Product– Pathfinder Player Companion-Undead Slayer’s Handbook

System-Pathfinder

Price-$13(PDF), $20 print

Producer-Paizo

TL;DR-Great introduction and options for fighting undead. 97%

Basics– Time to fight the things that go bump in the night!  Undead Slayer’s Handbook gives a general overview of how to fight undead from the simple zombie to the most complex, scheming lich.  The book starts with different groups that slay undead and how they may help you.  After that, the book focus on fighting different kinds of undead giving feat, spells, items, traits, and class abilities that focus on killing each kind of horror.  Moving from the kinds of undead to kill, the book shifts to what kinds of people kill undead giving new class options and feats.  The book finishes in classic Pathfinder Player Companion style offering more spells, items, and a prestige class called the Soul Warden.

Mechanics or Crunch– The book provides lots of new options for those focusing on undead.  These all look well balanced as you get a large bang for your buck if you fight undead, but won’t really help you against the standard goblin.  My only complaint is the alchemical items.  The book provides several, varied alchemical items to fight undead, but these seem underpowered or far too expensive to use.  There are items that do significant damage, but you have to pay too much for them to the practical.  There are cheap items that are not that useful. 4.5/5

Story or Fluff– This book is full of story.  Lots of new traits provide stories on the background of an adventurer.  Also, each section gets almost a full page providing story and background for each monster or monster hunter.  It’s simply well done! 5/5

Execution-This is Paizo, so the layout is well done.  The art is great, but, it might be a bit more than some people can handle.  Since, undead tend to be pretty gory.  The centerfold is a beautiful haunted house that describes how to fight a haunt, while the front cover provides details on how to fight each type of undead.  In addition, the back cover gives information on how undead are viewed in different towns.  This book is a pleasure to read and look through. 5/5

Summary- Again, another solid effort by Paizo.  Undead are my favorite creatures to fight or throw at my players.  This book gives a solid introduction on how to fight the monsters to a new player, and to the older players out there, it provides enough new options to make it useful. 97%

Game– Catan: Cities and Knights

Price– $40

Producer-Mayfair Games

Set-Up/Play/Clean-Up-1.5 Hours

Players-2 to 4, up to 6 with an expansion

TL;DR-New life in a classic game 80%

Basics-Return to the island of Catan, this time to defend it from barbarians and build metropolises.  In this big box expansion to the base game, players continue with the standard Catan mechanics of building roads and settlements to harvest resources and amass points.  What are new are players now roll an extra die, can build automatic soldier called knights, and collect different resources called commodities from cities.  Some tiles give you commodities like the forest tiles.  Cities on forest now produce paper and wood instead of just two wood.  You can spend paper on your turn to upgrade your cities.  Each player has a flip book showing how upgraded each city type is in science, politics, or military.  There are three city types to correspond to the new die.  The extra die has green, yellow, or blue cities on it or three barbarian sides.  When you role a city color on the city die and have upgraded your city of that color enough, you get automatic development cards.  You no longer get to buy development cards, you have to earn them through upgrading your city and random chance.  When you role a barbarian, you move the barbarian ship closer.  When the ship reaches Catan, all players send knights to defend the isle.  If you don’t sent enough knights, then the player with the fewest knights has a city downgraded to a settlement.  If you do have enough knights, then the player who sent the most get a victory point for being the defender of Catan.  The barbarians reset, and play continues as normal.  Play keeps going until someone has 13 points instead of the original 10.

Mechanics-Settlers of Catan is how you fix Monopoly.  It’s a quick game that is easy to play without a lot of complicated rules.  I love it.  This big box expansion adds some complications, but the new stuff doesn’t break what already works, but adds some new options to the mix.  It’s an excellent way to add new life to the game.  However, the new mechanics are very chance heavy.  If you loved Catan before, but thought it was a little too American styled because of the random element to the game, you will hate this expansion as it add more randomness to your game. 4.5/5

Theme-Catan isn’t a theme heavy game.  It’s got terrain control for being the governor, but there isn’t much story besides 2 to 6 people settle an island and hate to share it.  This game gives a bit more depth as you get more characters, buildings, and more themed cards, but there isn’t a lot here. 3/5

Instructions-The instructions are well done.  The rules are crisp while getting the point across.  They also have a few examples that will help get the point across.  Again, the rules don’t really build the theme, but they do teach you how to play the game well.  And these rules get my personal blessing because I didn’t have to run to Board Game Geek to figure out a sticky point mid game!  4.5/5

