"Anyone using carpet tiles?" Topic

I noticed these carpet tiles, 30cm square, available in light green, and became curious – are any of you using carpet tiles for your wargaming table?

link

Is a 30cm grid useful for anything?

Do tiles provide any advantage over a terrain mat?

I've got a stack of tiles I've used over the years, although they are much bigger than 30x30. Half of them are marked up in square grids of various sizes.

The only real advantage is that I can lay out as few or as many as I need.

I have found tiles excellent when showing contours for 1/300th modern wargames.
I used low pile DUNLOP 12x12 inch ones (1978???) The tiles also make good islands in sea games.
They are still very useable now but relegated to flooring.

martin

Being in construction I see lots of flooring products that could be used for a war game board. Took a picture of a vinyl tile for sea games.

I've used vinyl floor tiles a good bit, no carpet squares though.

Not carpet tiles, but the larger, thicker neoprene tiles used as flooring in children's play areas. They can be carved and multiply stacked. With a decent coat of paint I've found them to be very resilient.

Each tile could be textured: roads, rivers, foliage colors changed, etc. Then they can be connected, as necessary, to change their layout.

I use interlocking foam rubber mats for ice, cavern floors, and dungeon terrain. I use craft paints, applied with a natural sponge, and wet blended.

I use indoor/outdoor carpet for my ground cover, cut to fit my table. Cheers!

30cm = 1 foot. Many mats are x feet by x feet…

I started out with carpet tiles, long since moved on.

Here is flooring I thought would be good for sea battles

The only carpeted tiles I've seen had the carpet cut and glued onto foam floor tiles. I wouldn't do that myself, but it would be a nice way to get colors you prefer. I'm not sure what I would do with a cartoon color like the one in the OP.

I have seen 1' tiles with terrain on them used for gaming. It looks like a nice way to make a geomorphic layout. Here's the set War Artisan made for this purpose:

I've considered doing this myself, but I'm too heavily invested in cloths and bags/boxes of pieces to go on them.

I did experiment with making a set of these foam floor tiles with a hex grid, but I couldn't find a way to avoid at least one distorted row per tile (hexes don't fit into square dimensions). Last year I ended up springing for a monster pile of Hexon instead.

Do tiles provide any advantage over a terrain mat?

Foam floor tiles with interlocking edges are extremely useful in naval gaming – there is no more Edge of the World™. You just peel up the unused row on the other side, scoot over the whole interconnected mat, and lay down a new row on the near edge. I use this all the time for steam-era naval gaming where ships tend to move quickly and the ocean should be open to the horizon. My naval tiles look almost exactly like these by War Artisan (because I followed his tutorial to make them):

I just made myself a new set of 32x 2'x2' tiles, and it basically took one weekend to complete. They're pretty easy to make. The hardest part was picking out the paint colors. I'll be running Fri and Sat night naval games on them at Enfilade, if anyone wants to see them in action.

FWIW, War Artisan made a second set with nicer art (wave patterns, better blending of the point-to-point dots, etc.):

I would never have chosen such a light blue for a seascape, but these are beautiful in person.

Not as described. I have used individual carpet tiles or pieces of tile for crop fields, and I have used pieces of artificial lawn tiles (cut into natural shapes) for areas of tall grass.