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@Mecha_Buddha

That may or may not be in the works already

We'll have to see how this bad boy goes!

@Hellfury

Yes.

2mm backing, .5mm top.

Very, very minor edge distortion over many years of use (and that is mouse-pad use, where your wrist tends to rub the same spot a lot) but in general the quality of products several years old was still excellent (we checked samples). No curling.

@Angryboy2K

A sticker would fall off and look shoddy to most people and as H.B.M.C. stated, would require an entirely new production run. Honestly, the logo is minor, no kidding. If you hate it, that is a bummer, but there's nothing to be done about it at this point.

We could ship locally, that is something we can consider but logistics, and labor involved with keeping track of that is not entirely in our hands, freight is handled by a third party at the manufacturer and as such, we would have to issue special instructions or have an agent of ours (Todd) there to handle it personally.

For a single order it really doesn't make sense, but if we get a decent volume or orders in the area that can be served by Chinese post, then we'd love to save you guys and gals some money, for sure.

@Garner

Thanks! We appreciate it!

@Moopy

Thank you, sir! And just wait till the 'Urban Combat' mat is unlocked, it looks slick! I think it will be the most popular. The 'Alpine' mat has gotten super popular response too (snow themed) so we'll see!

I have absolutely no problem with the "Branding" on the edge.

Besides, how often do you use the 10cm of the very edge of a board?
And if it is that terrible...well you mentioned stickers..perhaps you can get a sticker that looks like a bush or something and sticker over it if it breaks your suspension of disbelief. Or a bit of terrain.

These look great, shame about the shipping to Oz.

Any plans for swamps?

 Reecius wrote:
@Angrybok2K

I know how you feel but trust me, this writing is TINY! Doug and I explicitly said it must be unobtrusive, but we also had to put our logo on it, I hope you can understand.

Nope. Absolutely nope. For $95 I expect it to look better than green felt and with the printed text/logos it certainly is not better. The Sabol Designs mats had the EXACT same problem. Indeed these mats you claim to be unique to the market are about 5 years late: the Sabol Designs combat mat was nearly the exact same idea in the exact same material that you are selling, but only cost $65. Instead of high-res art they were actually high-res aerial photos printed on the mousemat material and everyone was REALLY excited for them too until we got them and realized the text in the images was not a watermark but actually printed on the mat itself. The text completely ruined those mats, we just couldn't sell them at our shop because of it and got stuck with 5 of our initial order of 6, the one that "sold" was to one of our former employees for a hefty discount. Why on earth would I pay that much for a high-detail printed surface just to have to stare at your logo every single game I ever use it on?

For the same cost I can get a plastic Games & Gears board. For $10 I can get a green blanket and airbrush some brown areas on it. Until recently I could get GWs fantastic Citadel Gaming Mat for $40. Your mats are interesting, but WAY too expensive if they're going to be permanently branded.

Very very cool. Maybe a little higher than I would have thought pricewise (Games and Gears doing prepainted 3D boards for $100 right now... tough to see this at the same price).

I'll wait and see on the urban combat mat... but definitely watching this closely

 Reecius wrote:


@Angryboy2K

A sticker would fall off and look shoddy to most people and as H.B.M.C. stated, would require an entirely new production run. Honestly, the logo is minor, no kidding. If you hate it, that is a bummer, but there's nothing to be done about it at this point.

Well, I'd hope it WOULD fall off. Preferably when I came to remove it.

Obviously I'm beating a dead horse at this point; your design is finalized and all that... But I wonder WHY you said you "have to" have your logo on it. Is it to prevent copying? Wouldn't it be a simple matter for someone to cut it off and upscale the remainder if they wanted to copy it without your logo?

Ah well. The last time I had this kind of discussion on Dakka there seemed to be plenty of people satisfied with spending their money on mats with a logo on them despite the fact that it sort of negates the point of spending money on a realistic mat in the first place. While I'm sure you realize as well as I do that you can't (and indeed shouldn't try to) please all of the people all of the time, deliberately flawing your product like this from the get-go doesn't make sense to me. The people who don't care about the logo will buy one without a logo for sure, while the people who are anal about it will only give you your money if you remove the damn thing. All you do is reduce your potential market with no tangible upside.

