Thoughts on the Dwarven Forge Castles Kickstarter

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Mar 272016

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder System, What Is It?

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder System Kickstarter

As you may have heard, Dwarven Forge launched their long anticipated Castle Builder Kickstarter about three weeks ago. DF has been talking about this project and taking lots of community feedback for this system for at least a couple of years, possibly longer. What they’ve deployed for this Kickstarter is a truly massive and elaborate system that will eventually allow you to build some really impressive setups that’d be immersive and fun to play with whether you’re an avid fan of Dungeons & Dragons or any other fantasy RPG setting or a tabletop miniatures gamer.

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder system includes a multitude of options allowing you to build the castle of your gaming dreams with square and round towers, large walls that can be made double thick for a castle that looks truly massive and options like gate houses, drawbridges and more. There are “mountain cliff” sets that will allow you to perch your castle on top of a rocky crag or make sheer cliffs a feature of the castle.

In the last 24 hours or so they’ve let the cat out of the bag about castle dressing packs that will allow you to theme your castle with runic/druidic decorations or take a darker turn with necromancer themed accessories. There are also powered up options that include lighted accessories and even a powered drawbridge that raises and lowers via a small battery powered motor.

There are still about three days remaining in the Kickstarter so Dwarven Forge is still in the process of releasing more add on packs that expand and enhance the Castle Builder system and as the funding total increases (it’s currently sitting at close to 1.2 million dollars in pledges) there will be the inevitable stretch goals.

Some of the rumored expansions include more dressing packs and architectural accessories, a moat pack, themed miniatures, and ruined wall and tower sections to show damaged or abandoned areas. The DF staff have mentioned that they sculpted as many as 140 different pieces for the Dwarven Forge Castle Builder system and if that is indeed the case there is much that has not yet been revealed to backers. There as been some talk that some items will not appear during the actual Kickstarter and may become available for purchase after the Kickstarter ends during the Pledge Manager phase. (The Pledge Manager phase usually takes place a few weeks after the close of the Kickstarter and gives fans a chance to add additional funds for more add-ons! or sometimes allows late backers who missed the original KS to participate).

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder System, What I Like

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder system is up to the usual excellent standards that you’ve come to expect from Stefan Pokorny and company. The castle builder seems well thought out in terms of modularity and there is a great variety of pieces that will allow you to build just about anything you can imagine. The sculpts themselves are beautiful and the pieces go together well. There is also a lot of compatibility with last years Dwarven Forge City Builder system which I bought quite a bit of and really like for tabletop gaming in particular. Dwarven Forge Kickstarter projects have all been made out of a super durable, almost indestructible material they like to call “Dwarvenite”. It’s something that you can allows your kids to play with and not need to worry about it breaking. In this Castle Builder Kickstarter they are using ABS for some of the large long pieces, this also promises to be extremely durable.

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder Kickstarter has a variety of pledge levels, starting with a $20 “Add On Only” pledge that doesn’t include any of the castle set ups but does allow you to just purchase add on and accessory packs individually if you’d just like to add a few things to your other DF stuff. This is the first time they’ve had an add on pack on;y pledge and I think it’s a great idea. This was a popular request in previous DF Kickstarters so it’s nice to see them responding to customer feedback in a tangible way. There are various other pledge levels that will get you sections of a castle like a gatehouse and ramparts or a complete tower all the way up to a large keep pledge that includes enough pieces to construct a good sized square castle with 2 square corners, 2 round towers and a gatehouse. The combination of these options gives backers a great deal of choice and flexibility, but, that comes at a cost and a lot of complexity.

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder System, What I Don’t Like

I’m going to go right for the elephant in the room for this Kickstarter. It’s a very expensive project and there’s no other way to put that. Dwarven Forge tends to be expensive anyway but one of the benefits of the original Dwarven Forge Dungeon Tiles Kickstarter was that it had tremendous value for the money spent, particularly compared to what you needed to spend on their hand painted resin sets. This value for dollars spent has steadily gone down through each Kickstarter as they’ve increased in complexity. The Castle Builder system is also the fourth Dwarven Forge Kickstarter in four years and to be honest, last years was pretty spendy.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not begrudging Dwarven Forge for their pricing, they’re a business and I want them to be around for a long time so I understand that they have to charge what they have to charge to stay viable. My complaint is twofold (and to be fair I’m not really sure these are complaints, they’re really just my observations).

