is great – we all know that one guy who’s fingers seem to be perpetually covered in Cheeto dust. Cloth mats will stain, so keep the Kool-Aid far away, but for all but the very worst stains, a good wash in some quality detergent will have you covered.
The best feature of all is the way that cloth mats ‘drape’. Before a gamer lays out a fabric mat, they can put down carved foam, books, or any solid form on the table and the fabric will drape over it to create seamless hills and valleys. I have known players to drape their cloth mats over a foam substructure, and then use push-pins carefully pushed through the cloth to more realistically anchor terrain like trees.
The draping feature also means that a fabric mat fits any (smaller than the mat) size table; if the cloth mat is 6’x4′ it will overhang, or drape, beyond any smaller table, such as a 3′ round. For the new Cigar Box Battle mats, the versatility doesn’t end with table size. Since fabric mats often do not have any sort of backing, they can be printed on both sides to give you the choice of two designs in a single mat.
Just like Sunday dinner – showing how fabric mats can drape over a round table. This is the Island mat from Cigar BoxThe downside to a cloth mat is also related to this draping and folding; they wrinkle and crease. If left folded in storage for too long, the fabric can crease. A simple ironing is enough to correct this, but it’s still something to be aware of. The wrinkles are what can be troubling during gameplay. Just like sliding your hand across a sheet or tablecloth, dragging something across the fabric can create unwanted ripples. I notice the most with the heavy ships in Blood & Plunder, but also with “based” games like Kings of War and historical games that use movement trays.
Cloth Mat Pros
– Lightweight
– Easy to Store
– Can be draped over substructures for seamless 3d effects
– Fits over any sized table
– Can be double printed
Cloth Mat Cons
– Can crease if left folded for too long
– Can wrinkle during play
– Not stain resistant at all
A 4’x4′ neoprene mat from TableWar’s new Caribbean line
Option 2 – Neoprene Mats
Neoprene mats are an evolution of the cloth mat. They are essentially gigantic mousepads, with rubberized backs so they don’t wrinkle or slide. The details are printed onto a thin layer of stretchable fabric. This fabric is of a very fine weave, and completely flat. This means that details can be printed much more sharply onto a neoprene mat, as the edges will not ‘fuzz’ on the fibers of a felt mat.
This is only an issue with the highest quality prints, however; and quality cloth mats manufacturers will choose designs that mitigate this problem almost entirely. The juggernauts in this category are almost certainly (who also offer cloth mats) and the FATMat line from .
The rubber base of these mats also gives them a degree of padding. Models dropped onto a neoprene are less likely to sustain damage. Most of all though, it dampens the clatter of rolling dice and gives far more protection to the table surface below. The crisp details of these mats, along with the sound-dampening, has made neoprene mats popular among YouTubers, and others who record their games.
Either contributing to this partnership or resulting from it, is the diversity available in neoprene mats. If you play fantasy or sci-fi games, you can find lava flows, lunarscapes, ice flows, and other weird and wonderful biomes to wage war upon. Lately, the popularity of Blood & Plunder has inspired TableWar to make an excellent set of Caribbean mats, which match along one edge to form a vast expanse of ocean, running up to a beach and inland.
That rubber backing does come with trade-offs, though. Firstly, it makes neoprene mats quite heavy, especially compared to a cloth mat of the same size. Neoprene mats also cannot be folded; they are stored rolled up. These two things combined make neoprene mats exponentially more unwieldy as they increase in size.
Finally, because they don’t fold, they also will not drape over a table edge without rising in the center; if you have a 4’x4′ mat, you had better have a 4’x4′ table to go under it. The rubber backing and synthetic fabric also makes them fairly water/stain resistant, but if you do manage to stain them, you can’t toss these in the washing machine.
