I'm holding it in my hands as we speak (...er... as I type). It's spread out in front of me. I've already punched the boards and separated the cards out into boxes I've been saving for them. My FLGS was even kind enough to promise me the promotional posters and other swag after the initial sales run.

I have to say, the box is exactly how I imagined it from reading the diaries and speculation posts. Kudos to the FFG marketing team.

The presentation of the game is beautiful and the components are top shelf, as expected.

While I am still reading through the rules, I haven't had any huge surprises so far. The WFRP community did an excellent job of taking the information presented to them and extrapolating rules information.

Out of respect for the FFG launch and the dev team, I will not be offering any spoilers or information beyond what is presented here until Jay puts up the green light. In fact, I think I'll back up from my keyboard to avoid temptation. Suffice to say, the game is beautiful and is published exactly as presented here.

There will certainly be a slew of expansions for this game. I can't wait to see what's next.

Did I say there were no surprises? Aight... There are a couple.

I'm scheduled to run it at our store on saturday morning. I'm excited to expose the our local population to the disease that is the warhammer roleplay world.

jh

I picked mine up tonight, and have been browsing it. I agree, all the materials are top-notch ... including the rulebooks inside and out. While not hardcover, they are pretty sturdy feeling.

I have done a once-over of the rules. Much is exactly as has been presented in the diaries. Additionally, there are quite a few things I was pleasantly surprised over, and excited to use as a GM, that haven't been mentioned (or explained) in diaries yet. I'll wait until after Saturday to post more specific thoughts, once I've run the game a couple times and others have had a chance to play the demo as well.

Definitely kudos to FFG so far!

I had the opportunity to briefly read the books, and see the adds last saturday.

And sorry guys, but I can't fully agree with You, that all material are top notch.
Well, most of them are, but some unfortunately are not.

There are some suppraises . Most are good, but there are also a few unplesant ones (and one very unplesant in my opinion).

I surely expected more after the diaries (well marketing did its part), but it can be also translated into "I expected too much".

I will get to that "what I like, what I do not like" after the green light .

One thing I can surely say that I like is the core mechanic.
I already made some houserules (because I like to, and I change every system I get to better fit my style), and think of few more (need of course test them to see if they work).

All in all, I think, that with a little bit of work, and a few addons, this can be a great system.

Dammit, I envy you all!

*sniff*

I hope someone sets up a **** WEB CAM this Saturday!

The anticipation is going to give me a stroke.

It's killing me not to be able to talk about this. The Injury, Death, and Healing rules are superb (grim and gritty indeed). I can't believe so much information is crammed into so little space, it's very well formatted. The artwork is... Gah. *NezziR shuts up*

No web cam here, but I will take plenty of pictures and get a write up in the new forum as quickly as I can.

P.S. For the record, there are things I wish had been... fleshed out more, but that's what expansions are for. My overall impression is extremely positive.

Gah in a "GAHH! " way, or in a "...gah... " way?

TELL MEEEEE

Gah! as in, 'I need to shut up before I spoil all the cool surprises'. The artwork is typical Warhammer art - you want to look at it till your eyes bleed There a couple of pictures I've book marked and keep flipping back too over and over.

Thank you for that edit. I was having an aneurysm.

You've saved a man's life today.

NezziR said:

After reading a bit more, and doing some cross system research, I may have jumped the gun on that - disregard.

This are a few standard, spoiler free questions for you lucky so-and-sos who have the game already:

1. Is the card stock for all the bits and pieces the same kind as the ones in Arkham Horror? I love that stuff.

2. What is the paper texture of the character sheets? Do they look like they're easy to write on? Or are they glossy like Character Folios for Dark Heresy and 2nd Ed. WFRP?

3. Did the contents smell nice when you first opened the box?

Necrozius said:

I don't have Arkham, but I do have Dracula and Descent. The card stock is the same quality - think, colorful, and solid. It has a slight texture to it and is slightly mat in finish. Very nice.

