It’s been a good while. Although my hobby output and gaming has been a bit on the slow side, there has actually been some going on while I’ve neglected this blog.
Hopefully starting to post again will motivate me to push some projects forward, but in the meantime I’ll (re-)start with something I prepared earlier – a first attempt at a homemade fleece mat for 6mm games.
I wanted something that would work for anything from about the 17th century onwards, as I have 6mm armies for a number of Horse & Musket periods. I also have an old collection of WW2 that I’d like to revamp and use with Blitzkrieg Commander at some point.
I found some fleece material online (Fabric Land’s ‘plain polar fleece’) and chose chocolate brown as a suitable base colour. It’s about £5 for a metre length and comes almost 1.5m wide. I started with a 1m piece for my first attempt and have since ordered a larger piece.
I just used normal water-based emulsion/acrylic paint. I already had the green which I use for all my terrain and figure bases. The others were various creams (e.g. Vallejo Iraqi Sand) and yellows. If you brush against the slight nap you get a bit more texture, so I did this for the fields. If you brush with the nap you get a smoother texture, so I do this for the roads and most of the grassy areas. I finished up with some dark green to suggest vegetation on the edges of fields and roads, and then applied a light grid with a black marker pen as I use grid-based rules for most of my 6mm gaming.
The fleece is a good all-round material. It doesn’t seem to crease, takes paint nicely, rolls up fine and drapes very well over things for hills.
Once finished it deserved a quick try out so I deployed 17th century forces and had a bit of a set-to.
I’m looking forward to painting the bigger mat, which is about 9’x5′ once I get my hobby space back together after some renovations.
More catch-up posts to follow!
I like this method! Well done.
That looks excellent! Very well done.
That’s seriously good, Dave.
Good to see you back!
Thanks!
Absolutely delighted to see you post again! This is one of my favourite wargaming blogs and was worried it had faded away!
Love the mat, no need to shave it?
And how are the Rhine wars going, the Confederation is about to invade, again!
Thanks Fred, no – it’s a fairly smooth fleece so no need to shave it like you do for teddy bear fur.
The Rhine War is definitely going to heat up again soon, I need to get the bloomin’ battlefield clear of work stuff and temporary mess that took over when we decided to renovate the rest of the upstairs! Thanks for the interest, will hopefully get going on this campaign soon.
Dave
Hi, is it possible to go into more detail on how you painted this fantastic mat. Brush sizes, how much paint? Did you mix your paints with water? I’d like to try one myself. Thanks for your time!