Inside the Entry Pack you will find 16 plastic minis, each individually wrapped in plastic and each with a corresponding stat card; a rules summary sheet for rolling up your sleeves and playing right away; a battle grid; 8 terrain tiles (2 assembly tiles, 6 feature tiles); D&D "Skirmish Rules" booklet; Damage counters a 20 sided die and a checklist. I will exam each of these individually.
The coolest part is the minis. From what I've read, WotC intends upon including one rare mini in every Entry Pack and Expansion pack. The first set of minis they are releasing are from the Harbinger set. There are 80 minis with approximately 30 rare cards and a good number of uncommons. It would probably take close to 30 expansion packs to get all the minis (each expansion pack runs for around 10 bucks). This, like all the other collectable minis, could become an expensive addiction real quick. The Harbinger set consists of 80 minis and is based upon artwork from all three core rulebooks. Different sets will be released later. The next set will focus on the Draconomicon.
My 16 consisted of a Man-at-arms (which will pass for the Paladin I am currently playing), Sun Soul Initiate, Axe Sister, Dwarf Axefighter, Elf Archer, Human Wanderer, Gnome Recruit, Human Commoner, Orc Warrior, Orc Spearfighter, Half-orc assassin, Crested Felldrake, Skeleton, Wolf Skeleton, Drow Fighter, and an Ogre. I got a good mix, but the quality of my 16 varied from good to awful. On a scale of 1 to 5, most of the minis get a solid 3, with two ones (the Gnome Recruit and the Crested Felldrake), and one 5 (my Ogre is pretty kewl). It should be noted that I'm not comparing these to lovingly hand painted minis. I didn't expect them to stack up to hand painted and they don't; however, for what they are, they are overall pretty good.
Each mini comes with a double-sided stat card. One side has d20 edition stats and the other is for the Skirmish Rules. The cards are useful for both sets of rules. Personally, I will use them as handy reference cards when running encounters and some of the more figure specific cards will become ready made NPC's. I would have liked the cards to be more attractive. They are black and white with a sketch of the figure on the d20 side. Full color art would have been more eye catching.
I tried playing right away by going off the rules summary sheet. That didn't work out so well, but on the up side, I played it with my 8-year-old. Not understanding the rules myself, I just reverted to standard D&D and we fought head to head fights for 45 minutes. He thought that was pretty cool, and I was happy to find a way to get him interested in one of my favorite hobbies (I'm cultivating future gamers). The rules summary sheet is fine, but you must read the Skirmish Rules first in order for it to be helpful.
The Battlegrid is a neutral "dungeon" gray one-inch grid. It can be used for both d20 or the Skirmish rules. It is not as hip as my Chessex Battlemat. However, on the back it has spell templates that can be photocopied and used to represent spell radius. This is a wonderful, yet simple tool. I've used them in a session, and instantly ended a discussion on rather a player's sleep spell would effect a group of creatures. Simple lay the template on the battle grid where it would be cast and there is no more argument. If the enemy/ally is there then he is there. No questions. Simple. The templates work just fine with my Chessex battle mat.
The terrain tiles are nice, but there are only 8 of them. I hope that WotC will have more available later (perhaps as a free download from their sight?). I checked and my Dungeon Floors from Steve Jackson Games work well with the minis.
The Skirmish Rules are a bit sketchy. I had to re read the line of sight rules and movement rules a couple of times. I played again with my son, and he liked the standard D&D rules better. Overall, the Skirmish Rules don't stand up to other miniature rules, such as Warhammer. There are no rules for large battles, which disappointed me, but WotC promises that they will be in the Miniatures Handbook. I'm hoping to find a system that I can convert for use with the Birthright setting. Judging from what I've seen, I don't think it will be too hard to do.
Lastly are the damage counters, which while nice, are too few to be of use in a large battle. Again, it would be a nice bonus if WotC offered some as a PDF download on their websight.
It isn't a perfect product. Some of the minis that I've seen are lame, but most are pretty good. They will liven your battlemat up more than paper minis, but don't come close to old-fashioned painted minis. They are scaled to a one-inch grid, so can be used with many other systems (28 to 30 mm will work). The battle grid is useful but bland as are the stat cards. If these downsides were fixed, I would give it 4 or possibly a 5 in both style and Substance. Overall, this product was a good impulse buy.
