Back in September, I took War Rocket, by Hydra Miniatures, to a local game convention. Matt Beauchamp recommended using a hex mat to speed play, but I didn't have one at the time. After having played a couple of games at home and at the convention, I found he was right, so I investigated Hotz Mats.
Then, just last week, I noticed some almost-negative commentary on Hotz Mats, so I thought I'd post my experience.
On September 23rd, I requested a double-sided nebula mat, green nebula on one side with no grid, red nebula on the other with 2" hex grid. I received the invoice from Eric on the 30th, paid by PayPal, and had the mat in hand before the end of October (despite the notice on the invoice and the website that delivery could take up to five weeks).
The mat is brilliant; the artwork is superb. There are two features that I truly love. The first is that, when I unfolded the mat for the first time and laid it on my game table, it laid out completely flat! No curling, no creases. As I've used it, I've rolled it up for storage between games, and each time, it lays completely flat with no bunching or curling no matter how long it has been rolled up.
The second great feature is the hex grid. I have one side ungridded for free-form play and one side with 2" hexes to accommodate the largest of the War Rocket bases. If you stand looking directly down on the mat, you can see the grid clearly. But when you sit looking at it, from normal viewing height as you would during play, the grid is virtually invisible! It does not detract in the least from the spectacle of a game with painted figures.
So that brings me to the second stage of my business with Hotz Mats. Several weeks back, Eric had a notice on TMP of the introduction of a moonscape mat. Since I could use that for War Rocket games across the barren surface of a planet or for ground battles using something like Future War Commander or StarGrunt, I sent him a note on November 10th asking about a double-sided lunar mat. We exchanged emails and on the 17th I ordered the mat, double sided, one with 2" hex grid, the other with no grid. On the 24th, Eric dropped me a note to say that my order was the first with a 2" hex grid and the crater array was not an exact match for the grid. He offered to send the mat for my review and, if it wasn't satisfactory, to replace it. I asked him to send it as I couldn't imagine that it would be unsatisfactory. It arrived today (December 1st) and is satisfactory in all respects. Again, brilliant artwork and great performance on the table; i.e., no creases, curling, or bunching.
The base color of the mat is just hair lighter than a Vallejo London Grey. There are numerous tiny craters or rocks about ˝" in diameter that are a bit darker than Vallejo Neutral Gray. The real gem is the spread of larger craters. There are about 29 of them, of which more than half either fit into a 2" hexagon or enclose a 2" hexagon. The remainder capture the vertices of three hexes. That makes all of the usable as terrain (rather than artwork) as either something that protects a hex or constrains movement across some hexsides. I understand from Eric that the hex pattern was predicated on 3" hexes, which would put all of the craters inside a single hex rather than spanning several smaller hexes. The craters themselves are almost a Vallejo German Grey and the feature that I like most about them is that they're all shadowed in the same direction. That is, you can tell that the sun is at one edge of the mat and the edge of craters nearest that edge are shadowed inside the crater, while the opposite crater edges are shadowed outside the crater.
As I said, a brilliant piece of work and, in my opinion, well worth the money for the appearance and for the ease of use of the mat itself, irrespective of any artwork on it. These are clearly better than any mats I've used before, so I will gradually be replacing all of my European and desert mats with Eric's; I'm ambivalent about the Mars mat; I need to see that one in person first :) .
tries a stucco repair product to contour his bases.
