"Pyramid of Shadows" battlemats

Bradd

For my first mapping project, I did poster-sized battlemats for the D&D adventure "Pyramid of Shadows." Below are some snapshots of the battlemats in action.

Setting up:


Royal Winterhaven Company:


Hedge maze:


Enemy contact:


Hoverboar:


Bloodied:


Sticky surprise:


Arborean grove:


Aryte charges an ettercap:


Narghuul cornered:


Charnel Lord:


Souless approaches Vyrellis:


Potato versus Vyrellis:

Highland_Piper

Those look great! I love seeing battle maps. Thank you for sharing these. What did your group think of them?

Bradd

Thanks! They love the mats, especially when I don't make them help with the trimming and stitching. One thing I really like about them is that they're almost as attractive as the poster maps that come with D&D adventures, but I can mark them up with pens if I need to make notes or draw special effects.

I print to letter-size matte photo paper on a Canon MX850 inkjet, usually with 5% overlap at edges. I estimate printing costs at about $0.20/sheet for the paper and somewhere around $0.60 to $0.80/sheet for ink (although I haven't experimented much with ink-saving techniques yet). The overall cost is non-trivial, but it's still cheaper than the group going to a movie or a restaurant.

tjfmen

Well Done. They look great. Good artistic sense. One thing I do slightly different is use cardstock - (letter size - Xerox 110 lb.). I pick up a ream of it cheap - probalby less costly than the photo paper. I'm not sure if the colors come out quite as vivid though. Keep up the great work. tf

Bradd

I have a bunch of 110# cardstock too; I was planning to use it for making chits eventually. I should probably try a test print with it, to see how it compares to the photo paper. While the vast majority of the cost is from the ink, any savings would be helpful at these map sizes. For example, the first level of this dungeon is 100 by 85 scale inches, which works out to be almost exactly 100 sheets. If I can save $0.15 per sheet, that's $15 dollars saved.

Thanks again for the compliments. I wish I had remembered this the first session I used the battlemats, because I actually like those maps better.

Kaallis

Hi,

First of all, good job on the mats, they look gorgeous. Would you be willing to share the source files that you used when printing them? I'm currently using those made by NeonKnight on the CartographersGuild forum (Mike Schley) and they look amazing but your seem to have way more details.

Please let me know or point me in the right direction

Kaallis

Terraformer_Author

I like these too. If I did something like this - I'd probably have each matt sheet laminated into MDF board or wood, and semi gloss / flat clear coated for preservation and durability.
Permanent stackable laminants would be awsome. There are companies that you can google or yahoo that do document on wood / carbon / lucite lamination, and I don't think that it would be all that expensive (i've never done it before though - so you'll have to shop). If you can have your high schoiol or college diploma laminated on a plaque - why not a battlemat?

Talk about your "ooooohhhss and aaawwwssss" factor - It would have an extremely high coolness ratio.