Looking At Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated

Dry erase boards. Flip mats. Graph paper. Lego. Theater of the Mind. All of these are valid, tried-and-true methods of tracking movement/combat in Dungeons & Dragons and other RPGs. While I've employed all of these in the past, nothing has worked better for my games than the dungeon tile.

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The new Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated sets from Wizards of the Coast provide a quick, inexpensive, and simple way to visually represent a variety of settings. Building on the release of last years D & D Adventure Grid, WoTC released three sets of Dungeon tiles on Jan 23, 2018—Wilderness, City and Dungeon.

The tiles retail for $24.99, but I purchased these for $15 apiece at my local FLGS. I have also seen them priced reasonably at Amazon and other online venues, so obtaining them won't break the bank. Let's see if they were worth the cost of admission. A simple search of YouTube will reveal plenty of unboxing videos for this set, so we won't go into that here.

Each set comes in a sturdy cardboard box—much like that of a board game—with a slip case cover. The isn't truly necessary, however, because the boxes are designed to match the theme of the set. For instance, the Dungeon set is covered with gray brick, while the Wilderness set is green and adorned with trees.

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Each set contains 16 sheets of double-sided, high-quality dungeon tiles. Each sheet contains anywhere from two to six dungeon tiles of varying size, design, and shape. Each tile has two sides, with different images. The quantity and style of the individual tiles are dependent on the set.

The Dungeon set is the most varied, with its semi-circular stairwells, it's single-tile objects, triangular and arch-shaped tiles to denote larger areas and several corridors. The Wilderness set has several large single-tile pieces, showing rivers and heavily forested areas. There are bridges, a canoe, springs, wells and more. Suffice to say this set would certainly have come in handy when I ran the "Greenest in Flames" scenario from WoTC's Hoard of the Dragon Queen back in 2015.

Moving onto the next set—The City—the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated line shows its true value. The City tile set has everything your generic village, town, city, or heavily populated area could need. The variety and size of the tiles lend themselves well to creating these areas and blend seamlessly with both the Wilderness and Dungeon sets.

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Being able to mix and match the tiles is a nice touch. Despite some oblong shapes in the Dungeon set, the tiles fit and blend together easily. The artwork is top-notch and all of them are reversible. Overall, I now have over 100 brand new, varied tiles I can use in my D & D games and I'm quite happy with this set.

So, are the Dungeon Tiles Reincarnated worth the price? Well, it depends first on how you track movement/combat. The D & D Adventure Grid serves this purpose well, as do many other flip-mats currently on the market. Also, if you already own any of the D & D board games like Wrath of Ashardalon or Castle Ravenloft, then you already have similar tiles. I remember some of these images from older editions—and some users here on EN World have confirmed these to be reprints of various tile—so, if you have them already, these are just fancy, repackaged, and remixed versions of those older sets.

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As a Dungeon Master who didn't even start using flip mats until two years ago—I'm a dedicated disciple of the Theatre of the Mind style of play—I'm happy to have these in my collection.

Contributed by David J. Buck

 

[Anthro78]

I bought the original run of these and really liked the 'idea' of them - but in reality, what a pain in the butt if you don't DM at the same place as you live. You set up a great scene, then you have to disassemble it and take it to the place where you play and then reassemble it. It's a nightmare adding to the prep. When I started picking up Paizo's flipmats they were so much less headache. Sure, I didn't get to assemble them exactly as I wanted, but they work good enough without the nightmare of prepping them.

So if you're the DM and you always play at your place, they're great. If not, budget some time to lay out all your pieces.

 

[Rhineglade]

Kind of the same reason I never got into Dwarven Forge. Sure, it all looks super cool. But too bothersome to keep track of all those little pieces. People always knocking things down. And what if players want to enter a room you set up and then decide to turn around and exit ASAP for whatever reason? Are you supposed to hurriedly disassemble everything and then put something else up in its place? Just not practical in my opinion.

 

[Von Ether]

I found that using these as "quick build" rooms on top of a wet-erase mat for quickly drawing out corridors is a happy medium especially since trying to find the right sized and angled hallways is the biggest time sink.

I thought the City was the best deal and I can't wait for a rooftop fight right on the box lid soon.

 

[Toriel]

I don't use them all the time but only for battles that I want to make extra special. They are not as tedious then. TOM is sufficient in most cases.

 

[Jester David]

Huh. I had assumed these were just a reprint but it looks like there's different tiles.

I remember being disappointed by the city one, which was mostly streets...

 

[Nostalgia Ward]

I found that using these as "quick build" rooms on top of a wet-erase mat for quickly drawing out corridors is a happy medium especially since trying to find the right sized and angled hallways is the biggest time sink.
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I used the Dungeon ones this exact way during my last game. I place them on top of wilderness dry erase mat and it seemed to work well!

 

[Blue]

I've got a bunch of sets of the originals. I found that I didn't have enough special pieces (corners, etc) pieces to make it up as I go for places, but if I had it mapped out ahead of time it was a pain finding the right piece and right side. I ended up using nothing but the wilderness ones, and those to scatter on a battlemap for additional terrain.

 

[Juomari Veren]

I bought the full set of these off Amazon when they came out. Only cost me $50 for three of them so I figured it'd be worth it. I've used two of the three sets (my group just doesn't dungeon crawl often so I still have the third box shrink-wrapped). The City set is definitely the best, because I suck at making city maps in general, so this helps give me an idea of how to focus on specific buildings in my city and then work to expand out from there. I also want to eventually use the sewer pieces because they look fun and I love the idea of adventuring in sewers. The Wilderness ones are catch-all, but there's a lot of tiles with water features on them so it's hard to do rolling plains or anything of the sort. I think the dungeon ones will come in most handy but I won't know until I actually cut my teeth on them. I do share the sentiment that you really need to design a map with these and then build an encounter around them as opposed to designing something on the fly with them. These are better for parties that like to take tactical consideration and do better the more accurate of a description you give them. I have one player in particular who absolutely cannot handle theater of the mind so I try to be as accommodating as possible, but sometimes I just don't want to lay the mat down and draw stuff. These help, but they work best for me when you have a few days to make something with them and sit on it to think about what you can do with it.

 

[pnewman]

These have more tiles (16) than the previous sets did (10). I believe they're ten reprints and six new but I don't have the previous versions to be sure.