It took a while but I finally finished painting my pledge for Dungeons and Lasers: Caves. There’s a blog on each room (check them out for painting guides, tips, etc.), but here’s a full sample build in all its glory.

Since it’s a modular system which breaks down to individual floor and wall tiles, the amount of different setups available are practically endless. For this, I just wanted to get a basic build down, but you could force the party through certain rooms to get to others. Here, you could skip straight to the treasure room. Granted, there’s a cultist wizard and a beholder in there so it might get a bit toasty, but you wouldn’t necessarily have to fight everything to get to it. Alternatively, an adventure where something must be collected from each room, like pieces of a key or amulet, makes the party clear the place.

It took about 15 minutes to build each room, and maybe 20 minutes or so to link them all together with the core set. Not bad for a first attempt. I imagine, when more familiar with using it, this could be much quicker. Taking the whole thing down and flat-packing it away took about 10-15 minutes, plus the whole lot fits in a 9-litre Really Useful Box which is ideal storage. All this went down on a 6×4 mat and filled just under half of it. This could happily sit on a 3×3 area, or be stretched out into something bigger.

Even though this wasn’t set up for a game, it was fun to put little stories and interactions into the scene. After all, D&D is all about story telling. At the entrance, we have the valkyrie-style character going back to investigate what’s going on in the graveyard outside. The sneaky elf is trying to loot the chest while everyone else is distracted, but of course, it’s a mimic. Then there are the gnolls racing down the corridor to attack the party while the hoplite fighter scrambles to block their path.

I used minis and scatter from loads of different systems here, like Frostgrave, D&D Minis, Heresy Miniatures, Heroquest, Dungeons and Lasers, and even The Edge (the first game I ever worked on) so the Dungeons and Lasers system is pretty versatile. I like how, while there aren’t gridlines as such, it’s pretty obvious, yet subtle, to identify a 5ft square. The curved walls also make a big difference to the aesthetic of the build, and the clips seem easier to use than previous D&L projects. That’s one thing I like about Archon Studio – they’re always innovating and refining.

It’s been a fun project (on the whole – I’m looking at you, spider nest) and has taught me a lot about painting natural textures. Those little patches of moss, dirt and strata in the rocks make all the difference from just a lot of grey drybrushing.

The Caves sets aren’t hugely available in the UK. The best stockist I’ve seen is Wayland Games which has a good amount of the Dungeons and Lasers range. Since I bought in at the crowdfunding stage, I still have a mountain of stretch goals to look at. There are some pretty cool traps and scatter terrain in there, and I do like the party of dwarfs. I’ll probably do some more of those between other projects (currently working through Bretonnians and Deathwing).

In the meantime, happy hobbying and questing!

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