by Bob Barnetson

Zuzzy Miniatures manufactures terrain, focusing on 25-32 mm wargaming. Based in New York state, Zuzzy supplies all its products directly through a webstore. Among its products are Terra-flex gaming mats. These textured latex rubber mats are available in a variety of sizes and themes and are provided unpainted.

Initial Impressions
For this review, I received a two-foot square mat, which retails for $15.97 USD plus shipping. Zuzzy produces larger mats. For example, a four-by-six-foot mat retails for $52.61 USD and a four-by-four-foot mat costs $38.02 USD.

Mats normally ship rolled up; as mine had previously been sent to TGN editor Zac Belado, it arrived folded in a square box and in fine condition. The mat had a strong latex smell when it came out of the box (that I attribute to the mat, not Zac), but this quickly dissipated.

I was initially taken by the amount of raised detail cast into the mat. “Flat table” syndrome is endemic in our group, although several guys have purchased painted felt gaming mats that use colour to visually break-up the surface. The Zuzzy mats use texture to break up the surface, which means colour can be used to add realism, rather than texture. That said, I was skeptical about my ability to adequately paint up the mat and the mat’s ability to withstand gaming: won’t the paint just flake off the mat when I fold or roll it?

Description
The mat is made of dark grey latex rubber and sits very flat, even after folding. Mats are currently available in three themes:

• The Despoiled Reaches: The Sulphur Field mat depicted a volcanic environment, with a hard crust and cracks revealing molten rock.
• The Ruined Land: The Scourged Forest mat depicts an Earth-like environment that has been laid waste to.
• The Verdent Fields: The Moorlands mat represents a lush, Earth-like environment.

I received a “Ruined Land” themed mat. The entire surface is textured. There are also areas of additional detail, including broken tree trunks and branches, areas of what might be dried and cracked mud, a few stones, and areas that could be either marsh or ground cover.

The degree of detail is hard to see on an unpainted mat, but emerges readily when paint and washes are applied.

Painting the Mat
I don’t normally game in larger scales or with a sci-fi theme (both of which this mat seems made for), but I have taken an interest in Games Workshop’s Legends of the Old West rules. Consequently, I decided to paint up this mat with a quasi-arid look, much like the terrain found in northern Wyoming.

Following the instructions (more or less) on the Zuzzy website, I picked out two bottles of acrylic paint (Americana’s desert sand and honey brown) and poured an ounce of each (half a bottle) onto a palette. I then drew my brush through them a couple of times to swirl the colours together but not blend them. The intent was to have paint of varying colours on the brush to create a mottled effect on the mat.

I then dipped the tip of a flat, one-inch brush into the paint and began to stipple the paint into the mat (i.e., tapping the tip of the brush lightly against the mat). This puts a small amount of paint on the surface. This is important, according to the website, as rolling up a thickly painted mat would cause the paint to crack. For this same reason, I did not prime the mat.

After a while, I also started to swirl the tip of the brush around (sort of a wet drybrushing). It took about 30 minutes to cover the two-foot square mat. There was some of the original grey colour visible in the deeper recesses of the mat, but this did a nice job of looking like shadow.

When the mat had dried, it was a bit more orange than I wanted. I dry brushed some straight desert sand paint onto the mat. This was quite effective in lightening the mat, but left it looking chalky (see picture below).

After letting the mat dry, I then mixed up a wash to apply. The exact composition of the wash is hard to know. It started with 10% brown and 5% black paint but that was too brown so more black was added. Then that was too dark, so there was some swearing while I slopped some more water into the mix as well as using water to push the too-dark wash around on the mat some. Suffice it to say, it was a dark wash. You can see the effect of the wash in the lower half of the photo below.

Once the entire mat had a wash, I went back and further darkened a few areas with more washing to create a greater tonal range. All told, painting the mat took an hour of work, broken up by about two hours of drying time.

After looking at the mat the next morning, I decided I wanted a bit of green. Wyoming, while dry, is not arid like New Mexico and I wanted to convey some ground cover. I dabbed on some dark green paint (with a bit of black cut in), followed by light green highlights. The result is okay; next time I would try to diffuse the green somewhat.