Neoprene Mat Pros
– High image resolution
– Won’t slide, crease, or wrinkle during play
– Sound dampening and excellent protection for the surface below
– Moderately Stain Resistant
Neoprene Mat Cons
– Heavy
– Must be rolled; a 4′ mat will form a 4′ roll
– Must be matched to the size of the available table
– Can’t be washed
Vinyl/PVC Mats
Vinyl or PVC mats are even newer than neoprene and come with some unique features. Vinyl mats are printed on sheets of vinyl, just like those big ‘furniture sale!’ banners that you see lining strip malls the world over. They’re quite a bit thinner, but they’re the same tarp-like, plastic material. To really review vinyl mats, like those from , takes a different approach than the previous two types of mat. That’s because vinyl mats are very much a “middle of the road” solution for gaming mats.
Vinyl mats can be folded like a cloth mat, but won’t crease as easily. If they do crease, you can take the lines out with some warm air from a hairdryer. The trade-off is that vinyl mats don’t fold as tightly as cloth. Vinyl can hang over the sides of a table but doesn’t fold in on itself, so it should only overhang on two straight sides. Vinyl mats are a little heavier cloth, but not as heavy as neoprene.
The same is true of cost; vinyl usually lands somewhere between a cloth and a neoprene mat. Keeping the comparisons going, vinyl mats are a bit louder than neoprene when you’re rolling handfuls of dice. The plastic finish on vinyl can make them look a bit more glossy or ‘satin’ than the fabric-based mats; if you’re photographing vinyl mats, they can sometimes throw some noticeable glare.
The unique, hard-wearing properties of vinyl, combined with their price points, making them a popular solution at tournaments and for club play when someone needs to get a high quantity of mats together and can’t guarantee that they’ll be well cared for. That’s not to say that quantity is prioritized over quality – only that vinyl strikes a good balance between the two.
Vinyl Pros
– Most durable of any mat options
– Very difficult to crease
– Can be written on with Wet-Erase markers
Vinyl Cons
– A little ‘shiny’
– Being a ‘Jack of all trades’ means they’re a master of none
‘Teddy Bear’ Fur
Let’s call this the first of our ‘weird’ entries. Teddy fur is exactly what it says on the tin; it’s sheets of the furry cloth that they use to make your nice, fuzzy, childhood friends. It’s been in use for wargaming mats probably since the cloth mats, and it was long considered the “primo” option for serious wargamers.
We’re going to start with the negative aspects of teddy fur, because that’s what really differentiates it from the previous entries: teddy fur can be expensive. Nobody except us nutjob wargamers (and crafty people making plush animals) is expected to buy this stuff by the yard, and so it’s priced accordingly.
It’s also the first of the mat options that requires you do put in some effort. While there are companies out there like ” who can buy in bulk and sell you a ready-to-go fur mat, many people are still making these in house, with spraypaint cans, combs, and beard trimmers.
Yes, you heard me right: beard trimmers. Teddy fur is thick, as you’d expect, but that makes it hard to stand miniatures on; especially for skirmish games that don’t have nice trays to stand everyone on. To combat that, and to add some realistic variations and maybe a few roads, it’s common practice to “shave” your mat down a bit. Teddy fur does a good job of looking like a field of tall grass, but even the laziest homeowner doesn’t have grass growing taller than his own head.
Unless you bought the ready made mat, you also need to make your teddy fur look less like Winnie the Pooh, and more like the killing fields of France. That means paint, and then combing it to work the paint through all the fibers and keep them from clumping up like the hair on an 80’s Glam-Rock band.
If you get it right though, teddy fur makes an awesome solution for those who recreate battles normally fought on gentlemanly greens (or really, really overgrown cities, I guess). It has the advantage of hiding bases, as your minis sink into the fur and bring the bases out of the line of sight.
It’s the only option here with a real 3d quality to the ground cover, with troops trampling it down as they move through, and amber waves of grain blowing in the breeze.
Since it’s on a cloth backing, teddy fur can be laid over substructures to create hills and will drape over the edges of your table like a fabric mat. The weight of teddy fur, means that it’s a little less likely to ripple than fabric mats, which is always a plus because this stuff works best with the kinds of ‘based’ miniatures that pull cloth mats around. Truly, teddy fur is a case of “effort in: results out” terrain making, and that’s going to be a trend as we close out the article.
Teddy Fur Pros
– the most realistic grass texture by far
– folds, and drapes just like cloth
– the classic option for the ‘gentleman’ wargamer
Teddy Fur Cons
– maintenance-intensive!
