Review Summary: If you ever enter a Klingon ship, bring a torch.
Blurb from the publisher: 'This gaming tile set contains 16 double sided tiles for a total of 32 interchangeable 240mm square and 120mm by 240mm map tiles of Klingon starship interiors.
Arm yourselves and prepare for battle through Klingon corridors, or repel boarding parties from the bridge! These Star Trek Adventures geomorphic gaming tiles are inspired by set designs and the Klingon bird-of-prey Owners' Workshop Manual, in consultation with Rick Sternbach and designed by José Esteras.
From the judgement hall, to cloaking generator rooms and Klingon bridges, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Klingon Tile Set map a glorious battlefield!
The Klingon Tile Set contains:
- Fully realised top-down designs of key locations on a Klingon starship: the bridge, engineering, transporter rooms, sickbay, plus other rooms, corridors and shuttlebays.
- Movement area markings compatible with the 2d20 system for use with the Star Trek Adventures conflict rules.'
What you get: Your EUR 34,99 or USD 39,99 or GBP 29,99 will buy you the Star Trek: The Next Generation Klingon Tile Set for the Star Trek Adventures game line in both cardboard and pdf form. The product can also be bought as a pdf only, for EUR 9,99 or USD 10,99 or GPB 7,99
Contents: No need for me to repeat the publisher's blurb about what the product contains. The tiles are printed in cardboard with a thickness of over 1 mm and are full colour. The pdf names every single area on its upper left corner. The printed product leaves the areas unnamed. The physical product does not use the exact same colours as the pdf. The pdf is substantially more elaborate and bright, with greens, beiges, even light blues at times. The print edition has been overlayed with a very strong red/black filter, as if a ship is on self-destruct mode. As a result, all areas are substantially darker on the physical product when compared to the much brighter pdf. The pdf allows for more details to be discerned, while the physical edition enhances the badass image Klingons project.
The pdfs naming of tiles is of great help whtn it comes to identifying what an area can be used for. The bridge and the sickbay might be obvious, well-known pieces however like the Judgement Hall (if you remember Kirk's trial in Star Trek VI the hall's layout will ring a bell) wouldn't have been easy to understand. To those add areas like corridors, machine rooms, plasma treatment chambers, secondary engine rooms, security barracks, three different shuttle bays, two sickbays (one with quite the damage on its floor), a transporter room, a war room (with a UFP ship under examination!), and many more.
The strong points: I would lose count if I tried to remember how many Star Trek episodes took place in a Klingon ship. If one is serious about his Star Trek campaign, even he uses another system, he needs these tiles. The aesthetics are exactly what one would have expected from the Sovie- from the Klingons: the predominant colour is black, and illumination is mostly provided by red lights. The design is post-industrial, favouring utility over aesthetics in every single choice. There are multiple air ducts on the floor of pretty much every room. There are signs of moisture that has not been properly cleaned, of damage on the floors, of patch ups in order to keep the ship flying. Compare this to the sanitized, operation-room aesthetics of the Federation, and you realize that you are holding a totally different beast.
Like the Starfleet Tile Set the design is varied and very versatile. This can be just a small ship with a half bridge and another half area of your choice, a vast Klingon cruiser that has just been boarded, or even part of a Klingon Starbase. Do not think of the tiles as a two-dimensional dungeon that needs assembly, even though they can be used in that sense to a certain extent. They are more like separate locations on the ship where action is likely to happen. Many of them can be immediately connected (the cargo bay is but one example), the ever-present turbolifts however provide a better idea of how people move from point A to point B inside this unfriendly environment.
The tiles work well with the 2d20 system. It is very clear where each area ends and where another begins. Very big areas are broken down into smaller ones by inconspicuous semitransparent lines. In practically all cases the lines feel like part of the scenery.
The images are computer generated; no stills were used, and the art does not go out of its way to look realistic (even though it mostly does). There are a few Klingon inscriptions here and there, I cannot say however whether they are legit and actually mean something. Taking into account the work Modiphius has put into this line, I wouldn't be surprised if they were. In contrast to the Starfleet Tile Set crew quarters are not given that much importance. There is only one area called Security Barracks with eight beds in a single space. Like their Federation colleagues, the Klingons don't poop; don't expect any toilets, or other real-life utility areas. This is all about action.
I found the price of both the combo deal as well as the pdf alone to be rather fair. In fact, I feel that the pdf price is a bargain for what the present tile set achieves within a Star Trek game. I am obviously very happy about that, as happy as I am about the support that Modiphius is putting out for this line.
The weak points: Having double-sided tiles brings costs down, yet it halves the amount of material that is usable at any given time, or at least until one decides to print his own tiles. The set doesn't do as badly as its Starfleet brother where the Bridge was paired with the Warp Core, i.e. the two most used locations on a Starship were on the same tile. Here the Bridge goes together with the Cloaking Generator Room. I can live with that.
I don't know what prompted Modiphius to print a slightly different image version to that of the pdf, yet it should have been handled differently. The physical edition comes out as very, very dark, and less elaborate. Mind you, it is not. The images however are masked under the prevalent two-colour scheme. There are things that are literally not visible whatsoever, when one compares that cardboard in front of him with the image on his tablet or PC. What is a gamemaster to do here? Print the pdf to gain on detail? I am certain that some fans would complain about how bright that is, brighter than any Klingon ship ever encountered. If the objective was to have a more functional and a more depressive Klingon ship at hand, the solution would have been a red/black transparency to superimpose over the tiles. This lack of alignment between the physical and the pdf product looks more like a mistake and less like a conscious choice.
On the Starfleet Tile Set I complained about the lack of a legend for the tiles. This problem is now partially solved; the pdf tiles are named thus even the most opaque areas can provide cool adventure ideas. Yet, that is only half a solution. I would have enjoyed the pdf tiles to have both a named and an unnamed iteration; after all, an imaginative GM can use a tile in numerous ways. I hope Modiphius is listening and will readily correct this omission.
The product advertises itself as being designed for use with the Star Trek Adventures 32 mm Miniatures, yet that isn't wholly accurate. The miniatures do not appear to be fully on scale with the present tile set. To put it simply, the miniatures are bigger than what they should have been. Either they should have been smaller (noooooo!), or the tile set should have been bigger (yeeeeees!). As things stand, and even when one disregards the perceptible size difference, their bases take too much space. Just a handful of people on the bridge and the place gets immediately cluttered. The issue could be minimized by trimming the base, yet there we start getting into questions of miniature balance and stability. A solution like that is likely to create as many problems as it will solve. Thus, the issue remains. Not having the tile set on scale with the minis is illogical, captain. The problem might be circumvented if one prints the tile set in a bigger format. This, however, would mean that the physical edition is at least partially not fit for purpose. Oooops.
There will always be someone that will complain about how this room didn't make it to the set or this series had a room or another that should have been totally included. To start with, there are seven seasons of TNG to chose from. Then, frankly, the coolest Klingon ships by far are seen on Discovery. Forget the dark and damp corridors; Klingon ships on that series are operatic, majestic, imperial beyond measure. If I were to request something, it would be for the Klingon ships of more series to be published!
Conclusion: Depending on your campaign needs, the Star Trek: The Next Generation Klingon Tile Set comes out from very useful to outright indispensable. Its physical edition suffers from a partial undersizing and a very dark colour scheme that hides many of the details, this doesn't however make it less desirable. Besides, the pdf works great at such a budget price. Qapla'!
For more info on the Star Trek: The Next Generation Klingon Tile Set visit the Modiphius Entertainment website at http://www.modiphius.com.
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