I have not had a chance to play the game yet. I have made characters and read through the rules. This review is from that limited experience.

Character creation is point buy with the same pool of points used for statistics and skills. The are all collectively called Abilities in the game. You then have Attributes, which are figured from different Abilities. We then have Traits, which a character may have or not. Natural attacks and weaknesses all fall into the category of Traits. Last we have Mysticism, which is designed to cover everything from Martial Arts to Spells to Powers. All of these things are balanced by threat. Threat in the game is a measure of how dangerous something is (kind of like levels but much more defined).

Combat is akin to a tactical skirmish game. It can be played without miniatures and maps, but the rules are so elegant that I feel you would be doing yourself a disservice going that rout. The combat chapter is comprehensive enough to cover almost everything that should come up and enough advice is given throughout the book that anything not covered should be easy to adjudicate for a good GM. Tactical maps are based around 30mm hexes equaling 2 meters and all ranges are given in hexes. If you would rather use a one inch grid, it's easy enough to do the math. The standard 1 inch equals 5 feet is close enough to not cause any problems.

An entire chapter is given to world mapping and exploration. This chapter also has multiple hex pages that can be printed and drawn on, even a polyhedral world map reminiscent of the one included in the old World Builder's Guidebook from TSR/WotC. The maps are a great resource. There are several tables for creating settlements. These seem most useful for a fantasy or post apocalyptic setting.

Equipment pretty much covers most of what would be needed and does a better job than a lot of universal systems I've seen.

Races are sparse, only four are in the book, but rules are given to quickly and easily generate your own. I have already imported races from several different RPG's and found it almost too easy to be real.

Next we have adversaries. Once again, the selection is sparse, but rules are given to quickly and easily create new adversaries. This is the next thing I am going to be looking at more in depth, and am actually looking forward to it.

Mysticism is one of the shining chapters in the book. As I stated in character generation, it covers everything from magic to martial arts to powers. I'm actually thinking about lifting it and making it my universal FX system. It is that good.

The last thing I'm going to cover is options. The book is absolutely ridiculous with options. Altering weapons and armor, scaling powered armor to become mecha, scaling vehicles to become space going behemoths and more are all covered.

The only thing the book lacks is a setting, but with the amount of material out there it shouldn't be hard to come up with something. Maybe you have a setting that looks cool but the rules leave something to be desired. Give these rules a run. I don't think you'll be disappointed. If you're interested in creating a setting from scratch, you could do much worse than the advice in this book.

Squexagons is a marvel of ingenuity. It's a hex grid overlaying a square grid (actually slightly rectangular, as squares do not line up with hexes correctly). In this package you get a small hex (1/4 inch/6.75mm) page and a large hex (1 3/16inch/30mm) page, as well as sample map of a small restaurant. Both pages come in color (blue hexes overlaying a red rectangular grid) and black & white. The small black & white page gets a little muddled, as there is no variation in shading between the two grids. This is a minor quibble which the color page more than makes up for.

I would have liked to have seen a 1 inch/25mm grid page. You can always scale the existing pages though this leaves a lot of white paper (30mm scaled down) or you end up printing a lot of duplicate pages (6.75mm scaled up). All of the pages are in A4 format with no option for US letter (if you scale the 30mm page to 25mm it brings it down to below US letter anyway).

This is a great little product that fills a niche for those of us that like to use hex grids with our rpg's or table games. You have to draw your own maps or you could print this on transparency sheets to use as an overlay for your existing maps and tiles.

First off is what Onedice is. This is a simple rules set that gives you the skeleton and muscle to run just about any game you want without having a huge amount of rules to bog down game play. You want a space cowboy game with elves running around casting spells, this rules set allows you to do it without having to search through a huge tome every time a question pops up.

What Onedice is not. This is not a product that gives you a finished game world to play in. It will take some work on the part of the GM and player's to flesh out the setting they like. Options are presented in the book as "skins", but even these are just basic overlays that are more examples of how to tweak the rules for your game than worlds you can drop players into.

Character generation is basic point buy, with options for special abilities. Advancement has the option of being level based or point buy. This is an option I wish more games employed. Game play is simple. (Single d6+modifiers vs target number)

The rules set does lack in the opponent department. While there are some creatures list in the book, they are not many. A broader selection would have been useful to use as examples if you want to convert some over from other games. Conversion, though, is very simple. (I've gotten it down enough that I can use OGL creatures on the fly.)

Onedice has become my group's rules set, even to the point that we are using it to run games in established settings from other game companies.

I have to say that Star Confrontations is a refreshing change of pace from the many rules heavy miniatures combat games out there.

This product is a 23 page pdf with one page taken by the front cover. The basic rules of the game take up only 4 pages and give a good overview of combat and terrain effects. I will say that a cheat sheet would be usefull, as some of the rules are efectively hidden in the body of the text. I have made one for my own game and it is very useful in play.

8 pages of the pdf are the Federation and Ork army lists. The armies have a decent selection of troops available. You are not going to find main battle tanks that can chew through hundreds of troops in this game, but each side does have transports/armor vehicles. The federation has an APC, a tank, and a walker. The Orks have a truck. To be honest the Ork truck is not very good, but you can field a LOT of them.

The rest of the pages are the miniatures and templates for the game. 6 pages for the Federation troops and vehicles. 4 pages for the Orks 2 pages of weapon and terrain templates.

The game is great to play and moves quickly. As stated before, this is a simple game and being able to interpret things on the fly is a must. We have had somme situations come up that were not covered in the rules, but that was because we introduced elements of our own. Some people may think this is a detraction from the game, but my group consider it a plus as we are able to make the game our own.

If you want a simple, inexpensive game that won't break you bank on figures in the future you can not beat this one. And the additional Army packs are free.

This set is a very good buy. The modular construction system means that the pieces can be used to make starships beyond those shown in the instructions without having gaps in the textures or having to cut extra parts to fill in gaps. Being able to make every thing from small tramp freighters to large fighter carriers from one set is wonderfull for science fiction rpg's, which is what I usually play.

The layers slightly change the color of the models, not enough to interfere with the texture but just to give the models a slightly different look. The models all have at least five color variants except for the Battle Cruiser which does not have layers.

These models must be printed scaled or they cut off the bottom of the page when printed on 8.5"x11" U.S. letter sized paper.

The bases are printed in white and meant to be painted or colored seperately, which is fine by me as paint and markers cost much less than ink. I would recomend painting as it stiffens the paper.

In summery: This set is a great buy. Almost infinite models for only $9.99. I can't waite to see what is produced next for the Black Sun Wars line.

This model goes together easily and looks good on the gaming table. The only complaint I have is that the additional pieces are situated with camo patterns mixed on the same page. I would have been happier if it had been arranged so that the extras pages had only one pattern on each page.

Liked: Excellent model. Easily assembled and good looking.

Disliked: Have to print multiple cammo patterns when I am building a single model.

Overall: Excellent product, would have liked the pdf to be a bit more organized.

For 4e this is an excellent expansion to the PHB. Finally the rules for animal companions. Most of the rest of this product, I could have done without as it presents the same problem as feats in 3.x edition. Namely proffligation of powers. The new Ranger build is probably the only thing that will get a lot of use from this product.

Liked: ANIMAL COMPANIONs for Rangers

Disliked: The excessive introduction of new class powers

This is an excellent product. The selection of creatures is fantastic, and it is fairly easy to find mundane challenges for a party. My players now post watches EVERY time they stop to rest in my campaign.