November 12, 2024

#UnboxingDay! ~ D&D Essentials by Wizards of the Coast

Brant Guillory, 16 December 2021 ~ #UnboxingDay

There’s plenty of good deals on this starter set for a budding gamer this holiday season, including mass market stores.

click images to enlarge

The box front & back

 

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The contents of the box: 2 books, DM screen, a bunch of cards, a set of dice, a couple of maps.  No figures or character markers for the maps, though.

 

The rule book is well-illustrated and covers what you’d expect

 

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The Essentials box includes rules for ‘sidekicks’ that support a single-player game, so this one legitimately plays with just 2 players if needed.

 

Adventure book, with a multi-layered campaign that runs several sessions to keep players hooked on a longer campaign.

 

There are a bunch of sheets of tear-apart cards with all sorts of conditional statuses

 

Another sheet has key NPCs with portraits.

 

There’s a handy fold-up box to keep all these cards, and a set of dice

 

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Mandatory pad of character sheets, with the original six stats out of order.

 

Front and back of the map.  The Sword Coast and the local town

 

4-panel DM screen, though it’s shorter than the ones we all grew up with.

Overall, it’s a decent package for new players with a limited crowd to play with, even if the box is light on the ‘toy factor’

 


Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed our recon of our recent acquisitions.
You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
The regiment also occasionally musters on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you, once we’re allowed to hold them again.

Brant G

Editor-in-chief at Armchair Dragoons

View all posts by Brant G →

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