First the positives. The board is light, but nicely crafted and is not much larger than a standard game board. It actually seems nicer and more expensive than the Restoration Hardware edition it is based on. The rooms are dark and moody with an expensive looking gloss that is missing from the Franklin Mint and RH editions. What I was not counting on is that the furniture is not attached to the board. It is placed there. So the game can be played with or without the furniture and it works just as well. The cool part is that the furniture can be placed anywhere in the room, not just the center of the room, or for that matter in any room, not just the one it was intended for – somehow I think there must be a way to work this into the game. The furniture itself is solid, attached to glossy black pedestal bases and make cool additions to the game. The instructions even include a section about placing the furniture in the rooms as part of the set up. The tokens and weapons are all nicely crafted out of metal and wood. The weapons set is basically the Limited Gift Edition set, and the cards have been updated to reflect those designs. The cards themselves are nicely oversized and feel truly luxurious. It comes with a really nice accessory box, reminiscent of the large RH game box, but is small enough to actually be useable with the game.
My criticisms are few. The furniture tokens are unfortunately painted with a similar golden/bronze paint to that used on the RH edition. It's too bad they didn't use the shiny gold plastic like that used on Christmas Tree ornaments (or the original Franklin Mint furniture which was is nothing more than this). It would have looked better. However, the resin molds feel weighty and substantial, something plastic tokens wouldn't. The rooms are unfortunately just the Franklin Mint designs flattened onto a 2D board. So unlike a standard board game, there is no depth to the artwork. Furniture lines the walls, but does not extend into the room as it would be depicted had it been custom designed for this type of board. So it looks a little odd if one inspects it too closely. The Colonel Mustard pawn is indeed orange, and the Mrs. White pawn is off-white.
Otherwise, I highly recommend this edition, especially if you can find it on sale. Although the artwork is merely a redress of the Franklin Mint theme, it is implemented in a totally unique way that makes it seem fresh with the novelty accessories. And don't forget they finally fixed the board to reflect the proper number of spaces between the center and the Hall and Ballroom.
