New Boarkit player mat for regular LOTR LCG Players

You can never please everyone. That’s a true fact of life. This can be depressing for content creators, but the silver lining is that this is also a source of new insight.

When play-testing a 4 player deck set for the The Massing at Osgiliath quest, one of my friends commented on the Boardkit player mat he was using. Basically, he felt the art was covered-up to much by all the lines and text on the mat.  This was not his first game of LOTR LCG and so I understood his point.  The current mat does focus on the needs of a board-gamer playing for the first time or only occasionally.  For this player, the layout makes it clearer and that’s what a mat for a board-game should do.  But for my friend, the omnipresence of repeating graphic elements was only contributing clutter.

So, with this new insight, I have added a second version of the player mat, one that eliminates most of the text and diminishes the visual clutter by reducing the opacity of the remaining lines by a minimum 50%.   I like the result.  You can appreciate more the great artwork and it give more freedom to place heroes, allies, enemies and attachments where you want.

I invite you to take a look a the first of this series.  It’s also in the Player mat section of the Downloads page.  It features a fantastic portrait of Eowyn the warrior by Donato.  Should I get some good feedback on this mat design, I intend to produce a small catalog of them with different artwork.  To each his own.

For those that want to work on their own version, based on this mat design, leave me a comment and I will get you a copy of the base PNG or PSD file.

As the subject is player mats, I’d like to give a shout-out to Otherworlder on boardgamegeek.  He developed a player mat that takes some inspiration from the Boardkit version.  Looks good.  I encourage you to check it out.  It can be printed on larger mats from Inked Playmats* so they’re larger and more textured then the current 17 x 11 inches we currently have here.

* Interested in a Inked Play mat version of the Boardkit player mats anyone?

Cheers,

LoC