Even if you already own a set of print-and-build dungeon walls, you’d do well to consider adding this set to your collection. The walls themselves are easy to build, but the LZW crew has included a feature I haven’t seen anywhere else: a very simple system for linking the walls together using ordinary bobby pins. That’s a great innovation. An even better innovation is the “options ruler,” which harnesses the power of PDF layers better than LZW or anyone else (as far as I’ve seen) has ever done it before. It’s a little hard to explain what the options ruler does, but once you’ve seen it in action, you’ll love the unprecedented level and ease of customizability that the system offers. This set is pretty heavy on instructions, and the instructions file credits a copy editor; while the English instructions are noticeably better than in some earlier sets, more care still needs to be taken to bring the text up the excellence of the artwork. Normally, that would limit my rating to four stars, but the excellence and utility of the options ruler overrides that this time. “E&I,” by the way, stands for “exterior and interior.”

With five substantial buildings, apparently designed for permanence, this looks more like a “settlement” than an “encampment” to me. Two buildings seem to be sleeping quarters; one seems to be a kitchen; two (without doors) are apparently for storage. Paths lead off the map in at least four different directions (maybe five, if that snow-covered path leads somewhere). The map is large and brimming with story possibilities. You could easily stage several different encounters on this map, giving you good replay value. At some point, it could even become a home base (albeit a sparse one) for the PCs. Although labeled for use with the Illfrost campaign setting, there’s nothing here that’s unique to that setting; any visit to a snowy clime will create an opportunity to use this map.

There’s a lot going on in this map by Jonathan Roberts, created for the Illfrost setting but suitable for any fantasy RPG. It’s an interior/underground map, so it’s not even confined to chilly climes like Robert’s exterior maps for Illfrost. The complex includes barracks for guards or soldiers, more private quarters for officers, cages for prisoners, and a twisty cavern/tunnel system whose function leaves me guessing. The map is well done, like all of Roberts’s maps. However, this one would really benefit from a brief key with suggestions about how to use the various encounter areas. This usually isn’t needed on Roberts’s maps, especially the exterior ones, but this one is so “busy” that a key would help.

“Flight of the Nova-1” offers a fun scenario for either a new (using the prologue) or existing (skipping straight to chapter 1) superteam. Chapter 1 basically sets up the dramatic situation, and chapters 2–4 resolve the issue (or so the players will hope!) over a series of three combat encounters. The end of the adventure teases a forthcoming product; this will either build anticipation or frustration, depending on your perspective (and your confidence in Adamant’s release schedule) and your interest in running the projected series of adventures in sequence.

Dan Houser’s artwork is, of course, wonderful, although, GMs not familiar with the full range of ICONS character from Adamant might incorrectly think that the illustration on p. 11 depicts Wrack and Sapphire Synapse, the villains involves in the action described there, when the illustration really features Dr. Punch and Electric Judy, heroes from the adventure “No Laughing Matter” who have no connection to the “Nova-1” storyline.

His writing isn’t quite as good, mainly because he occasionally takes too much for granted instead of spelling things out in detail, forcing the prospective GM to “read his mind.” It was also discouraging to find a homonym error in the very first sentence (“baited breath” instead of the proper “bated breath.” Unfortunately, this is the beginning of a trend; grammatical errors, oddities, and inconsistencies (especially related to punctuation and capitalization) crop up repeatedly, marring an otherwise excellent product.

This nice-looking 3D model requires a good bit of precise cutting and lot of patience to assemble well. The artwork is very nice, but the walls, columns, and so on are unrealistically thin—the thickness of two sheets of cardstock. This affects both the verisimilitude and the sturdiness of the model. It’s not a bad piece, but there are better ruins models out there, especially given the relatively high price.

