[Connecticon 2010 Week] CTCon Week Part 2: Dwarven Forge Sci Fi Passage Set Review

Following up from yesterday's blog post, here is my short review of the other set I got as an entirely too generous birthday gift, the Sci Fi Passage Set from Dwarven Forge.  Like the last one, its 49 bucks MSRP on the box.  But its an old box that was clearanced out so the normal price increases ala GW probably have happened.  I could go check but I don't wanna right now.  I'm off the antidepressants right now and still haven't made up all the lost sleep from the convention and week previous.

I am too bleh to put that much work into.  And once you see the mostly horribly out of focus pictures you will understand.  I promise I have better pictures and content from Connecticon 2010 later on this week or month.

Yes, CT Con 2010 Week is really "CT Con 2010: Adventures in milking this content for while".

Sorry new readers from Spoony Experiment.  If you were expecting the kind of audiovisual quality the TGWTG.com crew provide you on a weekly basis from me, you will be sorely disappointed.  Like if you are looking for a fork.  But its free entertainment and information so there.

But let's get this one done, shall we?

Much like the Fantasy set, its got felt bottoms and packed in the styrofoam for a nicely protected, heavy, space taking up product:

As we can see, its got lots of lovely detail and its all nicely painted.  Each of the little squares is an inch, meaning the current sized Warhammer 40K Terminators on their large bases pretty much take up a block of four.

(This poorly focused picture (all the better to hide my poorly painted models!) shows some of the pieces connected to one another and various sizes of sci fi minis doing some ridiculous conga line thing: An AT 43 UNA Steel Tac Arm, the current sized 40K Space Marine Terminator, current sized 40K Assault Space Marine, 40K Rogue Trader era Techmarine, Star Wars miniature Mon Calamari Medic, old Epic Keeper of Secrets, old Epic Land Raider tank, and old Epic Daemonette of Slaanesh.   (Epic stuff is 6mm scale to the rest's 25-32.) )

Also as we can tell, even the OUTSIDE of the passages is painted with lots of color.   What may be a good or bad thing to you is there are no little hourglass tie pins in this Science Fiction set, but the fit between parts is not exactly seamless.

(An angled shot to give you a height perspective and to show the edge detail as best as the blurry picture allows.  What?  I should turn on multiple lights in the house for this?  That would require getting up for a second and I am in those post con blues feelings right now.)

(This picture shows a T intersection next to a Space Hulk 3rd edition T intersection tile.  Also I have 3 Generations of plastic Space Marine Terminators as an extra comparison.  Left to right: V3 Space Hulk Terminator Captain, 40K Battle for Black Reach Terminator with a glued on Missile Launcher, and V2 Space Hulk Terminator with Heavy Flamer.  Only 2 of the models are actually painted to any degree.)

Notice how much larger the Dwarven Forge piece is, and how its squares are a little bit smaller than V3 Space Hulk's.  However the Space Hulk pieces are far lighter, portable, and cheaper.  To do 1-3rd ed Space Hulk with these sorts of high end terrain sets would probably cost you over 500 dollars and take up an enormous amount of real estate.  I guess if you are running the same sort of prostitution ring/meth lab/evil terrorist organization determined to rule the world that folks like these guys who buy thousand dollar plus action figures do, it would probably be worth it because the terrain looks DAMNED COOL.

However much like the previous review, I can only give it an OK rating for the same reason.  

Its expensive.  

Its heavy.

It takes up a ton of space.

It can kind of get in the way of actually PLAYING a game, especially if you have clumsy players.

But if you have the cash, or happen to be a smokin hot chick who could probably get your fans/playgroup to buy you stuff go for it.  

Me on the other hand?

I will pretty much just stick to cardboard tilesets, though the terrain sets from these reviews will get used when I can find uses for them.  Scenery backdrops, my dumb photocomics, centerpieces of a given game scenario.

But again like the Fantasy set, if places sold the pieces individually (roughly 5-15 dollars an element I would surmise) I would probably pick up more at my local game stores if I had some extra money on me.