So after over two months of my Warcry starter set sitting on a bench in my hobby room, I finally found time to connect with Artoban over Zoom and we both opened up the boxes on the last day of the 100 Days of Hobby 2020 project thread.
Here are my initial impressions ...
1. There are 7 large scenery sprues. These alone are making this box worth picking up! There are so many parts, and these can be made into items for mix and match to create different looks to the scenery. There is an assembly booklet that seems quite useful for these scenery pieces, as well as for the figures. However, make sure that you wash these dudes in a bin of soapy water. I did, and there was definitely some grayish gunk coagulating in the soapy water after I pulled the sprues out for rinsing under a faucet.
2. For the figures there are in essence 12 half sized sprues as follows. The Chaotic Beasts are on 2 sets of the connected half sprues, and 2 half sprues. Meanwhile, each of the humanoid factions has 1 connected sprue and 1 half sprue. These figures are nicely detailed, and at second glance I noticed they will be a bit tricky to match the parts without using the instructions provided in the manual previously mentioned. Although, think I'm going to enjoy these, and more than first thought that I would. Both teams look like they are barbarians in nature. One team would fit in nicely with a Khorne army, could even probably be used in a 40K Chaos army of some kind. The other team might be used as allies in a Beastmen army, yet could just as easily be used in a Chaos army as Maurauders or whatever, too. Both teams would make great figures for enemies of role playing characters as well.
3. The game comes with a quick play set of rules and a Core rule book which looks awesome. At first look, the latter item, besides having the rules, has three, maybe more, different styles of play. Plus over 5 dozen different scenarios, most of which are looped together in sets of three for narrative play, match play, or whatever you might create on your own. I have just barely scratched the surface of these, and looking forward to reading through them. The scenarios are all with different terrain setups, and there are cards that look like a person can randomly determine what is going to happen on any given terrain scenario. It all looks like plenty of ideas and help for players to have some great gaming sessions. And I've got plenty of reading to do yet in this Core book.
4. There is a double sided game board that covers 30" x 22". It folds into quarters for easy storage in the box. One side is of grays and greens with blue and black highlights, which is beginning to grow on me. The other side is my favorite with it's tans and creams having red and black highlights. Looking forward to getting the scenery pieces done first, and eventually using this double sided game board. And by the way, the box that the game comes in seems well worth holding on to as a storage place for all the gaming material and figures, it is large and very sturdy.
5. There also are 5 decks of cards (haven't opened them yet), a board of tokens, 3 sets of 6 dice (in tan, red, and black), seemingly just enough bases for the figures, 4 large plastic storage bags with 2 smaller bags as well, and a set of faction attribute cards. Oh! And a nifty little 12 inch measuring ruler that seems way better than those measuring sticks that the old WFB starter sets would have inside, but only one is included here.
So ... after all that ... I have started with the scenery sprues first. My thought is these can be used with so many things and it does seem to be enough of a minor project to get this game up and moving in the correct direction for eventual completion. I am liking the two humanoid factions that come with the starter set more, but I also bought a Splintered Fang set of figures and considering painting those up first, but we'll see.