– Can be pricey
– Only available in “grass” variety, urban teddy fur is just leather, I guess
3d, Modular Boards
Technically, anything that I say here is also true of single-piece sculpted game boards, but since companies are putting out packaged tile kits (like the ), I think it’s worth covering here.
Modular tiles are the only truly 3d solution in our list. They are, however, the most expensive and the ones that take the most effort to create. There are very few solutions left out there selling finished tiles, and I will avoid linking any here because they’re usually individuals working for a commission, and it’s really a revolving door of people “in the business” at any given time.
The skill required for building good modular terrain cannot be understated; getting everything to match up when the tiles are mixed, matched, rotated, and recombined takes a keen eye and attention to detail. Done right, you have seamless hills and panel lines that almost disappear into the flocking and contours of your board. Done wrong, and you have sharp edges that don’t mate together obvious seam lines, and abrupt changes in texture and color across your foliage.
Even the worst modular tiles still give you options not present in any of the other toppers. Gamers aren’t beholden to whatever additional features are printed on the mat (such as roads or fields); if you want a river to run through the center of your table, you can add one, and then take it away next game.
Features that would normally have bases (trees, fences, and even buildings) can be built right onto a tile, eliminating any unsightly seams where the base ends and the gaming mat resumes. The truly devoted can even finish their modular boards with the same ground cover that they use on their miniature bases so that everything blends together with a level of professionalism that will make you the envy of your gaming group.
Sarissa has the advantage of offering a decent storage solution, but this is still far from “easily portable”Moreso than any other solution, modular tiles are difficult to store. Easier than a fixed table, sure, but they’re still heavy, and cannot be folded or rolled. If the tiles are sturdy enough to stack without crushing any details, they can be shoved in a box and tucked away in a closet.
If the tiles are more fragile, or if they are very large, a gamer might become stuck with a permanent table, albeit one that can be reconfigured so that the river runs East-West rather than North-South for a game.
The other consideration is cost. A set of the3’x3′ from Sarissa retails for $43 US. That is similar to a good neoprene mat of the same size.
However, the Sarissa tiles do not include the glue, ground covers, flocks, paint, or the labor required to assemble all of that into a nice looking product. Those with the time and the wherewithal can create modular tiles for an incredible tabletop, worthy of truly cinematic games on a beautiful custom made surface.
Modular Pros
– It’s modular: you’re not stuck with whatever design the printed mat gives you
– True 3d, with integrated bases for your terrain
– 100% customized to your tastes
Modular Cons
– Very labor intensive!!
– Heavy and difficult to store/transport
– Can be very expensive
Conclusion
In the end, we’re certainly not starved for a choice of tabletop surfaces. What kind of surface you choose, however, is going to come down very much to personal preference. For example, NDNG’s own Mitch Reed prefers cloth mats for any game larger than 4′ square, whereas I am the opposite and prefer neoprene for large mats and fabric for smaller games and tables.
I think everyone dreams of having a fully realized, 3d board to play over, but the logistics of storing one, and the effort going into building them can be a real barrier for most. In any case, whether it’s fabric, vinyl, neoprene, teddy fur, or a tile system, whatever topper you choose is going to elevate the aesthetic of your game. When we’ve put so much effort into painting and modeling our troops, it seems a shame to play a game over the glossy woodgrain finish of your kitchen table.
A note on durability
I know that I didn’t cover durability, beyond the fact that some mats are washable or stain resistant. This was intentional. The fact is, every solution is going to degrade over time. Fabric will fuzz or fray, neoprene mats tend to separate or bubble, and teddy fur sheds. Modular mats chip and get banged up.
None of these toppers will last forever, but any good quality supplier is going to give you a topper that will last for quite a few years if cared for. I could have listed the “wear and tear” as a con in every single entry up here, but it would be redundant; every topper has it’s own wear and tear that will affect how it looks over time.
So, what solution will you be using, or what do you already use? Do you have a favorite company for wargames mats that I didn’t mention here? Let us know in the comments!