Sigil is shutting down on October 31. Here is a battle mat that runs in a browser tab.
By Burton Miller, creator of Virtual Battle Mat
This is a browser tab.
The short answer. Sigil stays open through October 31, 2026. After that, Wizards of the Coast shuts the servers down, and everything made inside it is gone, the maps, the dungeons, the notes. Wizards offers no export. Its own advice is to take screenshots and copy your notes out before the date.
Virtual Battle Mat is a browser virtual tabletop. Nothing to install, on any computer or tablet. Your players join from a link, with no download and no account. Voice and video are built-in. The minis are rendered from real 3D miniatures, so the table looks like minis on a battle mat. The free tier is free forever. Moving a campaign over is an afternoon: Make a table, upload or pick your maps, place your minis, send the link.
What Sigil did well
Sigil looked wonderful. Full 3D environments, with miniatures you could look at from any angle. It talked to D&D Beyond, so characters and dice came along with you. Playing was free with a D&D Beyond account, and plenty of groups had their best-looking sessions ever in it. If you played D&D, it was great.
Where Virtual Battle Mat is different
It runs in a browser tab. Mac, Windows, Linux, a Chromebook, any computer with a modern browser. There is no client to download and no graphics card to meet.
Players join from a link. You send it, they click it, they are at the table. No account for players, no sign-up wall between your group and the game.
Voice and video are built in. One tab for the table and the faces. No second app, no separate call to set up.
The minis are rendered from real 3D miniatures, at the isometric angle, and they sit on a flat battle mat. It reads like minis on a table, which is the part of Sigil most people actually used. And because of the pre-rendering, these tokens look great. Flat tokens are fully supported too, so your old token art still works.
You can paint the minis right in the browser, and share the paint job so everyone on the platform can use it.
There is no rules engine, so it runs any game. D&D, yes, and everything else your group plays.
Every token and every map is made by human artists. The catalog has a free shelf of tokens and maps, a Premium catalog from content partners, and ready-to-play adventures with the map and the minis already set up.
What Virtual Battle Mat does not do
It is not a 3D world. There is no camera to fly and no first-person view. If the environment was the point for you, this is not that. It feels more like sitting behind a table with your friends!
It does not talk to D&D Beyond. Character sheets and rules stay wherever you keep them now.
It cannot import anything from Sigil. Nothing can; Wizards is not providing an export. You rebuild from your screenshots and notes, which is true of every tool you might move to.
It is built for a laptop or desktop, not a phone.
Pick something else if
You want a full 3D world with a flying camera, and that matters more to you than how fast the game starts. Virtual Battle Mat will not give you that, and it is not trying to.
Pick Virtual Battle Mat if
You have a game to run and you want it running tonight. Your players will not install anything, or some of them are on Macs. Your group plays more than one system. What you liked in Sigil was the minis on the table, not the camera work. You would rather start free and stay free.
Before October 31, take screenshots of the maps and scenes you want to keep, and copy your notes and journal entries somewhere outside Sigil. Wizards' FAQ says nothing created in Sigil is accessible after the shutdown. Then open vbm.games, make a table and send the link. The free tier is free forever, and your group is at the table in the time it took to read this.