First, this is a huge project with a lot of complexity. I think they would have been better served by either breaking this into two smaller Kickstarters over a two year period OR waiting another year and showing off a lot of this stuff in action in order to build anticipation and demand and to give backers wallets a chance to recover from the last three years and last years City Builder Kickstarter in particular.

On the subject of complexity, there is already an incredible array of pieces and options and they’re still holding stuff for the final run up to the end of the Kickstarter. I’ve been following the project pretty closely and watching their videos and livestreams and I still feel a little overwhelmed when I go look at all the pledges and options and then try to figure out what add-ons best go with what pledges. I imagine that someone coming to check out the project who hasn’t been following it as closely is probably at a loss to figure everything out and make a decision. It’s probably pretty confusing and some people are just going to pass on the entire thing because of that confusion. I think Dwarven Forge could have alleviated most of this by creating more video shorts explaining how the various pieces could work together rather than relying on spur of the moment livestreams.

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder System Sorcerer’s Sanctum Pledge

My other observation is the spend for this Kickstarter. In previous projects you could spend a few hundred dollars – I’m talking three or four hundred dollars here – and receive a reasonable amount of stuff that gave you lots of options and flexibility to create an interior layout for a dungeon or cavern. Last years City Builder was noticeably less wallet friendly but still seemed reasonable for the utility, particularly for gamers who might have multiple games they could use buildings and city structures with. As a gamer who plays RPG’s and tabletop wargames I thought the City Builder set was a great addition to my terrain collection.

The Dwarven Forge Castle Builder system is another beast entirely. They offer some nice basic packages and late in the campaign have offered up some “complete castle” pledges at varying price points that give you the exact stuff you need to build a specific layout, like a Sorcerer’s Sanctum ($585) pr the Royal Stronghold ($1950). (Those prices are for the prepainted versions, the unpainted versions are $460 and $1500 respectively and it’s worth mentioning that these special sets don’t include any stretch goals). These and the other “complete” offerings are all great options for folks looking to just show up and buy something ready to build without poring over the various pledges and add-ons and trying to figure how everything goes together.

The problem is that if you watch the promo videos and short video builds of various setups that Dwarven Forge has produced it quickly becomes apparent that even if you pop for the $2000 Royal Stronghold pledge you still won’t have near enough stuff to build those epic layouts shown in the promo videos. I’ve spent quite a bit over the first three Dwarven Forge Kickstarters, around $3500 between the three projects ($800 on Dungeon Tiles, $1200 on Caverns and $1600 on City Builder), and that figure is low because it doesn’t factor in items I’ve bought from their website or via the secondary market to add to my collection. The issue here is that in order to get enough of the Castle Builder stuff to even approach some of the layouts that Dwarven Forge have shown in their build videos I’ll have to spend more on this one Kickstarter than all previous Dwarven Forge Kickstarters combined. RPG’s and dungeoneering aren’t my only hobbies so it’s hard to justify blowing a huge chunk of my annual gaming budget on this one thing.

This isn’t just me complaining about this situation either, it’s reflected in the number of backers that have participated in each of the Dwarven Forge Kickstarters. There were 5398 backers for Dungeon Tiles, 3950 for Caverns, 2719 for City Builder and with just over three days to go for Castle Builder there are a paltry (by comparison) 1315 backers. That is a 50 percent drop in participants just from last year, and I believe it’s mostly due to a combination of backer fatigue (4 increasingly expensive Kickstarters, 4 years in a row) and the issues mentioned above. (I also think that as these Dwarven Forge projects get more and more specialized there are a number of drop outs due to the sets not being as generically useful e.g., the number of people who need a city or castle set for their RPG adventures is fewer compared to the basic dungeon building set).

So Now What? How About Something Completely Different?

The Makerbot Replicator Mini 3D Printer

At the end of the day, the Dwarven Forge Castle Builder system is still a functional work of art that’s imminently useful for RPG’ers and tabletop gamers. Issues aside, it’s a fantastic set that once again delivers in terms of artistry and flexibility. While I am currently pledged at the add-on only level and I may end up getting one of the smallest Castle Builder set ups, I won’t be dropping anything near what I’ve spent on previous Dwarven Forge Kickstarters. In fact, I’ve decided to try something completely different and recently purchased a Makerbot Replicator Mini 3D Printer. I’ll have more to say about this in the coming days but if you’re interested in seeing my 3d printed works in progress as I learn how to use the Makerbot Replicator Mini you can follow me over on my Twitter account @HolyCrapItsLate.

