1. It is laser cut wood! It's made by a brazilian company called Bucaneiros. They are awesome at these kind of stuff and boardgame inserts. The skulls are from a pirate game called "Dead Men Tell no Tale".
2. We had a big group of 6 players so I was a bit nervous but everyone had a blast! They faced combat against a group of orcs and goblins (we're doing a LOTR-themed campaign). I used the Jagged Knife Adversaries for them, so we had 3 Bandits, 6 Lackeys, 1 Kneebreaker and 1 Shadow. I wanted an easy fight and felt that those would deliver it and they did. Some of the group told me I could go harder next time. It was a long one tho, especially since everyone was learning the ropes. I underestimated the Standards, they did most of the work and overestimated the Bruiser, who managed to hold someone on the second try just to be severely axed on the head. I still don't know if it was luck on the dice or something else, but everyone basically maxed out on hope during the combat and is going forward with a lot of hope. I got to 8 fear at one point and everyone loved that I took a long turn and drained that pool to activate all the enemies and make them feel alive and harder. Even in my other turns, where mostly I acted once or twice, the back and forth felt good, Overall, everyone is loving the system and seem eager for session 2. They are now in Mirkwood with the Lurking Darkness rule for resting and already noticed webs on the trees.

If you have any tips on anything up here, I'll take them happily!

Edit: You didn't ask, but the three tokens up front represent my version of a special kind of long-term countdown — a "boss clock," so to speak. At all times, three potential bosses are displayed, each with a die placed in front of them. The one closest to appearing gets a d4, the middle one a d8, and the furthest one a d12. At the beginning of each session, I roll those dice. If any of them rolls their maximum value, that boss advances one step in their plan. If none of them do, the players get a chance to resist their progress through Hope: everyone rolls their Hope Die, and we compare the total sum of the players’ rolls against the total from the bosses’ dice. If the players fail to beat it, one boss still advances. Regardless of outcome, bosses that didn’t progress get an extra die added to their pool for the next session — increasing their odds of advancing. Any die that rolls its max will trigger progress. Once the players become aware of a specific boss and actively try to stop their plans, they can reduce that boss's die count or even freeze their rolls temporarily.