[REVIEW] DSL Ironworks "Quick Decks Full Bundle"

[DickNervous]

What:	DSL Ironworks Quick Decks Full Bundle
What is included:	Quick Decks 1: Starter Pack Quick Decks 2: Expansion Pack Quick Decks 3: Bay Weapons Quick Decks 6: Frontier Starports
Where To Get It:	DriveThruRPG.com
How Much:	If purchased Individually: $22 Bundle Price: $10 (Save $12!)
Format:	Watermarked PDF

Description of Product from DriveThruRPG:

Starships aren't built in a studio; they're forged in the Ironworks.

In a hurry for a 25 mm deckplan? Don't have time to sit down and draw one up? Then Quick Decks are for you. In this Starter Pack you will find 26 pages of pre-drawn map tiles scaled to 25 mm. Simply print, cut them out, and arrange them to build a starship properly scaled for miniatures. Each tile has it's own grid, the type of tile, and approximate displacement in Traveller tonnage listed on it, making it easy to build ships on the fly.

- Greyscale images to speed up printing and save on printing costs.
- Completely scalable vector graphics - tiles can be printed at virtually any size, with minimal loss of detail (requires Adobe Acrobat X).
- Tiles can be used to lay out all kinds of ships, from small craft to multi-kiloton vessels.
- Future expansions to the line will add more options, and expand your ship-building capability to new dimensions. Current plans include tiles for hangars, launch tubes, barracks, armories, bay weapons, and more. Also in the works are tiles for buildings, terrain, starports, and space stations.

Why am I looking at this product?
I was looking for something to help with my Traveller campaign as a visual aid. Something that will allow the players to really get into it and be immersed in the world. I decided that using minis and scale maps would be perfect and set out to find resources.

One of the things I came across was a set of products by DSL Ironworks (who I am sure you are all familiar with from their "Bastards of Foreven" line of products) called "Quick Decks" and decided that I would check them out.

My Description:
They are based on a 25mm scale and each pack has a variety of pre-drawn sections of a ship and they cover pretty much everything you could want. There are staterooms of varying sizes (2x2, 2x3, 2x4, 3x3, etc) and layouts. Common areas, bridges & cockpits, you name it. Here is a quick rundown of what is included in each pack:

The Starter Pack (Quick Decks 1) has 26 pages of pre-drawn ship sections and includes everything you would need to layout the deck plan of a typical ship. Some examples are small quarters, large quarters, corridors, walls, airlocks, bridges, vehicle, bats, and so on.

The Expansion Pack (Quick Decks 2) has an additional 27 pages of ship sections that add even more variety, layouts and sizes. In addition to more of the things in the Starter Pack you will find briefing rooms, low and high tech versions of a library, brigs, sensor modules, armories, barbettes, blank rooms, boarding equipment and much more.

Bay Weapons (Quick Decks 3) has a variety of 50 ton bays for you to use. There is an empty bay plus ones with 8 different bay weapons, all for both upper and lower decks (so 18 different 50 ton bays). There are also empty 100 ton bays (for and aft sections) and a bunch of additional counters.

Frontier Starports (Quick Decks 6) is over 45 pages of sections to build your own frontier star port. It included road sections, landing pads, control centers, warehouse areas, and way more.
​

What I think:
My first reaction to opening the PDF files was "Whoa! There's a lot of stuff here" and I was a bit overwhelmed as to where to start. But then as I looked at each page in detail I realized that it wasn't all that bad. There are two approaches you can take to using these.

Print Everything!
One approach is to print everything out, cut the pieces, and store them for use when needed. This would be a lot of work, but you would have all the tools for building pretty much any deck plan you wanted on the fly. The Pros and Cons to this approach are:

Pros:

• Can build any ship at a moments notice
• Will have a wide variety of available parts
• Get everything done at once

Cons:

• It's a lot of printing
• Cutting everythign will take a lot of time
• Hope you have plenty of Xacto blades
• Keeping the pieces organized can be a challenge
• Need over 100 sheets of cardstock

​

If you can keep them organized and have the time, than this is definelty a good option. I, however, know full well that I am nowhere near that organized and will end up with a ziploc bag full of small pieces of card stock that I would have to sort through, just like my son's LEGO collection. So I went with Option 2:

Pick a Ship to Build:
I am running the "Pirates of Drinax" campaign and decided to build the decks of the ship the players get, a Drinaxian Harrier. So I pulled up the plans provided and started to identify that pages in the first two packs that I had the sections I needed so I could print them out. Once identified I printed everything out on some nice light blue 67lb paper and promptly handed it over to one of the players who has a lot more spare time than me to put it together.

