Review: Battlemap Trenches

Okay, so I just bought my first "pay what you want" (PWYW) product, which is Battlemap: Trenches from Lord Zsezse Works.  I decided to pay about 50% above the listed average for the product because I felt it was worth more than the average.  The main reason I bought this product was to go with the WWI RPG "dungeon crawl" rules I've been working on.  I thought it would be nice to have some professional, full-color trench tiles I could make trench systems with quickly.

Anyway, on to the review.  This product comes with one pdf with twelve 6-inch (150mm) full color terrain tiles, and two images (gridded and ungridded) of the completed trench map you can make with it.  The artwork is high quality and there is a lot of nice detailing throughout.  They have duckboards on the trench floors, sandbags on the parapets, and random bits of equipment and supplies.  For my purposes of a WWI setting the 55-gallon oil drums don't look quite right, but that's just a quibble from my particular perspective.  (Actually, the 55-gallon drum was patented before the war in 1902 by lady journalist Nellie Bly, but visually it gives the impression of a WWII/modern setting.)

After looking at the twelve tiles more closely I was disappointed to find that they are not a fully geomorphic set.  It's more like they drew up a scene of a section of trench and wire out front, then cut it into twelve pieces with little regard to where the cuts went.  It's actually more of an encounter map.  The company does make another set which does appear to be a proper geomorphic set.  I may buy that one later.  I think this would be a better product if it used more geomorphically designed tiles.

So, if you're looking for an encounter map, this should do nicely.  But if you're looking for a set of fully geomorphic tiles, buy something else.