By now, many of you have likely seen the beautiful game mats being produced by A Game of Dice and Ire. While many players design and print their own play mats through printing services like Inked Gaming, there are a few designers of Destiny specific play mats on the market. So are these mats worth your consideration and investment? Let’s find out!
Appearance (5.0/5.0)
There’s no doubt that these mats sport impressive designs, but I’ll be the first to admit they look even nicer in person. The art is crisp, clear, and detailed. And importantly, the custom art on these mats does not infringe on any of the Star Wars or Star Wars: Destiny intellectual property like virtually every custom mat does.
Utility (4.75 /5.0)
I was initially concerned about how much I would like the sectioned-off design of these play mats. It seemed like it might be a little tedious to keep everything in its proper space, but in truth, I found these mats to help immensely with organization. I tend to like to keep things a little more free form, so my preference is for the mat with more generic spaces (and the desert duel art). This mat is designed to accommodate four characters, and while I suspect it would be a bit cramped at that number, it’s certainly possible. The other mat (with the schematic art) will only accommodate three characters but with much more specific areas for each card type. The choice that you make will most likely depend on your own personal preference, but I have to admit that I like them both. The most helpful sections of the design were those reserved for your resource pool, your support cards, your active dice pool, and your reserve supply of different tokens (which proved to be more useful than I imagined). Less helpful were the shield zones next to each character card on the “schematic design” mat. It was certainly a neat idea, but I found that they just got int the way when trying to exhaust character cards. Ultimately, some will not like the sectioned design of these mats and the inevitable constraint that they apply to your set up. Prior to using these mats I might have considered myself in this camp in fact. And indeed, there are still a few problems – support-heavy decks may run out of space for their support cards; I never quite found a good space to put shield tokens other than the dice pool area; and the space for character cards seems slightly confined, although, to be fair, putting three to four characters on any mat is always going to be a bit tight. Despite all of these minor flaws, I found myself really enjoying these mats and finding them to be significant improvements over my own mat.
Durability (5.0/5.0)
Like all neoprene mats, these are incredibly durable. I would imagine that like other neoprene mats, the cloth on the edges may start to fray slightly after prolonged use, but that isn’t a significant concern for me, and certainly not different from other mats. I would expect to get many years of use out of one of these mats.
Cost (5.0/5.0)
These mats are available through A Game of Dice and Ire’s Etsy store for $25.00 plus shipping. This price point puts them right on par with Inked Gaming’s custom mats, which is honestly a great deal considering that the burden of acquiring or designing high-quality, custom art work has already been done for you. Moreover, they’re right in line with Fantasy Flight Games’s own play mats which, though they sport nice, official art, I don’t like nearly as much as the custom designs on these.
Overall Rating: 5.0 /5.0
Final Thoughts
I honestly like these mats quite a bit more than I initially thought that I would. Having only seen them online before now, I have to admit that I had largely dismissed them because I wasn’t sold on the functionality of the design. However, after having the chance to get my hands on these and use them, they have certainly changed my mind. These are well designed, attractive, high-quality mats that compulsive organizers (like myself) will find very useful. I highly recommend that you check them out!
**A Game of Dice and Ire donated three play mats to The Chance Cube Open in exchange for a fair and honest review of this product.
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As a very new player to Star Wars Destiny, I have noticed a LOT of abbreviations and slang for playing aspects, most often deck types and descriptions. While I understand thsat this is obvious to the more seasoned players, it is quite confusing to newbies like me. I don’t think we can lesson this effect but it might be helpful to have a new player area/guide to help sort out some of these terms!