Frugal GM Review: Inked Adventures Hand Drawn Large Geomorph Tiles

OK this review might seem to have a couple of issues with it.......

1st of all, I reviewed some of Inked Adventures other offerings last week. 2nd, this product looks eerily similar to a review from a year ago last February.

As for back-to-back reviews from Inked Adventures.....remember last week when I stated I had "reams" of printed paper waiting to be assembled? Well I also has some self-stick Elmers foam core I picked up at the art store specifically for this project and it has been basically blocking my access to my office closet for months now. I already the tiles printed and just needed to get off my duff and get things assembled.

Now as to the similar review, well it is a similar product. Some time after that review Mr. Babble re-did the geomorph tiles and released it as a much larger product. While this essentially "fixes" every single minor issue I had with these tiles, I basically went and used this larger tile set to print off essentially the same sized tiles I would have gotten had I used the original files from the set I reviewed the first time around......

...pretty smart, eh?

Actually my copy shop offers self-serve B&W printing of legal sheets at the same price as letter, so by messing around a bit I could get eight tiles printed per page instead of 4-6 from the original set's pages. The cool thing with this new larger set is that in addition to the A4 and Letter formats, the set includes the graphic files in full 300 DPI JPG glory.

These larger tiles are 10" square and the printing is broken out over two pages per tile so you can glue smaller printed sheets together to make a larger tile. The tiles of these sets are conveniently numbered and the section that gets glued over shows a picture of the completed tile to make assembly even easier. This is a nice touch that isn't necessary, but really goes a long way in making things easier on the end user. There are 128 tiles which is really just 64 tiles, with a second set mirrored from the 1st. This is a great way to double the size of the set effortlessly.

Now if you choose to play directly with the graphics files like I did, they aren't numbered....because they don't need to be. For the most part everything is in black and white, but there are a few red spots to denote entrances. I think you are better served printing in B&W and using a marker to denote those little red spots, if you wish.

If you end up doing like I did and re-size the tiles, I'd suggest printing off an example page or two 1st. I made my tiles a little too small. In some ways I saved on printing costs, but failed as far as saving on the expensive foam core and lamination plastic. At least I have more for a second go.

My tiles look great, don't get me wrong, but I wish they were bigger so each square would fit one of my small tokens. A box of small tiles, a couple handfuls of tokens, and I'd about have a travel geomorph set for gaming on the go. All I'd need is a random tile contents generator and I'd be set for a pull-it-out-of-your-butt session.

Assuming I decide to make full-scale tiles, I think I'll end up using the graphic files and printing to 11" x 14". IIRC FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos) has self-serve 11" x 14" printing for roughly 2x the price of printing to letter or legal. Might as well skip a step and end up paying the same amount for printing. I don't think I'll be using the expensive foam core and lamination plastic, but I do have a pile of recycled signage from a convention and a roll or two of clear shelf-paper will work just fine. What I'd do is use my smaller tiles to map put a place and then a single tile (or two as needed) in the middle of the game table for the players to use their figures on.....

....yeah, that should work nicely. I'll have to number the tiles to make them easier to locate. I'll Also need to make sure I print off some of the doors and counters that are included with the Large Scale Hand Drawn Geomorph Set.

This set is currently on sale for $8! It is normally $15. Compared to the Inked Adventures Hand Drawn Geomorph Tiles (small) which are on sale for $5.50...definitely worth spending the extra $2.50 to "supersize" your geomorphs.