Okay, no pictures here, just some quick notes:
1. The box is huge!
2. After considerable unpacking, roughly equivalent to my Falcon Northwest uber-PC, the inside wooden case is quite beautiful to behold.
3. WARNING!!! Do not open the lid past 90 degrees! There is a warning inside saying this, but by time you read it, you've probably already flipped open the lid 180 degrees. ARgh! This was poor design, as you essentially have to use one hand to hold the lid vertically upright while you extract the contents. If you go past 90 degrees, then hinges chew into the soft wood and paint of the box cover.
4. My box cover was apparently scratched at some point, then filled with putty and touched up. The result is pretty noticeable, depending on the light and angle. I've requested a replacement, but I'm not holding out any hope. Overall, its not a disaster, as the overall look of the cover is a weathered leather book, and the scratch isn't inconsistent with this.
5. The box is very, very fragile and won't withstand too much handling or trips to friends houses. Lots of corners and edges with soft wood and easily chipped paint.
6. Rulebook is thick leather bound, sort of like a high school yearbook with pages approaching card stock thickness. Very nice.
7. Paint jobs.... Well... not as good as I would have hoped for, IMHO. Sort of what they would look like using quick dunking and rough macro painting. Sort of like Heroscape figures, only perhaps a bit worse.
8. The cards... They're huge. I'm not deshrinking these until I have sleeves.
9. Black dice now for Shadow; White for Free Peoples. Personally, I prefer the original colors.
10. The bonus box with re-painted Aragon and Gandalf the White turned out nice.
So..... Wow. This Italian masterpiece edition board game certainly impressive to look at, but like a fine Italian automobile, fiddly, impractical, hard to maintain, and not something you'd just take up the block casually. What does everyone else think?
Labels: War of the Ring
