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Saturday 31 October 2015

Dungeon Saga & Anniversary present

On Thursday I got a rather surprising delivery at work. I knew Mantic were starting to pack and post out the Dungeon Saga campaign, but wasn't expecting them to get through to mine quite so quickly. It looks like their strategy of the two prepacked cartons was a brilliant one that I hope they reuse again to streamline other campaigns.

The book boxes are really good and will provide a fantastic way of storing the tiles and tokens; though I think they will need some stronger way of sealing them as the weight is going to pop them open fairly easily. Some nice dividers will also be needed to keep all the parts neatly organised. A nice little laser cut card holder would go well in here.

The resins are excellent casts with little to no visible lines. Material wise they are a little grainy when you cut them; very similar to the resin used by Forge World. They are a lot less flexible than the resin Blaine for the Kings of War campaign, which is good as that one is threatening to bend under it's own weight. The one weird thing is that the resin characters are a lot taller/bulkier than the plastic versions that come with the game. I suspect there is a lot of shrinkage between the materials. With most characters it isn't noticeable, but the halflings look like 15mm figures! Still nice sculpts though, which is a massive step forward compared to some of the other Mantic games. The doors and furniture are great additions to the terrain box.

The only real bugbear with this one is the distinct lack of proof reading in the Adventurer's Companion. It is full of mistakes and is, quite frankly, a bit of a disgrace. Not only are all the page references in the book "See page XXX" instead of the actual page number, but some words are missing or, in one case, one of the Race descriptions is a copy/paste of another description. Thankfully all of the actual rules in the book seem to be fine.

All in all, I'm really pleased with this one. Mantic managed to deliver a nice looking game with some fantastic models and rules that are easy to understand. If they could just hire a proof reader next time around it will all be good.

To make the weekend even better, today I got an amazing present from my wife for our anniversary... every Sharpe book with the new pulp style covers! That should keep me quiet on the train for a while  to come! :)


3 comments:

  1. I opened my DS box yesterday and I agree fully. The minis are fantastic. Even if I never get a game of DS in, I'll get my money's worth of fun painting them.

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    1. Just don't venture into the minefield that is the KS comments section regarding the state of the Adventurer's Companion and KS bonus adventures ;)

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    2. I am staying well clear of that mess! Even when a company gets everything right, some people go off on one. When a company actually screws up...it just gets silly.

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