Posted in: Board Games, Games, Review, Toys | Tagged: D7D, DnD, dungeons & dragons, pathfinder, WizKids

This Board Needs Decoration: We Review Wizkids' Pools & Pillars Set

Published Wed, 23 May 2018 17:45:45 -0500

I've enjoyed many years of tabletop RPG games where we had nothing but pencils, paper, and imagination. But at a certain point, the mind needs substance. So for those who have a budget, there are options to make your game pop, and Wizkids is pretty awesome and making some things come to life. Today we're going to review one of their Deep Cuts Miniatures sets as we explore their Pillars & Pools set that they sent us.

The whole contents of this box include four pillars, a fallen pillar, four banners and torches, a deer head, three small pools, a large pool, and extra rock pieces. We'll go over each one and how you how they fit into the scheme of things. First, we have the fallen pillar, which is shaped up to look like a pile of rocks sitting in the dirt. This makes for a great setting to show off the fallen ruins of a once great area, or how a room may be falling apart around you. It also makes for good cover or an obstacle to throw at your players. This is a fantastic design no matter how you use it.

Moving on to the small pools, these are see-through blue plastic with rock designs circling them. From afar they look similar, but up close you can see the small differences in each one. These make for great storytelling points as people can sit but them, make wishes in them, find objects in them, have creatures rise from them, and make a number of different water-related spells happen. They take up four squares or seven hexes, so it also makes for a good obstacle that players need to get around.

The large pool is actually one of the best designs I've seen in a while, as you are given a pool with figures on either side. You have a couple gargoyle statues and a torch, both of which can be taken out and replaced with ordinary rocks if you see fit. This gives you a number of different combinations, not to mention the ability to have the rocks "morph" into the gargoyles if you want.

The remaining set of items focus on the four pillars. Each one is set to look like a standard pillar you might find in a castle, complete with a specific stone structure that looks like it could actually hold up the roof of whatever room you're in, or even outside as the remains of a castle. Each one comes with a hole in one of the sides for you to put in a specific decoration. The three decorations, as you see below, are torches, banners, and a deer head.

Each of the decorations has its own peg that you can use to place int he hole and make the pillar look different or have a specific use. The deer head can put you in a hunting room, the torches in the depths of a dungeon that has low light, the banners in a room for royalty. Basically, this is your way to set the scene however you wish with a little bit of a visual aid. I always recommend the torches as you can sue them to pull a resource for fire spells or put them out to darken the room for those with dark vision to see better.

This is a pretty cool Wizkids set that gave a couple of the games I visited some character. No one really had a complaint about them or felt they were out of place, even the one game where all there was for us to interact with was the large pool. Right now the set is going for $40, so a little pricey, but also pretty reasonable considering some of the other sets out there that charge the same price for less. Definitely worth looking into for DMs and GMs who want to add some flavor to their pits of despair.