Feeling Cryxie, the "token" review

Since I've been playing Cryx lately, I decided to pick up the token set for the undead first. No offense to the other factions I play, as I will be picking up tokens for these too, but I wanted to try these out and see how they do. First, I should mention that I love shiny new accessories for my games, so even if I'm not entirely thrilled about these, I'll be picking some up for the other factions that I play anyway.

But for some of the rest of you out there who are skeptical (and let's face it, after the old Hordes tokens, who wouldn't be?) here are some pictures of the new Cryx tokens. I should also mention that in person these tokens look more neon green than they do in these shots. I don't know why this darker color of green came out. Looks more appropriate for Circle...

The focus tokens (below) have the faction symbol on them, and the best thing about these tokens are that they stack neatly. You get ten of them, which is fine unless you like to play Terminus, but then if you're looking for enough to fulfill his requirement, then no one else will want a token set with that much focus. Although it would be a major headache for a company, it would be very cool for consumers if we could purchase these tokens piecemeal.

The next tokens are the generic tokens, which have a white sticker on the back of them so that anything you write on them with a dry erase marker will show up better (I'm presuming). These are good to have because as I'll mention in a moment, you might need them when your other tokens run out. You get five of these generic tokens. Also pictured are the three Knockdown tokens you get.

The next photo below shows the spell tokens. You get four of the single circle tokens and four of the double circle, or "peanut" tokens as I have already begun to call them, that are for upkeep spells (these also have the white sticker on the back). These are meant for you to write the appropriate spell name on the token. Personally, I would have liked to see a few more non-upkeep spell tokens, but really, when are you going to have that many spell effects out on the table that require a token?

The next tokens shown below are the corpse tokens (depicted appropriately by tombstone shaped markers) and soul tokens. Again, I could question the quantity, but I won't waste too many words on that. Overall these look pretty good.

Next, the stand up tokens, Corrosion. At first thought I wished PP had done all of them this way, the tokens standing up, because it emphasizes them better on the table. These were my favorite when I opened the package. But then thinking on it a while longer, I began to change my opinion on that. These tokens take up a lot of room in my organizer box, and I'm not sure I want to see that many tokens all standing up, clogging up the table while I play. We'll see if that opinion changes once I've actually had a chance to play with them.

A couple more observations about these tokens... the base of them is a broken gear, but instead of looking characteristic for the game, they just look, I don't know, broken, as if they were damaged in shipping. So I give a thumbs down on the broken gear look. A second, albeit minor complaint, is that half of them don't stick well into their bases, as in they are too loose, and I will be gluing those together at some point. I don't know how many of these I will actually use in a given turn, but six of them came in the package.

My only major complaint about the tokens overall is that they look used. There are lots of little scratches all over the surface of them (these do not show up in the pictures I took). I would have expected them to be nice, bright, and shiny, the way my GF9 tokens STILL do. But oh well.

What it all boils down to, is that you need to have fun with your tokens. Below are the skull beads I thought looked cool and I purchased them to use as focus or corpse or soul tokens for my Cryxies. I like them so much I will most certainly continue to use them even though I have the new set. I also have tons of the old GF9 tokens that I will continue to use because they are simply some of the nicest tokens ever made by a company, and I like the soft, fuzzy backing on them.

The next few posts will most likely concern my painting challenge with my Circle models. More on that to come...

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