Deep Cut Studio Game Mats (Review)

Never done a product review on the old blog before.  Not really interested in them, but I thought a quick peek at my new Deep Cut Studio mats might be helpful to anyone who happens to be shopping around for game mats.  Mats can be pricey, after all, and that's particularly true if your a North American and you're ordering a mat from Lithuania, which is where Deep Cut happens to be located.  The shipping is murder.  But.  I'm very happy with what I've bought from them so far.  The mats are well worth the money in my opinion.  Here are a few views of mine. I needed an excuse to set up some lights and play around with the camera in the big board's new digs anyway.

 I ordered two mats, the first being the 'Old West' mat. It depicts a desert environment with lots of patches of dry, cracked earth, some drifts of sand and a weary looking shrub here and there.
The artwork is very beautiful and immediately convincing.  Here's a view with some ordinary stones gathered from a creek bed and a lizard hide I got from the terrarium aisle at the pet store.  You can see how well the mat sets off even the simplest terrain.

Three brave adventurers explore the mat.  Deep Cut sells their mats in cloth, pvc and mousepad.  Mousepad is by far the most expensive, of course.  I knew I wanted mousepad from the beginning.  Its lovely, heavy, rugged stuff.  It doesn't fold or crease, doesn't reflect the light, and you can bounce your painstakingly painted miniatures off it all day and their paint won't chip.

Mat detail.  I'm excited abut getting my Egyptians and Hittites onto this.  If I ever finish painting them, that is.

Another view.

And another, this time with minis.

The other mat I purchased was the 'Waterworld' oceanic mat.  I got this one mainly to support the ww2 naval miniatures games I've been getting into lately.  (More on them later.)

View of the artwork.  I had a hard time capturing the color.  Its a somewhat deeper, richer  blue than it appears here.

I'm also looking forward to using this for Rogue Trader adventures and Oldhammer fantasy ship to ship combat.  I've got some resin pirate ships and intend to man them with Dwarf slayers and Skaven weapon teams.  Masts and sails transformed into towering infernos by warp fire throwers.  Think of it!

I was just playing around by this point.  Light still isn't quite right in most of these photos.  Going to have to keep working on that.

Stranded on a tiny desert archipelago after their ship has crashed into the sea, Imperial Prelate Sancho Corleon and his companions wonder what to do next.

 

The Astropath seems to doubt their chances...

Anyway, hope this might be of use to someone.  I've painted a bunch of stuff lately.  More Rogue Trader, Biblicals and some ww2 naval stuff, so there are plenty of posts coming down the pike.  Cheers!