Wizkids has just released an adventure centerpiece in the form of the Dungeons & Dragons Icons of the Realms The Tower. This 37cm / 14.5 inch tall, multi-floored, pre-painted plastic tower features removable windows, buttresses, staircases and more. It could be an abandoned, crumbling, overrun tower in one adventure and a mysterious wizard’s abode in the next. Coming in at an RRP of £250, is this ready to bring an epic location to 3D life? Let’s find out!
Coming in a huge box, The Tower comes unassembled. The walls of each of the 3 individual floors come in sections that neatly push together. When formed the floors would need to be pulled apart, giving The Tower a lot of stability and strength. Adding to this and locking the first two floors together are seven solid buttress pieces that fit into the outside of the walls of the ground floor. For the flooring the set includes cardboard floors which sit inside the walls. These are double sided offering a gridded and ungridded side. The three floors stack on top of each other, and while there is an order technically there is nothing stopping gamers from switching the upper two floors around.
A roof area, with stone statues of hooded folk around the rim, sits on top. Part of the roof is a stone walkway area, with a clear plastic skylight – which allows gamers to see down into the upper floor. From the way it is designed, The Tower can sit in the center of the table with the floors stacked up, dropping jaws and dominating the playspace. It can also neatly be split into the three individual floors. So, as the adventuring party makes their way up, the next floor can be unveiled. This enables the party to be on different levels at once, without having to do anything rather dexterous.
The entranceway to the tower has two great features, which are sort of a combination. Firstly, it features an opening double doorway. Size wise this is just about big enough for an average medium monster to fit through, though being roughly 10 foot wide in game there is no reason why the players couldn’t encounter large sized monsters inside. Going above and beyond simply opening, the full door area is also removable. Creating a broken wall style entrance way this is ideal for when players are about to enter a ruined, abandoned tower. Some of the bricks from the inside are almost just grey plastic, not quite getting the same treatment as the rest of the build but this is hardly noticeable when not looking for faults.
Coming with three staircases, for players to slowly ascend The Tower, these have been designed specifically for the set. Height-wise these about reach the top of the walls and their slow curve allows them to sit flush along the walls. This isn’t to say that dungeon masters won’t be able to use them for other builds, with Warlock Tiles for example, they just perfectly work within the tower itself. Like the stairs from the WarLock Tiles range there are 3 of the stairs in the staircase that allow a mini’s base to tuck under. This enables players to move their miniature actually up the spaces of the staircase according to their movement values, with a space at the top large enough for a medium sized monster.
The way the stone buttresses and the statues plug into The Tower results in them not being as usable elsewhere, nor does it really allow for the set to be used without them. If you don’t want to have an abandoned tower lined around the top with the awesome but slightly creepy statues, you can choose not to add them. Yet, there isn’t anything to replace them with, and the holes to push them into will be visible. The same can be said for the buttresses which would leave flat and holed plastic visible.
Making the second floor that bit more impressive looking are the fanciful windows. Making the set that bit more customisable though, these windows are fully removable, coming separate in the box. Unlike the statues and buttresses these are designed with being added to the set or left off, with the gap they sit in maintaining the stone brick patterns. As with removing the door this gives The Tower a sense of being much more rundown, and players can choose how many of the 8 windows they want popped out.
For the price point The Tower sits at there are a few things that gamers might have expected from the product. Looking past the windows and the entranceway, there is very little in the way of customizability. There is no second window type to add in instead, nor a fully crumbled wall piece. Including a few additional pieces that could swap in and out, to allow The Tower to be visually different when used a few times, would have been an improvement.
Then there are the rather disappointing cardboard floors. Putting aside the fact the back of the box lists only 3 floors but 4 are included, the set comes with 1 stone floor board, 1 wooden floor board and 2 wooden landing boards. Coming with a hole in the middle, the landings let you see down through the tower, though the option to have all three floors be full solid floors would have expanded the options for players. On top of this there is the fact that this £250 RRP set doesn’t use WizKids WarLock Tiles, opting for the much less premium cardboard. Given the current WarLock Tile range the pieces would have to be specially designed, as the current curves would be too small for The Tower. For such a price point though it’s not out of this world for gamers to expect premium quality – so the cardboard floor tiles are certainly a detractor.
There is no denying that the Dungeons & Dragons – Icons of the Realms The Tower is a fantastic location set. The height that it brings to the table, with the pre-painted walls and more, are sure to wow players and dungeon masters alike. From a build quality standpoint, The Tower has sturdy, chunky, plastic walls, with a few flair bits such as the entranceway and the windows being removable. Not having used WizKids WarLock Tiles for the flooring, instead of cardboard, seems an odd choice as it makes the set feel slightly less premium despite the price tag. There could have been some additional customisable elements. Regardless, this is a location that can be reused for many castle keeps, wizard towers and more, and due to the production quality it will be able to do it for years and years to come.
(Editor’s Note: The Dungeons & Dragons – Icons of the Realms The Tower set was provided to us by Asmodee for the review. The set is currently available from local board game stores! Find your local store here.)
