Game: Skirmish tiles, fiendish grounds
Publisher: 0one Roleplaying Games
Series: generic
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 19th, August 2004
Reviewer’s Rating: 7/10 [ Good ]
Total Score: 7
Average Score: 7.00
0one Roleplaying Games make great maps. The Battlemap series is superb. There’s a spin off series in the Skirmish Tiles (and another in Explore) and in reality there’s very little difference between them and so they’re highly compatible. The difference between the battlemaps and skirmish tiles is simply that battlemaps tend to be larger and more coherent and skirmish tiles tend to do individual features that don’t necessarily stack together so well.
The theme in the Fiendish Grounds skirmish tile set is… well, hell. The D&D Planar System is probably the inspiration here but it doesn’t matter. If you need tiles for key parts in an alien landscape then the Fiendish Tiles might appeal to you. I can identify three main styles within this – there’s the lava/hot/fire theme, the ice/cold theme and the middle ground more generic theme.
In the fire tile theme we’ve pieces such as the lava pit, lava spots, cave of fire (I shape), cave of fire (L to the left), cave of fire (L to the right), cave of fire (T shape), cave of fire (cross roads) and the fire dragon aura. The fire dragon is just an aura – not a dragon (an actual dragon would require a mini or paper mini).
In the ice tile them we’ve pieces like the frozen demon, ice pond, the ice ruins 1 and ice ruins 2, ice chasm and ice waste.
The more specific pieces with a generic flavour include an iron gate, iron wall, iron tower (left) and iron tower (right). Oh! An iron thing there. We also have an “artefact”, lightning hallway, blood pond, blood stream, gate, dread bog, the demon’s throne, ribcage, the skulls’ ground, pillar of bones and the cage. Phew! A lot.
There’s actually an awful lot in the PDF. 0one are masters at this and so you enjoy a colour rendering of the tile and a grey scale for it too. (Some 0one cartography also has a wireframe version of the map, but not this one). There’s a total of 72 pages. That’s one of the most bulky 0one tile sets I’ve seen yet.
There are a lot of skirmish tiles but there’s a little disjointed. The ice tiles don’t really have walls and the “caves” of fire are more like raised stone platforms surrounded by lava. You can link the caves of fire together to create a criss-cross of pathways but that’s it. You don’t have any “empty” ice tiles which can be used to link the busy ice tiles with. Similarly with the more generic tiles – you’ve tiles with something on them, busy times, but you don’t have any filling tiles.
You can’t really get away with putting the whole lot together to create an adventure location. Oone show how the tiles could fit together but I think it just shows how putting the tiles together doesn’t work. You can’t create entire locations but you do have tiles for those awkward locations (like a frozen nest) where you’re likely to have fights and where you are likely to know, down to the tile, where characters are.
I do like 0one’s range of tiles. This particular set is more fiddly than most. You will have to write a scene specifically to use these tiles unless by some incredible chance you’ve already planned some ice hell adventure. On the other hand, I think these titles are good enough to inspire you to write the required scene. For $7.50 these 72 pages are exceptional value too.