Execution-What you get is good, but you might not get all you need.  Catan has a lot of editions, even for the very first base game.  Some editions don’t work well with different editions of the expansions.  My game didn’t come with two different colors of dice, so to find if I got development cards, I had to mark one of my two basic dice with a sharpie to know when I got development cards with the ship/barbarian die!  Adding a second colored die numbered one to six would have been a real nice small touch.  Also, you have to put stickers on wood.  Not a big thing, but that is always a pain!  But, what you get is nice.  Not perfect, but well done and good quality.  The flip books are cool.  The new boards are great.  I liked what I got.  It wasn’t love at first sight, but it was nice. 4/5

Summary-I like this game more than I like the original.  The original is a well done classic, but just like any other classic; you need to spice it up.  This expansion gave new life to a well loved game.  It’s a bit pricy as you are paying over $40 bucks for the base expansion and at least $20 more for the 5/6 player expansion to the expansion.  But, you do get a relatively lot of stuff.  Don’t look for a complete American style game with lots of story from the board or a complete Euro style game with no randomness in this one do.  It’s a fun mix of the two concepts heading a bit more toward Euro styling. 80%

Game– Shadowrun Online

Producer-Cliffhanger Productions

Price– ~$30

TL;DR– It’s up to you. Do you like preorders?

Basics- Hoi Chummers!  Time to step into the world of Shadowrun again, but this time online!  Shadowrun Online will be coming out later this year, but if you did the kickstarter OR pay to join on Steam, you get a preview of the game.  Right now you are NOT getting the full game, but if you join, later you will.  The game features a short campaign where you play a mage and a gunner as you plow you way trying to find a kidnapped girl or a multiplayer death match.

Mechanics-This game feels like Shadowrun Returns.  That isn’t a bad thing as I liked Shadowrun Returns, but some reviewers feel this game was made for the tablets like my Ipad.  Again, that’s not bad, but it is a thing to consider.  Basically, this game is a turn-based, small squad tactical battle in the Shadowrun world.  Each turn you move a character and have them attack.  My biggest complaint is that I can’t attack then move.  Not huge, but its something to consider.

Visuals-The game looks nice.  The parts you get to play in all look like they belong in Shadowrun.  You can rotate the screen which is a nice feature that’s not in Shadowrun Returns.  All the buttons for your character do look really pretty too.  However, I don’t like the tilt that the screen has.  I found it sometimes hard to visualize where my character was standing in comparison to other people.  This lead to me missing a few shots and dying!

Story-Here is the meat and potatoes.  Shadowrun Online has to have a decent, cyberpunk, dystopian story. This is where the game lives or dies.  The story you get to play is pretty short, but done well enough.  The characters do speak to one another in the missions, but between missions the characters mostly get walls of text expanding on what’s going on.  I’d like more to engage me, but it’s not bad.  I sit and read walls of text in Shadowrun Returns, and I love that story.  What I see from this game, I like.  But, this game HAS to keep up what it brought to the table as a minimum!  More story telling will keep this game from the fate of so many MMO’s littered at WoW’s feet.  This game can’t beat WoW through anything else but story.

Summary-I’m not grading this one.  I usually do, but this one is just a nice tech and story demo of what coming out later this year.  What I see happening is a simple MMORPG that will do well with the touch screens set in the Shadowrun Universe.  It you take out the MMO part, that describes Shadowrun Returns.  Both games use an extremely similar, simple interface.  I don’t mean that as an insult, as the simplicity doesn’t bog down the experience with clutter and won’t keep newer players who have never heard of Shadowrun from coming to the table.  The visuals are very similar which is good for not only bringing players in.  The story is fun, but it’s short.  I played the demo in 1.5 hours.  For $30, that’s a bit much, but I have to keep in mind that I’m paying for the full game and getting delivery in pieces.  Most of us hardcore Shadowrun fans want more like riggers, deckers, astral combat, customizable characters, more missions et al.  I do recommend this game, but you have to decide if you are ok with buying a game ahead of its being ready.  Right now, you don’t get much of a game as it’s a 2 hour tech demo.  I love kickstarter, so I’m fine with one year lead times and paying way ahead for a game.  If you love Shadowrun Returns, then you will love this.  Now, you just have to decide WHEN you buy it.