by Bob Barnetson

Zuzzy Miniatures manufactures terrain, focusing on 25-32mm 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 come unpainted.

Initial Impressions
For this review, I received a six-by-four foot Moorlands gaming mat, which retails for $52.61 US plus shipping. The dark green mat arrived rolled up in a cardboard box. Inside, the mat was encased in a plastic sleeve. The mat had a strong latex smell when it came out of the box, but this quickly dissipated.

The Moorlands mat is part of Zuzzy’s Verdant Fields range, designed to mimic a lush environment. Consequently, it has a rough, grassy texture cast onto the surface. This texture is a bit more scale-neutral than the trees and rocks found on Zuzzy’s Ruined Land mat that clearly cast it as appropriate for 25mm figures. The cast texture means paint colours can be used to add realism, rather than simulate texture. The texture of the Zuzzy mats sets them apart visually from both felt and static grass mats.

Click to enlarge

Description
The mat is made of dark green latex rubber and sat very flat right out of the box. Folding and otherwise abusing the mat does not seem to affect its ability to lay flat. Mats are currently available in three themes:

• The Verdant Fields: The Moorlands mat represents a lush, Earth-like environment.
• The Despoiled Reaches: The Sulfur Field mat (and related products) depicts 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 Moorland’s mat has two main types of texture covering its entire surface. The more raised areas appear (to my eye) to be largely scrub while the less raised areas appear to be more meadow-like. My painting plan developed with that interpretation in mind. The additional details (e.g., broken tree trunks, areas of what might be dried and cracked mud, a few stones) that are apparent on the Ruined Lands mat are absent here.

Painting the Mat
I decided to paint this mat up to represent summer in a northern climate. This allows me to use the mat for European and North American battles from Rome to WW2. Zuzzy’s online tutorial is based on its Ruined Land mat, but the basic techniques are easily applied to the Moorlands Mat.

For the first coat, I picked out a couple of bottles of acrylic paint (brown and olive) 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 green-brown effect on the mat.

Click to enlarge

I then dipped the tip of a flat, two-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. By applying small amounts of paint this way, the paint does not crack when you roll the mat to store it away. For this same reason, I did not prime the mat.

Fairly quickly, it became apparent that I’d gone a shade too dark and that there was no way I would have enough paint to cover 24-square feet. So I rooted around the garage until I found a can of olive-coloured latex paint and used that instead. The result was better coverage, the right shade and I can always put some dark onto the mat with a wash.

Click to enlarge

Once this coat has dried, I wanted to add some areas of variation. For the areas I took to be scrub, I took a bit of medium green (heading towards chalky in shade) and drybrushed this over the base colour to create highlights. I then mixed up a slightly greener version and dabbed that on.

For the areas I took to be grasslands, I wanted to stray a bit towards dry (but still greenish) grass. Consequently, I took some medium green, added a bit of honey brown and dabbed it on the surface. This didn’t turnout the way I had expected but I’m satisfied with the result.

The drybrushing and highlighting got away from me a bit so I decided to put a black/brown wash on to darken the matt. This also ought to get the detail to pop. You can see the effect of the wash in the lower half of the photo below.

Click to enlarge

Once the entire mat had a wash, I went back and again drybrushed the grassier areas to put some more highlights in. The result is a mat that has both tonal and textural variation. All told, painting the mat took three hours of work, broken up by about four hours of drying time. Using a large two-inch brush significantly speeded up the process.

Gaming on the Mat
I run games at the club about every second meeting and I find mats are both pretty and functional. This mat allows me to put on Rome versus Gaul, American War of Independence, or WW2 games, making it very versatile. So far, no paint has come off and I am very satisfied. The Zuzzy website notes that a flat Krylon spray sealer can be used to seal the mats, although I have not found that necessary.

The mat looks good with 28 mm figures. But it also looks good with my 10 mm WW2 stuff (see pictures below). It photographs a bit darker than it actually is. The disruptive pattern of the ground texture really gives the game a nice look. That said, the infantry stands do appear to slightly float on the high points of the mats. I don’t find that distracting, but some gamers might.

I also ran a big-battle DBA game using 6 mm figures. Again, I was satisfied with the look of the table, although the scale of the detail cast onto the mat somewhat clashes with the scale of the figures. Again, I don’t find this too problematic, but some of the guys at the club had more difficulty.

Click to enlarge

I placed some hills under the mat and the mat lies very nicely overtop of them. That said, I prefer to game with the hills on top as there are fewer disputes about line of sight. This mat (being 6×4’) was not prone to the sliding on the table that I noted with an earlier 2×2’ foot mat. It is possible to mount the mat on a piece of mdf (instructions on the website) but that would reduce its utility to me.

Comments
Much like Zuzzy’s Ruined land mat, this Moorland mat has received a warm reception at the club (“Where did you get that?”) and has replaced my Hotz felt mats as my go-to mat for much of my gaming, particularly where the game is at a lower scale (e.g., a company-level game) where the detail seems appropriate.

I do go back to the Hotz and Monday Knight Productions mats when playing a game where the hex pattern on those mats is necessary; Zuzzy does not have a hex-option. It might be possible to put a hex pattern on a Zuzzy mat with a template, but I don’t think it would look that good. I also sometimes go back to felt for more abstract games (e.g., DBA) where vaguer detail is more in keeping with the gestalt of the game.

Again, the key attraction of this Zuzzy mat is the detail cast into it. Painting becomes about colourizing the mat, rather than creating the illusion of texture. The ground looks like ground does when viewed from 30 feet in the air—a bit rough.

Conclusion
This mat is a very well made and looks great once painted. This ground cloth means I can put on good looking games at the club or while traveling without the hassle of hauling terrain boards. The mat is also much less expensive and time consuming to make than a terrain board and easier to hide… errr… store in the closet away from my wife’s prying eyes.

Zuzzy’s website provides useful instruction Zuzzy also indicates it will be producing cast terrain pieces (e.g., tree trunks, rocks) to match the theme of this mat. Overall, I think this is a good quality product.

Pros

• Very effectively represents ground cover—more so than fabric mats.
• Easy to paint, store and transport.
• The most flexible of Zuzzy’s mats, perfect for historical gaming in the northern hemisphere.

Cons

• Strong latex smell at first.
• Aimed primarily at larger-scale games.