"standing crops - Teddy fur Vs door mat" Topic

I've 'made' both teddy bear fur and door mat fields (to look like fields of wheat) within a week, primarily for my SYW gaming. I prefer the mat. Which do you prefer, and why?

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Mat – looks more stubbly !

Agreed – I think teddy bear fur is better for long grass than standing crops.

Agreed. Up to the point where you stand troops on it. I always have a problem with men hovering above the crop field. Whereas the teddy bear fur just lies flat.

The truth is that they both look really nice.

As Rich writes both look good until you come to put figures on the mat and they start to levitate.

A couple of options:
You could chop the mat into smaller pieces say something like 2" x 3" (or say into pieces same size a couple of bases worth of troops) and remove portions to allow you to place figures in the field not on top of it that frankly looks silly IMHO. I've seen this method of making smaller pieces to remove and it works well.

The issue with using faux fur is that the ends of the fur taper unlike wheat. What you need to do to make the fur look more like wheat or barley is to trim the very tips off with a pair of very sharp scissors. It won't take long to do and although it may sound completely stupid or reverse logic trust me! Your eye will pick up the difference and it's enough to make faux fur look like crops. If you are using cheap fur fabric then that never looks like crops or even grass but if you are using proper faux fur then what I've suggested will work.

We did an ACW game for Salute a few years back using sectioned doormat. As troops waded through we removed the sections. Cover and movement penalties were removed as the crops were beaten down.

I've tried both, and prefer the fur. Figures levitating on wheat (cocoa mat) or corn (green plastic mats) fields just look goofy. I'm not a fan of the segmented fields, as they work fine in practice but just get destroyed and littered all over when players get into the heat of battle.

For wargaming purposes, faux fur every time.
What's missing from your photos is the figures actually placed within the fields.
If you'd taken those shots, I think most would agree that the faux fur looks more realistic.

I'd go with the fur. I dislike the hovering.

The inside of corrugated cardboard works well for plowed fields, just peel off one layer of the cardboard and then paint/texture the corrugated as you please.

I like the look of the Mat, but the hover effect looks funny, so the Fur is my choice.

Mister Tribbles – nice idea for plowed fields, thanks.

I'd go for fur every time, and corduroy for ploughed fields.

One tip for fur is to make sure you brush against the grain so it is standing up as high as possible. The fur is quite long when brushed but tends to lie flat. All teddy bears like a good grooming!

I think teddy bear fur is better for long grass than standing crops.

Interesting comment – we've come to consider standing crops of wheat or rye as something quite distinct but actually, isn't that what they are: long grass? And in the 18th C. scene depicted here, they would very much have looked the part: Crops stood a good 4 to 5 feet high before being bred lower for harvesting combines, and being sown by hand would lack any orderly pattern. Practical considerations aside, the doormat with ist appearance of orderly rows may be more suited to modern battlefields.

Replace "long grass" with "grasses that taper to a point rather than cereal crops that are topped by kernels" then…. ;-)