I have seen tutorials for battlemats that are much more involved and use messier products. This is simple and extremely effective. I can see lots of new and younger gamers doing this on a buget. Heck, who am I kidding,I am going to make one! Or two, or three....
Felt has a useful quality in that it adheres to itself. You can take a big sheet of green, then cut strips of brown and blue and place them on the green for modular roads and rivers.
@@selrahcmoonandstar It doesn't look NEARLY as good as what you made. And it looks a little weird, with the water sitting a bit higher than the grass. But it does let you have a modular setup. For best results, glue the green sheet flat to a big board. ... which means yours is also more portable.
I bought goblingreen felt for the retro look. And it looks great. But the fabric is not very tabletop friendly since it grips everything you place on it which gets really annoying really fast.
That's something I hadn't thought about, but after painting and spraying it the fleece isn't very grippy for miniatures at all. It is for terrain a little bit, but my terrain tends to have rougher textures on the base than my minis.
So I got some acrylic felt and attempted to make a kind of muddy look. Unfortunately, it turned out rather hideous. However, I made quite an important discovery about fabric battle mats after my mistake. They are WASHABLE. I think you'd need to avoid the mat finish as I didn't get around to that. I think if you avoid the mat finish, you could potentially have infinite designs on a fabric battle mat, including water features or maybe a bit of frost! I also think it could be interesting to make a modern or future city style battle mat out of grey felt. Roads would be a lot trickier, some experimenting with tape might be a good idea.
Oh my goodness you're right, they would be washable wouldn't they! I have ideas for a handful of different fabric colors and then painted designs on them too, and right now I'm in the pre-production step for a desert/wasteland design and a city one!
Thanks for this! All the other techniques seemed so daunting! I really love your videos. Did you try this technique with the other kind of felt? It doesn't seem like it would roll up as nicely as this one.
Thank you, I’m glad it feels approachable! This my first try ever with the fleece, and since it worked so well I haven’t tried making one with the felt yet, and yeah that’s exactly what I was thinking too that it wouldn’t roll up nearly as well
I can only imagine how much paint you had to use. Did the fleece absorb it readily or did it remain mostly at surface level? The end result looks really good!
It actually didn't take that much paint! And I used the super cheap craft paint, so it was probably less than $1-2. I think it mostly stayed at the surface level, the watered down dark brown for the road didn't even bleed through. The texture of the fleece really holds onto paint well. And thank you :)
After you touched it, wasn't it all "felt"?
I'll see myself out now.
*ducks and runs*
I wanted to work that joke in there but wasn't sure if it would confuse people lol
Oh you are welcome here, sir! Puns are the embroidery in the fabric of life.
I have seen tutorials for battlemats that are much more involved and use messier products. This is simple and extremely effective. I can see lots of new and younger gamers doing this on a buget. Heck, who am I kidding,I am going to make one! Or two, or three....
I have so many more that I want to make haha, every color and terrain type from wasteland to ruined city to ocean/sea/beach, even underdark
Exactly. This is cheap and easy enough to have several ready to go for different environments.
I would 100% buy rocks from you to support this amazing channel.
That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me
Felt has a useful quality in that it adheres to itself. You can take a big sheet of green, then cut strips of brown and blue and place them on the green for modular roads and rivers.
That is a really interesting point that I hadn't considered!
@@selrahcmoonandstar It doesn't look NEARLY as good as what you made. And it looks a little weird, with the water sitting a bit higher than the grass. But it does let you have a modular setup. For best results, glue the green sheet flat to a big board.
... which means yours is also more portable.
2:40 - Two for the price of one. I got a chuckle out of that.
Ha thank you I was proud of that one
You: footage not sped up
Me: watching at 1.5 speed anyway lol
Seriously though, thanks for the great video, gave me some help and inspiration
Hahaha I love that, thank you for watching and I'm happy for any help or inspiration I can give
Awesome result!
Thank you!
Came for the tutorials, stay for the humour
Love to hear it haha
Nice tutorial!
Thank you :)
I bought goblingreen felt for the retro look. And it looks great. But the fabric is not very tabletop friendly since it grips everything you place on it which gets really annoying really fast.
That's something I hadn't thought about, but after painting and spraying it the fleece isn't very grippy for miniatures at all. It is for terrain a little bit, but my terrain tends to have rougher textures on the base than my minis.
So I got some acrylic felt and attempted to make a kind of muddy look. Unfortunately, it turned out rather hideous. However, I made quite an important discovery about fabric battle mats after my mistake. They are WASHABLE. I think you'd need to avoid the mat finish as I didn't get around to that. I think if you avoid the mat finish, you could potentially have infinite designs on a fabric battle mat, including water features or maybe a bit of frost!
I also think it could be interesting to make a modern or future city style battle mat out of grey felt. Roads would be a lot trickier, some experimenting with tape might be a good idea.
Oh my goodness you're right, they would be washable wouldn't they! I have ideas for a handful of different fabric colors and then painted designs on them too, and right now I'm in the pre-production step for a desert/wasteland design and a city one!
Thanks for this! All the other techniques seemed so daunting! I really love your videos.
Did you try this technique with the other kind of felt? It doesn't seem like it would roll up as nicely as this one.
Thank you, I’m glad it feels approachable!
This my first try ever with the fleece, and since it worked so well I haven’t tried making one with the felt yet, and yeah that’s exactly what I was thinking too that it wouldn’t roll up nearly as well
Selrahc is Charles backwards. Port of Ravensbluff, Selrahc Bayrat?
Is it?? 🤔 my mind is blown
I have a 3×3 sheet of green felt but not what to do with it
Hopefully this gives you an idea of one thing you could do!
I can only imagine how much paint you had to use. Did the fleece absorb it readily or did it remain mostly at surface level? The end result looks really good!
It actually didn't take that much paint! And I used the super cheap craft paint, so it was probably less than $1-2.
I think it mostly stayed at the surface level, the watered down dark brown for the road didn't even bleed through. The texture of the fleece really holds onto paint well. And thank you :)
I am surprised that it didn't bleed through. Thank you for the additional information.@@selrahcmoonandstar