Have you ever played a tabletop RPG but wanted to recreate your environments with 3D terrain? Well Archon Studio have recently released their Dungeons and Lasers range to retail after a couple of successful Kickstarter campaigns, allowing you to do just that! Essentially this is a modular tile system that can be used to create 3D dungeons for your games.

Archon very kindly sent us a selection of goodies from their first wave of retail releases to take a look at, all with a Sci-fi vibe!

Our full review will be coming once we have built, painted and have a proper play with the system – but we wanted to share our unboxing so you can take a look at all the goodies that you get inside each set! Check out the video over on YouTube below!

Sci-Fi Starter Set

First up we have the core Sci-Fi starter set that can be used to create environments for your games. It’s worth pointing out that not only will these work great for RPGs, but are usable for other systems too – I plan on integrating these into my Necromunda boards to represent some of the sprawling hive city!

Included in the box are a 3 frames of flooring tiles, 4 frames of walls and doors, 2 frames of accessories and scatter than can be used to give your environments some life and finally 2 frames of clips to attach these all together

As you can see from the above images these go together in quite an ingenious way, with clips that allow you to push the components together without glue – and with initial testing they are very sturdy, I can pick them up by the walls without the structure falling apart and need quite some force to separate them. This is great as it allows you to flatpack the entire set for storage, then clip them together for your games. We’ll be following this up with a full review once we have built and painted some environments, but initial impressions are very good! It’s also worth pointing out that these can also be assembled on multiple levels if you wanted to stack your dungeon higher – again something that will work for a Cyberpunk megacity or Necromunda style Hive!

Xenogenesis Cell

Something Archon Studio have done throughout their Kickstarters (And hopefully expand further with these retail releases) are offer additional themed rooms to further expand your dungeons

They also sent us the Xenogenesis Cell set which allows you to create a room that looks like it has been infested by Xenomorphs – while it is very green and orange on the box art, I think this will look incredible in a traditional Aliens colour scheme of blacks and blues. Again like with the core set you get an assortment of floors, walls and doors to put together a feature room for your games.

Xenodragon

But if you have a feature room you need a big monster to live in it…

This is where the Xenodragon comes in – a horrific combination of Alien Queen and Dragon in a multi part plastic kit! Have to admit these one is a little niche, but I am a massive Aliens fan and can’t wait to paint this one up in a suitably reminiscent scheme!

Animal Companions

The final set that Archon Studio sent us to unbox was another rather interesting one – Animal Companions!

There has been a lot of love online for things such as Dungeons and Doggos that allow you to create parties of pets to use as your characters in roleplaying games, and Archon have created a plastic kit that contains 24 animals with a 50/50 split on sci-fi and fantasy vibes! Want a Warrior Dog or even a spacesuit wearing Bear? Your dreams may well be answered with this set! Also included are a trio of mimics, one as a chest, another as a book and a final one as a vending machine! All the models in the set also have some gorgeous sculpted bases too!

Summary

As I said earlier in the article we’ll be doing a deep dive and full review into this set once it is built and painted, as I don’t feel we can fairly judge it until we have used it over a couple of games to make sure the pieces hold up after repeated use, but first impressions are great! This really is a brilliant idea for making gorgeous 3D dungeons that can also be boxed up and stored away between games, something you can’t always do with kits that have to be fully assembled before use. With the tile system Archon can also easily add future sets in order to add to the variety of the range. This initial wave is Sci-Fi themed, perhaps due to the ability to use it with other systems, but where I think this range will really shine is if they also release their fantasy kits, as I can see a lot of people investing in these sets in order to create some awesome looking dungeons!

These kits are currently available to order over on the Archon website, so make sure to check them out! Keep an eye open for our upcoming full review too!

Archon Studio provided Sprues & Brews these kits free of charge for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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