Pros:

• Less paper required
• Less cutting required
• Less time consuming
• Less Ink required
• Easier to organize

Cons:

• Way less flexibility
• Can only build 1 ship
• Will have some spare parts left over

​

Ideally if you are doing this you will want to "mount" the deck pieces onto a bigger surface so that they stay together. I would suggest either oak tag (if you want to be able to roll it) or foam board (less portable). Either way you will probably want to use some 3M Spray Mount adhesive or something similar and then get it laminated.

What I like...
I really like the variety of sections and the quality of the drawings. It looks really nice printed out on the 67lb paper I got, even the colored pages. At first glance it looks like you can build pretty much any ship layout you can imagine. The details of the items in the rooms such as the furniture, electrionics, chairs, books, weapons, etc is top notch and really brings things to life much better than if you simply wrote on them what it is. They even provide the dTons for man of the sections right on the edge!

What I didn't like...
To be honest, there isn't really anything to not like about the product. That doesn't mean it is perfect though, and I will address that in the next section. But I can't really think of anything that was bad about the Quick Decks.

Summary
Bottom line is that I really like the Quick Decks and the entire concept of them. They are pretty easy and straight forward to use, look great, and if you print on nice heavy paper, will have a pretty good life span, even longer if you decide to laminate. There doesn't seem to be any limitation as to what you can build with these products as long as it has a "typical design" (ie: Is not an "organic" ship, has typical sections, etc). If you wanted to show the walls of a ship that is an asteroid or organic structure it would be difficult since everything is pretty much smooth lines (straight or curved).

Here are a few ideas I had that (IMHO) could add value and help first timers get results faster:

1. Sample Models: Provide a list of pages you would have to print and a photo showing some of the most common ship layouts (such as the Type S Scout and Beowulf Free Trader) to help people get started.
2. Possibly add a 3d papercraft model of these ships like the one shown in the images for QD Pack 6.
3. More Descriptive Index: Provide a descriptive index or even thumbnails to help users find specific sections faster
4. Allow for users to add comments, notes, and annotations that can be printed with the pages. Possibly even on the back
5. For the starport in particular, a big picture of how it could be laid out

Overall Verdict: Successful Jump!
I really like these products and hope the DSL Ironworks comes out with more similar products. I would love to see somewhat generaic ones for making planetside locations and more detailed once for specific types of ships similar to what they do for the "Bastards of Foreven" ships that they have released.

I will update this with some "action shots" when we use them with my group.

PS: If you are wondering about Quick Decks 4 & 5, they are ship specific decks for the DSL Ironworks "Bastards of Foreven" setting that, from the images, include a 3d paper craft model of the ships. They were not part of this bundle and since I am not using the "Bastards of Foreven" setting at this time I didn't purchase them.

 

[DickNervous]

Wow, 109 views and not a single comment.
Is that good or bad? Should I do more reviews of stuff I buy?

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Go Team Feedback!

Keep up the good work. Loved the "Jump Succeesful!" rating, both looking forward to seeing more reviews and other cool ratings. It is nice bit to see how folks use the stuff being made so I hope to see those action shots.

Hope you feel vindicated now and thus be motivated to write more reviews. :devil:

 

[DickNervous]

Thanks Magnus!

I will post pics once we use them, and will do write ups of the other items I purchased recently during the DriveThruRPG Game Master sale. There were quite a few.....

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

You're welcome.

No thank you, it was a very pleasant, well written and useful. Pretty much what a review should be.

 

[navanod]

I just spotted this...

I just stumbled across this thread; I've been elbow deep in the Bastards of Foreven lately, and haven't had as much time to check in here as I'd like. (Yes, I'm the face behind DSL Ironworks). I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for your review of the Quick Decks line. I'm very glad you like them. It's nice to see a review of them; we've sold a bunch of them, but there seems to be a dearth of reviews for them.

With regard to your suggestions

"1. Sample Models: Provide a list of pages you would have to print and a photo showing some of the most common ship layouts (such as the Type S Scout and Beowulf Free Trader) to help people get started."

This is a good idea, one that I'm definitely going to work on implementing. Perhaps individual products covering the parts for a specific ship, i.e. 'here is what you need for a Type S (scout/courier or seeker)".

"2. Possibly add a 3d papercraft model of these ships like the one shown in the images for QD Pack 6."

QD6 doesn't include a 3d paper model, are you referring to the A2 outline in the hangar layout on the cover?
On a related note, 3d paper models of some of the ships in Bastards of Foreven are being contemplated...my biggest stumbling block at the moment is learning about pepakura and the software to unfold the models (and what NOT to do to a 3d model to make it hard to unfold). I'm not sure what scale would work best, or what the interest is would be. These could range from small models printed on 2-3 pages; a simple type-S unfolded at 28 mm scale runs 36 pages as unfolded by Todd Zircher on the Traveller FB page.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tangent-zero.com%2Ffiles%2Ftype_s_taz_02.zip&h=IAQGp3GIM

Another possibility I've considered is 3d paper models of the tile parts themselves, complete with full or half height walls, props, etc for a truly 3d deck plan. Not sure of the interest level for something like that.

