Firestorm Un-Boxed with Chris Townley Firestorm Market Garden will be on retailer’s shelves in a little over a week, but given that our stock just came in the door a few days ago we wanted to give everyone a chance to see what was inside. I grabbed Sean (one of our graphic artists) and a spare gaming table downstairs so that we could take a few photos as we pulled it apart.

The first thing that you notice is that the box has a pile of stuff in it. By the time you pack three game boards, tokens, dice, rules and so on into the box there is not a lot of space left. There should be just enough room your campaign notes and your Generals orders.

We decided to just pull everything out and get it on the table. That way we could get a closer look at a few of the finished components whilst we took the photos.

Gaming tokens were first on the list of things we wanted to take a closer look at, especially the new plastic gaming pieces. We took some more pictures of these which you can check out further down. Other than the new plastic Firestorm Troop tokens there are the Supply Markers (that the Airborne troops need to stay in the fight), Control Markers so that the Allies can keep track of where they have managed to advance and C-47 Skytrain pieces to help allocate where you are dropping supplies or troops. The Battle Arrows also make a return and are conveniently numbered from 1 to 5, so you can keep track of which battles need to be resolved first.

Included in the box are a pair of colour A1 posters to help your players identify what units their Firestorm tokens become when you play out the campaign – these detail the unit organisation and stats, so even if your players are not familar with these units they will be able to get up and running quickly. They would also look pretty cool hanging on your gaming wall.

The rulebook covers everything you need to know to play the game, as well as a host of other things. Check out Ken’s Design Notes for more information. Read Ken's Firestorm Market Garden Design Notes here... The Firestorm Market Garden Resources booklet is designed so that you can easily photocopy some of the most common information that players might want to have handy during the planning and gaming sessions.

Recreating Operation Market Garden meant that we needed to have a massive board, as there is no way to show the distance 30th Corps needed to travel, without making the trip a long way on the table. In the box you get 3 sections that once combined make a board measuring 120cm (or 4 feet for those of you who still think that way).

Just to show you how big the board really is, that’s a Flames of War Kingtiger and Sherman, just for scale! You could almost drive them up the roads on the map. Needless to say you are going to want to keep a table set aside for your players to plan and scheme where their next attack will be.

Say hello to my little friend!

Last, but not least I grabbed one of the plastic British Para tokens and paired it up with one of the metal versions. When we were sculpting the plastics we took some iconic infantry figures and used them as the reference. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the result!

So, there you go. That is what you get in the Firestorm Market Garden box! Don’t forget if you have any questions to add them to the forum thread and we will pick some to answer next week. Post any questions you have regarding Firestorm Market Garden here... ~ Chris.