I've played Theater of the Mind until now, but have been looking for a good battle map and set of figures or pawns to use.

My first instinct is to look here for monsters: http://www.amazon.com/Pathfinder-Pawns-Bestiary-1-Box/dp/1601254245/ref=sr_1_4?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1430287822&sr=1-4&keywords=pathfinder+pawn

You get a ton of cardboard cutout figures with bases to use. The only problem is that it has so few of each monster. Like 3 goblins. Nobody ever fights ONLY three goblins. So it is basically unuseable if I'm running something like Lost Mines of Phandelver.

For the battle mat, there is the Chessex one. http://www.amazon.com/Chessex-Role-Playing-Play-Mat/dp/B0015IQO2O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430287918&sr=8-1&keywords=chessex+mat

But everybody says that arrives rolled up and needs to go through some uncreasing before you can use it. Surely there are some big mats out there that aren't so foolishly packaged?

I've been gaming since slightly after Old Geezer was a pup. In that time I've accumulated a lot of gaming stuff: hundreds of Fantasy minis, hundreds of Sci-Fi and Star Wars minis, and a hundred or so Call of Cthulhu and 20s/30s Gangster minis. I like minis. Its cool having a mini that looks like a specific character (and vice versa). I like using the miniatures to show where the characters are. It helps with getting everyone on the same page and with clarifying line of sight (LOS) questions. I don't use move by square or hex as that is too time consuming and frankly it seems a little to gamey. I used to paint minis with a good friend of mine and occasionally with my wife. It made painting a social activity and it was great having someone there as an audience. Also we shared paints which greatly increased the variety of colors available. I spent a lot of time painting and it took a while learning to get good at painting. I still have a few of my first efforts untouched by later editing. Gosh do those first paint jobs suck.

But I can't recommend buying and painting minis as a fast solution for gaming. There are a lot of paper-based solutions and for showing relative position and LOS, bottle caps, dice, paper clips, salt shakers, or any old thing works. (They just don't have the cool factor of nice minis.)

I've got a roll up erasable battle mat that I bought 30 years ago. It comes with preprinted squares. I break it out for big fights, but for most day to day gaming scribbling stuff on scrap paper or just using a table top works find. (I can't recall if I got it at a game store, at one of the few cons I went to, or if I mail ordered it.) In fact you can just do an Xs and Os kind of scribble map and skip the minis altogether and that will show positioning and LOS.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828769You get a ton of cardboard cutout figures with bases to use. The only problem is that it has so few of each monster. Like 3 goblins. Nobody ever fights ONLY three goblins. So it is basically unuseable if I'm running something like Lost Mines of Phandelver.

They sell the PDFs for the various sets. I recommend buying one phyiscal set and then instead of buying more pawns just pay for the PDF and print them yourself on cardstock.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828769For the battle mat, there is the Chessex one. http://www.amazon.com/Chessex-Role-Playing-Play-Mat/dp/B0015IQO2O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430287918&sr=8-1&keywords=chessex+mat

Buy Pathfinder Flip mats like this one.

http://paizo.com/products/btpy8oto?Pathfinder-FlipMat-Basic


Chessex sucks over the long haul. I been using Pathfinder flip-mats for a while and when it gets too dingy it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to replace it.

Quote from: estar;828801I been using Pathfinder flip-mats for a while and when it gets too dingy it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to replace it.

I heard that one is folded and has creases that causes ink to gather in it and it's hard to get it to lay flat. Is it true?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828804I heard that one is folded and has creases that causes ink to gather in it and it's hard to get it to lay flat. Is it true?

It has creases and it lays flat. It not perfect but better than a chessex.

If you want to go the extra mile get a piece of plexiglass and lay the map underneath that. That fixes any flatness issue with any map as well as providing a solid surface.

Yes plexiglass doesn't fold so there is that.

Standard Chessex mat, but I do own a lot of the Pathfinder battlemats, which are fun at times.

As far as figures - Reaper.

But if you can get your hands on them, and you don't mind your figures being a little OVER THE TOP - I highly recommend getting Rackham's Confrontation figures. I usually use them for my big bad NPC's or my own personal PC's once they're around 7th level or higher. They're pretty epic.

I've used miniatures and various things, but my favorite are TFT-style cardboard counters.

One inch hex maps, cardboard counters square and a bit smaller than an inch, with a character printed on them, where the top of the character aligns with a hexside to show front facing. These can be mass produced by printers (or copiers) and glued onto cardboard and cut out.





