I like the looks of exactly one of the play mats FF puts out and thats the plain starfield.To me, the others with the pictures can be distracting or actually cause you to miss stuff in a game. I've looked at the prices of them and availability and see that evidently I am not alone in that as those are the harder ones to find that you dont see put on sale prices.

Of course, coming from 40k, my mind thinks along the lines of bigger bigger bigger games with more and more options. This goes towards playing fields for me also. So I thought... the playmats are set at a single size and making bigger would mean buying more than one and having that edge in the middle and cost....So I looked for alternatives. Coming from 40k, my first thought went towards, painting sheets of particle boardor plywood and then, transport, weight storage... and.... nah.No way.

Thisled me to tiles. Thinking of getting the squares of a type to jigsaw with minimum seams. While at Lowes, I went to look at them and found something else that I found to be perfect for my needs. A box of sturdy rubber flooring mats that interlock. Easy to put together and take apart, one fott squares to make standard size fields or elongated fields for larger games or scenarios. "Edges" that fit in along the outside so that you get a solid straight edge without having the interlock parts oddballing out and its black with grey specks making a perfect starfield. Also, the ships just do not "slide". Look for interlocking rubber utility flooring. Price was just a hair under $20 U.S. so on a comparative price with "official" mats.

I hope this helps someone and that I've given enough information for anyone interested to find it. Anyone else come up with ideas for alternative fields?

1 minute ago, EVIL INC said:

Look for interlocking rubber utility flooring. Price was just a hair under $20 U.S. so on a comparative price with "official" mats.

Would love to see some pictures of this DIY Starfield!

I was careful to not put any company names but did get the exact wording to put into a search to find it. I bought mine at Lowes (couldnt find it on home depot site but they have different version that likely work just as well, but they cost more. Copy paste below.... still didnt put company name but if you type it into lowes site as it is on the picture, you'll find that Native American name come up.

Went back and read reviews (4 out of 5 stars)... Most of them were good. Note that all reviews were coming from using it as flooring.

I wont go into the good reviews as most of them are about how well they fit together, how easy it is and how sturdy plus some on good insulation.

The bad reviews consisted of

1. Folks didnt like the speckle patters as it was too "random" Thats just what we want as players. lol

2. I found that when putting them together, you need to keep them on the same side. If 3 pieces are laying on one side, the 4th needs to be on the same side to fit. Likewise for the edges. Evidently folks were trying to put them together with some of the pieces being upside down and not being bright enough to flip them over.

3. Some folks found that there were different thicknesses between some of the boxes. I did not run into that problem within my box and chances are, one single box would do any of us so we would not be putting muplitple boxes together to even have to "risk" that unlikely event.