Thursday, September 02, 2010

Dwarven Forge: Here be Dungeon Terrain

As I continue to consider how best to tackle this skill challenge issue I'm been grappling with; I thought I'd post a little diversion and share with you all the very cool dungeon terrain I received courtesy of my hard earned allowance and the good folks over at Dwarven Forge.

I picked up the Room & Passage Set.  I've heard great things about the Dwarven Forge stuff, and have salivated after it for years.  In order to encourage drool amongst the rest of you, I thought I'd do a big unboxing (they're all the rage these days, right?) of the set.  So without further ado, here's the Room & Passage Set by Dwarven Forge: (click the pic for the larger image).

After unpacking the outer & inner cardboard boxes, I ended up with these two Styrofoam cases:


Open the lids, and here's what you'll find:


The foam cases were kind of nice.  Here's a closer look at the first case:



...and the second case:


Here are the pieces I received in the set.  First is 1 Intersection & 2 T-Sections:


Next up, 4 L-Sections of corridor:


On to some smaller pieces.  2 10' corridor sections, and 8 room corner pieces:


You get 7 wall room pieces.  It's a odd number, but it's what was in the set:


I was impressed with the assortment of room floor tiles.  There are 10 in this set:


Finally, this particular set included 3 doors:


Although it's only one set, I was impressed I was able to create a small encounter area with it.  Actually, the little map I created could actually be used as 2 or 3 encounter areas.  Here's a pic:


The same set up from another angle:


The verdict?  Well, I think it's fair to say, that the stuff is pretty great.  Plenty of reviews have been done, so here's my quick run down of the pros and cons.  

Pros:

Great colors, excellent detail, heavy "solid" pieces, flexible design.  This set is absolutely gorgeous.  It's showpiece stuff, and sets the bar for folks like me that often use Hirst Arts blocks to create our own terrain pieces.  Assuming adequate funding, I'll buy more sets like this.  There's a reason these guys are at the top of the list when it comes to quality terrain.

Cons:

Expensive, overseas manufacture (but most everything is these days), inconsistent edging (individual pieces don't match up as closely as I would have liked), & wonky doors (I understand they have a new door design coming out this fall, I look forward to seeing  that.  The current design seems ill thought out).

Well, that's my unboxing.  I hope you enjoyed this close look at an actual set from Dwarven Forge.  I'm sure my players will love it!

Until next time...

Game excellently with one another.

3 comments:

  1. How well do they stay put when minis are being moved or when players inevitably bump and knock the table around when trying to perform the simple action of standing up from their seat? Are there non skid bottoms or are the bottom surfaces smooth enough to adhere small rubber buttons to prevent shifting?

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  2. @Larry - They're pretty heavy, so random movement isn't much of a problem. They have a felted bottom. I wouldn't call it non-slip, but it is non-skid.

    Little rubber buttons on the bottom would work well, as long as you do all the pieces that way. Otherwise, you'll have mismatched heights.

    The pieces don't fasten to each other, so if someone really hammers the table (like trips and totally throws most of their body weight against it), they they'll move about some.

    Thanks for the question, and thanks for reading!

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  3. Anonymous9:55 PM

    Initiative would have been to use the styrofoam boxes themselves to make an amazing and interesting dungeon complex just by cutting doors into the foam, painting the whole thing black and adding drybrush to it.

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