So when Miniature Market had the bomber sale last week, I decided to order a mat with my bombers. I had seen the Gale Force 9 mats before and was pretty much sold on one of the nebula-looking ones. When I was shopping the site, the mat from HCD supplies caught my eye. It's slightly cheaper at $22.50 vs $30, which was a bonus, but I was most intrigued by it being neoprene and not vinyl.

http://www.miniaturemarket.com/hcd96669.html#.UsYZFmRDtiU

Well it arrived today and I'm impressed! The neoprene is similar to what a mouse pad would be like. It's slightly thinner than the game tokens, if that gives you some idea how thick it is. The weight and rubber backing make it 'stick' nicely to the table. The cloth covering lets things slide easily while resisting 'bumps' in my initial playing with it tonight. Pinning a ship down when measuring and such is also easier since the neoprene has some squish to it.

It is heavy though, about 2.5 Lbs. It comes in a cardboard box and not a tube so I have concerns about long term storage, but I can probably buy a shipping tube when it comes to that. It's also actually 35.5" by 35.5" not 36x36. That may be a big deal for some, not for me, personally. (Ninja Edit - had a chance to compair to gale force 9 mats today and they're the same size, so they all cheat a bit on the definition of 36")

Anyway, I give it a thumbs up.

Cheers,

Rich

Not sure if anyone will see this, but just a quick follow on, I had this mat out with some Gale Force 9 mats at the pirate tourney at the Game Parlor today. It's the same size as the Gale Force 9 mats, maybe, *Maybe* a 1/16" of an inch smaller. So I would not hold the 1/2 inch short against it, since the others are short too.

The only issue I have with GF9's mats are that they scratch pretty easily. Other than that, I flipping love them.

yeah i bought mine end of December and it has quite a few scratches already.

I got mine and there is a post about it already. Mother are pretty nice mats. I do like them quality wise more then the gf9. Mbut I like the 9s designs more

Can you post a picture? I want to see what it looks like in real life.

yeah look on the "What do you play on post" THE HCD mat is nice but the design is waaaay to much..lol

The GF9 mats are awesome, but they do scuff and scratch pretty easily.

One of my friends, who may pop in here at some point, recently got the Mini Market mat and I personally was not very impressed with it.

The art, rather than looking like a space photo, looks a bit like you would see painted on the side of a van, very flat and spray-painted.

The mat is definitely a good half inch short in at least one direction. Not the end of the world, but definitely frustrating for the price of those mats - and I know I've had games where on/off the board came a lot closer than a half inch. If it says 36x36 it should BE 36x36. In a game like this that's actually pretty important since it affects everything from setting up asteroids to movement.

The biggest sin, though, is that I found in practice the mouse pad material was a terrible choice for a play surface. It's slightly spongy, which means it's got some give and things can tip or move if you put weight on the mat near a figure - when you're trying to execute a move or check a fire arc or something, for instance. And worse, it's way slicker than my GF9 mats, which means stuff slid around like crazy.

I mean small shifts, but the material has no grip - it's not designed to hold a mouse in place, it's designed to give it a nice smooth surface to slide over, after all - so I found it WAY more prone to ships slipping and sliding slightly out of position at the slightest provocation.

I think he liked it, but based on what I saw it would be a hard pass for me. Didn't care for the art, found it irritating it's the wrong size, and the slick, spongy surface is a bad match for a miniatures game.

On a side note, I have one of the DS'tone Kickstarter space mats on order, so I'll put up a review whenever that comes in. The art on them (using actual space telescope photos from an astronomer) is gorgeous, so we'll see how the mats themselves are but I'm looking forward to getting mine.

as Crookedwookie said, its short, but not an inch, a half inch short, but its still short on a side. The mat is slick, but until they release a magnetized mat with magnetized bases, stuff is gonna slide. I like that when I do have to lean on it (after about 3 or 4 moves) it will stay put and not move. I may, for funzys, flip it over and see how well the grippy side is as a playing side.

I don't like the art work, but oh well. I got a mat that is fine, and at the price it was at, (cheaper - around $22) I can live with the background. I personally wanted a just black one. Is that to much to ask. I may look into like a fabric paint or something.

Overall, price and all, its a good mat, not great, but as long as you like it, thats all that matters. I fell like this star mat stuff is fairly "new" so I would guess someone will have the rockstar of mats soon.

please somebody post if they find a fabric paint or something that works on the HCD mat.. want to paint mine but don't want to mess it up!! lol thought about trying to make the planet look like the death star!!