The book bindings seem solid and the finish is also mat, so it won't get all funky with hand oils. I'm VERY careful with all my books, so I may not be the best judge. I'll encourage people to handle them at the demo though and I'll report any broken bindings or damage. From what I see, they are as good a quality as any non-hardback book I've seen.

The character sheets are not glossy. They do appear to have a faint coating on them, but testing show that you can write on them perfectly (unlike the V2 character folios, if that's what you are worried about). They also seem to erase well. There is a slight background color on the sheets. After 4 or 5 erases you can see that it is faded, but the text and lines are still intact. I tested it just for you

Now that you mention it, the box had NO smell to it. I'm a little disappointed not that you have pointed it out. I'm a big fan of that 'new book' smell.

Note to self: Start a petition to have smell added to the boxes.

I'm not seeing any substandard components here. My only observation is that they are a little smaller than they look in the pictures. It just seemed larger in the photos Still, worth the price of admission IMO.

NezziR said:

Excellent, thank you. That was a big worry of mine.

...another question ...

How are the "Character" boxes? They look pretty cool in the photos...

Necrozius said:

You fold them up yourself (they come flat). They close well (but don't stick/lock so they won't tear when you open them). They have a semi-gloss finish and great graphics.

There's an Empire Skull/Shield/Weapon one, a Chaos Star one, and a Comet one. they all look great.

Necrozius said:

1. Comparable to Talisman I would say.

2. This is the one of the things I do not like in the 3-rd edition core box. Surely gave me a bad impression.
They are sooo small, that I'm not sure if my players can fit a name of their characters on them. I knew there were supposed to be small, but not THAT small.
Did not put them to the test unfortunately (only reading and watching), but its unlikely I'm using them (more likely, that I make some myself in paint and print them).

3. I was not the first person to open the box, and did not even thought of smelling it.

About character boxes. I did not have time to watch them, contents of the books were more interesting

Sunatet said:

I'm hoping that you mean the FFG version, not the Black Industries one (ugh).

Oh, before I crash out - THE ART!

You can imagine it's amazing, but they've included some classic art in the books. There is a full picture of the WFRP1 book cover, front and back. There's also a print of the WFRP2 cover. There are also prints of some art I never thought I'd see again, like the box covers from some of the really old WFB stuff.

There's a lot of artwork in those old products that really deserves to be seen again. It's a shame that so much of it is sitting under layers of dust in gamers closets. I was really glad to see it reprinted

I hope my enthusiasm is rubbing off on everyone. I'm having a blast

Edit: That's not to imply there's not a lot of new art - there is, and it's amazing. Salute to the new generation of Warhammer artists. May you inspire todays gamers like John Blanche and Ian Miller inspired me back in the olden days

Heck yes! I love the old art. Glad to see that it's in there!

Necrozius said:

Yes FFG version .

And as NezziR said, THE ART IS TOP NOTCH.

The cards are almost exactly like Arkham Horror. Big size and the smaller size, and of the same high quality. The smaller size is still easy to handle, and easy to read, yet still with plenty of information on them. The cardboard tokens/standups/etc, as well, are made out of the same thick high-quality stuff Arkham counters/standups are made out of.

I haven't done much with the character sheets, since technically this box isn't mine (yet). I agree they feel a bit small, being used to full-page character sheets. However, I don't find they are too small to write on nor read. It's just that there isn't much space to take notes and stuff. Of course, a smaller sheet means less space taken up. When I laid out all the stuff for the demo PCs, each one took up about as much space as any other RPG character. It just was a bit more horizonal than vertical, if you lay it out "correctly" (ie career card to the side of the character sheet, and talents socketed on the side of the career card). You could certainly arrange your layout differently, be just as effective, and not take up any more space. Honestly, it doesn't seem to me that it will take up much more space then normal.

Yes, the art is very nice.

The dice!

I had a bad experience with the dice in the Doom boardgame: the paint wore off most of the symbols!

Are the symbols on these ones indented or set INTO the dice, if you know what I mean?

Yes, the symbols on the dice are set in pretty well.