Dungeon Tiles Master Set - The Wilderness: An Essential Dungeons & Dragons Accessory (4th Edition D&D) [用品]

As a long-time collector of Dungeon Tiles I can say without reservation that this is the best collection yet published. True, most of the tiles are recycled from old sets (all of them as far as I can tell), but with such a low price, a full ten sheets of durable double-sided tiles, and the incredibly handsome and even useful box, the new Essentials line of Dungeon Tiles outshines every past edition.

What is this thing?:
Dungeon Tiles are handsomely detailed pre-printed heavy cardstock 'pieces' that you can use to cobble together a map for wargames. In this case the tiles are sized for D&D miniatures (~25-30mm), with the grid spacing hovering around an inch. The Dungeon Tiles sets include a whole pile of tiles representing rooms, corridors, furniture, traps, and the like.

The Tiles:
The Dungeon Tiles Master Set - The Dungeon contains a smörgsbord (a lot!) of tiles collected from previous editions, enough to build a respectable multi-room dungeon out of. With a full ten sheets of double-sided tiles this is the biggest single collection published.

The Box:
In addition, the oversized box the tiles ship in provides superior protection to the tiles within, in addition to being a giant tile itself (the box is printed like a dungeon plinth and made from the same materials as the tiles themselves). The box is easily big enough to store any loose tiles you might have collected from previous sets too, at least twice as thick as necessary for the product within.

The Value:
There has never been a better value in dungeon tiles published by Wizards of the Coast, between the number of tiles for your money, as well as the very handy box, this is a fantastic way for new DMs to build their collection of handy tiles.

Altogether this is a wonderful product for new DMs, or for those who wish to expand their collections. If you already own several copies of every other Wizards produced Dungeon Tile you will not find anything new here beyond the box.

Like the other Essentials tile sets, The Wilderness is primarily a repackaging of previous sets. It may be entirely such; I'm not sure because I didn't already own any of the outdoor tile sets these were probably drawn from. So, setting that aside and looking at this as a standalone purchase, I'm very happy with the set and have, in fact, purchased two - though I'm not sure that's entirely necessary given the number, size and variety of the tiles here, and the rather generic nature of wilderness-based tiles.

The first thing that impressed me about The Wilderness is the relatively huge number of big 8x8 tiles. You get six of them, along with a generous six 2x8 tiles. For me, this is great; I really don't want to be laying out big, expansive outdoor encounters using scads of 4x4 or 2x4 tiles. Next, the tiles mostly depict things you will actually want to use, like roads or rivers (reverse of each other, so perhaps two sets will come in handy after all) including bends/turns, plenty of trees - both alive and dead - including three 1x1 trees to dot around your map, some graves, carts, boulders (in convenient sizes including three 1x1), water features (again including three 1x1 ponds), etc. All in all, very useful, perhaps because it is relatively generic compared to something like a cave set, with its narrow, black-edged passages or a wizard's tower with its all too familiar book-strewn tables. That begs the question: do you really need Wilderness tiles? Would not a dry erase mat do just as well? Certainly... but for that matter, a dry erase mat will do just as well for laying out anything, if that is your style of play. I would argue that something like desert is too featureless for tiles (see my Desert of Athas - Dungeon Tiles: A 4th Edition D&D Accessory review), but these Wilderness tiles do have enough character, I think, to warrant their purchase and use.

Lastly, like the two other Essentials sets currently in existence, The Wilderness makes brilliant use of the box itself, not only as a roomy storage container, but the top is a 9x12 grassy scene with a few rocks and a 4x4 tree on it. (The City has rooftops, The Dungeon has a generic dungeon floor)

Overall, I give this set highest marks, and my only reservation would be that if you own a lot of the old outdoor sets, you might not need it. The numerical breakdown of the tiles by size is listed below, and I will post some photos of the set above.