 Reecius wrote:


We could ship locally, that is something we can consider but logistics, and labor involved with keeping track of that is not entirely in our hands, freight is handled by a third party at the manufacturer and as such, we would have to issue special instructions or have an agent of ours (Todd) there to handle it personally.

For a single order it really doesn't make sense, but if we get a decent volume or orders in the area that can be served by Chinese post, then we'd love to save you guys and gals some money, for sure.

I wasn't really thinking of it for the odd order, but rather for ALL non-US orders. I'm pretty sure Chinese shipping costs are lower than US international shipping costs. What I'm saying is it's worth comparing the following two logistics chains:

1. Ship a single crate to the US
=> ship out to customers (international and domestic)

2. Separate international/domestic (US) orders
a. => Ship out crate to US with domestic orders
=> Ship out to customers
b. => Ship out international orders direct from China

Even with additional labor costs to pass on to your backers, option 2 could work out cheaper.

Not having had the sound turned on while watching the video, I may have missed something related to this, but if your mats are crease-proof you should fold them for shipping. I believe a lot of countries will cause you additional expense/headaches with tubes.

These look pretty sweet. Will there be such a thing as a freebie for this kickstarter and at what point would it kick in?

Very cool, Reecius.

I've been trying to convince game publishers for years that, for some games, dye sublimated neoprene is the way to go to print boards to play games on.

I have a few that I have had done at considerable expense for rethemed board games.

Really glad to see more and more people comng round to the idea.

I can see a market for specific types of terrain.
Starfield comes readily to mind, as does a more urban textures graphic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, as much as I like the lighter 1mm gauge neoprene, the edge distortion gets bad if it isn't really stored well. the thicker guage I haven't had any problems with on my oldest board which is 5 years old now.

@Vain

Yeah, it's tiny, I'll post a size comparison so people can get a feel for the scale of it.

@Joyboozer

We lowered shipping to Oz and NZ. We'll eat it a bit on shipments to Perth and Cairns and such, but we want you guys to be able to get them if you want without paying through the nose! As stated, we're working on a distribution point in Oz and it looks solid, so long as we have volume to send at least a pallet to Oz to make it worthwhile, we will do so and pass the savings on to you all!

And yes on Swamps, I had the same idea! If it is popular, we have a ton of cool ideas for future designs!

@Lobukia

Yeah, the price is higher than we would have wanted but it is a very, very good quality product and we got the best price we could after a lot of shopping. It's one of those things that once you have it in your hands you see how bad ass it is! Not putting any other similar style deals down at all though, they all have cool things about them, too. We just think ours has some stand out features like ease of transportation and use, etc. plus proof of concept and just beautiful colors that make them stand out.

@angryboy2K

Haha, I know the feeling, I got a Sabol mat years ago (still have it and we use it on our shop, actually) and I hated the giant logo. That's why we made ours small. I will post a scale pic so you can see. We wanted to brand it for marketing purposes. Lots of people will see it and that is good for our business.

No hard feelings though, and you have every right to voice your opinion, no hard feelings here. If you search articles in Dakka, I wrote the review on the Sabol mat and said a lot of the same things! haha

As for the other part of your post, thanks for the good ideas.

I honestly can't answer that. I don't know what it costs to ship in China. We are currently in the process of setting up European and Australian distribution points and if that pans out, we will be able to dramatically lower shipping costs. But, we will look into China shipping internationally and see if that is cheaper. That may be a good leas.

As for the package size, it's not different on post for the most part, they largely go on weight and general dimensions.

@Kalamadea

Sigh. Hahaha, thanks for the sunny disposition and positive attitude!

For one, I am very, very familiar with the Sabol mats. I have one in our shop, right now. i also wrote the Dakka review on that very product on this site, which you can look up.

Two, our logo and theirs are NOTHING comparable in size, please reference the below picture.

Third, their product has been OOP for years.

