I'm wondering if anyone has getten the mats yet and what they think about them. How close are they to being like a mouse pad? How thick are they?

They are exactly like a mouse pad, the thin kind. I used that rubber matting you get in the department store, in with the shelf liner rolls, to help keep my felt from moving about. So I kinda like having them with the rubber backing built in. No board warping to worry about either.

I wasn't sure how I felt about the "two" halves thing there, but I kinda like that too now that I've seen them. If you have a large enough area, you could always move one of the halves over if the dogfight were going off one side of the playing area. Also, you have the option to configuer the two halves together either side by side for a more squarish playing area, or end to end for an elongated playing area. Hell, I may even get a third one of these!

I've got to say, the game now feels more like a complete game with these colorful playing mats. Felt was better than a table top, but these put plain ole' felt out to pasture. I love the colors, and the WWI planes just look spectacular on these mats.

The logos...

I can't imagine why Nexus would not put a Wings of War logo on their Wings of War game mats!

When I went in to my FLAGS to pick mine up, I asked the owner if he had seen the mats yet. He said he hadn't, and I asked him if he wanted to take a look at mine before I left. He said sure, and so we opened them up. The first words out of his mouth were, "Oh, the logos aren't bad. I was hearing that the logos were huge. Those are about what I would expect."

I can't think of one game off the top of my head that doesn't have the name of the game on the gameboard somewhere. I guess they could have just put one logo per mat instead of two, but IMO, who cares ? It's the game logo, big deal. I could see the $39.99 price tag keeping people from buying them, but a logo? Maybe the whole "Logo-Gate Affair" thing is just a knee jerk reaction to the rather hefty price tag of each mat? I dunno. But it makes no sense to me at all. If you just can't bear to look at them, put your maneuver deck over them or something. The logos aren't outlined in black and are just plain white script, so I guess if they drove you that crazy, you could just fill them in with a sharpie.

Fortunately for me, my FLAGS gave me a 10% discount on the mats. But even at that, the $39.99 each, price tag made me wince, not the logos. Those things are a tad pricey for a poor white boy like myself! But considering some of the mouse pads, which are of the exact same quality, that I have bought and or seen with things like team logos and such on them, these are OK for a one time spend. I recently saw an Ohio State University Logo'd mouse pad selling for $29.99!!! That thing was just a fraction of the size of these mats!

My big issue with them aside from the price, is to now find a carrying case for them. Thay are rolled, so something along the lines of a map tube case may be in order. I'm not sure the boxes they come in are going to hold up very long, but they may for a while. I might be off to the Army surplus store here real soon.

I've had my share of wargames with the paper maps, and I just don't care for them myself. I always like a more durable, longer lasting playing surface, and I think these fit that bill. No seams to tear or rip and no warping to worry about. After the bitter pill of the price was over, I was pretty happy with them. Like I said, I can very easily see myself getting a third one down the road for those really big games.

Thanks for the feed back on them. I have a very nice credit at my local game store and was thinking about spending part of it on the mats. When you say as thick as a thin mouse pad, how thin are you talkiking, 1/4 inch, 1/8 inch, 1/16 inch??

Just heading off to work here, but after a quick check, it looks to me like the rubber backing is 1/16, then you have the fabric adheared to that. So it looks to me like the whole thing is more like 3/32nds.

Funny thing, but I have some 1/8 thick Ohio State University drink coasters (I know, again with the Ohio State stuff. What can I say, I'm a bit of a "homer". While I'm on the subject, the Reds are playing good baseball; good pitching anyway up to now...) made the same way, and after having had them for quite some time now, they are actually warping!

IMPORTANT NOTE: DO NOT SET COLD BEERS ON THE EXPENSIVE WINGS OF WAR MATS!

Oh, so these are pretty thin then Are they pretty soft feeling like a normal mouse pad? Sorry for all the questions, but my local store will most likely not order any of these unless I special order them... so I doubt I'll ever see any before I decide to buy.

HMS Hajj said:

No problem on the questions, for $39.99 apiece, I can certainly understand wanting to find out what you're looking at before buying. This Sunday I'm off work, and I'll post some pictures up on here.

Well, 1/16 + fabric does sound like it's tisue paper thin when you read it, I must say! But they are fine as far as thickness goes, and yes, as you mention, they do feel very "soft ". They also feel very durable. Like I said, the price was a bit of a pill to get past, but after that, I feel as if I've invested in something that not only enhances play of this game greatly, but will last and last. There may be less expensive alternatives out there, but these mats are certainly something this game has been lacking.

kaufschtick said:

RELATED IMPORTANT NOTE: DO *NOT* TRY TO USE A HOT POCKET AS A SUBSTITUTE OBSERVATION BALLOON ON THE MAT....