Dwarven Forge City Builder Terrain is Great for Wargamers Too

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Mar 312015

The other day I wrote a bit about Dwarven Forge’s various Kickstarters for their Dwarvenite range of dungeon terrain sets. Something that I didn’t mention at the time was that I think that this current set – the City Builder Terrain System, is really well suited for wargames and skirmish wargames in particular.

What Is the City Builder Terrain System?

dwarven forge city builder terrain system

A sample build of a small city area that would work for a skirmish game set in an urban environment. This uses parts from the Capital City pledge, Imperial Streets set and various smaller add on sets

Without rehashing everything I wrote in my previous post, Dwarven Forge’s City Builder Terrain is a modular, durable, plastic terrain system that allows you to build up urban areas for your tabletop games. Dwarvenite is a heavy duty polymer that’s fairly indestructible and holds its finish well. It’s so durable that some folks just carry around their sets in a tote or duffel bag.

What Can I Make With The City Builder Terrain System?

The City Builder Terrain System sets are fairly complex and give you a wide range of options. They can be purchased in a “dungeon gray” unpainted version or completely finished and ready to deploy on to your game table. These can range from just a small building or two that are designed as more of a movement obstacle for mass battles all the way up to a massive city with a wide range of multi level buildings constructed of different materials and fortification levels. There are even sets available that allow you to construct the sewer system and all of this can be used in conjunction to create some complex battlefields.

Dwarven Forge City Building System Sewers

This battle starts in the buildings and on the surrounding streets, entering into a canal and ultimately descending into the sewers making this a complex and fun battlefield. This set up uses a mix of the new Dwarven Forge City Building sets along with Game Tiles and Caverns water tile sets, demonstrating how all of the various Dwarvenite sets are fully compatible.

This is especially useful for smaller skirmish level games like Malifaux, or Mordheim. The hotly anticipated new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battles has also been widely rumored to be or have an additional set of rules making it into a skirmish game

While the Dwarven Forge City Builder Terrain System is themed around a medieval period I think it’s fairly flexible and could be used for a wide variety of settings. You could simulate a rural or old city area in Bolt Action. It’s suitable for many historical games as well. It’s probably also great for some of the Steampunk themed skirmish games that are becoming more popular.

Check out this amazing multilevel build using pieces from the City Buildings, Battlements, City Streets and Sewers sets:

In addition to creating some complex exterior areas, the City Builder Terrain System can be used to create areas with fully finished interiors complete with stairways, line of sight obstacles, walls, doors, windows, balconies and more. There are also ruins add on packs to simulate blighted areas or damaged buildings. You could use the ruined pieces to modify buildings as your game progresses and things get damaged, dynamically changing the layout of obstacles and line of sight on the fly as a result of battle damage.

Pieces can also be combined with parts from previous sets to create water barriers or massive stone walls. The only limit is your imagination.

Dwarven Forge City Builder Terrain System for Skirmish Wargames? Yes please!

As a long time wargamer I really like the versatility of these sets. Typically wargamers tend to build or buy a few static building models and then use the same ones over and over. With the Dwarven Forge City sets you have a large selection of modular pieces that you can use to assemble something unique for your battlefield every time you play. Another benefit is that many static models, especially for medieval/fantasy architecture either don’t have interiors at all or are very limited due to the way they are manufactured. The Dwarvenite pieces give you the option to have fully realized interiors to your buildings. With the addition of accessories from other companies you can even place furniture and other items much like scatter terrain on the insides of your buildings.

Sample tavern interior and surrounding streets

This coupled with the huge range of accessories available from Dwarven Forge and the fact that unlike pre-made buildings which can be finicky and at times a bit fragile, the Dwarvenite parts are nearly indestructible and will probably last you a lifetime. I think these facts all add up to a great value for wargamers and even more so for skirmish gamers.

The Dwarven Forge City Builder Terrain System Kickstarter is in its final few days so head on over and take a look at what’s on offer. For more general information about Dwarven Forge and their products check out my other article here.

