Post by Gilvan Blight on Sept 17, 2009 18:53:10 GMT -5
I recently picked up a set of Litko's 4e Status Markers and Bloodied Tokens. I got to try them out at the last Hugin and Munin D&D day. Here's what I thought.
Quickly: loved the status markers, wasn't a fan of the bloodied tokens.
Summary:
I made three different purchases from Litko Aerosystems. The first was a DM's set of status counters. This is a set of 33 1" plastic tokens in various colours. Each token has etched into it one or two 'effects' from the 4th edition rules. You will find everything from Marked to Restrained, Prone to Dying, Blinded to Deafened. Generally the opaque tiles are two sided and the clear are one sided.
My next purchase was a set of 10 Bloodied tokens. These are clear red plastic about 1" in diameter in a 'blood splatter' style of pattern.
Lastly I picked up a navigational compass. This is a nice solid piece in blue with cut out NESW on it and etched arrows for the diagonal directions. It's about 3" in diameter.
The Good:
The quality of everything was excellent. The plastic is very thick and the cuts and etching are perfect. I don't expect these to break any time soon and I can't see much less then rolling over them with something doing much damage to them. They are also free of any mold lines/marks and the clear tokens are flaw free.
I love the status tokens. I prefer them to every other marking method I have seen and used (the Alea Tools new and old, poker chits, small chits, heart tokens from board games, etc). The advantage these have over everything else is the fact they take up the entire 1" square and they are a good 1/4" inch thick without being too thick. This means that you can see the corners of them sticking out from the standard round mini bases and they are just thick enough to see a stack of them clearly without being too tall (I find the Alea ones way too thick, when you have a mob with 4 things on it, it ends up taller then all the PCs which just looks silly). I like the fact they are colour coated as well, and I have plans to colourize my status cards to match the colours of the chits. I also found they were useful for all kinds of things that aren't actually on the tiles. For example I used tiles that weren't needed in a combat to differentiate between identical minis (aka a brown tile under one Dire Rat, a orange one under another, etc). The bloodied tokens were also a nice thickness and I like the idea of the 'blood splot' shape, but they had a bad disadvantage.
The Bad:
The bloodied tokens tended to disappear under the standard D&D mini base. I really wish they had made them take up more space like the tiles. They could have easily made them almost 1" square while still having the splatter look. They still work better then 1" chips though, as they don't totally disapear and the thickness makes them stand out. Here I think red Alea tools markers work better though as they show up more. What I personally have been using is Health tokens from Fantasy Flight's Descent and I may stick to them.
The Ugly:
Nothing ugly about my first two purchases. My third was regrettably all Ugly. Besides not being the most aesthetically pleasing it's also pretty much useless. First off it was about half the size I expected it to be. Secondly it's very thick, which means the NESW that are cut from the plastic are very hard to read from any angle but above. These two pretty much make it pointless to me as I wanted to be able to put it on the table so that players who cannot reach the map/tiles could tell other people where to move their minis more clearly (something you really must try if you don't already do it, a compass on the table has saved so many "no not that right, right that way, no towards George, no no no!, Georges right side, there that's it!" moments.).
Overall:
So overall I was pretty happy with my purchases. The total order was under $30 including shipping (which was reasonable for Canada at a bit over $5) and showed up in less then 5 days. I really like the status counters and strongly suggest them. The bloodied counters I'm iffy on, I do like them and they are better then 1" chips but they could have been bigger. The one thing I can't recommend is their compass, I don't see why anyone would want one of these and regret the purchase. Now I need them to put out some Aera Effect and Zone markers like Armourcast just did!