A while ago, there was a kickstarter. I have to admit that me getting off of Ks, makes me miss a lot of shiny stuff, and Eldfall Chronicles was one of them. The reason for this is that as a retailer, I mostly look for projects that either have retail support or have shelf life outside the platform. This, however, completely flew by me. Was it unknown or just outside my interest, who knows. After the success of the ks, I could not evade them any longer, but I persisted, till now.
From my printer/ design background and education, I feel ashamed that I have missed this one… Without saying anything about the game itself, this game is a gem to behold and here’s why…
How Eldfall Chronicles and Freecompany found me
Wargaming is a small niche within a bigger business on the production side. Although there are not a lot of companies that know each other, there is a lot of contact in the world that the retailers know and vice versa. Sometimes, there are people popping up in the weirdest places that you never expect, looking at you, Gary! Meant as a compliment, you truly are the Droopy of the war gaming world!
Anyhow, this representative contacted me because he knows our shop quite well by now, but also saw I wasn’t working with Freecompany yet. Once again, the talk was about Eldfall Chronicles. This time, however, there was something that triggered me…
For the more loyal readers like you are, bragging about the models by a company, made me send the dreaded mail (see this blog for explanation) and, like the creators of Dungeon Digger (this blog), they nailed the part by sending me a starter set.
As to the others reading this and thinking of contacting me… This is how you make friends and a demo set on the floor in one go!
Winning where others fail
As stated before, I have a background in design and printing, leaning to the printer side. This is due to the fact I refused to learn my stuff back in the day. We had two choices. Hands-on and design, but for design you had to learn certain things and that… well… Let’s just say I fancied partying above learning stuff. Getting older, and I guess wiser, I got to have a soft spot for well-designed product, and this is where we eventually end up with Eldfall Chronicles.
Why am I saying this? Well… there are a lot of things companies do to market their product, but almost none of the companies care about the biggest attraction of their product. Packaging. Look at your own stash of plastic, resin or whatnot these days. A plain old dumb box with awesome content.
When you go into a bakery, what attracts you the most about the delicious food that is offered? Right! Presentation, and that is exactly why I want to talk about Eldfall Chronicles.
Let’s talk Eldfall Chronicles Unboxing
Yeah, I know, I’m taking the yapping far in this one, but it had to be said before the actual topic of this blog is addressed. We need to unbox this beauty of a product. Let’s go!
So, before even seeing the contents of this box, there is a beautifully presented product in the form of a box with sleeve. The sleeve is embossed with golden trim and richly detailed colors, and the logo of the game attracts the same kind of attention. This makes it a whole and the product therefor looks quite attractive.
Taking the sleeve off, we find the total opposite of color usage in the form of a black box with the same embossed trimming. The sleeve is the most attracting part of the closed product, so we move on to opening the box.
After opening, we find the basics of the game. A commercial flyer for the game, a softback manual (living one, downloadable), and the second thing that makes this game stand out from the rest. The tokens are high quality and thick.
Below the token cards are the 2 faction boxes, with the same high quality in printing, without embossing. In the middle of the box, we find a monster, in this case, a huge water elemental.
Below the faction boxes we find a deck of cards for the models and 2 sets of 2x D20’s in the colors of the factions. This is all presented in a durable plastic tray that is intended to use more than just taking it out of the box to never use again. It seems this box is also used as storage when you eventually buy more Eldfall Chronicles.
The models of Eldfall Chronicles
The stars of the show and the reason this unboxing exists. The models that got me into Eldfall Chronicles in the first place.
I’m not sure until we finally built them, but it seems these models are about 32mm true scale. A nice scale and without an overkill of details, quite paintable. They didn’t lie about the Unicool quality! These models are crisp and almost no mouldlines in sight!
Another thing to note is the pretty solid bases with sockets that fit the model’s feet pins. Under the bases we find sockets for magnets.
Since the models will get their own shine in the form of a painting blog, so we won’t spend a lot of words on them this time. I find the total package more interesting than giving the models the spotlight this time around.
As to what I have seen from Eldfall Chronicles
Simply said, if the game is only half as good as the packaging, the packaging did its work! This also means you get an awesome game! If you are in for the minis, you are better off just buying the faction starters, since you don’t need the rules. If you are in for more than just 4 minis and don’t mind taking 2 factions the first buy, you are better off with the starter, as you get everything and a model extra for the same price!
From what i have seen, this product, at the time of writing this, is an underrated product that deserves a bit more attention than it gets now. Let’s see if I can retain this thought when i have built, painted and played the game.
Keep an eye out for these blogs as we traverse the world of Eldfall Chronicles. The box that was sent contains the essentials, the Coalition of Thenion and the Sand Kingdoms. Included was the Water Elemental as the monster.
Next up… Paint pens…? And more Eldfall Chronicles
