When I first read about champions I was happy to see what looked to be the replacement for my beloved heroes.

When I saw the pictures I was a little skeptical but the idea still intrigued me.

Now that I have my first champion I can say that I am disaponted. I can only hope that the final product will differ from Lord Katalkus.

Reasons for my disapointment:

1. The small dial pieces are just that, small and paper and flimsy. These things will fall apart with any regular amount of switching

2. There is no place to store said small flimsy paper dials.

Which means I have to either keep a small plastic baggie with each figure, or have some sort of contained file system in order to kep them straight. Now this wouldnt be so bad if they were bigger or sturdier; I keep my bombardment tokens in a flight stand and it works well. These pieces are too small for any container I can think of.

3. Switching out the dials is freaking hard.

Seriously, not only are they a tight fit around the center nub, there is no way pry them out of there. I tried my fingers, tipping them upside down and patting, even using Katalkus' own pointy staff failed. In the end I had to ask my wife to use her nails to pry the piece out. If they were made of styrene or something more sturdy I would have less fear of tearing them, but as it was I almost tore the coating off of one edge.

Bottom Line:
Terrific idea, terrible implementation

hmmm. <runs off to test his Katalkus>

hmm, my dial popped off just fine, but I do agree the dial paper should be much, much sturdier. The paper also popped out easily, I didn't switch in a new one though, some could be tight once they're on I guess.

I have a feeling it won't be, so don't hold your breath. I think it should have either been styrene or paper with a thick backing attached. as for storage, we can all find something to store in, though a little pastic canister would have been a very cool idea.

You could just have a semi-defective dial. Just like 1.0 figures, some were incredibly hard to turn, some turned easily (it's much better with the new dials). I'd wait until I get a reasonable sample of them before I cast judgement.

maybe you could laminate the papers and cut out holes with an x-acto knife?

wizkids gets and A for effort, but an F in keeping things simple. as they say, If it aint broke, dont fix it.

cant you stack all the dails together leaving the used one on top with the rest under for support ?

during the game, no, because you have to look under the dial for point cost info.

I'm actually rather happy with the Champion I have seen (my Kalkatus). I agree that the paper could be a little sturdier, but I have had no issues with the dials being too tight to change. I plan on storing my Champions like I store my uniques - in a Plano tacklebox, each champion getting its own spot - no lost dials, no mixed up dials, everything organized.

No, there is only room for one dial on the clear plastic.

Just for clarification the plastic turns and comes off reltively easily, but the paper itself is hard to remove from the clear plastic.

Maybe I just have a defective piece, but I fear the little tokens floating all over the place in the containers i have all my uniques in.

I suspect that at least WK will have replacement rpintouts available on the MK site at the very least (as they do with bombardment tokens).

time to buy more dime bags...umm...i mean really small ziplock bags...

wizkids has some great ideas...but i for one think that they should stagger their ideas...wait awhile before introducing a new idea....the whole reason i quit mtg was because new things were just being thrown left and right without true understanding or time to really try out cool strats and ideas.

Dial storage - I modified a card sleve to hold 4 (the 5th is the fig)

I took some cardstock and traced 4 disks in an offset patern

oo
-oo

I then used an exacto knife and cut an upward curve looked like this ()) the cut was the middle one.

the curve arches away from the long side of the sleeve.

Leave the cardstock in the sleeve to give it some support - and now insert your 4 dials.

Put the sleeve in the page holder.

If you would like to post this idea on your website - pm me with an email address and I'll make a pdf of these inserts with cutting guides.

Um Preacher man that is crazy ;)

Seriously Mage Knight is supposed to be a game without all the hassle of traditional war games. With wizkids adding 2 new game mechanis every set it is quickly beoming more complicated than an average player wants to get into to. One of the first major selling points of the game was that all the stats are on the dial.

With Warhammer and DnD minis out there we already have the high and low end difficulties. That leaves Mage Knight somewhere in between.

I love Mage Knight and I hope this is just a pothole in the bumpy road to perfection. Champions are a neat idea but they only complicate the game in a way that is going to alienate players looking for a quick fantasy wargame.

When I think about it there may not be a market for a quick fantasy wargame, and maybe wizkids is moving their product towards a different audience. With Pirates outselling everything but magic and yugioh and Heroclix pulling in all the comic book fans they may feel that they have used up their casual market.

I am sure they have done market studies, so I will not presume to tell them they are wrong or are going to fail. I honestly don't belive that anyway. All I am saying is that Champions=large leap in complexity due mostly to the storage and replacement of parts.

In all fairness, the "new mechanics" of Champions and Adventuring companies are EXTREMELY minor compared to Cavalry and Spellcasting. Champions only affect actual army build -during the game, they act EXACTLY like any other figure. Adventuring companies are almost like 1-sided permanent domains.

I think that while this set does indeed have new mechanics, they are VERY minor ones.

I haven't had any Champion figures in my possession yet, so I can't really make any statementes one way or the other on the ease/difficulty of removing the dials, though. :)