Thanks for the continued replies and photos would be great... maybe with a plane base next to it for reference would be even better. I talked to my local store owner last night when he came over and he confirmed that he would only special order the mats. Even at whole sale price, they are a big investment for him to just have sitting on the shelf.

csadn said:

LOL!!!

HMS Hajj said:

I can certainly understand that, the concern about the price, I mean. With any luck, I'll get a game going with one or both of my sons tomorrow, so I'll get some pictures of the mats with the planes on them then. I can't really convey enough here how much of a difference the mats make in the "look" of the game, at least from my point of view anyway.

But at $39.99 each...I can also see this as a stumbling block. That is probably one reason why they broke the whole mat into an east and west part, as one mat for $79.98 would most likely have a very difficult time selling. At least at $39.99, one could conceiveably buy just one of the mats to give it a look see. If you were really unhappy with it, I'm sure you could at least recoup a portion of your money reselling the mat (E-Bay & such?). That would be at least better than plunking down $79.98 and being in the same boat.

And like I've stated before, I can see myself grabbing a third one down the road somewhere, I have a friend who has a couple "bingo hall" tables in his gaming room that could accomodate the space. But seeing as I'm not independantly wealthy here, I'll be directing my "wargaming budget dollars" toward a couple other items on the radar first!

I have no doubt that they add to the look and feel of the game, it's one of the things that is making me want them. We play on 4x6 tables, so it would take both to cover it (with a few inches hanging over ).

They are beautiful! I picked bought them both yesterday. I may not get a chance to play soon, but if I do, I will put up pictures. I agree with what kaufschtick said about the logos, thickness, and softness. In my opinion, the logos are not a big deal in comparison to how big the mats are. I volunteer at a camp in the summer, and I have gotten many young people into boardgames. I'm sure that these mats will entice more of them to play Wings of War.

kaufschtick said:

Originally, I wrote that as a joke... then I thought about some of the gamers I've known....

I'm also imagining how my Feral-Born male cat will deal with one, given his tendency to hop onto the table while we're playing (since *that's* where the Human Attention is, that *must* be where the cat should be): {LEAP} {SLIDE} {*THUD*} ....

How are the mats at keeping the cards (either aircraft or maneouver) from sliding around? We have had problems with both, espcially when they all start overlapping during a close dogfight.

Thanks

Robin

Well, here's some quickie pics of the new mat. The cards move about on the mat just about the same way they do on the table top or felt IMO. We've always held the cards in place by applying pressure with a finger on one end of any given card in question, and then inserting or removing any overlapping card from the other end when we need to move them. Never had any real issues with "card slipage" , as far as them sliding around or being moved unintentionally, myself.

I kinda like the Battle of Britian look with this mat too.

One of my favorite scenarios to set up is the good ole' "Flying Tigers" type scenario!

A good ole' piece piece of cloth is still good for other looks. Blue for naval dogfights, tan for desert, and light blue for the high altitude stuff, like B-17 raids and such. My kitchen table top is 52.5 inches by 52.5 inches, and I loose a little over a foot on the backside with the mats, but they sure do look sharp.

It'll be interesting to see if they give any thought to releasing mats like these for the WWII version of the game, although these seem to work just fine.

kaufschtick said:

Um, may I make a request: Get a Photobucket account, or similar, and just post links of the pics, please? Having to scroll through 10' of pictures every time I read a thread is, to put it politely, Inconvenient. Thanks.

They really do look good! I just played around with placing four of them together, and they line up okay graphic wise, but it would have been super nice if they would have designed them to line up if you added more then two together. It would have only required the river to exit the center of the mat on one side. Oh well, I doubt anyone buys four of them anyways.

I must say, I like having the images posted right in the thread. I hate having to open up a ton of more windows just to view the pics. Much easier for me to scroll down to skip over them... or better yet, have a forum where we can chose to have the newest post at the top. Like all major forums.

csadn said:

Actually, I do use photobucket! When I upload the pics to photobucket, I resize them so they aren't so damm big, but sometimes it must take a while for them to resize on photobucket. I actually left 3 pics out because they where giant size. I hate the huge pics too, sorry! They are normal, medium size from my point of view, hopefully they are to everyone else on here as well. They should be 4x6 size, roughly.