Gaming on the Mat
Mats are great for “away games”, because they can be rolled or folded. I have vigorously rolled, folded and crumpled the mat and, so far, have not had any paint come off. The Zuzzy website notes that a flat Krylon spray sealer can be used to seal the mats, although I have not done this (yet). I also walked on and spilled some hot coffee on my mat with no noticeable effect—other than the coffee staining improved the look slightly, which doesn’t say much for my painting skills.

I then set up a couple of solo games on the mat: a quick game of Warmaster Ancients and a trial run of Legends of the Old West. Warmaster Ancients is an element-based game and all of my units are affixed to metal bases. The metal didn’t slide all that well over the surface. They didn’t mark the surface, but the corners (which are fairly sharp) were prone to catching on the raised detail.

To be fair, this mat isn’t meant for small-scale figures with sharp bases. The Moorlands mat (with fewer individual raised features on it) ought to not have this problem. Also, this issue occurs with felt mats as well (suggesting the problems lies with my choice of bases more than the mats). The catching stopped when I started picking up the bases to move them, but that puts more wear and tear on the figures. It is also, perhaps, bad form in rule systems where millimeters are important.

Movement wasn’t a problem with Legends of the Old West, where figures are individually based on circular plastic bases. Despite the figures being taller and heavier, I had no problems with the raised detail on the mat causing instability or tipping. I was also initially concerned that the raised detail might cause some terrain to hover slightly above the surface. This really wasn’t a problem (see picture below); the raised detail is not so high as to effect the terrain that sits on top of it very much.

I also experimented with putting hills under the mat and the mat lies very nicely over the top of them (moreso than felt). The Zuzzy mat did slide around a bit on the table when I caught it with the corner of a metal base. I would think a larger mat would be less prone to do this than the two-foot square mat I received for this review. It is possible to mount the mat on a piece of mdf (instructions on the website) but that would reduce its utility to me.

Comment
I’m an old-school wargamer (i.e., perhaps somewhat cheap) and prone to making my own terrain and gaming surfaces. While I do own a couple of Hotz and Monday Knight Productions mats (which have hexes printed on them), I’m generally sceptical of spending a significant amount of money to cover, say, a 4×6’ table. The Zuzzy Mats clearly warrant an exception. The mat painted up beautifully with very little effort. The result is a very nice looking and flexible gaming surface that can roll up for transport or storage. I’m so taken that I’m going to order a larger, fifty-dollar version for my wild west gaming.

I think the key attraction of the Zuzzy mat is that it has so much detail cast into the mat. This means you can then use painting techniques to properly colourize the mats, instead of using colour to create visual texture surface. The texture of the “flat” parts of the mat look like the ground does when viewed from 30 feet in the air—a bit rough. The added features (branches, portions of larger stones, cracked mud) really breaks up the surface of the gaming table, without affecting the placement of other terrain or figures.

As a primarily historical gamer, I am also interested by Zuzzy’s Moorland mat. The lusher and more generic detail on that mat make it more suitable for historical gaming in a variety of scales. While Zuzzy focuses primarily on 25-32mm gaming, the Moorland mat looks like it will work with my 6 and 10mm troops just fine.

Conclusion
This mat is a very well made and paints up as advertised. For gamers who often game away from home or who must tear down their game after playing, Zuzzy provides a nice looking and durable ground cloth. Gamers who game primarily at home might prefer to make a permanent terrain board, but I would think they’d be hard pressed to make a comparable board at a lower cost than the Zuzzy mats. My next purchase will be a larger version of the Ruined Land mat for my old west games.

Zuzzy’s website provides enough instruction that even a beginner could successfully paint this mat (I had my four-year-old help me with the base coat). Zuzzy also provides cast terrain pieces (e.g., tree trunks, rocks) to match the theme of each of its mats. Overall, I think this is a good quality product.

Pros:

• Paints up easily and nicely.
• Very effectively represents ground cover, more so than fabric mats.
• Easy to store and transport.
• Hugely improves the look of the table.

Cons:

• Strong latex smell at first.
• Small review mat was prone to sliding on the table.