60"x40" wargames convention matt. How we made it and how you can make it.

Last week we had many interesting tasks, one of which was making a new terrain matt. This is a simple but extremely fun craft.

In this post, we'll talk about how we did it and, by extension, how you could do it! Arthur has been crafting for well-over a decade, so if you have questions, let us know either on our Facebook page or on the contact form on our Home page.

We started with a large sheet of faux leather and used a caulking gun with gutter rubber (the rubber material used to fix gaps in guttering and pipes), and spread it liberally over the sheet.

​Using a putty knife, we spread the rubber over the sheet, working quickly and in sections to prevent it drying.

We then spray painted it with a mix of colours. We forgot to photograph this stage but it's quite simple: spray one colour at a time, working in layers. Cover the matt with your base colours for setting the tone, and then add splotches of your preferred colour for patches/islands of terrain. These patches will help the flocking, to be added later, stand out.

Arthur demonstrating the size of the new gaming matt.

With a big brush, we dry-brushed the whole matt with a beige tone to bring out the texture from the first stage of the build.

After that, we applied paint and drizzled on the flock and static grass.

​The final matt looks awesome and did its job excellently.

During playtesting we found that the larger the matt  -- the better, though there is a peak size in our opinion. Generally 40" by 60" is a great size for most games and points counts so that's the size we chose for this matt and what we recommend in the book.

This size is hopefully something a lot of wargamers can accommodate, and we'll be taking it to conventions, so you'll be able to test it and Cretacea there for yourselves!