Sorry, no access to pictures (wife had access to the camera all day), but they have confirmed Dragons and Creatures as two sets they hope to have out by the end of the year. There are some links to pictures in someone else's post a bit farther down the board.

Creatures : Forest Giant, Rock Elemental, and Hydra--new mechanics for the re-releases of the old figs to have something for those of us that already have them, plus the hydra. Haven't seen everything yet, but I can confirm that the Rock Elemental is a Red banner! Oh, and the Forest Giant has a treetop home instead of a rock pile, and throws logs (but not sure if the mechanics are any different).

Dragons : Forest Wyvern, Ice Drake, and Fire Dragon--all new sculps, and not sure what the banners of any are. However, I suspect at least the Fire Dragon is a Red, due to it's summary card that I saw. Essentially, when it moves, it can fly and therefore move passed enemy spaces. Any spaces it crosses marked with it's breath, and when it lands, it rolls 4 dice against each target. Hits lead to the target actually being hit by the fire breath, with a special token attached to them. Didn't get the chance to see what it did, but it didn't sound nice.

Hopefully will get more of an opportunity to check everything out tomorrow, as I got shuffled out of the way for someone from a media site to take pictures of it and the War of the Ring Collector's Edition sitting right next to it. However, given that the BattleLore tournament was a wash, with no one else sticking around for the whole thing, I get to play against Richard Borg tomorrow, so plenty of time to ask questions and get things sorted out!

bcwMD said:

Great Idea! Give everyone the promo pieces but change them so those who already have them don't feel like they're buying the same thing twice.

Trump said:

The Forest Giant sounds like the same thing twice to me

Hopefully I'll get a chance to look at it a bit more today. And if not, I can always ask Richard Borg when I see him later.

Oh, and Heroes is here, and it looks great! I can't wait to sit down and play it!

What I want to know is why do the expansions for this game come out when I don't have any money? Oh well... maybe I don't really need health insurance...

(Which is to say, I can't wait to get this stuff in my hands.)

@ bvwMD

We are eagerly waiting for further news! Dragons, heroes.....

Especially your chat with R.Borg!

Thanks!

Well, Richard and Rob wiped the floor with our paltry forces in the final game today. A good time was had by all, though. Sounds like they're actually going to do a post about it on the site at some point (including pictures), so more in the future.

Dragons : Rob thought this was coming out first, but they didn't have any figs at the con (the factory didn't send them and adequate number of figs to preview). Fire Dragon is Red, Ice Drake is Blue, and Forest Wyvern is Green. Like all creatures, dragons can only be killed with a critical hit--however, the first threatening die against them is always ignored. So you need to roll two hits to trigger your critical hit roll, and always roll one less die than you normally would, making them even tougher! No word on their movement speeds, but they all have the Fly ability so can move past friendly or enemy forces (although any Lore cards that can stop their movement, like Web, cause them to drop to the ground and roll one die for a critical hit). The Fire Dragon marks every unit it flies over (no word on it's movement rate, but it sounded like it could mark multiple units), and then unleashes a 4 dice attack upon landing against each of those enemy units. No word on what else it can do, or what any of the other ones can do, but it will also apparently include a summary card for the Troll, for those who bought that fig.

Creatures : Creatures will include the Rock (Earth) Elemental and Forest (Hill) Giant figs (Red and Green, respectively), as well as a modular Hydra (by far the coolest, but I'll get to that). It also includes summary cards for playing the base set Spider as a Blue Widow Spider (not sure how it differs from the Green Spider except for banner color, but there is a scenario on the back cover of the instruction manual that has the French using one Spider on each flank). The Forest Giant only rolls 2 dice to attack, except when it's on it's Lair, when it can make a ranged 3 attack for 3 dice (cannot make this in melee, though). It also ignores all terrain restrictions for forests, making it even more mobile as a Green unit. The Rock Elemental's Lair appears to be a special hex that no other unit can enter (a Magical Vortex), and it requires you to have a Wizard of at least level 1 on your Council to summon. There is apparently a number of Vortex cards as well, but their role isn't defined. By far the coolest, though, is the Blue banner Hydra. It comes with 6 different heads and necks, starting with a single head and neck on each of three stumps. It's life pool is similar to the Troll's--every time it takes a banner color hit (no sword-on-shield or criticals involved), it loses a neck. When a neck is removed, it goes out of the game. However, at that point, every time it rolls a Lore, it gains a new neck--a bifurcating neck with 2 heads. It seems as though it's going to be limited to 6 necks (and therefore 6 "HP") total, unlike the Troll with its capacity for infiinite regeneration as long as it stays alive. However, given the ability to add new heads, I'm assuming the Hydra rolls extra dice for extra heads.