6 8x8, 6 2x8, 2 4x8, 2 5x5, 4 4x4, 8 2x4, 2 3x3, 6 2x2, 5 1x2, 7 1x1

THE FACTS. The box itself (underneath the decorative sleeve you see in the factory product photo) is a 9x12 (all dimensions are the standard 1" square used on D&D battlemats unless otherwise noted) generic dungeon tile that is about 2 1/4" high when closed, or 1" high if you only use the top. The sides have a columned wall design to help you use the box as a raised platform in your battlemat. The box contains ten sheets of tiles, which you punch out to obtain the sets below. In most cases, the tiles are "generic" on one side; i.e., they look just like the box top. On the other side, they have a "feature" like a portcullis, pit, rubble, web, table, portal, trap door, etc. Please see the list below for exact numbers of each design. In some cases the tiles are printed with features on both sides. This is especially prevalent on the smallest tiles (1x1 and 1x2) as these are intended to be "accents" to your layout, not forming part of the layout itself. In my list below, if there is a slash "/" in the description, that means the tile has features on both sides, and the feature on either side of the slash corresponds to the feature on each side of a tile. If there is no slash, the tile is generic on one side. Here's what you get:

4 8x8--
Lab
Coffins
Cells & Rack
Marble/Runes

3 4x8--
Banquet
Sarcophagi
Pool

2 5x5--
Magic Circle
Blue Vortex

6 4x4--
Spiral Stair
Deep Pit
Wide Stairs
Throne
Dais
Round Table

2 3x3--
Deep Pit
Fire Vortex

4 2x8--
Beds with Trunks
Crevasse
Bookcases
Alcove Shadows

14 2x4--
Medium Stairs
Medium Stairs
Crevasse
Portcullis
Fog
Bookcase
Rubble
Wood Floor
Wood Floor
Wood Floor with Stairs Down
Deep Pit
Work Table with Papers
Double Wood Doors Open/Closed
Double Iron Doors Open/Closed

12 2x2--
Pit
Spider Web
Stairs
Stairs
Card table & Chairs
Spiral Stair
Eagle Altar
Human Statue
Round Well
Black/Rubble
Black/Cage
Black/Warrior Statue

10 1x2--
Barrels and Crates
Portcullis
Black/Rubble
Wood Door Open/Closed
Wood Door Open/Closed
Wood Door Closed/Broken Down
Wood Door Closed/Broken Down
Double Wood Doors Open/Closed
Double Iron Doors Open/Closed
Iron Door Open/Closed

8 1x1--
Brazier/Skull Pile
Brazier/Ladder
Archon Statue/Broken Statue
Evil Statue (Crooked)/Lever
Corpse/Round Well
Corpse/Black
Spikes/Black
Trap Door Open/Closed

COMMENTS: This set has enough "generic" tiles to build most average-sized encounter areas, even those that span several rooms and corridors. This set contains a lot of reprints, some of the tiles are immediately recognizable from Arcane Towers and Streets of Shadow, for example. The downside of that is that you'll get a lot or repeats if you own the other sets. The plus is that it makes this set highly compatible, or provides a nice mix of other sets if this is your first set. When it comes to dungeon tiles, uniqueness can be a double-edged sword. The biggest plus of these WotC sets is the quality of the cardboard. These are sturdy, flat (not warped), and the images are in the traditional D&D style. The knock against the sets is usually that you need more than one copy of each one to build a decent encounter; but I don't personally think that's the case with this set. I own a lot of PDF files of DIY dungeon tiles from companies like Fat Dragon Games and I also make my own tiles using Campaign Cartographer; but this set seems like it will probably have anything I could need to lay out a single encounter, even one that spills out into a corridor or over into another room. And making my own tiles is frankly an expensive (cardstock and printer ink aren't that cheap), time consuming pain in the butt that usually leaves me frustrated. If your plan is to build an entire floor of a dungeon and leave it on the table, then you will need way more than this set, of course; but if you only plan to build the current encounter, then take it down and build the next one when it happens, these should suffice. But I provided the list and photo above so that you don't have to take my word for that, you can check the packing list against your own needs. Lastly, the inclusion of "black" tiles has drawn negative marks from some reviewers. Certainly it seems like an "easy out" for WotC. Black tiles may be useful, but making those doesn't require any talent... I can get black construction paper pretty cheap and cut it to any size I need. If they had run out of ideas for stuff to put on the smaller counters, I would have preferred combat condition markers in colors like red, etc. for bloodied, immobilized, etc.

SUMMARY: For me, this is a good product at a good price. Quality construction, decent selection, lots of individual tiles for loads of possible combinations, and I really love the box. I can put multiple sets in here instead of in ghetto Ziploc bags (though I'll probably still use the baggies in conjunction with the box, because I'm OCD and want my sets separated), and I think it's great that they thought to make the box usable as a big, elevated tile in itself.