"Europe Mat With Just Fields - By Customer Demand" Topic

What figure scale did you have in mind when you made the fields?

Ditto-?

Great looking mat. Now can you make them without your name on them?

Xin

Thanks for listening to your customers. Hopefully all that asked you to make this pick up at least one.

Looks great for smaller figures, but the fields are a bit small for larger scales. Would love to see a version with fields about twice that size.

Appears to me they are about right for 6mm troops, and/or for larger scale aircraft flying above them.

Ditto to Flintloque. Bigger fields and 2 foot square size would be great for DBA 3. All I see now for Phil Barker's DBA size is a water sheet. What would be good is a 2 foot square piece with fields like the one with the 908mm boy on it.

The plain open grassland, desert and tundra matts are the ones to get. They can be customized to any battle. The grassland with roads would work if it didn't have roads.

Why would anyone want to buy a mat made with roads, buildings already printed on it? Makes it hard to do a scenario. The Gettysburg matt is really useless.

Just make the correct terrain but no roads, buildings, farm fields or rivers already printed on it. I need the flexibility to do any battle. I have my own buildings, roads,farm fields and rivers to put on the mat so I can customize it for each battle.

I agree with Rallynow. They are nice mats, but marking them with terrain really limits their use. The most helpful ones are the plain grass and desert. I think you would sell more if you focused on featureless terrain.

Data. Research. Without us customers seeing customer data that is driving production we customers have no idea what the justifications are for anything in this hobby. The just-completed hobby survey points to WW2 being the largest gaming segment today, followed by Napoleonic's still. My guess is this mat with the fields was wanted by air combat people and if this mat had a hex grid on it, I'd buy it. Also, my guess is some peeps are probably going to cut the fields out for use on plain mats but yes it would be good if the size of the fields was noted somewhere so one would know what fig scale would go with it.

Plain mats don't really show the strength of a printed mat versus a piece of felt or any other form of game mat. I'm sure Cigar Box realizes that this may be relatively niche compared to open grassland, but just because vanilla and chocolate are the most popular ice cream flavors doesn't mean there isn't room for pistachio.

Rich

If I wanted open plains, I could buy a piece of cloth and spray some texture on it. The appeal of these is the artwork. Personally, I'm less interested in the trees and hedges, as I'll still use 3D terrain for that, but having a variety of fields on the mat that I can place roads, hedges & bocage between is very attractive.

Yuk, did they not even view aerial shots of a real landscape first? This looks so unnatural with its tiny fields, guess its ok for 6mm but definitely not for 28mm, but the fields should still butt up to each other either way.

I love this but I would use it to supplement my current Wings of Glory City/Country/Coast maps for 1/600th jet combat.

It would work for 1/300th aerial combat also but (currently) I only have that scale winging it's way in the mail.

For my 15mm or larger (larger is skirmish only) figures I would use conventional 3D terrain (3D isn't necessary for aerial but "expected" for land combat.

"… The just-completed hobby survey points to WW2 being the largest gaming segment today, followed by Napoleonic's still…"

Society makes a lot of wrong choices…

Who cares what "most" people play if your product is not addressing their needs/desires? I see this (based on a WAG) as oriented to aerial games but definitely figures below 15mm size, maybe even below 10mm size.

"… just because vanilla and chocolate are the most popular ice cream flavors doesn't mean there isn't room for pistachio…" – great insight.

Versatility is good sometimes and over-rated other times.

Free Market, don't like it, don't buy it. Don't whine, buy something that meets your wants/needs/desires and move on. Support the companies that support your "flavor" of miniatures addiction.

"… The just-completed hobby survey points to WW2 being the largest gaming segment today, followed by Napoleonic's still…"

Who get invited to complete this survey? I've never seen it. Is in a particular magazine? Is that magazine backed by WW2 or Napoleonics manufacturers?

"Who get invited to complete this survey?"

I saw it advertised here on TMP.

LOL! Wargamer Blue, that was uninentionally (I think) very funny.

Well, no one knows how representative TMP is of the entire Hobby anymore than any single forum… it should say "… just completed TMP survey…" then. Hell, no one even knows for sure how many war gamers there are in the world and a forum, no matter how large or small, may not be representative. If my understanding of TMP history is clear LAF was founded partly by "virtual Voortrekkers" unhappy with TMP, so if correct, then TMP doesn't represent the hobby in toto.

In surveys it is all about who you ask what questions…

The survey was advertised here, but it wasn't a TMP survey. It was done by one of the Wargame magazines. TMP was one of several online sites where the survey was advertised.

Over 7500 individuals took the time to respond, so I'd suspect it's a fair sampling of the wargaming world.

Here's the results, in a series of articles.

link