Unfortunately, they only had the test prints of a handful of the cards, and since they were test prints, they were only single-sided. They also only had the boxes and front/back exterior covers of the rules booklets, so a lot of this is incomplete. The goal is to have both out by the end of the year, though, so hopefully Rob will start giving us more info soon.

And as for what is coming out after this, Rob was pretty tight-lipped (obviously it's been a big push to get Heroes out in time for GenCon, and they need to finish these next two projects before moving on to the next), and while Richard certainly has a lot of say, it's still ultimately FFG's decision--which means no word on what army might be next, or when we might get Dwarf and Goblin deployment decks.

Oh, and with Heroes , I'll be doing a review on BoardGameGeek in the next couple of days, so look for that once it goes up. I will say though that a Rogue combined with Riding and Backstabber, with a Sword of Fear (I believe it was called), is an absolutely devastating combo--Richard took out most of our left flank with his Rogue embedded in a Rad cavalry unit. Five dice to attack, and once you start fleeing you're hit with a Fear effect so have to retreat extra and check for Panic Losses. Especially when combined with his unnatural dice karma leading off--I think the first 3 or 4 attacks with that unit were entirely composed of banner hits, sword-on-shield (slaughtering our opposing Hero), or flags. Three or four units on that side were simply anihilated, either from direct attacks or from the panic.

just a mini-reply before i go to bed ;-)

I like the forest-Giant, who can ignore the movement-restriction... so its not like the Hill-giant...

The rest... pretty cool!

Waiting for your review...

I noticed that the figures on display for Creatures were not the usual colors. The two previously released molds were in green plastic, while the hydra was a much darker gray than normal. I hope that was just for the test figures.

Actually, what excited me the most after initially spying these two sets on display was the troll card. When I spoke with the staff, they said it would be included with the stone bridge because buyers were jipped by having them printed on the paper mat in Troll and Country, but I was under the impression they would be included in Creatures, not Dragons. If they release simultaneously, it doesn't matter I guess. Until then I have Heroes to hold me over, and now have justification to buy Troll and Country finally.

Bitva--did you take the opportunity to read the bits of the instruction booklets they had out? It was only the front and back of each one, but Dragons specifically said it was including the Troll bridge and the Troll summary card (but not a bridge summary card, as that was available on the site), while Creatures would include new summary cards to use the spider as a Blue monster.

Oh, and Rob could neither confirm nor deny plans for race-specific deployment decks. Which I interpret to mean that they're in the works but not yet ready to officially announce yet, since if there were no plans they would just flat out deny it. But that wouldn't be out until 2010 at the earliest.

I didn't really pick up and touch anything other than the hydra, felt like I wasn't supposed to. I assumed the mock-up cards were for Creatures set only. Pretty disappointed that the stone bridge doesn't have a summary card though.

I think these work.....

Hydra http://twitpic.com/dvtff

Dragons http://twitpic.com/dvthy

I hope FFG also includes the terrain and rule cards for the Hill Giant / Earth Elemental in the creatures pack since i could not get my hands on a Hill Giant.

Doesn't sound like the terrain for the originals will be included, they're trying to provide the main things (figs) so that everyone has access to them, without making those of us that already have them feel like they're buying the exact same thing again.

Still trying to get my Heroes review up on BGG, had some sort of error that demolished everything but the first paragraph after I sent it, and haven't had time to get back to it yet.