Review and Unboxing of Dungeon Tiles DN3: Shadowghast Manor

About a week ago, the Wizards of the Coast D&D Twitter account (manned at that time by Steve Winter) posted an image of the new Dungeon Tiles set. I responded with a tweet that literally was just "GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMME!!" because I love the DT line and this was a very macabre set it looked (fitting with my gaming style).

Long story short, I got the set in the mail today so I made a blog post with crappy cell phone pictures of the tiles reviewing the set, with Steve's kind permission to post the images.

Thanks for the pics/review. I mostly agree with your thoughts.

I think the new "other" size is fantastic (!) for adding that thin wall/fence/terrain. I have been making my own tiles for this purpose.

This set looks different than others and is a nice, new addition.

COMPLAINT: (in all caps b/c I can) I don't like the wasted tiles on the outside yard. Just give us added tiles/details/options for the house! If I need to use the yard in the set up, two inches won't be enough AT ALL anyway... but two inches is a perfect hallway or side room, or hidden closet, or... you get the idea. When I'm using tiles but also need to use an outside yard, I place the tiles down on an appropriate battle map (in this case, I'd likely use my grass battle map). It gives far more options for movement.

This is only part of the set, I know, but it angers me. OK, that's off my chest.

Nice set.

buddhafrog said:

Thanks for the pics/review. I mostly agree with your thoughts.

I think the new "other" size is fantastic (!) for adding that thin wall/fence/terrain. I have been making my own tiles for this purpose.

This set looks different than others and is a nice, new addition.

COMPLAINT: (in all caps b/c I can) I don't like the wasted tiles on the outside yard. Just give us added tiles/details/options for the house! If I need to use the yard in the set up, two inches won't be enough AT ALL anyway... but two inches is a perfect hallway or side room, or hidden closet, or... you get the idea. When I'm using tiles but also need to use an outside yard, I place the tiles down on an appropriate battle map (in this case, I'd likely use my grass battle map). It gives far more options for movement.

This is only part of the set, I know, but it angers me. OK, that's off my chest.

Nice set.

Click to expand...

I personally like all the tiles, especially the outside ones. The grass matches perfectly with the Wilderness DU set (and I assume the other external ones) and the wrought iron fence and graveyard tiles work great with the style of game I run.

I probably should note that a lot of my review was tied to my personal preference for running undead or horror themed games, because the "dungeon hallway lined with coffins" tiles are a bit repetitive. But it works great for me because I always need more coffins (I own about a dozen of the Sarcophagus mini from the D&D Minis line). But the set's solid.

Also, don't expect a lot of reviews from me. I seriously lucked into this thank to a random joking tweet. Steve Winter posted a picture saying "Look what just landed on my desk!" of the tiles, and I am not kidding when I posted "GIMMEGIMMEGIMMEGIMME!!" Except for the number of "GIMME"s I posted. Steve was cool enough to DM me asking for my address so he could send it to me and kept to his word. So as far as I'm concerned, Wizards has earned my respect as a company. They took my silly, joking post on Twitter and gave me a product I was going to buy anyway (and making a product so good that I'm going to buy a second copy if not a third as well).

I'm going to start updating my blog again, but I'm not sure if I'll do any more reviews unless Wizards is kind enough to send me more products since I'm usually a bit late with buying new products and there are far better reviewers in the blogosphere who are able to review early. But I'd appreciate any support and feedback you can give me on the rest of the site if you decide to browse around beyond my review.

Thanks for this. I was looking yesterday for some pics and these are fine.

Looks like I will have to up my order from one to two sets.

The catacomb tiles are awesome.

Dice4Hire said:

Thanks for this. I was looking yesterday for some pics and these are fine.

Looks like I will have to up my order from one to two sets.

The catacomb tiles are awesome.

Click to expand...

Possibly a bit niche, but it really solves a problem I had with the previous sets in that I only had 4 tiles total with coffins (I have two sets of DU1). This really fixes that problem for me, combined with the graveyard tiles on the other side.

It also helps that pretty much every campaign I run is at least 25% undead for enemies and that I'm looking to use the Heroes of Shadow/Shadowfell sourcebooks to create a 4e Ravenloft campaign.