Back in June of 2014, Troll Lord Games ran a Kickstarter for the Sixth printing of Castles & Crusades. 685 of us raised over $63,000 for the game and have been getting physical and digital releases ever since. Well, as of this weekend, the final part of my leatherbound pledge arrived. In the package was my Castle Keeper’s Guide and the few remaining ancillary items. Back in January we did an unboxing of the first part of the physical Kickstarter releases. We’ve also done reviews of all three core books: The Player’s Handbook, Monsters & Treasure, and the Castle Keeper’s Guide. I figured we’d close out coverage of the Kickstarter with another unboxing to let you see what arrived. Plus, there are only sixty-eight copies of the leatherbound Castle Keeper’s Guide, so this is your chance to see a pretty rare book. Why not share that with the Diehard GameFAN audience, am I right?
Here’s the box everything arrived in. My cat was particularly interested in it, as you can see. It’s much smaller than the previous box Troll Lord Games sent me, but then, this is the tail end of the Kickstarter.
The opening of the box. Behold the glory of stuff covered up by tissue paper.
The four core content pieces removed from the box. There’s a book, a supplement, a ruler and a black tumbler. Of course, as we will see, the tumbler holds a lot of little things inside it.
First up, here’s a close up of the ruler. It’s a plastic thing. It’ll be help for miniature gaming, but I’m not sure how I’d use it in conjunction with Castles & Crusades. Still, it’s a nice little freebie.
Here is the tumbler, still in its packaging. It’s actually a dice shaker… which kind of lets you know SOME of what awaits us inside it.
Here is everything removed from the dice shaker. There are dice, a USB drive, a coin of some kind and a bottle opener. I’ll never use the latter two, but again, it’s nice to see something extra thrown in.
A close up of the unwrapped dice shaker.
One side of the coin.
The other side of the coin.
Top of the bottle opener.
The bottom of the bottle opener.
A close-up of the USB drive with the C&C logo on it. On the USB drive are digital copies of the three Core Rulebooks for Castles & Crusades. Nice to have!
Another shot of the USB drive.
Here is a shot of the dice. These are some fantastic dice. Not only are they visually striking, but I love that the C&C logo is there in place of the six pips. I’m really impressed they fit the whole logo on there, and so clearly too. These are perhaps my second favorite d6s ever after the Skaven Warpstone Dice Games Workshop put out.
Here is a closeup of the logo on the four d6s that came in the tumbler. Snazzy.
Here is the supplement included with this Kickstarter collection. It’s called Epic Play, and it’s for very high level C&C characters. It also uses the non-leatherbound CKG cover design. It’s a nice little extra.
Now comes the main event. This is the leatherbound Castle Keeper Guide. Man, is it pretty. It’s definitely the best looking of the three leatherbound books, and was more than worth the wait. This is my second favorite leatherbound gaming book ever, with the first being the Call of Cthulhu 20th Anniversary Edition.
Finally, here’s a shot of what the interior of the CKG looks like. This is the first version that has ever been in color, and it’s a great book just to flip through, even if you’re not currently playing Castles & Crusades. Remember, you can still get a hardcover or digital version of this book from Troll Lord Games.
So there you go. We’ve finally wrapped up coverage of the Castles & Crusades, Sixth Edition Kickstarter. Of course, that still leaves the Gaxmoor Kickstarter, for which rewards are about to come in. As well, by the time this goes live here on Diehard GameFAN, you’ll see a new Kickstarter for Castles & Crusades live on that site. Perhaps you should go on over and check it out?
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