Spring Cleaning Middle-Earth
Goal: Create a new playing surface
I am on a very strict hobby budget and so mats are not something I can really afford. At the time of the initial project I took an old GW grass mat that a friend had given me and mounted it on to foam tiles. This worked great for giving us a 4ftx4ft playing surface. The only problem was that the tiles I used weren’t quite as thick as they needed to be because they overhang my table. This was fine for playing but by the end of the night there was bend forming.
Tiled grassNew mats
I need my mats to fit my table so I decided that I’ll just make my own. Have seen a bunch of people making acrylic mats online and it seems like something I could do.
Initial costs:
- poly-backed dust sheet £11.99
- decorator’s caulk £1.39 (though I’ve since found they do these for 99p); I bought 4 cos that’s all I had cash for right now
- Total: £17.55 (assuming costs haven’t gone up in the last year or so)
This polysheet is huge that I’m sorted for the next few years of mats if this works out.
Laid out on the table I’ll be playing on and started cutting to size. This dust sheet cuts easily with scissors and I’ll get 8 mats out of it (£1.49 a mat). The plastic sheeting can get a little loose once it’s been cut so I ran a little superglue round the cut edges (be careful of chemical burns: superglue+fabric=ooooh weeeee!). Once the rest of the mat is together I don’t see this being a problem because the caulk will seep through so this is just a temp fix.
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