FAL General: Happy New Year!

Well, a new year is approaching and I am starting to find time when I'm not working. This means I'm looking forward to another year of gaming, which I have been most fortunate too get done in spades that last couple of years.

This years it's been mostly the latest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, with mixed success from my part but a hell of a ride for the group. We're picking it up again sometime in January, tackling paragon levels and Revenge of the Giants.

I have also played several games of Citadels over the year. It is a brilliant game, quick to learn and with engaging gameplay. Look forward to an in depth review of this game and Fury of Dracula which I picked up yesterday, sometime soon.

Apart from that the big thing waiting to be tried is of course the third edition of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. We're planning on giving it a whirl in January, and with the arrival of The Adventurer's Toolkit the option of playing a Rat Catcher is once again open ... but the players have said they'd rather play a career that does not give me extra incentives to have sewer based adventuring, so we'll see what they'll go for in The Ongoing and Spectacular Adventures of the Wilhelms.

And of course, the iAltdorf map will be updated in January.

But until then, have a happy new year!

/Magnus

WFRP: Unboxing WFRPv3

I got the box home a few days ago, but haven't had the time to look more closely at it nor its contents. I did an unboxing with photos, but I guess most of you have already seen other pictures of the game. Still, this might give you some more insights into the package and the components included.

The box is big and thick and a bit intimidating:


There's an external slip cover with a "lid" that opens up to reveal more details about what's inside. The lid is help shut by two pieces of velcro:


A shot of the box from the side, the lid open. I'm not sure what I think of the logo. A bit too metallic for my taste:


First edition, second edition and third edition:


The covers of all three editions in plain view. They are all good in their own ways, but I'm a bit sad that third edition didn't do the spiky hair dwarf motive as well:


The slip cover. As you can see, the box itself is wrapped in protective plastic. Which is good, because the slip cover was scuffed and somewhat defaced:


Top lid of the box removed and placed to the side. First thing I noticed was a catalog for FFG's other games:


The four rulebooks and two plastic bags of cards and counters. You also see the cards in different stacks:


Another view of the cards and a glimpse of the extra ten-sided dice. You might notice that everything is resting on some card stock that's inside the box:


The card stock has now been removed, for your viewing pleasure:


Under the compartments of the card stock I found the character sheets, more cards, dice, plastic stands and the three player boxes:


Here are the three player boxes folded and "assembled". The dice are standard size six-sided, shown for scale:


Here you see the box placed in my bookshelf (showing roughly 10% of my gaming collection). It looks really out of place there, so I might rearrange the whole thing, especially when more boxes are aquired:


Well, that's my first unboxing!

/Magnus

WFRP: First impressions

So I went to my FLGS today. They know me there, so all I had to say was "you've got something for me". The reply was "a big box?". Sure thing, WFRPv3 comes in a big box. It feels massive, it is massive. If this had been released way back when, I would have been totally floored by it. I really like the package.

Unboxing it (pictures to come) revealed a box half packed with stuff. Some padding, but after trying to put it all back, the box was crammed. Well, that's life. The pieces and rulebooks and everything looks really neat. Really, really neat. They've avoided some typographical errors that plagued the BI releases, which is nice. They are reusing a lot of art which is ok in my book, but a bit disappointing.

Initial impression is that it looks cool, that it heaves closer to WFB imagery than earlier editions but that it tries to appease the WFRP fans of yore by introducing some familiar themes. One peculiar thing I haven't seen mentioned is that they stuck in a bag of extra ten-sided dice, since they deemed that the original dice didn't measure up quality-wise. A bit odd, and I'm not sure what to think of it. Nice that they put in the extra dice, a bummer that the original set didn't hold up ... it's one of those things that won't bother the fans, but will be forever used as fodder against WFRPv3 by the most vocal of critics.

Ok, that's the initial impressions. I'll post pictures later.

/Magnus

WFRP: And a new campaign is announced

Popped over to my RSS reader, and saw that FFG has announced a new campaign titled The Gathering Storm. Read more about it here. Bound to be interesting and comparisons to The Enemy Within and Paths of the Damned are inevitable. My guess is it'll be better than PotD but not so good as TEW (without SRiK and EiF).

More thoughts on this as more info is revealed. Or when I had a bit of thought about it, whichever comes first.

/Magnus

WFRP: WFRPv3 has arrived!

So WFRPv3 has arrived. At my FLGS at least. Got an email notice just now and I can pick it up tomorrow, if my work schedule allows it. After that I will start posting my impressions, probably in a series of posts, with plenty of pictures. It'll take some time, but I want to give it a fair shake before burning it at the stake ... erm ... extolling its virtues ... or something inbetween, most probably.

Interesting times.

/Magnus