Counters Rule!

Most of you know that I'm a big miniatures fan. I like to use them in my games and, just as much, I like to collect and paint them as well. I've got a quinjillion of them.

So it may surprise you that I'm going to take just a short moment and rave about counters, and in particular the counters put out by Fiery Dragon Productions. This is a rave rather than a review because: (1) It might appear to be a conflict of interest to review Fiery Dragon's counter collections when they've done one for Arcana Unearthed; and (2) I don't review things like miniatures and counters anyway.

But Monte, you ask, why would you give counters even a second glance if you use miniatures? I'll tell you. Counters can do a lot of things that miniatures can't. Counters pack up in a plastic baggie and get thrown into my bag for a game at a convention or somewhere where it would be inconvenient to lug around a bunch of carefully painted minis. Counters offer a dynamic way to show 15 dwarves and 25 goblins even if I've only got half that many (or less) painted. Counters are inexpensive and require very little work.

At GenCon, I handed each DM running an Arcana Unearthed event a Fiery Dragon World of the Diamond Throne Counter Pack. With little preparation, that DM could suddenly present a counter for each PC and display all the NPCs as well.

The Fiery Dragon counters have always reminded me of the counters offered in a lot of old Villains and Vigilantes adventures. I loved those counters and used them all the time playing that game and even other superhero games. (Even though, as a kid, I rarely used miniatures or anything like them, I always felt that visual representations were important in a game that modeled comic books, a very visual medium.) So I was very pleasantly surprised when I learned that that's exactly what inspired the Fiery Dragon crew to do counters as well. Those guys are really cool. (They even did Orc and Pie counters as a GenCon special!) I should point out that you can also get cool counters from Skeletonkey Games, as well as cool dungeon tiles.

While miniatures are even better to look at and are fun to paint, don't overlook those counter packs at the game store. Cheap, little or no work, they look great, and they're very portable. Counters rule.

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