Wow! This is a big, exciting, complex adventure, well-designed and well-presented in almost every way. Author David Flor has covered all the bases, providing several different ways for the PCs to get involved. The maps are well done, though there is no other interior art. Although the production values aren’t quite up to those of the big publishing houses like Wizards of the Coast and Paizo, the storyline and other content easily match the quality of modules from those publishers. Just about the only way to make this product better would be to include printable miniatures-scale maps.

Each entry in the Justice Wheels series presents a superhero or supervillain who uses a distinctive vehicle. The characters are presented as heroes by default, with tips on how to use them as villains instead. Black Scarab strikes me as basically “Moon Knight in black”; even his origin is very similar. I presume that was intentional. Scott Harshbarger’s illustrations of Black Scarab and his car, F.A.L.C.O.N., are excellent. The page formatting is minimal and, frankly, unattractive. A relatively high number of misspellings (“anhk” instead of “ankh,” “profecient” instead of “proficient,” “machineguns” spelled as one word) and inconsistencies (especially with regard to capitalization) mar the two pages of substantive text. It’s also worth noting that Justice Wheels #1 does not seem to use the vehicle rules published in Justice Wheels #3; at the very least, it isn’t clear how Black Scarab’s vehicle puts those rules into practice. Black Scarab is an interesting enough character to add to your ICONS roster; in my case, I’m more likely to use him as a villain than offer him to a player as PC. 50¢ is a good price for a pre-statted villain with great artwork.

Each entry in the Justice Wheels series presents a superhero or supervillain who uses a distinctive vehicle. The characters are presented as heroes by default, with tips on how to use them as villains instead. Compared to Black Scarab from Justice Wheels #1 (I haven’t read Justice Wheels #2), Bluejay is a fairly unexciting character—sort of a “poor man’s Batman” with a taser-tipped quarterstaff—and his Golden Eagle is a fairly unexciting vehicle. The page formatting is minimal and unappealing, and the text needs another round or two of copy editing. The compelling reason to get Justice Wheels #3 is the set of vehicle rules at the end, which include not only a Vehicle power but also two sets of rules for chases (one simpler and one “crunchier”). These rules are good, and worth having, even if the presentation is humdrum, beset with grammatical errors, and lacks hyperlinks to online resources referenced. I doubt that I’ll use Bluejay in my ICONS games in any capacity, but I will almost surely use the chase rules.

This three-room dungeon ending in a shrine to Cthulhu is a perfect jumping-on point if you’re curious about the Lord Zsezse Works line and want to “try before you buy.” The LZW team’s artistic excellence is on full display here. As I mentioned before, the product basically gives you three dungeon rooms, with several options for hooking in other methods of entry if you wish. As usual, LZW provides both top-down and isometric views of the scene, which really helps to bring the environment to life. Large JPG files are included for the GM’s reference and for use with virtual tabletop software. It’s hard to argue with free, although the visual aid PDF would have been more useful if it had been laid out for portrait viewing on-screen as well as portrait-orientation printing. But really, you can’t go wrong with this map set!

Supreme Commissar is a great villain for the Wargames setting; unlike some of the other villains in the series, he’d be hard to move to a different time period without major reworking of his backstory. In addition to a long narrative about Supreme Commissar’s history and psychology, and of course his stats, this supplement also provides stats for a typical Red Directorate agent and the Red Directorate’s helicarrier, obviously inspired by S.H.I.E.L.D.’s helicarrier. It’s a good thing the Red Directorate helicarrier has a cloaking device, because it’s painted cherry red; unfortunately, the writers can’t seem to decide whether to hyphenate “heli-carrier” (pp. 9, 12) or not (p. 7). Stats are also provided for a military jet fighter and helicopter; the artwork for these two is a completely different style from the rest (either photographs or 3D rendered models). Three long and fairly detailed adventure hooks round out the product. Better attention to proofreading (to eliminate the inconsistencies, mismatched/misplaced punctuation, and other such problems) could have raised the rating by one star.

