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The title pretty much sums it up. Is the GW one any good? Any suggestions for other brands?

The GW board is expensive, it only provides a limited number of configurations, and it comes unpainted.

There are various companies which supply mats and individual terrain pieces like hills and marshes. These are much more flexible than the GW set, and come ready to use. Another alternative is felt cloths, which have less texture but are lighter and cheaper.

http://www.zuzzy.com/
http://www.terrainmat.com/
http://www.scenics.co.uk/
http://www.hotzmats.com/
http://mondayknight.com/

Alternatively, it is pretty easy to make your own board. If you spend the GW's cost on tools and materials you can make heaps of stuff, and it's fun to do!

http://balagan.org.uk/war/modelling/terrain_mat.htm

Here's an NZ based group who have some terrain articles.
http://www.fusiliers.net/wargaming16.htm

If it's gonna be your only thing, I'd also recommend making your own. For the cost of the ROBB you can get all the bits and make whatever you want.

On Dakka, there's a few good links. PaniC posted all his terrain tutorials on an article here - http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/CategoryaniCs_Terrain_Tutorials - he actually owns a ROBB as well, but there's good stuff for creating modular bits.

I have a terrain blog here - http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/270642.page - most of my stuff is the traditional 'sheet of polystyrene' stuff, and I basically have a big 6x4 sheet of timber that goes on my living room table. I also get a lot of terrain from Amera, who make very cheap but very good vac-formed stuff. Link in the blog.

Killkrazy, you have some amazing Tau/desert terrain if I remember correctly - made using noodle bowls and textured paint. You should post a tutorial/pics maybe?

I've had a Zuzzy mat for the past 2-3 years now and it is still in as good a shape as when I bought it. It paints up very easy and at the end of the day, I roll it back up and put it back in the original box it was shipped in for easy storage. I believe it cost around $50-$60 back in the day. One of the best buys for my gaming, especially when compared to its cost.

Anyone had any experience with Terrainmat? Looking through Kilkrazy's links above, their urban mat looks really nice.

Some additions to what Kilkrazy posted:
1.) You also have to flock the GW board as otherwise miniatures won't hold on slopes.
2.) Zuzzy looks great but being a heavy rubber mat, 100$+ postage is killing this product for me.
3.) I own 2 Hots mats and this is what I regularly use (European Fields, Western town without grid and streets). Heavy use leads to pilling though.
4.) Sabol once had and probably will again sell their Combat Mats ( http://www.thewarstore.com/SabolDesignsCombatMat.html ), sturdier than felt. I prefer sand colour, plains is quite reddish. Beware that there is a big white www.sabol.com print on one side that puts off some customers. Regular price is high at 60$, got it at a selll out for 20$.
5.) Ziterdes has something similar to the GW board, but less robust and less expensive: http://www.ziterdes.de/ziterdes/en/produkte/listview.php?catID=69&subcatID=99 . I now prefer Hotz mats.

BTW: Some company planned to do a photorealistic city mat 2-3 years ago. Does anyone know who? Or was it Sabol as well?

Necroagogo wrote:Anyone had any experience with Terrainmat? Looking through Kilkrazy's links above, their urban mat looks really nice.

Yes, I have a Terrain Mat brown desert mat.


Terrain Mat
Reviewed by Kilkrazy, September 2010


Terrain Mat is a small company based in Norfolk, UK, who make roll-up terrain mats (duh!) and accessories for tabletop wargaming.

http://www.terrainmat.com/

The mats are offered in several standard sizes which you can see on the site, and can be ordered in various colours for the type of terrain you want.

If you fight in Europe you generally want a temperate background which the “Green Steppe” provides and you would dress it up with trees, fields and so on.

If you fight in North Africa the Semi-Arid mat would be good for the more populated areas, while the Red Desert would fit Desert War scenarios.

In each case there is a compatibly painted range of hills, and road and river sections, allowing you to easily build up a table with a coherent look, and features which are significant for wargames.

I chose the 6 feet by 4 feet Brown Desert mat. As it happens I’m doing all my 40K armies in desert colours, and I have two historical desert armies as well.

Base price of this mat is £110.58 and it comes with 12 feet of roads and several feet of river sections. You can also choose two ‘area terrain’ sections, for which I took a salt marsh with islands, which I can terminate a river in or use as a crappy alien oasis, and a rocky rough ground section. These are discounted from the price charged when bought by themselves.

The total including courier delivery came to £146.97. This is the price at which I ordered back in April 2010.


Hills
If you spend over £170 in one go you get the courier delivery for free, which is worth £25. This seemed a bargain, so I pushed on into the Hills part of the site and ordered a large hill and a set of three small hills to take me over the limit.

I spent £175.05 in total. This got me a full size mat plus six terrain features, a river and roads, to which I can add my home-built Tau buildings for quite a densely covered table.


Customisation
As well as choosing Brown Desert, I took the roads in 28mm scale and the river in Brown water.


Value for Money
£175 may seem a lot for a bunch of terrain pieces you could make yourself. Compare it with the Games Workshop Realm of Battle Board though, which costs £150, comes unpainted, with no detail terrain pieces (roads, hills and so on) and only has a few configurations. Really it is pretty good value for money and you can set up an attractive table right out of the delivery box.


Construction
The material of the mat is a canvas like cloth with texturing material and paint munged onto it on the playing side.

The hills and terrain features are built onto light plastic card. My only qualm is that these pieces feel a bit ‘floppy’ compared to pieces built onto a material like 3mm mdf.

You could rebase these onto thicker bases if you wanted, and I may do that though I will most likely use thick card for ease of cutting. It will make them stand a bit proud of the table surface, of course.


Delivery Time
The other thing to bear in mind is that each mat and accessories are made to order, so you could have a six week wait for your stuff to arrive.

Or you could buy the RoB extension boards http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440158a&prodId=prod400004a which are flat. I bought two sets for a 4x4 table because I only play Necromunda away from WHW, and the fact that they store down the side of my pc desk nicely. Costs a bit more, but they are durable and store easier than a rolled up mat or a big board in my limited space

Kilkrazy - thanks for the review. How's it hold up to wear and tear?

The GW RoB board is great IF you need to transport it regularly and it has to be use-able on a smaller than 4x6 supporting table.

If that's the situation that you're in then there's nothing else worth looking at. (I have one for that purpose and it's brilliant)

If that isn't your situation then it should be somewhere at the bottom of your list to check out. (lack of flat space for terrain, stuff sliding down hills, pieces scuffing each other in the bag even with bubblewrap between them, dice bouncing everywhere, OMFG the skulls!!!!)