Unboxing: Star Wars Edge of Empire Beginners Game

On Thursday the first (outside the beta) of Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars line made its way into my local FLGS. The Star Wars Edge of Empire Beginner Game. This is a $30 box designed to introduce players to the Star Wars RPG, and perhaps new people into the hobby. It harkens back to the old days of beginner sets for games. It's colourful, simple and contains everything you need for a good few hours of fun.

Like many of the Fantasy Flight RPG boxes of late (using Wargammer Fantasy Roleplay as an example) the box isn't entirely filled with the contents. A cardboard sleeve is used to bulk out the box and to contain the dice separately from the flat contents. 

As is normal for a Fantasy Flight box set, we get a copy of their latest catalogue  though why it's Summer 2012 I'm not sure. 

From a game contents perspective we get a main rulebook, emblazoned with the instructions to read this last.

In keeping with its style of being a beginners game, each of the booklets (with the exception of the character folios) contains a notice on the cover indicating the order in which to read them. So despite the fact they were packed in a completely different order I'll go through them in the order they're to be read.

First up we have the Introduction Sheet. This gives a short overview of what is a roleplaying game for the uninitiated, along with a two page spread of a game sample (we've all seen these before.) On the back page we have the traditional Star Wars scrolling text that serves as an introduction for the adventure included with the game.

The Read Me Second is the Adventure Book. The Adventure Book is a ready to play adventure for the GM. It quite clearly explains the rules as it goes in the areas of the adventure where they will come into play. Additionally the adventure contains a lot of suggestions and information for the various paths the players may take during the course, intending to cover as many possibilities as it can. This should help reduce a beginning game masters workload when running a game. 

Since this is designed as a beginners game it comes with pre-generated characters. There are four in total, each comes as an 8 page full colour character folio. These folios contain all the characters stats, along with details on the rules relevant to the players, information on experience advancement and details on how the dice work.

 

There are four characters. A Twilek Bounty Hunter, a Wookiee hired gun, a human smuggler and a freed droid colonist. 

  

Coming up after the Adventure Book there is a two sided flyer. One side is simply an advert for the full game book coming out in Spring 13, and the main side tells the GM to go to the Fantasy Flight website to download a new adventure that continues after the one in the box set. 

The Final Read Me booklet is the main rulebook (pictured earlier in this article.) This 48 page book contains the rest of the rules that the players and GM will need to continue more adventures outside of the limited set needed for the introductory adventure. While obviously this won't be as comprehensive as the main book that will come out next year, it seems on a quick skim it should be sufficient for now.

Rounding out the box set we have a double sided fold out containing maps. One side of the Krayt Fang, the players spaceship, and the other side of three locations in the adventure.

Additionally there is a set of popout counters that are produced to the same high quality as Fantasy Flights normal board games. They represent characters, NPCs, vehicles and starships in the adventure.

Rounding out the box are the custom dice for the game. Again, these are high quality dice up to the normal standards.

So all in all you get a decent amount for your $30, especially as a beginner set. Looking through this all I would say this is a perfect box set to get for anyone you're trying to introduce to the world of RPGs. Also if you are interested in the game for when it fully comes out next year, this may not be a bad investment though the dice will be available separately at a later point so I wouldn't get it just for them.

Unboxing: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition

A couple of weeks ago I did a successful and popular unboxing for Second City for Legend of the Five Rings. In a local sale last week I picked up a copy of Fantasy Flight's Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition box set and thought that even though it's a couple of years old, I'll still do an unboxing for it. Like the Second City one, this is not a review.

So the box for WFRP 3rd edition is huge. While deeper than the Second City one at 30 x 23.5 x 11.5 cm, it actually weighs a few grams lighter at just under 3kg. It's still a heavy box though.

 Upon opening you are presented with the top of the stack and a catalog for Fantasy Flight Games

So the contents break down as follows.

• Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay Rulebook: The main game rulebook (96 pages) 
• Tome of Mysteries: A book dealing with magic and related rules (48 pages)
• Tome of Blessings: A book dealing with religion, gods and priests and associated rules (48 pages)
• Tome of Adventure: A GMs book dealing with topics like campaign play, creatures and NPCs, tracking games and includes a 28 page introductory adventure (96 pages)

•  3 sheets of heavy card tokens. These break down into
• 48 tracking token: triangular tokens that come in four different colours
• 6 stance rings: rings that your character base fits into to tell if you're cautious or reckless
• 6 activation tokens: to indicate if you've taken a turn or not I believe
• 2 large standups: monster figure standins for a troll and an ogre
• 47 medium standups: card standins for players, NPCs and creatures
• 39 fatigue and stress tokens
• 40 puzzle-fit stance pieces: used for tracking various items during the game
• 5 puzzle fit centre pieces: used as the hub for the puzzle pieces (don't ask me, I haven't read the rules through completely yet)

•  5 wrapped sets of cards in three different sizes. These consist of
• 154 action cards (small cards)
• 70 wound cards (small cards)
• 45 talent cards (medium cards)
• 30 condition cards (small cards)
• 30 insanity cards (small cards)
• 30 career ability cards (medium cards)
• 19 miscast cards (small cards)
• 12 location cards (large cards)
• 1 item card (not sure, but I think it's a small one)

• 30 double sided career cards/sheets
• 1 pad of paper double sided character sheets
• 4 party sheets

•  3 character boxes: since there are many components that a character may use in any game, boxes are provided for players to keep them all together until the next game. A good idea if you use the components in your game

•  36 custom dice
• 12 plastic bases

So you get a fair amount for your money. Even though this looks like you're unpacking the latest version of Arkham Horror, this is an RPG and a quick glance through the rulebook supports this. I look forward to reading it and giving it a run through.

Unboxing: Second City for Legend of the Five Rings

Since I couldn't go to GenCon this year, like everyone else I had to wait for all the goodies to hit the streets through the regular channels. One of the items I was strangely waiting to get my hands on was Legend of the Five Rings: Second City Boxed Set. Now when originally announced I wasn't entirely sure I would get it due to the main setting now being in Rokugan but outside the Empire. However being the collector that I am, I felt I had to get it anyway no matter what my logical mind may have told me.

Upfront information, this is not a review but merely an unboxing and overview of the product. I believe the street price for this is $79.99 US, but I managed to get it from 401 Games in Toronto for $68.

So what do you get for what is still an expensive piece of RPG material. Well first off lets start with the box as a package. All 3+ kgs of it (yes, 6.6 lbs of box set). For reference that's over 200g more than the Ptolus book for those that have it. This is certainly the heaviest RPG box set I've ever purchased, and is heavier than many of the modern style board games. It measures 23.5 x 8 x 30 cm and can be seen below.

So, onto the contents. The box contains, in order top to bottom of how it arrived. Unless otherwise noted, the items are regular full paper sized.

• A cloth drawstring dice bag with the new L5R logo on it

• The City: A 98 page plus covers book guide to the city
• The Campaign: 106 page plus covers campaign set in and around the city and the colonies
• The People: 106 page plus covers guide to NPCs and organizations.

• The Journal of Yogo Tanaka: a 16 page digest sized journal, I'm assuming it's a handout for the campaign
• An unlabeled 20 page digest sized pillow book. Not sure if this is just flavour or a handout again.

• A GM screen: A hardboard 2 full panel and 2 3/4 panel GM screen. It is the same GM screen that was released previously from a content and art perspective, but this one is sturdy and stiff unlike the previously released light card one. Very welcome

• A large 8 page sized unfolded poster map of the city

• 6 Premium Character Logs: 8 page plus covers full size high quality character sheets similar in concept to the Travelogs they released for the second edition. I hope these are released for general sale in packs as well as I'd hate for these to be the only copies there are.

• A pad of character sheets: Full colour 2 sided character sheets. 50 by my count. An odd addition in these days of household printers, PDF downloads and easy photocopying, but welcome nonetheless

• Dice: 10 jade coloured D10 with the Imperial chrysanthemum logo replacing the 10 (see above for photo with dice bag)
• Stance Cards: 30 stance cards for the various combat stances, 6 of each representing each of the 5 elements (Full attack, attack, defense, full defense and center)
• School Technique Cards: 140 cards representing the techniques from the various schools in the game, one for each rank technique. I don't know if this represents all of them, but it is at least the core rulebooks including the minor clans and Spider Clan.

All the books are full colour and match the style we've seen in the other 4th edition products to date, there's been no skimping on quality here to bring costs down on the box.

So all in all you get a lot for your money. Once taxes are include this cost me just slightly more than the main rulebook so it was cheap for the content. From a first glance, this is a fabulous box and seems well worth having. Now to get around to reading it.

(Note: next time I think I'll use a white tablecloth rather than those patterned place mats, they're so distracting.)