I've been playing minis games for over two decades, and I am just now starting to hear the word "map" being used to describe peoples boards and terrain. Where did this term come from? Is it a computer game thing?

I never heard "map" before in that context. But mats (as in roll-able gaming mats). Maybe some people again didn't listen right and are now talking maps instead of mats? 😉

"Map" as a term originates from video games, referring to the play areas and since there seems to be a pretty large overlap of the two communities, and that the term fits pretty neatly within the TTG sphere, it seems to just have been adopted to refer to physical play environments as well as digital.

That's what I figured. I don't like it, but maybe that's just me. 🙂

Multiple other mini games have board pieces that setup into maps as well, Descent, Imperial Assault, Zombicide, Gloomhaven, etc. It is probably the combination of video games and the continuation into mini games.

I this is my first real miniature war game but I played a TON of Heroscape where "maps" are built using hex tiles. I always call them maps due to that background. Sorry if it is annoying.

Oh, no worries. It just caught me by surprise.

4 hours ago, Sharkbelly said:

Oh, no worries. It just caught me by surprise.

Maps? MAPS, you say? Don't give in Darn-it! I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's stuck in their house afraid of the virus or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's worth of minis, stores are going bust, shopkeepers can't sell us the AAT or Iden Versio. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching the internet while some "influencer" tells us that today he painted fifteen miniatures and sixty-three order tokens, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my legion and my paints and my terrain (not maps) and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the corona virus and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a tabletop gamer, God D@mn it! Terrain has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS H3LL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'

@Chili-52 is right.

I got a new paintbrush. George, my friend, he gave me this brush. This is a pretty good brush. It's not as good as my first brush. I miss my first paintbrush, but this is still a good brush. Sometimes, you just hafta take what life gives ya, 'cause life is like a paintbrush and sometimes life comes from eBay all half put together and big mold lines not trimmed off or anything and all grey plastic colored... you, you, you gotta paint it. You, you, you gotta strip that glue off in Simple Green and trim off the mold lines and start all over again and, and sometimes, sometimes life has so many unpainted figures, you know a brush, a brush, it's not good enough, it's not good enough. You, you gotta get out, like, a spray can, you know, and you gotta, you gotta really prime a lot of figures and set up a huge assembly line, you gotta get it painted. You gotta really try to get it painted. But if that doesn't work, that doesn't work, you can't give up. You gotta, you gotta stand right up. You, you gotta run to a window and say, "Hey! These armies are grey as ****, and I'm not gonna take it anymore!"