A Skirmisher “Top Pick” from Gen Con 2006!

One of the most versatile and useful gaming accessories released at the most recent Gen Con, in August, had to be Dwarven Forge’s Medieval Building Set. Not only has the company lived up to its usual high standards with this set, it has made available something markedly different from its existing product line.

According to Dwarven Forge, the Medieval Building Set “is meant to be the first of many aboveground sets that will finally allow our collectors to take their adventures into villages, towns, and cities.” This set certainly does that, and its Tudor-style components are ideal for creating three-dimensional floorplans for essential urban adventuring areas like taverns, inns, shops, guildhouses, and any number of other buildings. They are also fully compatible with the stonework and cavernous pieces of the other sets, allowing creation of multimedia subterranean and aboveground structures alike.

Like the company’s other Master Maze components, the modular pieces in this set are scaled for use with 25mm miniatures and marked with a 1-inch grid pattern that makes them ideal for creating floorplans that accurately correspond to graph paper maps. Likewise, they are made of handpainted cast resin, with felt-covered bottoms to keep them from scratching any surfaces on which they are placed.

This is a nice, fat set, and well worth the $99 price. Its 40 pieces are adequate to configure any number of small, medium, or even relatively large floorplans; without too much effort, we were able to create a three-room structure that was a scale 40 by 90 feet (with one piece left over). Components in this set include four Doors, 10 Straight Walls (three different versions), four Window Walls, eight Corner Walls (two different versions), 12 plain 2-inch by 2-inch Floor pieces, one 2-inch by 2-inch Floor piece with a bearskin rug, and one Secret Door.

As with many Dwarven Forge products, it is the little details that make one realize just how much care and imagination goes into developing the company’s various sets. With that idea in mind, my favorite pieces in the Medieval Building Set are a secret door disguised to look like a bookshelf and the wooden floor segment with a bearskin rug on it, both of which are very cute and elegant.

Other nice details of the pieces in this set include wood grain on the edges and little brackets on the corners of the 2-inch floor pieces, which can help make them all the more suitable for use in platforms, boardwalks, wharfs, or other applications where their sides might be seen.

Addition of accessories like Dwarven Forge’s Medieval Furniture Set or Dungeon Accessories Set (elements from which are shown in the pictures accompanying this review) -- or similar accessories from other companies -- can help to further customize areas created with these components.

Among game manufacturers, Skirmisher Publishing LLC is a big fan of Dwarven Forge products, and you can look for floorplans based on the Medieval Building Set and other Master Maze components in the upcoming Nuisances-inspired d20/OGL sourcebooks The Great Con and Antipaladin’s Quest.

Dwarven Forge’s Medieval Building Set can be purchased directly from the company.