I’ve been building out my collection of terrain for the Marvel Universe Miniatures Game (“MUMG”) to ensure we’ve got a good selection for gameplay, as well as to take interesting photos for the blog. I’d seen several Knights of Dice kits at different stores around Melbourne and thought the buildings looked cool and well executed, so decided to pick a few up to try out and build out a city table.
I ended up starting with 89 Moore St, Dainty Sichuan Restaurant and the Golden Dragon Inn kits, giving me a solid start of a Chinatown table – ultimately I’m hoping to build a ‘Big Trouble in Little China’ table, so if anyone knows where I can get a MUMG scale prime mover to make the Pork Chop Express out of, please let me know.
The Moore St tenement building was a good size, however it has no external ladders or stairs so effectively acts as a giant piece of blocking terrain if you aren’t a flyer or wallcrawler. Dainty Sichuan was a beast of a kit (especially as I got an extra level for it as well), and has a massive footprint on the table, so not sure how it will come together on the table with others. Golden Dragon Inn was a very cool kit and is a good size, with both it and Dainty Sichuan are able to be pulled apart into separate levels, so can have people move internally up and down. One benefit to the size of the Dainty Sichuan building is that with some appropriate internal pieces (like bars, tables, kitchen, etc) you could play a game inside the restaurant which would provide an interesting dynamic.
The assembly of the kits was relatively straightforward, and most of the pieces popped out easily without needing to cut them. They also included handy pop out tools to push out some of the smaller details which made it even easier, although I initially didn’t realise that was what these were for, including a quick note on the instructions as to the usage would’ve been handy. The instructions were clear for the most part, and some also included handy tips for assembly like using clamps (I used some foldback clips I had handy, but you could also use clothes pegs to similar effect) or rubber bands or using reflective card for windows. The small stair cases were slightly fiddly to get aligned properly, but not as challenging as other building kits I’ve built.
That said, I’m not sure I’d recommend these to beginners, though, as there were some oversights on the instructions (like installation of the ground floor for Golden Dragon Inn not being in the instructions – I only realised when I was cleaning up and had to search through the rubbish for the supports), as well as not being clear on certain elements which looked very similar. That said, the kits didn’t require much clean up and fit together nice and snugly. In fact, I skipped some prep work which would’ve made the final builds look a bit better (like sanding back connections where windows punched out) for expediency.
Once together, the buildings are incredibly sturdy, with the double walls providing extra protection against wobble. The levels on Dainty Sichuan and Golden Dragon Inn come apart fairly easily, whilst still feeling solid once together.
The final buildings are well detailed, look amazing, and will bring a cool vibe to the MUMG games we play on them in future. I’ve started painting them (as you may have seen on my Instagram page), and will detail some of the ins and outs of that in a future post. I’d definitely recommend these kits, but be aware they are slightly more complicated and so not necessarily a beginners build.
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