Welcome back to the Gallant Goblin!
I'm Theo and today we're looking
at Tactical Maps Reincarnated.
Recently—past couple of months—Wizards of the
Coast has been releasing a couple of map packs
for Dungeons & Dragons.
We had one for the Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica
and we had one for Dungeon of the Mad Mage.
You can look at our review of these if you
click the "i" in the corner of the screen.
Basically though, people weren't very happy with these.
They were not what they expected.
They wanted tactical maps: poster-sized
maps with a grid on them
that you can put on your table and run encounters on.
And those maps were more a GM's tool for planning.
They weren't made for encounters.
They weren't made to put down on
your table and have adventures on.
This is more what people were expecting—
or at least, so we think.
This is supposed to be 20 tactical maps with a grid
that are taken from previous adventures in
the Dungeons & Dragons line over the years.
So let's really take a look and see what's inside.
So the first thing you'll notice
when you pick this up
is that this is a little bit more hefty
than the previous map packs.
This is the Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica map pack
and while they're the same size, this one
with the poster maps is a little bit thicker
than this one that has the cardstock sheets in it.
Now when we look inside this,
you'll notice that they provide you with the
rules for using a grid for size of creatures
and they also give you the rules for using hexes.
On the other side they provide you the
rules for using a grid for line of sight
when determining half cover or three-quarters cover,
and they also tell you how to determine an
area of effect using a cone and a sphere.
So let's take one out and put it on the table.
Now these are truly paper poster maps.
They're going to be pretty fragile so
be careful when you're unfolding it,
when you're moving it around on the [table],
when you're trying to get rid of the creases.
So you can see it lies pretty flat on the table but
it's going to have a few folds and creases on it.
This is a 21x30 inch map.
Let's go ahead and put some figures on it.
See how they look.
You can see it lies fairly flat but there's going to be some
folds and creases that make things a little bit unstable.
You can also, if you want to, make some of the
terrain features a little bit more 3-dimensional.
Put down some real tables.
Put down some real trees even.
And that's how it looks on the table.
So this set comes with 20 poster maps
although 2 of the pages are half maps
which are 15x21, so in effect you
really get 22 maps in this set.
They really are very fragile though.
Just opening them up and trying to get them
flat on the table and positioning them
and trying to get the creases out, I've
come really close to tearing them.
So I would recommend finding a way to protect them.
I think the best way is to get a
24x36 acrylic sheet to put on top.
That'll allow you to keep it flat so your
minis can stand on it without falling over.
You can also write on it with
a dry erase marker if you like.
So that's probably the best way—you
can also laminate each individual map
but that's going to get expensive really quickly.
This set, you can get online or at your
local game store for $20-$25 [USD].
You can also buy it on D&D Beyond—it costs $15
and it gives you 20 high resolution JPEGs
that you can print or do with as you like.
It's also available on Fantasy Grounds for $15
and you can get it on Roll20 for $25 but that includes the
dynamic lighting and the advanced fog of war effects.
These maps are all taken from 3rd edition and
4th edition adventures which used to come
bundled in with a poster map inside.
So they reincarnated a lot of those old
maps, the ones that were interesting
or fairly generic that you could
use for a lot of different settings
and they bundled them into this product.
I think this is a lot more in line with what
people were expecting from a map pack,
a tactical map with a grid on it that you can
put on your table and have adventures on.
You can stay tuned to the end of this video to
see pictures of all of these maps on my table.
We're going to give you the names that
they gave the maps on D&D Beyond
and we also—I found DMDavid had a nice
compilation of the old poster maps.
So we tried to figure out which adventures
each one of these maps came from.
So we'll credit him in the video description below.
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and concerns in the comments section below.
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