Sad, soggy and saturated

Oh the misery. Just a day after extolling the virtues of Battle Systems' new 3D cardboard dungeon set-up, disaster struck. On a rare hot and humid afternoon in Dublin I left the attic window open to let in some air. Of course the heat did not last long and within an hour or two, thunder was ripping through the sky and rain pelting down like machine gun fire on the roof.

And through the window.

Sad thing is, I had forgotten about the open window.

The real tragedy is, the newly-built 3D dungeon was directly beneath it.

It wasn't until the following morning that the carnage was discovered when we tried to leave the house and the alarm system informed us of an open window.

Uh-oh.

It is testament to the Battle Systems product that the whole thing had not completely dissolved by that stage. Walls were bent, bridges somewhat buckled, but remarkably:

1) The dungeon was still intact in terms of its overall shape

2) Most of the components, while soggy, were still in one piece

This was snapped VERY quickly before the whole thing was rapidly dismantled... you can see the bridge is about to break under the strain there! What a shame....

A very quick teardown operation and this is the type of scene I was left with... not what I was hoping for after I'd spent hours putting my pride-and-joy together!

A major drying operation followed which involved dismantling the whole damn thing, placing the card between piles of heavy books, and turning the radiators to max.

In fairness, out of all of the pieces, this is the only one that was absolutely destroyed, a doorway whose interior had buckled under the weight of two soggy stories above it and then the archway torn:

Not the work of a cave troll. But a mere bit of Irish rain.

I think that is a good indicator of the quality of the product! There was no peeling or warping, once I dried everything slowly and carefully.

It was pelted with rain for more than 12 hours and still the majority is salvageable!

In contrast, I had a couple of Wizards of the Coast DnD tiles nearby which also got  soaking. These have warped and peeled in a shocking fashion. I am going to have to jam them between heavy books for some time and glue the paper pieces back to the card, which is looking very tatty now. They are just about salvageable, with a lot of drying and glueing, but will never be the same again.

So the moral of the story is: Never open a window if you're in Ireland.

You're asking for something precious to be rained on.