The SLDF Field Manual is a long awaited sourcebook, covering the Star League's military capacity leading up to the Amaris Coup. The book presents three core sections discussing the SLDF's organization and principles, the SLDF's 2750 army deployment - with a break down of each Corps and its military region, and finally the sourcebook provides rules and charts for the playing the SLDF and the twenty armies it consists of.

The Star League Defense Force chapter provides a variety of information on Battlemechs, infantry, and armor assets used by the SLDF, as well as a lot of the principles the SLDF is based off of - moral guidelines, command structure, and the interaction between armies and fleets. This is primarily a fluff chapter, and will provide a lot of great ideas for A Time of War chronicles during the Amaris Coup. It may also give some insight into the popular Erdani Light Horses mercenary company. This is the kind of stuff that made me want to check out this book.

The Deployment Sections are thorough - each of the Twenty regional armies, as well as the regular army, have a section. Each of the army's Corps is discussed, it's CO introduced, and cool Divisions get a treatment. This is the largest segment of the book - covering nearly 80% of the page count - and it really blurs together. Reading this straight through is grueling, and should serve more as reference. The highlight of this is the Periphery coverage - these armies never had much discussion in older sourcebooks, despite Periphery uprisings being critical to this time period.

The Rules Annex contains what little crunch is in the sourcebook. Tables provide random generation of 'Mechs (normal and royals), Vehicles (normal and royal), and Aerospace Fighters (normal and royal). There are also special rules for the various combat divisions listed earlier in the book.

Field Manual SLDF's individual entries are well written. The artwork is evocative. The concept is good, but the execution is lackluster. This isn't a fun Battletech sourcebook, but a dense Battletech referencebook. Check it out if you are a big SLDF fan, but don't expect a lot of new rules or scenarios for your tabletop game.

This is a very well designed book, with some very evocative art.

The manual starts off with an overview of the SDLF, before going into the break down of the various armies that compose it, giving a lot of background information, although I am not sure how you would use it in a game