December 28, 2018: Fun With Playmats

We've been offering a few different playmat designs over the last few years (the latest Ogre playmats are now on Kickstarter, with the project closing today), and we're far from the only game publisher selling playmats to support gameplay. Over the holidays, I got lucky enough to add several of Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars: Imperial Assault playmats to my collection. (Now I'm down to needing time to play the game so I can truly enjoy these new mats.)

If you're unfamiliar with the different Imperial Assault playmats, each is designed for the game's skirmish mode and offers up a new battlefield. If you've not given Imperial Assault a try, I suggest that you find a friend who owns it and give it a shot. Imperial Assault is an evolution of the Doom and Descent games (both of which were first designed by Munchkin CCG co-designer Kevin Wilson), and can best be described as a Star Wars dungeon-crawl game. And yeah, the game includes campaign play and there are a lot of miniatures and missions available for it.

If you've never used playmats in your games, you've been missing out! Cloth mats, with rubber backing, provide a smooth surface and – in the case of these Imperial Assault mats (as well as the Ogre playmats) – serve as the gameboard. Playmats only work if you have a large enough table, but if you do, they make game setup a little quicker . . . and they look fabulous!

-- Phil Reed