They have advantages over miniatures, in that it's entirely clear which direction they are facing (which is of course crucial in a proper combat system), and when they fall prone or even accumulate into heaps of bodies, you can still have other characters (try to) stand atop the piled dead without having your miniature fall over, or needing to remove the bodies (body placement being significant in a proper combat system for terrain effects on movement and combat, collateral damage to maimed but living bodies, hand-to-hand combat pig-piles, taking weapons from the fallen, etc...).

I use the Crystal Caste Battle Board. Comes with a double sided mat (hex and squares). It's pure awesome sauce.

I absolutely recommend the Pathfinder Pawns. You can carry a decent pile of them with you, and they are spiffy looking. Easy to use. I have some 6 sets, and I have THOUSANDS of "minis". A super good deal IMHO.

Mats are easy to "un-crease". Just lay them out on a table and leave for a few days. You can pile up some game books on the crease to speed up the process. If all else fails, I will use a warm iron and a towel (don't iron directly!). You don't need the iron to be furnace hot, but hot enough to penetrate a towel. Skip the steam. :-) I generally only do this when I'm in a hurry.

Also, I keep my battle board mat folded in half inside the bb. The crease usually disappears in 30 min.

I use regular minis ( a vast collection of Warhammer (citadel), Reaper, Mantic, and various other smaller companies), but never used a map-sheet. I game on a felt-lined gaming table and use modelled terrain.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828769For the battle mat, there is the Chessex one. http://www.amazon.com/Chessex-Role-Playing-Play-Mat/dp/B0015IQO2O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430287918&sr=8-1&keywords=chessex+mat

But everybody says that arrives rolled up and needs to go through some uncreasing before you can use it. Surely there are some big mats out there that aren't so foolishly packaged?

I have a square mat and a hex mat like that.  I haven't used them in a while.  They were definitely sold rolled up.  I don't recall ever having to go through an "uncreasing" period.  I was using it the day after I bought it.

When I used minis for sessions I did not use a grid or hexes. But were I to use them now I might employ Heroscape tiles as they make for some nice 3d terrain compatible with most minis.

But one thing I like as quick and easy minis are tri-fold standups.



These were for a postcard game contest. They have two sides and a back and are 25mm scale.

There are also tri-fold font sets out there for all sorts of fantasy and sci-fi creatures.

How do you guys handle minis for swarms of creatures like Goblins?

You can't just have one or two, you need like 10. But most packages only give you 3 or so of each. There's no way anybody would buy like 7 Pathfinder Pawn Bestiary boxes for that...

I vary rarely use minis. When I have it was with no hexs/grid. My favorite use of minis was "weird" western (western with supernatural) I used 54mm cowboys and indians. That I had modified and painted.

Quote from: estar;828801Chessex sucks over the long haul. I been using Pathfinder flip-mats for a while and when it gets too dingy it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to replace it.

I disagree.

I've been using a Chessex battlemat, which I've owned since the 80s.
It works just as fine now as it did then.
There's a few light stains on it where someone used a red marker which didn't come off completely, but it works just as well now as it did roughly 30 years ago.

I use minis and I have a few shelves of them.  lots of undead, gobbos, orcs, demons, miscellaneous humans and demi humans.
A few dragons and various other monsters.

Quote from: Skarg;828832They have advantages over miniatures, in that it's entirely clear which direction they are facing (which is of course crucial in a proper combat system), and when they fall prone or even accumulate into heaps of bodies, you can still have other characters (try to) stand atop the piled dead without having your miniature fall over, or needing to remove the bodies (body placement being significant in a proper combat system for terrain effects on movement and combat, collateral damage to maimed but living bodies, hand-to-hand combat pig-piles, taking weapons from the fallen, etc...).

But they are flat and do not even remotely show proper height or line of sight and determining line of sight is significant in a proper combat system.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;828884How do you guys handle minis for swarms of creatures like Goblins?

You can't just have one or two, you need like 10. But most packages only give you 3 or so of each. There's no way anybody would buy like 7 Pathfinder Pawn Bestiary boxes for that...

1) Buy more minis.

2) Use other random minis and pretend they are goblins. Always remove the other minis first, keep the 3 goblin minis (swapping out as needed) on the board until the end.

3) Use pennies, dice, bottle caps or other things for the extra goblins. Remove and replace as in 2).