Saturday, December 9, 2006
Opening the box
My (first) copy of BattleLore arrived the other day, so let’s have a good long look at the packed contents of a BattleLore box (and the two promotional miniatures):
First impressions? The quality is stunning. I haven’t seen any photographs that have done justice to the detail in the miniatures—they really have to be seen in person to be fully appreciated. As expected, a few of the miniatures in the second layer were a bit bent, but ten minutes with the hot and cold water technique fixed that problem easily. While the plastic trays are great, it’s virtually impossible to remember where all the banner bearers belong in the trays, so instead I’ve moved the bulk of the minis into a plastic compartmentalised box and kept the second tray for banner bearers. As I’ll be getting a second set I plan to use one box for minis and one for everything else.
The game truly is ready to play: no punching out counters and tiles, no fiddly work applying stickers. The rulebook is 80 pages of full colour, packed with examples and beautiful artwork, perfect-bound with a matt celloglazed cover.
The artwork throughout is top-notch. I especially like the fine detail of the grass cover on the Battle Board (much nicer than the somewhat painterly look of the Memoir ‘44 boards, in my opinion). When flipped over, of course, the board becomes one half of an Epic sized board, and the possibilities for huge battles are certainly very exciting.
Now, I’m faced with the daunting task of painting this huge selection of finely-detailed miniatures. Quite a job, but I think the game will be justify the effort and painted miniatures really do enhance the experience.
Time for the battles to begin ..!