This villain’s origin and backstory are interesting, and author Mike Lafferty provides four fun adventure ideas using him. The writeup includes not only the simian mastermind himself, but also two types of henchmen that can serve as models for others. Sadly, this product seems not to have been proofread/copy-edited at all—or at least not successfully. The most glaring problem, standing head and shoulders above the many punctuation errors, is the product’s indecision about whether the villain’s name is spelled “Sovi-ape” (cover, pp. 2–9) or “Sovie-ape” (p. 1).

Majestic-12 is a great twist on the “man in black.” He’s a great fit for the Wargames Cold War setting, but author Mike Lafferty also includes tips for transposing him into a more contemporary setting. As a bonus, the writeup mentions that Majestic-12 has two customary form of dress; the cover shows one, and the “character sheet” shows the other one. The product includes three fun adventure hooks that involve Majestic-12. Despite these strengths, the text needs some additional copy-editing to eliminate grammatical errors. Most importantly, somebody needs to decide whether the character’s name has a hyphen (cover, p. 1, header), a space (p. 2), or nothing (p. 3) between “Majestic” and “12.” That kind of sloppiness gives an otherwise fun product a black eye.

Death Mask’s look and powers may remind you a bit of Dr. Doom, but this writeup gives him a unique flavor and motivation, both perfectly suited to the Wargames setting. The package also includes three fun adventure hooks and stats for the Red Guard “foot soldiers” in P.H.A.N.T.O.M.’s army.

“The Vile Worm of the Eldritch Oak” is a Pathfinder adventure by Brave Halfling Publishing. I’m not familiar with that adventure, so I don’t know the narrative context for these maps. I do know that the artwork lives up to LZW’s pattern of excellence, without question. The package gives you battlemaps for three areas: the titular “eldritch oak” itself (cut away to reveal the small room inside), a torture chamber that apparently sits at a level below the oak, and the lair of the titular “vile worm” (who apparently lives below and is fed from the torture chamber). A bit more of a key or comments on how the artists envision the spatial relationship between the three areas would have been helpful for DMs like me who don’t know the storyline. If you want a 1" grid on the maps, use the PDF layers feature to turn on the grid layer; it’s off by default. JPG files are included for virtual tabletop users. The only things “missing” here are LZW’s famous isometric views, which always enhance their products. At any rate, this is a great map set, whether you intend to use it with the published “Vile Worm” adventure or just build your own scenario around this interesting set-piece.

Hero Pack 2.5 presents six super-powered individuals, four of them heroes and two of them villains. While some of the heroes interest me, especially the Shepherd, a roster book serves GMs best when it’s full of villains. As in Hero Pack 2, only 1/3 of the characters presented in Hero Pack 2.5 are villains. I’d have added another star to my review if the proportion of villains were higher.

On the other hand, Hero Pack 2.5 offers GMs a couple of features that Hero Pack 2 lacked. For the two villains, Ephemera and her sidekick Sequence, Hero Pack 2.5 provides GM tips and adventure ideas in addition to an origin/personality writeup. These few paragraphs make Ephemera and Sequence significantly easier and quicker to use than the villains in Hero Pack 2.5.

Additionally, almost half of Hero Pack 2.5 consists of a mini-adventure entitled “Enter: Galacticron.” This mini-adventure includes its own supervillain, Lady Omega, along with alien soldiers and a potentially world-altering event. The mini-adventure itself is worth the price of Hero Pack 2.5.

Unfortunately, Hero Pack 2.5 seems to be more poorly composed and proofread than most Adamant Entertainment products. In particular, missing and misplaced punctuation dot the landscape. The frequency of such errors makes me wonder whether anybody actually copy-edited Hero Pack 2.5 at all.

Despite the “2.5” in the title, the duplication of Hero Pack 2’s cover, and the brief errata for Hero Pack 2 on the first page, Hero Pack 2.5 is really an independent product. You don’t need Hero Pack 2 to use Hero Pack 2.5, and you don’t need Hero Pack 2.5 to complete Hero Pack 2.