HMS Hajj said:

As far as having four mats goes, I think this is the kind of game that if two people enjoy it, some of the hope is that different players will buy a certain amount of the game materials (mats in this case) and can then combine their respective resources when playing. So two players having twop mats each is something I could see happening a lot more than one player buying four mats alone. Although in time, I can see some diehards such as myself, eventually acquiring four mats!

Hopefully the pics are all coming through now completely resized, below are the other three I left out last night. I guess photobucket just takes a bit of time for it to resize the pics. When I added them into this post tonight, they came through just fine, but last night, they were the super huge variety. I'm hoping that all of them are now roughly about 4x6 in size. Not too small, and not too large! A couple of these came out kinda dark anyways, but hell, I'm just happy to be able to get them on here in the first place!

I have a buddy of mine who nearly went with doing miniatures in 1/144 for the ole' Avalon Hill game Mustangs! a long time ago. When I began doing Wings of War for the WWII planes, he mentioned to me that with the miniatures I have, they might work for Mustangs! too. He correctly pointed out that we would just need a game area with hexagons.

A long time ago, I had a clear plastic mat overlayed with hexes, and I was thinking that these game mats (WoW) bear a similiar resemblence to the old Mustangs! gameboard, minus the hexes. Then I remembered the old clear plastic mat with hexes, and I started wondering if there was a company that still made clear mats with hexes? If there is, it would be neat to piece together a clear overlay for these game mats and give Mustangs! a try! Just a though; an idea to get maybe a little extra mileage out of these mats and the 160 or so WWII (soon to be 200+) 1/144 scale minis I have. I think he still has that game too...anyway, here are a couple more pics.

kaufschtick said:

For me they come in at about 6" square. When you're posting half-a-dozen or so at a time, well, you do the math (and then realize some folks around here don't seem to know what the "edit post" function is for...).

I'd just like to be able to hit a link I can open in a new tab, is all.

Just got back from Gen Con today and after looking at them several times over several hours of shopping I finally broke down and purchased them. I really wished they would of had them on display somewhere as everyone was looking at the box and wanted to see them on the table.(They may of had more sales...) But for some reason, nothing. - Even the two demo tables did not have them, go figure.

On another note, I really wanted to purchase some more planes. Right now I have all series one and four from series two. My goal was to finish set two and get all of three. But alas, they had no deals on purchasing sets and at $13.00 and $16.00e, I'll pass and grab them from ebay. On a positive note FF did manage to get me for around $130.00 bucks as I said, both mats and a copy of WoW Fire from the Sky, along with lots of Deck Sleeves for the cards.(which I did not know existed).

Can't wait to roll out the mats Monday at the local game store...

Game on brothers.

Which sleeves work with the cards? I've seen some sleeves mentioned on their site, but none that mention usage for WoW.

E

kaufschtick said:

Well, for Mustangs, Blue max, Fokker fodder or any other hex or sqaure based game it is better to buy a mat from here: www.hotzmats.com/ I really reccomend the european field mat, if you get it two sided you can use one side for Wow and the other for hexagon based games. They are not that expansive, it is from Canada BTW. The 3" hexagons are perfect for 1/144.

Here is a picture of the hexagon side: i72.photobucket.com/albums/i199/Judas_photos/Picture029.jpg The trenches in it are marked out with Memoir hexagons but we have gotten some brown cloth band now, I plan to make my own hexagon markers with trenches on based on real air photos. The baloons are marked with GW paint cans here, now we use ping pong balls instead with a glued on nail so we can fit it to a Wow stand.

But you should know that hotmatz are better for higher altitudes (where most of the battles were fought). They are also a lot larger than Wow matz and can also be put together (even if I have seen no need for it with 16 players). In WW1 some dogfight were fought at the low altitude that the Wow mats show but for a WW2 game it really doesn't fit. Dogfights there were fought at a lot higher altitude.

Here are the deck protectors from FF. One set says Mini European and the other American. They said at the FF booth these are the ones that go with WoW so here we are. Not bad $2.00 per 50 of them.

Cat #FFS02

1-11/16 X 2-5/8 (44x64mm)

No sure why picture not shown...

Anyway, it doesn't bother me scrolling down pictures as much as is does every time you log into the Forums and after you hit Boardgames you have to scroll forever to get to the Wings of War selection...

So there is no difference between Mini-European and American? Just different names for same product?

Not a bad price at all.

I feel the same way about having to scroll all the way down. A nice small menu across the top like they have now for the main forum topics would be nice.

E