"3. More Descriptive Index: Provide a descriptive index or even thumbnails to help users find specific sections faster."

I'll agree with that; the organization of them needs work. I'll see what I can do about that at some point.

"4. Allow for users to add comments, notes, and annotations that can be printed with the pages. Possibly even on the back"

This could be a tricky one. After a rather short exploration of acrobat, I'm not sure there is a way to implement this easily, if at all. I will, however, explore the options in this regard.

"5. For the starport in particular, a big picture of how it could be laid out".

I thought about this as well, and will see if I can get it implemented sometime soon.

Again, thanks for your review, comments, and ideas; I appreciate it a lot. And when you get some pics of them in use, I'd appreciate it if you could send them along to dslironworks@gmail.com; I've been trying to get some for a while.

Donavan L. (dslironworks)

 

[DickNervous]

I just stumbled across this thread; I've been elbow deep in the Bastards of Foreven lately, and haven't had as much time to check in here as I'd like. (Yes, I'm the face behind DSL Ironworks). I just wanted to take a moment and thank you for your review of the Quick Decks line. I'm very glad you like them. It's nice to see a review of them; we've sold a bunch of them, but there seems to be a dearth of reviews for them.

You're welcome! As you can see I am pretty happy with them, and I know that unbiased reviews from customers is the best form of advertising. Besides I also look at this as a way to give back to the awesome community here.

With regard to your suggestions

"1. Sample Models: Provide a list of pages you would have to print and a photo showing some of the most common ship layouts (such as the Type S Scout and Beowulf Free Trader) to help people get started."

This is a good idea, one that I'm definitely going to work on implementing. Perhaps individual products covering the parts for a specific ship, i.e. 'here is what you need for a Type S (scout/courier or seeker)".

"2. Possibly add a 3d papercraft model of these ships like the one shown in the images for QD Pack 6."

QD6 doesn't include a 3d paper model, are you referring to the A2 outline in the hangar layout on the cover?

Yeah, I realized it was just an image when I purchased the QD5: Salient-Class Patrol Frigate. I edit that in the original since it was my mistake.

On a related note, 3d paper models of some of the ships in Bastards of Foreven are being contemplated...my biggest stumbling block at the moment is learning about pepakura and the software to unfold the models (and what NOT to do to a 3d model to make it hard to unfold). I'm not sure what scale would work best, or what the interest is would be. These could range from small models printed on 2-3 pages; a simple type-S unfolded at 28 mm scale runs 36 pages as unfolded by Todd Zircher on the Traveller FB page.

http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tangent-zero.com%2Ffiles%2Ftype_s_taz_02.zip&h=IAQGp3GIM

Another possibility I've considered is 3d paper models of the tile parts themselves, complete with full or half height walls, props, etc for a truly 3d deck plan. Not sure of the interest level for something like that.

Since I wrote this I have been on sort of a mission to find good visual aids to use in my campaign including 3D paper craft models of all types. One thing I have learned is that they can be both outrageously cool and detailed and ridiculously complicated to build. Some examples are made by a company called Dave Graffam Models. They makes ones that are nice and simple like a small bunker to the ridiculous.I don't think that adding 3D to the basic QuickDecks is really worth it to be honest.

For the actual Bastards of Foreven ships it is a different story. For those it might be worth making a scale model. I have seen some from Genet Models that are pretty cool. If you are having issues figuring out how to do make the models it might be worth checking out what he has done or even contacting him.

"3. More Descriptive Index: Provide a descriptive index or even thumbnails to help users find specific sections faster."

I'll agree with that; the organization of them needs work. I'll see what I can do about that at some point.

"4. Allow for users to add comments, notes, and annotations that can be printed with the pages. Possibly even on the back"

This could be a tricky one. After a rather short exploration of acrobat, I'm not sure there is a way to implement this easily, if at all. I will, however, explore the options in this regard.

I am trying to remember what I had in mind when I wrote this. Getting things to print on the back would probably be tricky, and it would require a printer that can do duplex. But on the front possibly use Acrobat comments or adding form fields?

"5. For the starport in particular, a big picture of how it could be laid out".

I thought about this as well, and will see if I can get it implemented sometime soon.

Again, thanks for your review, comments, and ideas; I appreciate it a lot. And when you get some pics of them in use, I'd appreciate it if you could send them along to dslironworks@gmail.com; I've been trying to get some for a while.

Donavan L. (dslironworks)

My group only play every other week right now (though I am trying to change that) so it might be a while, but as soon as we used them I will get pics and send them to you. Also, feel free to contact me directly via dick@nervoused.com if you want to discuss anything in more detail. I've always been full of cool ideas for all kinds of things, but never have the time (or proper skills) to make them happen.

Also, I'm going to go back to DriveThruRPG and post a shorter version of this review for the bundle.