Excellent system, very easy to learn and one that doesn’t hold up play. The original skill system works well, defining a character as the player wants. The magic system is very simple and quite innovative – no single spells but catch-all groups such as “offensive strike”. Here the caster chooses a direct magical assault of some sort (e.g. fire, ice, lightning) or charges a weapon / fist for extra damage. The power of the spell is determined by the casters skill. Simple. The book is well organised and very complete – comprehensive kit lists, how to do things, monsters, treasure, adventure and dungeon generation for ideas etc – it really is all here. A neat threat system keeps the game in balance too – very well thought out. Whats bad then? The only really bad thing for me was the random dungeon generator – first it is all hand-drawn (what happened to the ruler), second, well the generator is in a table format; roll a die for rows then columns and there you go. The average of a D10 is 5.5 so what is in this space of the table? A corridor, an empty room? Nope. A trap. The most common encounter generated is a trap. Hmmm. The idea is good, but the execution needs improving.
Along with the pdf, I ordered the print on demand book. I live in the UK, and it was delivered three days after ordering!! Yes, I paid extra for first class postage but even so, thats quick! The pages are slightly out of position when the book was bound but for an extra $4 I’m more than happy with it. The book and system lives up to its claims of being a complete, rules lite system, and is more than capable of keeping a group going for many, many months. A very solid 5 out of 5.

An excellent publication - clear layout in the style and order of the Basic / Expert books, even the font matches. The inclusion of new classes, races, kit and magic expands the game in a way that I wish had existed back in the early 80s when I started playing Basic. (I still DM it now actually!). WIth the inclusion of Bards, Illusionists, half-ogre, half elves, gnomes, NEW thief skills, new spells, monsters and magic items etc, I feel this is better value (and more focused) than the Rules Cyclopedia. The demi-humans are still limited in level advancement and there is still a focus on clan / stronghold creation at name level - which, unless you want to rpg day-to-day running a castle / clan then your charcter effectively retires. How can a character advance / gain XP whilst is sorting out taxing the peasants?! Overall a fantastic publication.

good - excellent range of figures, well printed, very good value for money bad - printing what the figure is on the base just really annoys me!! I know what tumble weed is and I can hardly spring some mysterious creature on my players if its written on the card - you just dont get this with lead / plastic (whatever they are made of) 'normal' figures.

good - excellent range of figures, covers all the characters necessary, most also on horse back - incredible value for money bad - printing what the figure is on the base just really annoys me!! A deadlands figure with a camera is quite likely to be a muckraker!! I dont need this pointing out.

good - clear pictures bad - why write what they are on the base? e.g. I may want to use the 'adventurer' figures as npc thugs or my player may want the 'assassin' figure as their pc!! Not many 'steampunky' figures - more mechanics, tinkerers etc would be nice - having 2 identical soldiers is not really steampunk. makes a good addition to the victorian figure range though.