An affordable, attractive and flexible option for scenery building in D&D
So, you’re a dungeon master and you want to bring your game to life with scenery, but let’s be honest, who really has the time and resources to 3d print or buy scenery for every session they run. What you really need is something nice and adaptable that can fit into any scenario you might be running. This is the premise of Warlock tiles; to give you an affordable solution that allows scenery building that can be done on the fly or in advance, that looks good and requires minimal effort.
On all accounts, Wizkids have certainly delivered on those goals to mostly high standards and by this reviewer’s opinion, Warlock Tiles are certainly the most affordable and flexible solution on the market of 3d scenery.
What’s in the box?
There are 3 main types of Warlock Tiles kits out there; the base sets, expansions and accessories.
Base Sets
Base sets give you all the tools you need to make the scenery for a location. There are a few different types of sets for different types of locations:
- Town & Village
- Dungeon
- Town Square
- Cavern
The first 3 kits use square and rectangular pieces to build a floor or the ground whether it’s a building, a dungeon or city streets. Each of these can be clipped together with warlock clips so that no errant dice rolls will knock your scenery apart. One thing to note is that some of the older sets use clips that are very difficult to clip together requiring some force and, after clipping many tiles together, rough hands too (I eventually began using a cloth to stop my hands hurting). Thankfully, Wizkids have created EZ tile clips that are softer and much easier to piece together, I definitely recommend picking up some of these if you buy an older set, they’re cheap too.
The cavern set doesn’t use these though as it uses more natural, rounded tiles that simply get placed together (or on top of each other) to form natural looking rock formations. These tiles are easy to place miniatures on and have some natural segregation between spaces so that each square represents 5ft squared in the game.
Within the town and village and dungeon sets, you’ll also get walls that can be added to show the walls of buildings. Like the floor tiles, these are 3d and appear substantial and realistic and have a nice finish. To allow for walls within the tiles, skinnier wall pieces can slot between floor tiles giving a huge amount of flexibility for dungeon and building design. These can be a little more easily dislodged though as they’re not connected using warlock clips so don’t tend to travel well but it is an elegant solution. These sets also come with doors and windows (the doors even open).
The town square and cavern sets don’t come with walls, but the cavern set does come with rock formations that can be used to create a natural looking cavern walls or other rock features. You’ll also get some nice features in these sets too with a rope bridge to cross chasms in the cavern set and street lamps and sewage drains in the town square set. It’s also worth noting the the town square set uses floor tiles with various patterns to help you create realistic looking streets and paths while the cavern set has different sized and shaped tiles to allow for different configurations of terrain.
The big question really is, do you have enough in one box to create the scene you want to depict and really, the answer depends on what you’re trying to do. If you’re looking for something that shows terrain for a single fight scene, then in most cases, the answer is yes, and it will look great. If, like I often am, you want to use Warlock Tiles to build an entire dungeon, large building or complex of streets, then the answer is no, you would need multiple sets to accomplish this. I found that a small-medium sized dungeon required 4 sets to build and while the price is good for what you get, these sets don’t come cheap at between £70-£100 at some of the cheaper retailers and those costs can quickly stack up. Having said that, no other alternative offers so much, that looks so good for so little so if you have the cash, Warlock Tiles are still the best option for stunning, 3d dungeon and scene building.
Expansion Sets
Beyond the base sets, Wizkids has been hard at work on expansion sets that offer different options and configurations for your builds. For example, you can get curved and tighter corridors for dungeon and town and village sets that give you better dungeon and building options. There are even sets with full height walls for an extra level of immersion (giving walls proportionally the right height for your miniatures). The cavern set has expansions that give you more cave features such as stalagmites and rock formations. A list of all the expansion sets can be found below:
- Expansion Pack I
- Dungeon Angles & Curves
- Dungeon Straight Walls
- Town & Village Angles & Curves
- Town & Village Straight Walls
- Full Height Stone Walls
- Full Height Plaster Walls
- Town & Village Angles
- Dungeon Curves
- Town & Village Curves
- Dungeon Angles
- Stalactites & Stalagmites
- Dripstone Bridges
As with the base sets, the expansion sets offer up a consistent level of quality that really take your scenery to the next level and they’re all compatible with one another utilising the same clip system (with the exception of the cavern sets that are just positioned without clipping to each other).
Accessories
Wizkids have also created a line of Warlock Tile accessories. These give nicely painted and designed terrain to add to your scenery so the dungeons, caves and town centres. As with the tiles, these add a great touch to any scene you’re trying to create. These sets are cheaper coming in at around £40 giving you a god range of options at a more affordable price.
Accessory sets include:
- Mushrooms & Pools
- Stairs & Ladders
- Dungeon Dressings
- Tavern
- Torture Chamber
- Kitchen
- Merchants
- Town Watch
- Doors & Archways
- Marketplace
- Speluncker’s Docks
Overview
Warlock Tiles offer the most affordable and flexible solution for 3d dungeon and scenery building offering an attractive and easy to build set of tiles and scenery. Being pre-painted and having easy to clip together solutions makes them an excellent option for DMs with limited time for building scenery and allowing you to make creations on the fly.
A slight blemish on older products comes in the form of their hard clips, but Wizkids have even come up with an affordable solution for this with their cheap EZ clips which come pre-packaged in later sets.
Warlock Tiles are easy to recommend for anyone wanting to level up their TTRPG scenery and are the most accessible product on the market.
Score 4.5/5