Thoughts on the Dwarven Forge City Builder Terrain System Kickstarter

Geek News, News and Info, RPG, Tabletop Gaming 1 Response »

Mar 302015

As you may or may not know, Dwarven Forge, makers of 3D dungeon themed modular gaming terrain recently launched their third Kickstarter for an entirely new City Building Terrain System set. This Kickstarter runs until 6:00 PM PDT on Thursday April 2nd. Here’s a look at the Kickstarter promo video where Dwarven Forge creator Stefan Pokorny lays out some background and an overview of the system:

A Little Dwarven Forge Background

If you’re unfamiliar with Dwarven Forge, it’s a small company that’s been making high quality, hand crafted and hand painted resin dungeon terrain for almost twenty years. They feature a fairly large variety of terrain sets that range from a “basic” field stone stonework motif to some very specialized and unique sets that offer a much more finished look with themes like ”Den of Evil”, “Realm of the Ancients” and “Catacombs”. The owner, Stefan Pokorny is a classically trained artist who has worked in a variety of mediums. He’s also a longtime fan of Fantasy Role Playing Games and this is where his artist background has intersected with his love of fantasy and games like Dungeons & Dragons resulting in the creation of Dwarven Forge.

Dwarven Forge resin sets modular dungeon terrain

An example of a resin Dwarven Forge layout with a variety of sets

Dwarven Forge sets are a large leap above everything else that’s currently on the market and are clearly a labor of love. The result is amazingly detailed yet highly flexible system that allows you to create almost any type of dungeon environment that you can imagine. Sets are highly sought after by fans of dungeon terrain and collecting Dwarven Forge sets is frequently referred to as “the addiction” by those in the know. The fact that these are produced in relatively small batches and hand painted also means they are pricey and sometimes out of stock for significant periods of time.

Detail shot of a Dwarven Forge handcrafted and painted resin Catacombs set

About three years ago, the powers that be at Dwarven Forge decided to explore the idea of producing sets in a different material that would be more durable and easier to manufacture in large quantities, allowing them to be made available to a wider audience at a much less budget busting price. After some research they settled on a plastic polymer that is similar to what hockey pucks are made from and decided to call it “Dwarvenite”.

The base pledge of the original Dwarven Forge Games Tiles Kickstarter (painted option) included an assortment of just four different pieces. The genius of this was that these four basic pieces allowed you to create all sorts of rooms, then stretch goals added variety and many options.

Dwarvenite is almost indestructible. There are videos of the Dwarven Forge staff dropping pieces from the roof of a building and actually driving over a piece with a truck. The results of these tests are that the Dwarvenite material is virtually undamaged. This means that your investment in Dwarvenite will likely be something that will last you a lifetime and can be passed on to your kids or other gaming family. As the pieces can be manufactured in steel molds with standard injection molding processes instead of having to be hand poured in resin they are much less costly to manufacture and these savings are passed on to consumers. The lowered manufacturing costs also mean that they can offer Dwarvenite sets in both unpainted and painted versions.

Because Dwarven Forge was pretty much a two man operation they decided to go to Kickstarter to generate interest and try to fund their new product called “Dungeon Tiles”. Following the “base sets pledge plus stretch goals” business model they ended up with a resoundingly successful Kickstarter that allowed them to produce the new line and add many new types of pieces and accessories to the line. At the end of their Kickstarter they had raised close to two million dollars in funding. In keeping with their reputation for being a quality company with great customer service, they managed to deliver Kickstarter rewards to their backers on time and at a quality level that exceeded backer expectations.

The Dwarven Forge Caverns base set followed a similar strategy as the first Kickstarter

A year later they repeated this success with a Dwarvenite Caverns Kickstarter that featured sets designed to model natural stone caverns complete with stalagmites and other features you’d find while exploring caves. Once again they ran an exciting Kickstarter campaign and delivered their products to backers on time and with outstanding quality. In the video below you can see how by the time the Caverns Kickstarter finished you could create some fantastic cavern layouts:

What is the Dwarven Forge City Builder System

While the first two sets of Dwarvenite all focused on the underground portion of tabletop adventuring, this new set is designed to complement those sets and bring your adventuring into urban areas. The City Builder System is just that, a collection of Dwarvenite pieces that allow you build anything from a small cottage on up to a massive city complete with taverns, inns, fortified guardhouses and just about anything you can imagine (depending of course on how much of this stuff you purchase). The sets allow you to construct complete buildings with roofs and/or completely usable multistory interiors where you can play out your encounters in 3D with miniatures – and if you’re wondering, while this system does include optional battlements pieces it is not expressly designed to construct actual castles and keeps. Stefan Pokorny has indicated that he intends to run another Kickstarter in the future that will center on a castle building system. As is standard for Dwarven Forge Dwarvenite sets, all of the items on offer come either painted or unpainted versions.

