Whether you are a seasoned RPGer or dice-chucking skirmish player, chances are you are always on the hunt for gaming terrain. While it’s certainly possible to play these games using a plain grid map, it’s hard to deny the allure of 3D terrain. And on that front, the options can vary from 3D-printed plastic pieces to resin-cast, pre-painted dungeons.
In this installment of Level Up My Game, we are going to take a look at a new offering from Gale Force 9. Tenfold Dungeons are a set of boxed terrain that can be used for both interior and (sometimes) exterior battles. While these sets can be used in just about any capacity, two of the most likely are going to be for RPGs and skirmish games. So along with fellow BGQ reviewer Alex, we are going to give our thoughts on how they work from each perspective.
To give you a quick overview of them though, there are currently 8 different sets to choose from. For our review, Galeforce 9 sent us a copy of their new Scifi range: Cyberpunk City, Starship Vengeance, Smuggler’s Den, and Daedalus Station. Each set comes with 12 boxes of various sizes that can either be used as rooms, or (depending on the set) flipped over to be building exteriors. They also come with a pile of doors, clips, and even some walls to either cover up some art that’s not working for you or divide rooms into smaller areas.
They are constructed out of sturdy card stock and have some great art on them (depending on your tastes). Gale Force 9 also included some clear reinforcement stickers to be applied to the corners of the largest boxes to help stop any from coming apart. One last nice thing is that the boxes will all nest within each other, meaning you can store everything easily in the original packaging, which condenses down to about the size of a board game box.
For the Skirmish Gamer
I play a number of skirmish games so I’m always on the lookout for terrain to use, especially pre-painted ones. I can barely get through my miniature backlog of painting, so terrain is way down the priority list. While these won’t work for my games of Battletech or Snap Ship Tactics, I’ve found that anything at a human scale (28mm) works perfectly. Lately, I’ve been playing a lot of Cyberpunk Red: Combat Zone, and Cyberpunk City ended up being a great option. Not only were we able to do an outdoor skirmish on the streets of Night City, but we also were able to do an interior battle.
The one thing to note is that there isn’t much in the way of scenery included with the set. So while the rooms are flexible with a lot of space, they also feel really empty. You are most likely going to want some kind of furniture or other set pieces to add some visual interest or cover to the terrain.
However, I do want to note that two of the sets you probably aren’t going to use much for their exterior capacity. The Smugglers Den and Cybperunk City both work great for interior and exterior battles, Starship Vengeance and Daedalus Station are primarily going to be used for their interior space. Even the art on the latter two are fairly plain, being mostly simple exterior walls. This is quite the contrast to Cyberpunk City which has storefronts, signage, and other interesting elements on the outside.
The other nice thing about the terrain is that it’s grided to 1″ spaces. So it works perfectly for any system that uses that measurement. And for ones that don’t and use range rulers (like Warhammer 40k), you can easily ignore the floor grids. We did a quick 40k skirmish on Starship Vengeance and it worked great!
For the Roleplaying Gamer
Since I’m the forever GM of my gaming group, I’m just as keen as Tony on getting my hands on new ways to build encounter settings that are both great to look at and fun to engage with. The modular nature of the maps gives me a pretty neat alternative to be able to deploy on a night when the story has gone off the rails and I need to throw together an encounter ASAP.
As was mentioned above, without any furniture or other setting pieces, the maps can feel a little empty without some additions. Thankfully, roleplayers can fill the spaces with their imagination (and I can fill it with hordes of monsters,) so it is not as big of a deal as it might be if you’re skirmishing. For our purposes, we did not find much use for the exterior setup of the maps and stuck to the indoors, but that could very well be a function of our group and the game we’re currently playing (a Pathfinder 1E campaign.)
Speaking of the varied use of these maps, there’s enough variety in the different sets that you could mix and match for your own campaign’s needs. Even though there are some clear sci-fi leanings, you could just as easily use your imagination to see how those depictions could fit into your adventuring world.
Final Thoughts
I was pleasantly surprised with the quality and versatility of the Tenfold Dungeons. The modular nature of the rooms fits perfectly with any game that uses a grid map, or even skirmish games that use measurement tools. While the thematic nature of these is definitely going to coincide with specific games, if the setting is right for you, these are absolutely awesome to have on hand. I’m already eyeballing a chance to use either the Smuggler’s Den or Starship Vengeance for my next game of Star Wars: Legion.
At a price point of $65 a set, they are also really affordable for gaming terrain. Usually, in that price point, you are getting 1 room of a painted resin set (Dwarven Forge) or some 3D-printed grey pieces. So hats off to Gale Force 9 for not only making something that looks great, but is affordable as well. I’m definitely going to be keeping an eye on future Tenfold Dungeon releases in the future. Perhaps something modern-day to fit with Marvel Crisis Protocol or the Batman Miniatures game?
