"material for a base mat" Topic

I am getting into WW1 naval miniatures and would like suggestions for an inexpensive material for use as a base mat to start with.
Thanks in advance.

Try blue felt. You can buy it by the yard (x yards (3 feet by 2 yards (6feet) wherever faberic is sold. I have 2 – 2 yard sections (or 2 six foot by six foot sections).

I use dark blue marine vinyl. Kind of pricey (~$15/sq. yd.), but I've always gotten mine on sale or with a coupon, bringing it down to half price or less. The nice thing about marine vinyl is that there are no threads for metal edges to catch on and pull threads. I also have one that I made a hex grid on. Works well for either naval or air games.

I'll check out both as I'm still deciding if to base the ships on wood or acrylic bases.

Second on blue vinyl "leatherette".

I use an old blue tablecloth with thin vinyl table cloth protector obtained from a hardware store (off the roll).
link

Felt looks too plain and snags.

For really cheap head to your local fabric store. Explain you want the blue cloth that looks like a school portrait background. It is a cloth with a mottled pattern available in dark and light blue as well as greens and browns. Usually under $5 USD/yard for a 4' wide cloth. No snagging, looks good with no work. Very cheap.

Try a firm that prints banners. They can be inexpensive and the material is hard wearing. Here's one I had printed –

I sent them a pdf and they did formatting.

All good suggestions.

For about 15 years I've used dark blue felt mottled with black that I found at a fabric store. I bought 3 lengths of it, two 6'x8' and one smaller which got cut up to make deployment tiles for campaigns and blind deployments. I use the two big ones to scroll the terrain – when the ships get too close to an edge of the table, the entire cloth gets scooted over, the next one laid under it, and the action continues "over the horizon".

Last year I used War Artisan's technique for making interlocking foam "sea" tiles, and I love them dearly. The project cost considerably more than simple cloth, but has several advantages:

• The thick tiles smooth over imperfections in any table
  
• They are very light
  
• They are nearly indestructible for gaming usage (they're designed to be walked on!)
  
• They make scrolling the table under the miniatures really easy, removing "edge of the world" problems
  
• The regular 2' squares provide a ready grid for pre-planning coast/shoal/island placement, plotting hidden mines and reefs, pre-measuring deployment distances, etc.
  
• The foam is easy to cut if you want to make some half-size tiles (e.g. to fit a 5'x9' table)
  
• They were hella easy to make
  
• They look very nice
  

The cheapest source of foam tiles I've found is Harbor Freight, but you may be able to find them at any big hardware or DIY store. Caveat: you have to buy all you will ever need at the same time, because you will never again be able to match the puzzle-piece edges from a different lot or different manufacturer. I would recommend making at least 18 tiles, enough to cover a 6'x12' area.

I bought my paint, a standard foam paint roller, and a sponge paint roller like this one at Lowe's, a big West Coast US DIY store. The paints were Olympic Icon gloss latex in C55-5 Shimmering Sea (base coat) and B56-6 Jamaican Dream (speckled top coat). The gloss latex provides a little bit of water-like sheen.

The total cost came in under $100 USD total: $30 USD-40 for paint and rollers, $10 USD per 4-pack of tiles.

- Ix

WOW! that's very nice Norrins, how did you go about making it?
Would be great for virtually every type of skirmish games, zombies, pulp, WW2 etc.
Cheers all, lots of nice finds and ideas.

We use a length of cheap nylon cloth which we just bung in a bag after use to keep the wrinkles.

Sea Base

Ignore the shininess it is just the flash from the camera.

Lots of interesting ideas that I hadn't thought of, so thank you all very much with putting them out there.

@Zargon Check out the thread here – TMP link