Yes, I am a fan of DungeonCraft. Heck, I’m even a Patron. Since I’m getting back into the crafty side of gaming. I decided the next thing up should be some Ultimate Dungeon Terrain or UDT.

Now, this came out a lot darker than I wanted but it’s my own fault. I got heavy handed on some dry brushing then tried to do some fixes then got heavy handed on the black wash. And, yes, I know. It’s not perfectly round.

But there a couple more things that I’ve learned since I’ve done the first few dungeon tiles. I did get the blue XPS from Lowe’s and there’s a couple of things that I noticed and seemed to work out here. First, this does have a “grain” like wood. When you’re laying out the grid or doing similar detail work, it’s fine when you are going with the grain. But when try to go across the grain then those details seem to tear the foam. My solution is to use my trusty utility knife with just under an 1/8″ of the blade exposed. Simply scoring a line didn’t quite work as well as just using a gentle sawing motion.

Another thing I figured out which I haven’t seen mentioned else where about the Lowe’s XPS. Not only does it come with a plastic film on it which easily peels off. There’s also an additional sprayed on protective coating. When I did the first batch of dungeon tiles, they didn’t seem to take the texturing very well. For the UDT, I hit it with some 220 grit sandpaper. It’s easy to tell when you got this off since the foam won’t be shiny any more. This made the foam take the texture and other details better plus it should make the base coat adhere better.

So how does one use UDT? Well, I’ll Professor DM explain it.

I did do one variation on the instructions which seemed to work better for me. I left my foam square and used the edges as a guide for creating the rough grid and then I cut out the circle.

So how well does this work in actual play? Pretty good. If you’ve been keeping up I’ve running my game online with Owlbear Rodeo. I did up a map for VTT use and we’ve been using that. At first the players, were scratching their heads since they were so accustomed to counting squares and figuring out detailed areas of effect. But once they got it, they loved how easy and quick it was in play.

Thanks for stopping and stay tuned for more gaming craziness.