Gen
Con Treasure
Okay,
I talked last
week about some great memories from the convention,
but I thought it worthwhile to actually point out some
of the products at Gen
Con that seemed great. The thing is, since I do a
review column infrequently,
I'm only going to discuss the stuff I liked that isn't
the kind of thing I normally write reviews about. In short,
no standard d20 products.
The
Gamer's Bag
I never really cared about dice bags before. Maybe it's
because when I game it's usually at my house, but I never
felt the need to have a special bag to tote my dice. I
had some green thing with a broken leather strap, and
I didn't really care. Then I got one of the Gamer's Bag
"yuan-ti skin" bags with an elegant red drawstring
(with gold tips). It's big enough to hold 300 dice, and
sturdy enough to do so for a long time. I'm hooked. You
can check them out at RPGShop.
Fiery
Dragon Counters
As James from Fiery
Dragon said as he handed me some of their cool counters,
"I know you're a miniatures household, but..."
See, I love miniatures. If you don't know that yet, you'll
know it by the time you read the stuff below. However,
the Fiery Dragon counters, illustrated by Claudio
Pozas, are fantastic. If I didn't use miniatures,
I'd be all over these things. As it is, I'm still happy
to have them. I gave some to my non-miniatures-using DM
friend for his birthday a few months ago. At Gen Con,
I got their Dragons set, their Demons
and Devils pack, and one devoted to Tribes,
Clans, and Cults. They're both great looking and extremely
game-useful.
Reaper
Miniatures
As I said last week, I love these guys' miniatures. For
straightforward D&D "got to find a mini for my
character" miniatures, Reaper
is the company to beat. They do great monsters too, though.
I got a dragon called Verocithrax and it's freakin' huge.
It's more than 9 inches tall and 12 inches wide (the wings).
If you ever wanted to have a half-fiend dragon in your
game, Verocithrax is your man. Er, dragon.
Crocodile
Games Miniatures
I mentioned WarGods
of Aegyptus last week, too, but I'm going to mention
them again. I particularly like the hawk-headed Heru
figs, and the Anubi
warriors. And if you're more interested in Greek stuff
rather than Egyptian, rumor has it that WarGods
of Olympus is in the works!
Hundred
Kingdoms Miniatures
Check these guys out. Hundred
Kingdoms is a new game, but that's not why I'm talking
about it (I have no idea how it plays). It's the miniatures
that caught my eye, a whole bunch of different armies.
Some are human -- which is fine I suppose, but you've
seen them before. The exciting ones are the other armies.
Cat
people (great for litorians),
insect
creatures, and -- best of all -- ape
warriors. These guys look like Planet of the Apes
meets Gladiator, and baby, that's all kinds of
good.
Confrontation
Miniatures
I love these hard-to-find French miniatures. I got a bunch
at Gen Con. I particularly like the tigers of dirz (big,
bipedal lizard-wolf things) and the huge skull-headed
earth elemental. I also got some skeletons, which is really
odd for me because I'd pretty much sworn off undead figures
(because I've got dozens painted up and many more to paint
than I'll ever get to). The thing is, though, Confrontation
skeletons are just so well sculpted and posed.
1999
Miniatures
Yeah, I got a lot of miniatures at Gen Con. So sue me.
These new miniatures are from Cell
Entertainment. They are sort of science fantasy minis,
but for my use in Ptolus, that's
great. They look very nice and have a really different
feel than many other minis, but I've got to warn you --
they're huge. They must be 35 to 40 mm easy. If you use
these guys alongside your other minis, they'll look at
least 7 feet tall. But a creative DM can deal with that...
The
d20 Ranger
No, not that ranger.
This ranger is a pair of clear plastic strips marked with
the ranges of common weapons and spells that get cast
in the game, assuming you are using the common 1 inch
equals 5 feet scale. (Ever thought it was weird that we
measure miniature height in millimeters and miniatures
distance in inches?) These things are great. Want to know
how many range increments your archer has to worry about
to fire at a foe? This thing will tell you in seconds.
Does he have line of sight? You can use this for figuring
that out as well. This comes from BoneMan
Press. Soon, they're going to do specific spell-area
templates as well. Cool!
What
did you think was cool at Gen Con? Share your thoughts
with the rest of us in the Line
of Sight message board forum.
