How to Make a Cheap Wilderness Battle Mat for Dungeons & Dragons

Everybody .

Welcome back to Black Magic Craft .

Last video I made this big sci fi battle mat using cheap formats from the Dollar store and a whole bunch of you asked if I could do the same thing .

But with like an outdoor wilderness theme and the answer is yes .

Yes , I can .

And I did this time around .

The mat's main focus would be for encounters in table top , rpgs .

And in my experience , you don't need this huge play area for game like D and D , you're better off with like a little snapshot , small area .

So one mat would be enough and it came out pretty dang decent .

It looks pretty good .

You can bend it and throw it around and it ain't gonna get damaged .

It's really durable .

It's perfect for your average game master running an adventure .

So same dollar store format as last time these are very lightweight E VA foam that would make for a horrible format .

You get what you pay for or , but they're just great for making terrain .

I had a lot of people suggest heating up E VA foam with a heat gun to apply texture since otherwise it just bounces back and you immediately lose your imprint .

If you don't have a heat gun , they aren't expensive .

You can easily get one for like 25 bucks and they come in handy for all sorts of things .

Both hobby and household .

It did seem to help a lot with taking texture from a rock , but I mostly wanted to try it with a texture roller .

Using one without heat is completely useless .

It does not work at all .

However , heating up the foam first made it work great .

The texture was defined , it stayed and it made the surface of the foam a little bit harder , which was nice .

The tricky part though was doing a long road line .

You have to heat up the phone in small sections , but you don't want to lose the position of the roller on the pattern .

This meant that the process was pretty toasty on the hand .

Even the roller started to get hot to the touch , which probably wasn't good if I do this again , I'm gonna grab my glove or something so that I don't cook my hand .

Just be careful .

Despite the bit of uncomfortable heat paid off .

The pattern looked great .

I wasn't going for a town section though .

I just wanted a patch of Cobblestone road running through the wilderness because we all know that's where great encounters take place .

The rock really didn't give a ground texture I wanted .

So I switched gears and broke out the supplies to make a flexible texture paste .

I got some sand , rocks , paint and a paintbrush and a roller sleeve .

Again .

All from the Dollar Store .

The one ingredient I couldn't get there is latex cocking .

That's fine though .

This stuff is easy to find at any big box or hardware store and it's very cheap .

Now , there's no magic recipe for this .

It's cooking , not baking and the ratios end up being different every time I do it , which is completely fine .

Start with a whole bunch of latex caking then mix in paint .

This serves two purposes .

It tints the latex which helps when painting later and may sure it looks ok even if it cracks in the future .

But it also dilutes the latex to a thinner consistency that makes it easier to work with .

If you don't add paint , then you gotta add some water .

But hey , why not just add paint instead ?

And because the King is white , it takes quite a bit of paint and a lot of black to get it to a somewhat dark color to give the paste some extra strength and grit and mixed in a whole bunch of sand .

This turns it almost into like a spread of sandpaper .

I also added some larger gravel , but I'd say this is optional .

I probably could have skipped this since I added more on top later , I used a large paint brush to apply it to the surface and even though this mixture is water soluble and can be washed out with a brush while it's still wet .

I prefer to use a cheap one or $2 brush for this just in case it gets ruined .

But the brush doesn't provide a very nice texture .

So I back rolled it all again , using a cheap dollar store roller sleeve while this mixture was still very wet .

I sprinkled on more sand and gravel to sit on top and then use some dry tea just from tea bags that I opened up to give things a more organic force floor texture .

The great thing about using tea is that it smells so nice while you're applying it .

After all the various texture things are sprinkled on .

It helps to let pat everything down and make sure as much of it as possible .

Sticks to your texture paste .

I decided it would look more interesting with some large rocks but didn't want anything too thick , just a few to decorate , but they were low and flat enough to still place minis on .

I experimented using chunks of foam from another one of the same E VA formats because they were a good thickness and I was already working with it personally , I found it a lot harder to carve rocks out of a softer foam than with say XPS .

But it did work .

And since I had plenty of my texture goo left , I just used that to attach the rocks to the still drawing surface .

You might be wondering if you can save this texture paste for future use .

I think you could at least for several weeks as long as it's in something airtight .

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Now back to the project rather than just painting .

I made a batch of brown Maud podge way , the paint itself would give all the ground cover a better chance of staying put .

Long term , I was going for durability here .

Far more than realism when you have any kind of flocking , be it foam or tea .

It's a good idea to spray it with some isopropyl alcohol before applying any type of scenic cement or glue or in this case , the mod podge paint mixture , it helps the flocking absorb the glue right through it rather than just sitting on top on the surface .

The big cheap paint brush came in handy for this coat as well .

The mixture of brown black and green craft paint gave the whole thing a nice earthy color .

But before it dried , I dabbed in a bunch of green paint and wet blended it with the brown on the grassy areas .

Once that was dry , I used some can to dry brush the roadway and the stones .

I wanted them to stand out from the other ground coverage rather than trying to avoid getting it on areas where it shouldn't be .

I just got it on the grass and then assumed that I could cover it up afterwards with some more green so dry , brushed on and honestly that worked fine , looked not bad considering it was just some homemade texture goop and craft paint .

But the roadway and the rocks were just asking for a dirty dark brown wash and I couldn't resist .

I used an oil wash because they just work better hands down .

That's it .

And don't let yourself think that oil washes are some expensive , expert level thing .

They are not .

They're the easiest most forgiving wash to use .

And while it will cost you a little bit to get set up with supply , maybe like 30 bucks or so , those supplies will last you forever making oil washes dirt cheap in the long run .

You want more info on how to get started with them .

Check out my introductory video on oil washes just for the hell of it .

I decided to use the remaining bits of my dark wash with some dark green mixed in to cover up the rest of the grassy areas .

I'm not sure that this was needed or that it made things better , but I just wanted to see how it would go and once dry it looked totally fine .

Obviously , this mat doesn't look nearly as nice or realistic as something .

Luke from Geek gaming would make , but it looks a lot more realistic than a Neoprene or dry erase mat .

And it's a lot more playable than those hyper realistic ones covered in flocking and static grass .

It's a great middle ground and you can bend it , throw it in the trunk of your car , walk on it , whatever , it's not going to be easily damaged .

This simple layout can be used with a variety of scatter pieces to set up different scenarios .

So what do you think winner , winner chicken dinner or a big waste of time .

I don't know if this would be my main go to way to make a mat like this .

But if I was after something quick , cheap and very durable , then yeah , this is the way to go .

I hope you enjoyed this video .

If you did hit the like button , let me know in the comment section below and if you need to pick up any other tools or supplies that you can't get at your dollar store , check out Black Magic Craft dot C A there .

I have my essential equipment list where I list all the stuff that I use regularly and buying through those links , helps fund the production of these videos .

Last , if you get a lot of value out of this channel and these videos , the best way you can give back and help me keep making them is by supporting the channel on Patreon .

I'd love to have you as the newest member of the Black Magic Craft Fellowship .

That's it .

That's all .

See you next time .

Cheers .

Oh no .

The bear's gotten into the cocaine co .