Alongside the release of Curves, WizKids has released WarLock Tiles III – Angles. Again, coming in the two standard WarLock Tiles styles, Town & Village and Dungeon, these ditch right angles in favour of 45 degree walls and tiles. Coming with triangular tiles, EZ clips and diagonal walls, the set has a lot of plastic in the box. However, do the angles add to the dungeon building process or do they just put everything out of kilter? Let’s find out!
Breaking away from 90 degree corners the WarLock Tiles III Angles sets are expansion packs that revolve around 45 degree turns. Coming with isosceles, right angled, triangle shaped tiles, the two matching non-diagonal sides are 2” long. Two of these tiles can be clipped together to effectively create a regular WarLock tile. These tiles are pre-painted and double sided – featuring a wooden floor design on one side and stone flooring on the reverse.
To work with the longer tile edge, the diagonal, are slightly thinner but longer external walls and longer internal walls. There are two main designs, with the Town & Village set then including a standard and windowed version of each. The difference between the designs is how the ends of the wall are angled – allowing it to either fit on an inner angle or wrap around the tile. For the most part, these do a great job of enabling builds to have angled areas added onto the edge or see space subtracted from a room.
One of the selling points of WarLock Tiles are the way they neatly clip together, allowing builds to be pre-built and moved onto the table when the party is ready for the adventure. While the triangle tiles have clips on all 3 sides, unlike the Curves sets, the walls do not fully clip in. Normally, when clipping two tiles together, or a wall with a tile, 50% of the clip goes into each piece. For the angle walls, due to their thinner design, the clip only goes in a third. Thankfully, there isn’t a gap created between the wall and the tile. The clip can be pushed further into the diagonal side of the triangle tiles. Stability has been traded for this though. While the diagonal walls don’t just fall off it only takes a light nudge for them to come off.
Since WizKids released EZ Clips and started including them in sets I haven’t looked back. The original insanely solid, finger hurting, WarLock clips make building slower and packing away a literal pain. The angles sets might be their purpose, adding back some of that lost stability – though it is EZ clips that are included in the Angles sets. You will need pliers or something similar to remove them when packing away though.
The main usage of the angles is to add visual variety, as well as allowing corridors and dungeon tunnels to zigzag off in different directions. With a bit of work the tiles can be used to have full sections of a dungeon off at a 45 degree angle from the rest. However, with the thickness of the normal walls and exact shape of the angled walls it’s not a perfect fit. The WarLock Tiles III Angles sets are very much expansions. So much so the build on the front of the box is impossible to build without a base set, something which isn’t made overly clear. Furthering this the two Angles sets feature no wall pieces with doors. Therefore, any build is going to need a standard straight wall with a door in it somewhere to give the room an entrance. For Dungeon Masters this isn’t a deal breaker but it is something to work around, and occasionally might stop creativity flowing.
Used in combination with the other half height WarLock Tiles products the angles sets can help create vastly different looking dungeons, taverns and town halls. They might not look as fancy as the curved walls, but may end up getting more consistent usage. Stability isn’t an issue lightly overlooked though, and the way the diagonal walls clip to the tiles is far less effective than regular walls. Still, the Angles sets can easily be used in the middle of a build to have internal walls cut a room in half on a diagonal or to just break away from the fully right angled builds. Either way, they are another stunning set of pre-painted WarLock Tiles from WizKids!
(Editor’s Note: The WarLock Tiles Set III Angles expansions were provided to us by Asmodee for the review. The expansion sets are currently available from local board game stores! Find your local store here.)
