A beautiful little book. The "Fat Trader" is no longer a boring piece of background. The described variants turn it into an interesting and versatile starship for adventurers - and the 300 ton version is my new favourite starship.

Focussed and straightforward. The template system and standard spaces make for an easy to use design system, even if it loses some detail over the standard Vehicle Design System. overall exteemely good and well thought out! Check out Moon Toads other books, they're just as good!

PDF of a 500 ton 'stretched R' Type merchant for Traveller using Mongoose rules.

There is a brief description of the class and why a protected merchant is necessary, followed by construction and interior details. Deckplans for 6 decks at 2 decks per page in black & white, followed by blueprints of the class. Then there is the ship design sheet and colour exterior samples of 8 ships in the class.

As a bonus there are detils and plan for the 20 ton Launch.

There are seperate jpeg files of the deckplans, blueprints and a 2 page ship record sheet.

This feels like a lavish product at an extraordinarily reasonable price.

There is nothing I can find fault with here given the price.

"The Gladius Battalion is a general-purpose military company, contracted to provide training for local forces, security for rear areas, important installations, checkpoints, convoy escorts, as well as bodyguards for key personnel or VIPs. They are normally hired by groups and organizations who don't want to tie up their own personnel, whose loyalty is presumed to be without question, on the more dull and mundane military security jobs; freeing up larger numbers of their own personnel for the more specialized and important missions.'

"Units like the Gladius Battalion, are found everywhere, doing everyday mundane but essential security tasks, rather than the exciting "strike from space!" operations so beloved of the entertainment channels."

There are times when a DM needs a good set of mercenary NPC's & this is one of those times. Fortunately Moon Toad Publishing is there to step into the breech with 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' By Ian Stead, Tim Price, & Ade Stewart for Cepheus Engine rpg or the Classic Traveller rpg. 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' book has everything you need on a mercenary unit to employ as hired help or hindrance for your Cepheus Engine powered adventurers! While Drivethrurpg has their big Christmas in July sale 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' wasn't in the sale instead this came up through our MeWe & Facebook Cepheus Engine rpg groups. There are plenty of other excellent Cepheus Engine rpg powered game supplements such as Michael Brown's offerings, Independence Games , & many more including Stellagama Publishing.

So we leap back into 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' and right away we get history, background, & more of this mercenary organization. There's something of the Hammer's Slammer's series or H. Beam Piper's Space Viking's influence in 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' . That's not a bad thing at all because it speaks to the science fictional roots of the product.

We get treated to the inner workings of 'The Gladius Battalion' and their strengths, weaknesses, equipment. The book reads like a brochure for a real mercenary out fit & not one that we'd want to tangle with. 'The Gladius Battalion' isn't necessarily the bad guys but these are the guys that you send in to handle H. Beam Piper's Space Vikings because the local interstellar warlord & his forces can't handle the military might of the invaders. Need a palace rebellion put down? Call in the 'The Gladius Battalion' to handle the rebels. Because in 30 pages you get everything you need to present, polish, & handle your own take for your came of the 'The Gladius Battalion'. Everything is professionally presented up to & including Moon Toad Publishing's usual spec's & easy to read material.

Be warned 'The Gladius Battalion' isn't a push over organization by any means. These are professional soldiers & mercenaries capable of taking on experienced groups of adventurers. So you can use these forces sparingly or even to get your own adventurers out of trouble. Or maybe the PC's are even vets who mustered out of the 'The Gladius Battalion'.

The bottom line is 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' By Ian Stead, Tim Price, & Ade Stewart for Cepheus Engine rpg or the Classic Traveller rpg worth it?! In my humble opinion? Yes there's tons of uses for a gun ho, sharp, & well versed mercenary outfit for a science fiction campaign. Bare in mind that I bought this product with my own hard earned money not that Moon Toad Publishing wouldn't have given me a complementary copy. No I grabbed 'The Gladius Battalion Handbook' because its going to fix a nice little hole that's sitting in our own on going Cepheus Engine rpg campaign.

Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery Blog Want More OSR & Cepheus Engine Goodness? Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com

This is an excellent ship design. It is essentially a larger version of the classic Far Trader, suitable for a larger adventuring party but with the same philosophy of free trading adventure on the edges of the law. Just what I need for my Traveller campaign.

The deck plans are excellent. Clear, attractive and well thought out, which too few deckplans achieve. I'm quite picky about deckplans, but these are very well done.

The three variant versions are obviously helpful in providing you with the right ship for the campaign, but they also feel like they have genuinely been designed as practical variant models based on the same fundamental design. This adds a degree of credibility to the fiction that these are products of a far future shipyard.

All in all, highly recommended.

The Independence Armed Freighter looks like an ideal ship for players. It actually close to an Armed Merchantman or a Q-Ship, in that it sacrifices 50 tons of cargo capacity for armour and it has lots of pop-up weapons. It’s useful for working in high risk areas. It has 3G and J2 performance so would also make a decent pirate ship. It could be assigned to support a fleet, involved in anti-piracy operations, gun-running or smuggling. The players could even be travelling as the 4 security troops the ship carries and sorting out problems at each port of call. There are lots of possibilities. You get 10 deck plans and a 23 page pdf booklet. The 10 plans are full size, with each deck square around 3.5 cm squared when you display it at actual size. If you want to print them off, you’ll need to find an A3 printer. The ship has 4 decks. You get two plans for the top two decks, one bare and the other cluttered with things that might be present. I thought it was an interesting touch and brought the ship to life. You get three full size plans of each of the two cargo decks, one bare, one with some cargo and one packed with as much as you can fit in. The pdf booklet starts with a short introduction, explaining the ship’s design brief. It’s just a page long and serves to set the scene. I dislike supplements that give several pages of fiction. You’re buying a ship plan, not the introduction to a novel. I thought this was about the right length. The supplement has lots of good quality illustrations. There’s a plan view of the top, bottom, right, the front and rear of the ship with a few pages of text describing what’s on each deck. The large scale deck plans are reproduced at a more useful size. One thing I really liked was they show what each number on the plan is on the same page. I’ve bought ship supplements where you had to scroll down several pages to find what each number represents in the key. There are a lot of views showing the ship in different colours. I liked this, it reminded me of aviation books where they show you several images of a Spitfire in different colours. There’s a plan and side view showing where the weapons are. There are 3D views too, showing the ship in space. You get a worksheet, showing the details of the design. If you wanted to make yourself a pure merchantmen, without the armour and weapons, you can do so very easily. The supplement is very lavishly illustrated, it’s also only $5.43 (£4.02) so about the same price as a a fancy coffee. What are you waiting for?

Fantastic work! I love the Imperial Courier and plan to make a fully cut away model of it for a future Traveller game I want to run, and this product will help a ton! I kind of wish some views of what the interior rooms look like were included, but I really can't complain about this product at all. I especially love the detailed write-up on the background and the lovely 6-view blueprint!

I got this mainly for the older TL reaction drive stuff such as rocket propulsion we would use today and say 30 years from now. It is broken down like the cepheus SRD; very straightforward and textbook like. Lot of good stuff, no art, but it isn't intended to be that kind of supplement.

This book is worth it at even twice the price. If you are a gearhead who loves creating spacecraft, then this book is for you.

An outstanding rules set! One of the better ones out there for use!

All in all it is a nicly presented exicution of the SRD material with a fair amount of additional material.

Had some issues with the file not being editable, but the author worked hard to remedy the situation.

This is a great ship, well designed and documented. My players love it, I gave them a choice of several ships - they did their research and chose this one.

I cannot recommend this book enough - keep doing ship books like this please ;)

This is the first of the Traveller ship products that I have purchased and I highly recommend it to anyone that is seeking ship options for a campaign. Good ship descriptions and clear concise ship plans.

very good suppliment art work is excellent , so our the ship floorplans. I wishis i could find something this good on the jayhawk far trader, yachts anf the subsisted fat trader