Interesting package, this one contains 4 different ship deck plans. The problem is, that they're pretty disparate. You get a Galleon and a Pinnace, which both work together pretty well. I mean, the pinnace would work pretty well for a small vessel like a sloop maybe. The Galleon is rather large. It has a top deck, forecastle and aft castle, cargo and steerage decks. The Galleon is over half the pages in the package.
The problem is that the other two ships are a Bireme and a Viking long ship. I know that my knowledge of fantasy naval settings is probably not complete, but I can't think of any that I've run where you're likely to need 3 ships from completely different cultures and time periods! Maybe it would be a more attractive package if there were 4 ships you could use together in the same campaign?
The problems don't stop there. The artwork is so-so. Not bad per-se, but I have a lot of the Skeleton Key Games e-adventure tiles and these are nowhere near as attractive as those. The objects on deck are quite pixelated and look very "Cut and Paste".
Next, there's very little in the way of customisation possible. The ships all have stuff (cargo, cannons, weapons etc) drawn right there on the decks. It would have been much better to have the "furniture" on separate tiles that could be added later. There is a page of extra parts you can print and add to the decks, but the decks are already pretty crowded and there really isn't much room to put that stuff out. Having said that, the cargo and such is laid out ok, so that's not the end of the world, and you get a choice of forecastle with or without giant crossbows and either a cargo or cannon deck.
The last problem with this set is that the interior of the ship is presented as an exploded view, presumably so you can let your players only see the rooms they're in or have been in, keeping the rest of the ship hidden. Problem with that is that I wanted to print the whole thing out as one big sheet per deck. Fine I thought, just cut the rooms out and stick them together. Sounds easy, right? Except they don't actually fit! You need to cut them down to size and overlap them, and even then the doors don't line up! Just plain sloppy, especially with a PDF where you can provide both versions (exploded and complete) at no extra cost.
Overall, it's a bit mediocre. You get 4 ship plans which are all unexceptional. They're from 3 time periods and cultures, so unlikely to all get used together. There are things wrong with the larger ones, but nothing that makes them useless. Reasonably versatile Pinnace and Galleon makes it worth getting this set (that's 20 out of 27 pages, not much wasted)<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Satisfied<br>
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