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The Bazaar
The Bazaar comes as a collection of eight 8"x10" tiles. They're gridded out in 1" tiles to make it easy to play out tactical combat across the Bazaar.
The tiles feature depictions of animal pens, fruit stalls, weapon stalls, a fountain, bits of armor, textiles, lots of fish sellers, and more. Nothing runs from one tile to another, so you can put them together in any order that you desire--or indeed use less than eight tiles if you want, as I did when I playtested the tiles.
I think that the best gaming tiles have sufficient detail to both suggest adventure ideas and to suggest uses for areas during the game. Both were the case with The Grand Bazaar.
When I saw the animal pen, I immediately conceived of the idea of animals panicking during a riot. When we actually played, fighters stomped through fruit (taking a minus on attack rolls), rogues tumbled across stalls (requiring a high target number to succeed), and one archer perched atop the fountain so that he could see everything.
Here's a shot of the Grand Bazaar in play during my recent playtest:
(Any funny texturing on the picture is just from light reflecting on a plastic covering. The actual tiles don't show anything of the sort. For the curious, other accessories include dice by Chessex and Q-Workshop and bloodied and other markers by Litko Aerosystems.)
The Components
This new releases matches the series of Art of Wor tiles to date. As noted, it includes eight 8"x10" tiles (up from seven tiles in the first editions of earlier releases). Each tile is foam backed and printed full color on a plastic covering. The result is wet or dry erasable, while the foam keeps the tile from moving on the table.
The actual artwork is all computer-generated. It's still got a bit of a computerized look to it, but to my eye this one is more realistic looking than any of the sets the preceded it.
Comparison & Conclusion
For my full assessment of how the Art of Wor tiles compare to other tiling sets on the market, please see my Stone Bard Inn review. In short, I think they're top of the line if you want to write on your maps, for example when a magician drops down a wall of force (as happened in my playtest). Otherwise, the Dungeon Tiles from Wizards of the Coast are the only real competition for something that's both modular and attractive.
I usually think it's pretty hard for anyone to compete with Wizards of the Coast's Dungeon Tiles, because they're very attractive and they're very cheap. However in my playtest I put this 3 Sages tile set straight up against a Dungeon Tile set--and it was surprisingly Wizards which came up wanting.
The Dungeon Tile set in question was the recent Streets of Shadow set. I bought it because I was very excited to finally have a high-quality urban tile set ... but I was quite disappointed. WotC's set has a ton of sewers and rooftops. There are some plazas and streets, but they're quite dull-looking, without details (other than a few pieces that you can stick atop them). Compare them to the vivid colors and details of The Grand Bazaar, and there was no competition.
I didn't even use the Dungeon Tiles for my surface-side adventures during my playtest (other than a few people and an oxen cart, which you can see in the picture above). When I played out the second set of encounters for the day down in the sewers, where I did use the Dungeon Tiles, they looked much poorer for the nice Grand Bazaar that had been the focus of the first half of the day.
Artistically, The Grand Bazaar is probably the more attractive set of tiles that 3 Sages has put out, so I've given it a Style of "4" out of "5". In addition, its modularity makes it easy to use for a wide variety of purposes, so I've given it a "4" out of "5" for Substance.
If you're looking for city maps, The Grand Bazaar (and the previous Stone Bard Inn, which can be linked) are great options, increasingly so as 3 Sages expands the line.