A quick overview of the City Builder System in action using resin prototypes:

The one (sort of) negative aspect of this Kickstarter is the sheer variety of sets on offer. While it’s a well thought out project in terms of how it really will allow you create some fantastic urban layouts, this means that by necessity it requires a lot of different parts to accomplish that goal. Base pledges this time offer a complex variety of pieces that allow you to make buildings. There are add on sets for streets and sidewalks, as well as sets for sewers and buildings that are more fortified than typical residential or public gathering places. There are even sets that are ruined pieces that would allow you to create heavily damaged architecture. Add in the fact that he’s offering two distinct styles of buildings (stone and Tudor) and just the base pledges have to be complex to accomplish this.

Another look at (some pretty fantastic) possibilies using a lot of the different add on packs from this Kickstarter:

This means that trying to pick up some of everything during the Kickstarter is going to be cost prohibitive for most backers, not due to the pricing of individual sets which is fairly reasonable, but due to the sheer volume of variety and options. At the time of this writing the average pledge per backer is around $690 according to Kicktraq. Most Kickstarter participants probably have a budget that’s well below the level required to get some of everything on offer during the campaign. Having to stay within that budget will likely mean that most backers have some tough decisions to make about what they want to focus on during the Kickstarter My opinion on this is that unless you’re not interested in the city building aspect of this project then the best value is going to be to maximize your spending on the base building pledges as you’ll only receive free stretch goals with those pledges. You may also want to add in some extra floor packs because of all of the free wall piece stretch goals.

The other thing to keep in mind is that everything else should be available in add on packs from the Dwarven Forge online store once Kickstarter fulfillment is complete. (In past projects sometimes the mix of pieces is changed for retail and but as a general rule DF does not typically offer many “Kickstarter Exclusive” items). Scheduled delivery for this project is January 2016. While some may disagree, I think it’s a good long term strategy for Dwarven Forge to actually offer more options during the Kickstarter than most people can afford to buy all at once. They’re leveraging the power of crowd funding to greatly expand their product line at the beginning of the year. In effect designing and manufacturing an entire years worth of releases in one go which likely creates some significant cost breaks at the manufacturing stage. This should result in continued post KS business for Dwarven Forge as people buy additional sets or options that they weren’t able to squeeze into their pledge during the Kickstarter.

A fortified keep using a combination of City Builder System parts and Game Tiles from previous sets:

Dwarven Forge – My Own Experience & Recommendations

I’ve been using Dwarven Forge products off and on for awhile now. I have some of the resin sets like Catacombs and Realm of the Ancients and I participated in both previous Kickstarters (although I was late to the first one and piggybacked on a friends pledge at the literally last minute). I really like all of the sets I have used to be honest. The sets are different enough to allow you to create a wide range of environments and the Dwarvenite sets match up well with the resin sets. As mentioned above, the Dwarvenite sets are practically indestructible and I don’t have to worry about them getting damaged when kids are around or the cat knocks a piece off of the table. I purchased the Dungeon Tiles sets unpainted and have gradually painted them myself but I chose to purchase the Caverns sets painted for the second Kickstarter. For this third go round I plan to focus on the City sets probably unpainted in order to maximize the number of pieces I’ll end up with. I’ll be picking up add on sets when they go into general release after the Kickstarter fulfillment has been completed.

When asked about Dwarven Forge and Dwarvenite sets in particular I always recommend them as a buy due to the variety, durability and how nice they look on your tabletop. If you’re looking to spice up your role playing games (and dungeon crawl board games!) with great visuals that can really add to the immersion then I highly recommend you visit www.dwavenforge.com and pick some up! Based on my previous experiences I’m confident that The City Building System will meet or exceed Dwarven Forge’s usual high standards and I think that participating in the Kickstarter is a great way to get started with Dwarvenite!

Don’t forget that the City Builder System Kickstarter runs until 6:00 PM PDT on Thursday April 2nd.

Jump to the Dwarven Forge City Builder System Kickstarter here