Range Band Battle Mat! (revised 20250606)

Update (20250606): Enlarged (5"x6") central zone to accommodate more combatants.

Here is my custom battle mat for range band combat suitable for systems such as Tales of Argosa (Pickpocket Press) and Forbidden Lands (Free League).
The motivation of this little tool is to minimise the burden and possible confusion of verbal descriptions in combat situations measured in range bands. 
At first blush it looks darn simple. But it's more than meets the eyes. 

• Use any tokens or miniatures (25mm or smaller are ideal choices), or just beads/coins/cubes/meeples etc, to represent PCs and NPCs
• The battle mat divides the battlefield into two major areas: the central box and the outer ring.
• The central box represents what's "in focus", primarily where the PCs are and where melee combat takes place. Sorta like the centre stage in a performance.  The box can also function as the present dungeon room or things like that.
• To represent characters in melee (range) (~5 feet), just connect the tokens/bases. Ex: The warrior (white) and the doppelganger (red).
• Characters in close range (say <30 feet) but not in melee are placed somewhere within the box relative to the PCs. Ex: The corpse (blue) is in close range of the warrior (white).
• Characters placed in the outer ring are in far range (say 30~60 feet). The four sectors (front, back, left, right) indicate relative positions from the PC. Ex: The skeleton (yellow) and the troll (grey) are about 40 and 60 feet away from, and at the front of, the warrior (white) respectively.
• Characters placed outside the mat are considered to be very far away (60+ feet) from the PC. Ex: The feathered maw (green) is very far (60+ feet) away from the warrior (white), and the eye terror (sepia) is very, very far away.

There are some other uses of this mat, such as representing cardinal and ordinal bearing and clock positioning:

 

Not just that...

Once laminated, the battle mat is (dry/wet erase) marker-friendly. Place terrain models (trees, rocks, chests, etc.). Stick terrain markers with static clings (like those from Loke Battle Mats). And how about setting up a room/scene with index cards (like in ICRPG)? 

Someone points out in a discord discussion that my diagram looks similar to Prof Dungeoncraft's "Ultimate Dungeon Terrain" (UDT). Frankly, I was making this without ever thinking of his lazy susan build at all. What I had in mind was only "What should I do to best represent a range-band combat situation on a piece of paper?"

Instead of being a diorama design to showcase cool miniatures, my battle mat is made for using anything (even coins, beads, cubes, etc., or simply draw your stickman or smilies). It is practically a visualised (tactical) theatre of the mind. Unlike UDT, my mat emphasizes directions and (relative) positions as things are projected from the perspective of the PC(s). I don't even need to set up any room like in UDT. If that wall no longer matters, simply remove the drawing/sticker/block immediately. Is it necessary to use a larger token/figure for the Dragon? It doesn't really matter (that much). Moreover, my mat costs almost nothing, except for a pen(cil) and a piece of paper, and requires ZERO crafting. And personally using square/block shapes feel more intuitive than circles in a radar-like pattern (I'm not playing final fantasy anyways).

Interested? Grab it here (old), or here (revised)!