Fourth, they are similar in concept, but dramatically different in material. The Sabol mat is high density carpet, has hairs all over it that catch models, curls at the ends and, the high resolution image actually contrasts rather starkly with minis. I know because I have had one for YEARS hahaha, check half our video bat reps, you will see mine. Our product is a much nicer material, sits flat, is smooth, and has more vibrant, mini friendly colors. And no, hahaha, ours look nothing like painted felt. Look at the pictures of the close up images and you can see how much detail is there.

But hey, don't let me interrupt your uninformed tirade

Sorry to be rude in response to your rudeness, but you are way off and I am sure you can imagine that if this were your proejct you invested so heavily in terms of time, energy and money into, you would understand.

Here is a pic so you can see I know exactly what I am talking about.

Maybe I missed it, but what will the projected price be for a 4' x 4' mat?

@slk28850

Sorry, no freebies. :(

The product is too expensive and we wanted to keep it very simple. You do get discounts for additional product ordered.

And glad you like the look of them!

@Hellfury

Thanks!

And yes, we considered a number of gauges. We were going to go with 2.5mm because it was seriously beefy but shipping got too crazy. We decided to go slightly lighter and we have noticed no loss in durability. The 1mm was just too thin and you could see bumps under the table and such.

We feel really confident in this product and think it has a lot of potential. Once people see it in real life, it will make a big difference too, we just have to get the ball rolling!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@BrookM

$70 shipping included in the USA!

Nice!

It is nice and small like I expected it to be.

Also, really happy that the Aussie prices will reduce to $40.00. Depending on the designs I might be actually able to accept the postage costs.

Am I correct in reading it that each mat will cost an additional $40.00? I was hoping to get a few of my club to buy up together to see if we could reduce the cost but, if that is the case then it might not be possible.

By the way, I found this review on the site when looking for the Sabol Mat that i had never heard of before. it is yours? http://www.dakkadakka.com/wiki/en/Product_Review:_SABOL_Combat_Mat

Looks interesting, but the timing is awful. The price doesn't compare all that well to the G&G boards or the Tablescapes.

If this were ending next year, I might have come on board anyway, but with the shipping to Oz, the timing and the competition I just can't do it. But best of luck to you guys.

@Vain

If you guys do a bulk order, hit me up on PM and we will see if we can work something out to hook you guys up! I know how lame shipping costs down under are and we'll try to work with you to get you guys sorted out.

And yes, haha, I wrote that review many moons ago!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@Azazelx

Thanks all the same!

very nice looking indeed.

I'll be in on payday !

Awesome! Thanks so much, sir!

Nice, but the G & G one being at a discount holds my attention better here in AUS, especially since you've hinted this is very close to retail.

Good luck though, I liked the Dreadball mat on this material, so will look forward to seeing yours in the shops

Fair enough! We would sell for less if we could, but the price kind of is what it is for now. We hope to get it into shops in volume as we go.

Thanks for the support though!

OMG! It's enormous!!!


The Revenant, that is. The logo is tiny.

Looks like a really nice product. I'm afraid the logo takes the edge off my enthusiasm a little though.

Best of luck with it. I'm sure you'll do well.

Isn't this the same as every other mat... But twice the price?

I don't get the issue with the logo - is it printed in one corner, each corner our repeatedly printed along the edges? I'm presuming it's in one corner from the pictures, surely that's pretty unobtrusive and you could cover it with a well placed piece of scenery / tape measure / blast template / rulebook...

Seriously though, if you had created this product wouldn't you want some sort of representation of your company to advertise it to potential buyers? We all walk round with branded clothes, bags, watches, etc

I like the product, a lot!

Logo's are never really a problem for me and I have issues with storage space already so this might just be what I'm looking for.

Just gotta wait for 1st of December for pay though.

Ruglud, I can only speak for myself, but I spend many many hours of my life trying to make models and terrain look as real as possible. I don't then want to see any form of advertising on the playing surface. Kind of destroys the illusion.

I appreciate that the manufacturer wants to brand it. Don't see why they couldn't have put a giant logo on the storage sleeve instead though. If I'm paying a hundred bucks for a playing surface, I want it to be immersive and realistic. I don't want to be constrained where I can put scenery to hide logos.

