Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="omedon" data-source="post: 2008896" data-attributes="member: 837">Counter  Collection IICounter Collection II is Fiery Dragon Productions second foray into the world of cardboard counters, and it is a resounding success. With the advent of a solid grid based combat system in 3E the need to accurately represent the various D&D monsters and your characters is greater than ever. If you don’t have the money or patience for miniatures, but are tired of forgetting if the D12 attacking your characters is supposed to be the goblin or the orc, these counters should be right up your alley. The art for the counters is done by the talented Claudio Pozas, EN World's very own. If you would like to see a sample of his work you can have a peek at his <a href="http://www.d20reviews.com/pozas/fdp.html" target="_blank">site</a>.What do you get for your $14.95? 8-pages of die-cut counters. 416 in all, 75 of which are unique character counters perfect for PC’s or NPC’s. The remaining counters are made up of over 75 distinct creatures and monsters. For a list of all the counters found in CC2 look in the Fiery Dragon Products section on this <a href="http://karathis.2xs.de/" target="_blank">site</a>. The price per counter comes out to roughly 4 cents, a very good value. An 8-page booklet detailing 3 Prestige Classes and 4 new magical swords is also included as an added bonus.Counter Collection II has a greater focus on higher CR creatures than the first incarnation. It sports a number of demons, devils, dragons, hags, golems, and giants. Where in the first Counter Collection you would often find 15 or 20 of one kind of creature CC 2 rarely sports more than 5. This is not a problem however, because with these higher powered creatures you won’t likely need very many of each in any one encounter. It also means that you get a larger variety of counters and more artwork.Some interesting changes have made their way in this time around. Dragons now come in both Large (1x2) and Huge (2x4) sizes including Large sized copies of the Dragons which appeared in CC1, Tiny (1/4x1/4) sized animals such as rats, owls, and ravens have made an appearance, and there is a large emphasis on unique NPC’s. While the PC races and classes represented in CC1 were all carbon copies of one another you will find no duplicates in CC2 each NPC counter is a completely unique drawing.The Good:75 unique character counters 37 of which are human. The rest of the 75 are made up of 14 elves, 8 dwarves, and 4 gnomes, half-elves, halflings, and half-orcs. These were the deciding factor in my decision to buy this collection, and I am very glad I did. I am not a big fan of all of Claudio’s artwork but he does seem to excel at drawing characters. All of these counters look great, my players should be able to pick out a relatively good likeness to match their character concept, or perhaps even inspire one. All the character counters my players don't use will also make handy NPC’s.I wasn’t in fact disappointed with any of the art; it varied from good to great. The artwork in CC2 seems more refined, overall an improvement over CC1. I felt that Claudio did a particularly good job with the dragons; they looked fantastic. The elementals threw me off at first; I would have preferred it if the same style as the other counters was used, but they have grown on me. They have an otherworldly sort of look that makes them stand out so you don’t confuse them with a typical creature. Which is good in my opinion, it should make them easy to find on the combat grid. The look of the elementals resembles the style used in the 2E MM rather than the new style 3e depictions. I will have no problem using them in my game.The Bad:Too many dragons. While they are wonderful drawings and will look very imposing when used in a climatic encounter there are just too darned many to justify their place in the collection in place of more common enemies. There are two huge dragons of each type. I am sure that there are many certified rat bastard DM’s out there that are just ogling at the chance to send a whole dragon family after his PC’s but I am not one of them. I feel that one huge dragon should have been used to represent each type (Bronze, Copper, Blue, Green, Silver) rather than two, making way for a greater variety of smaller counters that are more likely to find their way into the average D&D game. If there was one huge sized counter of each rather than 2 that would be 40 more medium sized counters that could have been in the set.Also a couple of monsters were under represented in my opinion. Namely the Troglodytes, Kuo-Toa, and Yuan-ti. Particularly the Troglodytes, and Kuo-Toa, which are CR 1 and CR 2 races respectively. In CC1 low CR races such as these were found in abundance (10-20 of each) making it unneccessary to purchase multiple copies of the collection unless your were planning to run very large battles, while in CC2 only 5 counters of each of these races are included. It does not make sense that they would appear here with such low numbers especially since both of these monsters are from tribal societies and are often found in large groups. While having small CR creatures, that make up the bulk of CC2’s counters, appear in small groups is fine it doesn’t fit for these two races. Either higher CR creatures should have been in these monsters place or they should have had more counters in this one (perhaps in the steed of a few huge dragons). Hopefully FDP will remedy this in the upcoming Counter Collection 3 by providing us with more counters for both of these races.Conclusion:Counter Collection II is a great alternative to miniatures in terms of portability, variety, convenience, and price. While it is not as good as it could be it’s flaws are relatively minor merely preventing it from being outstanding, in fact if you have the means I highly recommend picking one up. It is so choice.CC2 is very solid and useful product, a great value for your gaming dollar.I give it a very strong 4</blockquote>

Verification