My Core Sets arrived yesterday and I got my first look at the new game.
The big, Flashy rule book is pretty nice. Expecially like the inclusion of pictures of all three world champions. The eight pages of advertizing at the back of the rulebook is ok with me. First rate effort.
I REALLY like the plastic Cthulhus ! They are much more solid and substantial, and better moldings than I expected. I will paint up a number of the extras for use as statues in my CoC role playing games instead of gluing them to posts in the company parking lot as previously threatened. I will also have to purchase the seperate box which contains the smaller ones as soon as they are available.
The packaging is just FINE. Previous loud complaints about the cardboard insert seem to me like the skinny-end-of-nothing-whittled-down-to-a-point. I'm going to put the cards in plastic boxes by faction, so no matter how cool a vac-formed plastic insert might have been, eventually all the cards wouldn't fit in it, and I'd have eventually thrown it out anyway.
New art is shiny and great !
The "game board" is better than I expected, nicely designed, understated, spooky-looking, and gets high marks from me.
The counters are just counters, but it was clever to put different icons on either side of each one.
Now for the loaded one - - - white borders.
I immediately fell deeply in love with the white bordered Deep One Assault card.
How can that be? - - - - Well, I put away all my black bordered cards some months ago, and have apparently forgotten how cool they look, because the white borders finally seem ok to me. And DOA is still such and EEEEEvil card, no matter the color of the edges.
Those are my first impressions. Other opinions?