Furnace Unboxing and Component Review

A few weeks ago, a massive box from Arcane Wonders arrived full of great games to play, many of which we have already written about on the website. We’ve loved them all so far, with Neotopia being one of the highlights! Furnace was another game I was really excited about, and thankfully the lovely folks at Arcane Wonders even sent over the additional – although unnecessary – playmat which nicely organizes the cards and makes them easier to pick up. We won’t be talking about that today, but rather what you get in Furnace!

If you’ve been reading the site for a while, you’ll know I love games that come with a good insert. When reading up on Furnace prior to the game arriving, I thought this game was primed to be one that came without an insert. There are not an exorbitant number of pieces in the box, so to just toss everything in baggies and then into the box would a actually be somewhat understandable. I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled the lid to see a nice plastic insert holding each component in place. 

My only complaint with the insert is that I would have liked to see each pocket of space be just a bit deeper so I didn’t feel like I was ‘scrunching’ up my components to fit them into the box so the lid was flat and flush. Still, it’s a great insert, and a great way to start a board game unboxing.

The game comes with a number of different resources: coal, iron, oil, upgrade tokens, and coins. The coal are represented by black cubes, and this was the first little baggie I opened and dumped out onto the table. For a half second, I was worried that all the resources were just going to be coloured cubes. That was OK 10 or 15 years ago, but definitely not as OK now.

Again, call me surprised when I opened up the bag of iron pieces and the bag of oil barrels and was greeted by nicely sculpted pieces that represented a piece of iron and represented a barrel. As this game probably has a higher price tag than you might expect, I was happy to see that there was a lot of care put into the production of this game – it’s top notch!

The rest of the components were made of cardboard, and as the coin and upgrade tokens aren’t “main” resources in the game, using cardboard here was A-OK with me. Sure, the upgrade tokens could have been cool metal or wood cogs, but I think differentiating resources from these tokens is actually really smart gameplay wise.

The cardboard is top notch, and it has been a long while since I punched a punch board with so much ease. I always say you know the cardboard quality is top notch when you open the box for the first time and a few pieces have been “pre-punched” simply from shipping!

The card quality is excellent, as they should be – there is a lot of flipping and placing cards so having good quality components here is super important. 

Furnace is a game I cannot wait to get the table again and again. It is easy to teach, easy to understand, and easy to play. Still, there is plenty of strategy to keep your thinking and scheming!