Battlemats for DnD 4e

[uthoroc]

I'll be playing my first DnD session for 20 years or so on Friday. Of course it'll be the shiny new 4th edition, and of course it will use miniatures and battle mats.

As the resident map expert my DM asked me to whip up a few blank battle mats with generic backgrounds - and mentioned he also needed a road with trees on both sides, similar to this

Comments

[gbsteve]

That's very nice! What scale are the squares? I only ask because simonjrogers tried 1" per square but this made the map too big. Most miniatures will fit on a 1cm square grid and this makes it far more manageable.

[uthoroc]

It's the official scale of 1" to the 5' square. I think they recommend it because there are situations in the rules where two or more figures end up in a square.

As this map is A3, it should fit comfortably on a gaming table, but it can be scaled down easily.

[uthoroc]

What minis were you using by the way?

I've put some of mine on the printed mat, and it looks like the 1" per square is definitely needed - at least for my GW miniatures. See the Gimli and Legolas figs in the image I added to the post.

[simonjrogers]

We used my old lead 1st Edition minatures which are about 1/2 the size of these.

I don't understand how it's possible to run a battle against a gargantuan creature at this scale without burning out ink cartridges and having a table the size of Switzerland.

[temporus]

If I'm going to run a seriously large encounter, I would either just go with the enormous battlemat, and re-draw by hand with the markers. Or I'd just print it out in black and white, and people would be fine with that as an option. Is it as awesome as color? No. But it gets the job done, saves ink, and keeps the game moving.