I just got these in the mail a few days ago and I’m pretty excited about them.  These are 4′ x 6′ cloth gaming mats that are printed with cool terrain on them.  These are not paper or vinyl, they are a fleece material … so if you get really cold at a gaming convention you can wrap yourself up in them and stay warm.

Normally I prefer “hard terrain” boards with very detailed 3D terrain and features, but honestly moving boards like those around and taking them to conventions is a bit of a pain in the backside.  So, at the last convention I experimented with some modular hex terrain and now I thought I’d give something else a try, cloth battle mats.

These come from Cigar Box Battle Mats at http://cigarboxbattlestore.bigcartel.com/

None of the mats on the site specifically say they are good from 6mm (1/285th scale) gaming but I took a chance on two that I thought would work and I’m very happy with the ones I got.  It seems that some of the mats are available in two scales; 10-15mm and 25-28mm, the main difference between the two is the width of the roads and other details, otherwise they are pretty similar.  In both cases I opted for the 10-15mm versions.

The ones I bought were:
#102 Europe (10-15mm) at $69.00
#103 Desert With Roads (10-15mm) at $69.00

For these photos I just threw them on my bed and put down a few buildings (and shrubs on the Europe board) to give you an idea of how they look. The light in my room was horrible, sorry about the quality of the pictures … but I think you’ll get the idea.