JoeGKushner
Adventurer
Well, I finally broke down and used my battlebox. See, at Gen Con, I saw the battlebox and ponder it’s use. I saw several people buy it and heck, one of my friends visited from Chicago and bought a copy. I figured hell, he’s got one, I don’t need it. Still, I went to the booth on Sunday and tried to buy one only to discover that they sold out!
My friend didn’t use his too much. He busted out some of the spell effects and liked to show off the tin but really didn’t get into it often. Due to time constraints, we stopped gaming recently and in a campaign I’m in, I’m playing a mage so I decided, what the heck, it’s time to break down and buy a copy.
For those wondering what I’m talking about, the battlebox is a set of counters and other goodies from Fiery Dragon. These counters handle things like the mount spell, or spiritual weapon, where the caster summons a weapon to fight for him. Now in the game we just played, I didn’t get a chance to use everything, but I did pull out the burning hands, flaming sphere and more importantly, the fireball counters.
While those that are smaller or counter sized are put on heavy cardstock paper, the bigger spells, like the fireball I talked about, come folded up in the box and have to be cut out. I’ve been telling myself that I need to scan it and transfer it to a transparency so that I can see the figures effected by it, but so far it hasn’t been a real issue.
I don’t know all the spells contained in the box. I’ve mentioned a few I’ve used, but I did see stuff for various cone shaped spell effects as well as other favorites like the lightning bolt spell. All I know is that there are a lot of spell effects.
That might not be enough for some people. The new DMG includes some spell templates. The miniature company Magnificent Ego has made several miniatures to represent spell effects ranging from spiritual weapons to various hand spells. They look pretty good but are much more expensive and of course have that added factor of being breakable. I love minis but man, I get tired of the touch ups on those actually used in the game.
Thankfully, the counter includes more than just the spell counters. See, the group I’m with is pretty good, but they do a lot of non-standard fighting. They try things out like disarm, bull rush, and trip. The tin includes little reference cards with all of the rules to resolve these odd ball situations on them. At the game where I was messing with the Dungeon Stamps, the GM looked up Grapple, Bulls Rush, and a few others to see what happened in different circumstances. That’s a useful tool. Anything that prevents you from having to pick up another book or find some table on a screen in an easy to use format, is a good tool.
There are some other goods included here. There’s a pad of mini-character sheets, perfect for tracking common NPC’s that the players may wind up fighting that also includes some room for a grid map. There’s a little d20 that I’ve put into my car’s ashtray as a kind of good luck charm. There’s a little Battle Box book that has rules for an Alert Factor and a Pursuit System. Both are from previous Fiery Dragon adventures and can be put to good use by a GM willing to use ‘em. There’s also a generic battlemap, a huge grayscale map with squares set up for standard play that’s on a fairly sturdy paper.
I don’t like cutting things out but I love this thing. I’m not going to use everything all the time, and I have other options for some of the goods. Nothing beats a nice 3-D Grasping Hand that I can put on the table for a nice visual effect. However, the counters are easier to carry, are less expensive, and don’t need retouching.
The wide variety of material here insures that most GMs, or players of spellcasters, should get something out of this purchase.
My friend didn’t use his too much. He busted out some of the spell effects and liked to show off the tin but really didn’t get into it often. Due to time constraints, we stopped gaming recently and in a campaign I’m in, I’m playing a mage so I decided, what the heck, it’s time to break down and buy a copy.
For those wondering what I’m talking about, the battlebox is a set of counters and other goodies from Fiery Dragon. These counters handle things like the mount spell, or spiritual weapon, where the caster summons a weapon to fight for him. Now in the game we just played, I didn’t get a chance to use everything, but I did pull out the burning hands, flaming sphere and more importantly, the fireball counters.
While those that are smaller or counter sized are put on heavy cardstock paper, the bigger spells, like the fireball I talked about, come folded up in the box and have to be cut out. I’ve been telling myself that I need to scan it and transfer it to a transparency so that I can see the figures effected by it, but so far it hasn’t been a real issue.
I don’t know all the spells contained in the box. I’ve mentioned a few I’ve used, but I did see stuff for various cone shaped spell effects as well as other favorites like the lightning bolt spell. All I know is that there are a lot of spell effects.
That might not be enough for some people. The new DMG includes some spell templates. The miniature company Magnificent Ego has made several miniatures to represent spell effects ranging from spiritual weapons to various hand spells. They look pretty good but are much more expensive and of course have that added factor of being breakable. I love minis but man, I get tired of the touch ups on those actually used in the game.
Thankfully, the counter includes more than just the spell counters. See, the group I’m with is pretty good, but they do a lot of non-standard fighting. They try things out like disarm, bull rush, and trip. The tin includes little reference cards with all of the rules to resolve these odd ball situations on them. At the game where I was messing with the Dungeon Stamps, the GM looked up Grapple, Bulls Rush, and a few others to see what happened in different circumstances. That’s a useful tool. Anything that prevents you from having to pick up another book or find some table on a screen in an easy to use format, is a good tool.
There are some other goods included here. There’s a pad of mini-character sheets, perfect for tracking common NPC’s that the players may wind up fighting that also includes some room for a grid map. There’s a little d20 that I’ve put into my car’s ashtray as a kind of good luck charm. There’s a little Battle Box book that has rules for an Alert Factor and a Pursuit System. Both are from previous Fiery Dragon adventures and can be put to good use by a GM willing to use ‘em. There’s also a generic battlemap, a huge grayscale map with squares set up for standard play that’s on a fairly sturdy paper.
I don’t like cutting things out but I love this thing. I’m not going to use everything all the time, and I have other options for some of the goods. Nothing beats a nice 3-D Grasping Hand that I can put on the table for a nice visual effect. However, the counters are easier to carry, are less expensive, and don’t need retouching.
The wide variety of material here insures that most GMs, or players of spellcasters, should get something out of this purchase.
