An alien landscape, an abandoned space station, the twisting corridors of your own starship—the possibilities for adventure are endless with Starfinder Flip-Mat: Basic Terrain! Designed for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game but appropriate for any RPG, this invaluable gaming accessory presents two subtle textures—dusty ground on one side and metal floor plating on the other—providing Game Masters a blank canvas on which to draw any terrestrial battlefield, space-age facility, or adventure set piece they desire. Whether your party is facing down a convoy of ratfolk scavengers or breaking into a robot prison on a machine planet, you'll always have the right map at hand.
Don't feel like you always have to run your game in someone else's world. With Starfinder Flip-Mat: Basic Terrain, the setting of your next adventure is wherever you can imagine!
24" × 30" mat
Folds to 8" × 10"
1" squares on each side
ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-962-2
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
GOOD:
The Mars/Akiton side is a nice idea with the different rock elevations.
BAD:
The too busy "steel grating" side make it hard to draw something meaningful in the squares.
UGLY:
The thickness of the mat seems thinner than that of previous products.
The grid is printed wrong, resulting in half-squares and smaller.
the squares are too big.
...because the squares on this aren't even close to an inch; they're much too large. In fact, the 10-inch side is less than nine squares long! Not a huge deal if you're using it by itself, but forget lining it up with another flip mat or overlaying with map tiles, AoE templates, etc. Coupled with the fact that this feels like a different material than any of my (many) Pathfinder/Gamemastery maps, and I'm guessing they used a new printer. Clearly there are some kinks to work out.
Printing issues aside, the map itself is a pretty bad design for a basic flip-mat -- it would have been much more useful to new Starfinder GMs to have a basic grid on one side, and the flip side be a hex-map star field. Yes, I know there is a separate product for that, but it could have easily been covered here.
Finally, the art that IS here is mediocre and lacking detail. This product simply isn't up to the standards of modern Paizo Flip-Mats. Unless you're an avowed completest, avoid this one.
Yes, while the "steel grating" is nice to have for space stations & ships or machine cities on "Aballon the horse", the "dust" is great for "Akiton the Red" aka Mars.
Not quite what I expected for something called "Basic Terrain," though it is nice that at least one side would work for other genres. Also, I see they have made the grid lines stand out from the background, which I believe is an improvement.
As a follow-up to my last post...I expected one side of this to be a hex-based star field, but I see they have a distinct product for that. That leaves me with mixed feelings -- would have been nice to need just one product for both applications -- but it does make the choices here make more sense.
So here's my take having seen this in action:
The deck plate side is too busy and the black line grid makes it useless to try and draw on.
The "Mars Surface" side has the same issue with the grid: Black lines make it useless if you need to draw anything on it. Works great if you only need to present that surface as is though
The deck plate side is too busy and the black line grid makes it useless to try and draw on.
The "Mars Surface" side has the same issue with the grid: Black lines make it useless if you need to draw anything on it. Works great if you only need to present that surface as is though
Yup, I didn't like the black grid lines, either, but I didn't mention that in my review because I felt it was already harsh enough. The thing is...why did changing the genre somehow require changing the gridlines? They've spent years perfecting the flip-mat...why change it now?
This map really reminded me of some of the flip-mat knock-offs that pop up from time to time.
The planet surface side, like I said, is fine so long as you do not need to draw anything on it. If you do need to draw, I second a Basic Flip or even a Bigger Basic Flip Mat (I love my BBFM).
Has anyone spoken directly to Paizo customer service or any staffers about the issue of the grid being off? I mean technically speaking, the cover says, "24"x30" mat...1" squares on each side." Well, we have already established the 1" squares is inaccurate. I would think that Paizo would honor replacements whenever a corrected version of the map is released.
Has anyone spoken directly to Paizo customer service or any staffers about the issue of the grid being off? I mean technically speaking, the cover says, "24"x30" mat...1" squares on each side." Well, we have already established the 1" squares is inaccurate. I would think that Paizo would honor replacements whenever a corrected version of the map is released.
I sent an email to Customer Service on September 2nd and have not heard back from them yet. Really hope they reply soon.