Different strokes for different folks. If we were all the same, the world would be pretty dull.

Fair play Egg, I understand your reasoning on this.

I'm a 'throw down a plain vinyl table cover and get going' type of gamer, but I do always drool over the utlra realistic battlefields I see on here and at the conventions...

Bung me the link! I'm planning my own homemade system at the minute, but it'll be a while before it's done. I could use something decent to play on in the meantime.

Feedback:

Good points:

- Love the Mantic rubber mousemat mats, so this is definitely a good material.
- Price point seems about right, it's very close to what Mantic was charging for a 6x4 in the DZ KS, $15 cheaper for US customers in fact.
- EU Distributor means no customs fees, right? Nice.

Other points:

- Logo is a pain in the arse, but I can paint over it so not too bothered. Reconsider that if you can, because realistically speaking, no customer is going to want it, the best you can hope is for them to tolerate it. At worst it's a dealbreaker and a lost sale.

This isn't something like a gaming case where a logo is fine and doesn't hamper the form or function of the case in any way, we are buying the grassy surface mat for the sole purpose of creating a surface that looks like a grassy mat, that is the entire point of spending the money in the first place, not "create a grassy surface with a logo on it", and not "create a grassy surface with an ugly splotch of green paint in the corner where we've had to paint over the logo". It makes the product look more crap by directly damaging the reason why you bought it in the first place, and to be honest, buying from a company that deliberately lowers the quality of their product for a marketing gimmick is less appealing to me than a company that puts the preferences of its paying customers first and foremost with zero exceptions.

- With the grassy board I feel like the render surface could be improved a lot, it doesn't look very natural or varied, it just looks like a basic uniform brown dirt with clumps of bright green... not enough variation in coverage, too much of a sharp contrast, no "patchy areas" of coverage, no variation in the colour or type of ground cover.

It would be much better to rework the grassy texture to be more granulated and varied, rather than "clumpy"... there's lots of natural references you can use, such as the foreground of this:



There are parts where the board does a great job of this texture, but other parts where the bare earth is far too saturated and goes from an area of lush greenery to an area of barren orange-looking dirt without much of transition... I kinda feel like replacing the bare dirt with more areas of semi-patchy coverage would look better and look more realistic rather than patchwork.

Also, I don't think I'd go for the crater mat simply because it's 3d texture represented on a 2d plane (can't think of any way to fix that though). Doesn't quite work for me, would definitely be more interested in a really nice desert mat for sci-fi.

Good luck! Looking forward to this one doing well, we need something like this on the market now that GW has stopped selling their battlemat.

P.S. Just wondering, how are the mats for gluing stuff to? Would it be possible to glue some static grass or even sand to the mats to get some texture on there?
Also, any plans for 4x4, 3x3, 2x2 mats?

I can't remember the last time I saw a large area of grass that didn't feature cow or horse poo but don't demand that kind of realism.

 Ruglud wrote:
I don't get the issue with the logo - is it printed in one corner, each corner our repeatedly printed along the edges? I'm presuming it's in one corner from the pictures, surely that's pretty unobtrusive and you could cover it with a well placed piece of scenery / tape measure / blast template / rulebook...

Or trim like an inch off that edge.

I've never played on a table where the corners haven't had rulebooks and dice on them anyway (and almost never any figures), so there's no additional hit to realism. Huge logo's maybe, but this one is like 10x150mm and will disappear under a squad of infantry.

That sabo one is horrific though.

Awesome to know what you two were up to in China

I would've been all over this if I hadn't I just pledged/purchased a Warboard on kickstarter a few weeks ago! These look really good and that's exactly what I was after, something to pull out and play on.

Agreed that it would have been better to leave off the logo, though... that's a legitimate feedback and should be an easy change since you've only had a few samples made. It just tips it from being expensive but 100% totally awesome, to 95% awesome. It does seem to be a common (and the only, other than the understandable cost) criticism, so worth considering, at least!

Any chance of a "pick up at Cons" shipping option, if shipping is a big driver in the cost?