Wheat Field Sizes?

[cstoesen]

I have purchased a Coir mat for some wheat fields.  The question is, how should I cut the 30" x 18" mat into fields?  I am looking to have this usable for multiple theaters but mostly I want to have something usable for the Eastern Front.  I am gaming in 15mm if that helps.

Chris

[katie]

I've tended to presume about 12" square for a field, 6" for a very small area (animal enclosure or something of that sort) in 28mm. Firstly, it means my field boundaries can be a standard 6" long (which is conveniently the length of Javis wall sections and I think K&R hedge sections as well), but it also means the fields are the same size as TSS tiles..

I figure 12" is big enough to be able to get two small elements in it and to actually fight across, while being small enough I get more than a couple of them on the table.

I was looking at getting some of these mats myself, but I don't really know where to go looking for them; any UK sources you could recommend?

I was plotting on using 2" squares; that way I can make fields of different shapes/sizes and I can remove sections as units move through them :-)

[carlos marighela]

Russian wheatfields? I suspect you could carpet the whole house and still be in scale for a Russian wheatfield. Same deal in Oz, no doubt something similar applies in Kansas or Wichita. The idea of cutting the mat into smaller squares is a good one though, allows for flexibility and troops placement.

[cstoesen]

Thanks.  That about matches up with what I have heard elsewhere.  The fields are just huge.

As for where to get a coir mat in the UK, no idea.  There are online retailers though that sell them.  I found mine at a Home Depot in Texas.

[v_lazy_dragon]

I found cheap Coir mats at Wilkinsons the other year, although when I went back they had stopped stocking plain mats and only had ones with phrases such as 'Welcome' on them...

[WuZhuiQiu]

Theirs are not cheap, but you can get them from IKEA.

[Dolmot]

although when I went back they had stopped stocking plain mats and only had ones with phrases such as 'Welcome' on them...

Theirs are not cheap, but you can get them from IKEA.

True story. Last summer I visited about 15 different stores (supermarket, furniture, hardware, garden, junk, you name it) with no success. Every single mat had some garbage printed all over it with no other purpose than making it:
1) a "design item", doubling the price and
2) unusable for gaming.
My previous rant may be here somewhere already. Fortunately I found other useful and/or interesting stuff on that tour so it wasn't three days entirely wasted.

Finally, a friend dropped me a hint on IKEA mats so I grabbed one. It was maybe 10e, I think, so not exactly a bargain but will cover all my agricultural needs for a whole table. I felt filthy after visiting that place, though.

Coincidentally, only last week I found enough time to start chopping and fine-tuning it. There's some progress already.


Regarding the original topic, I agree that bigger is better when it comes to realism. The reasonable size in 28mm or even 15mm would be larger than a standard table or you'd be turning a combine harvester around every minute. However, for my skirmish project I use multiples of 6" (15cm) so the tiles are 6x6, 6x12 or 12x12. There won't be too many border lines, while the individual tiles are still portable. Furthermore, my Renedra fences and some others are about 6" so I can enclose the fields neatly.

Finally, try to add some colour and details to the mats if only possible. Just plonking a piece with its grey rubber edges and all is a bit too cheap to me. Coir mats are a fine starting point but not quite there yet. It's fairly easy to go one step further with customisation.

[cstoesen]

Thanks.  That was helpful.

[Alfrik]

IKEA still has plain matts last I checked.

[Wilkins]

Was in Wilkinsons in Lancaster on Sunday and they have plain mats there too.

[WuZhuiQiu]

Re. size, remember that the ground scale may not be the same as the model scale, so some compression is likely.

For example, supposing that 15mm figures are 1:100, a 100m field would be 1m long at the same model scale, which is clearly a decently-sized field at 1:100, yet likely a huge field (1 km) at a gaming ground scale of (say) 1:1000...