Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Hello has any tried using the Zuzzy's battle mats? I want to buy one because it seems its the only mat that is textured (that I have seen) so you can paint it.. and gives war scenary a "real" feel unlike cloth mats, which are just flat.

How good is the quality and it is worth the price?

Also, the main question, if you do paint it.. and roll it up for storage, will the paint start chipping??

Thanks!

I have the blacktop one and the scourged forest one and they are amazing! I mounted mine to 2'x2' boards so i don't roll them ever but so far i havent had any paint damage, not even a little.

Be careful though, they are notoriously bad at customer communication. I got mine 3 years ago and it took a a few months to receive them but he included some extra mat pieces and i didn't have the same communication issues as others have. Now though from what i understand it can be almost 6 months.

My recommendation would be to reach out to them before you order to check lead times. If you can get one though you wont be disappointed.

3-6 months??? wtf do they have one employee working only lol

Well I guess my main concern is lead time. But I am also still concerned about the paint chipping if the mat is rolling up. I will need to transport between peoples houses so I can mount it on anything.

 Snoopdeville3 wrote:
3-6 months??? wtf do they have one employee working only lol

Well I guess my main concern is lead time. But I am also still concerned about the paint chipping if the mat is rolling up. I will need to transport between peoples houses so I can mount it on anything.

Acutally yeah. Zuzzy is a garage business so limited space and he has a day job. Each mat require layered pours to get it right with relatively long cure times. It is not a process that scales up well. There is some information on this in some of the latest Dakka discussion thread about Zuzzy. Wait time seems to be stretching to a year or so now.....

Zuzzy has recently dropped off completely I'm apart of a facebook group where one guy ordered a mat still hasn't gotten it after a year.

He has also dropped off ALL connection and will not reply to emails, facebook posts, contact trough his site anything.

He seems to have abandoned miniatures and has pursued a fiction writing career.

I would not at all recommend ordering from him.

Take a look at FAT Mats - no texture, but super transportable. I don't find the website photos do them justice - they look very, very nice in person.

I would recommend sending an email asking for a time frame (or anything else, really) before you pay for anything. I ended up getting a refund thru a Paypal claim after emailing him literally 25 times (after a few weeks, I started sending daily emails; nice and polite "checking on status" type ones, too), and he never responded to a single one. I also emailed him several times thru Paypal with no response as well. Paypal does have an expriration on beginning a claim with them, and it was 5 months (roughly) for mine. (I ordered on Nov. 13 and got my refund on April 9th). Also check the Better Business Bureau about Zuzzy. He has an "F" rating and a raft of claims thru the BBB as well.

If you get any response at all to a simple query, then you might try your luck and go ahead, but if your expierence with them is like mine was, you'll end up fighting to get a refund in a few months' time.

Shame, though, since those mats look great!

http://zuzzy-wargame-miniatures.blogspot.com.au/2015/04/zuzzy-comes-clean-open-letter-to.html

That's kind of a gakky 'coming clean' letter. 'We screwed up but be nice to us! Sorry, but business is business, taking someone's cash and then not providing the product, communicating or managing expectations is borderline criminal. My interpretation of that letter is that they have already spent the cash supporting themselves, and are now trying to persuade people not to demand their money back as they don't actually have it.

I agree. That could have been better. "Stuff happened that made us not be able to do things or say things to anybody. Sorry." That just doesn't seem to set the right tone. I mean, it's better than just disappearing into the mists, but if they were hoping for a solid mea culpa then they missed the mark.

It's really a shame, like I said before the product really is outstanding. I'd get another one in a heartbeat if the turnaround was reasonable. Hopefully it works out for both them and the other customers.

And now my confession: Zuzzy is the tobacco of gaming accessories. I've heard the horror stories. I've read the very sobering warning label.

Ultimately, involvement with it may prove to be a lingering, costly folly.

So why I am still tempted to have one?

Optimism bias for the win!

I am actually quite saddened to read that open letter.

I purchased the Broken Blacktop mat 2 years ago. I received it after only a 6 week wait - all the way in Australia!

I can't express how much I love my Zuzzy mat - it is fantastic!!!

If you are to roll it up, you can't paint it the way you would normally paint a table-top set up. You can only paint it using washes and drybrushes - which still works perfectly fine.
I haven't painted mine yet, but did a lot of research before hand and found there seems to be no problems if you paint with just washes and drybrushing.

For me space is the biggest problem, so the Zuzzy was perfect - I can't say enough positive things about it.

From the open letter it seems like they are trying to get their act together, so maybe just send an email as previously stated.

If you want to see the finished product my gallery has mine laid out along with how I set it up on a smaller table.

Kinda feel that apology and coming clean is bs! At any point during the last (Was it a year or longer) they could have stopped taking orders or put a delay on them but they didnt instead they kept taking orders and ignored peoples complaints. They are only now trying to save face as damage control because otherwise no one will ever trust them with their money again. They should have written this the moment they started having problems getting peoples stuff to them and communicated all this directly to customers as soon as they started having delays.

They say the customer had to wait for the product to be made but that's also nonsense. The customer had no idea if they would have ever got the product because they didn't bother replying to their customers at any point. For all they new Zuzzy wasn't making mats anymore but just kept the website up.

He also seems to at some point be blaming the customers for not loving the product and being unable to wait a possibly infinite amount of time before getting the product.
Im all for forgiving people who screw up and try to make right. I find it hard to trust anyone who screws up and just goes silent for as long as possible and only starts to talk when they realize the problem wont just disappear.

 Thokt wrote:
Take a look at FAT Mats - no texture, but super transportable. I don't find the website photos do them justice - they look very, very nice in person.

These mats seem really expensive? I don't know, I don't shop for mats that often but they seem pricey.

Latest from Zuzzy is they are catching up orders that were delayed 10 months ago.... I think the wait time will be extremely long... doesn't seem like a trustworthy company either.

They are more expensive than Zuzzy sure but you will actually get the FAT Mat.

I bought a mat from them (a while ago...) and was very happy with it. They suggest using washes and drybrushing to paint it - due to the flexible nature.

I used a few washes and it looks pretty good, of course, its the urban mat, so the dark grey material color was a fine base color to start from.

Quick update on this one that has just gone up:
http://zuzzy-wargame-miniatures.blogspot.com.au/2015/05/mid-week-update.html\

Seems they are working hard to make up for lost time.