Delthos's page

I've been collecting the Pathfinder comic and up to this issue I've been satisfied with the art. Unfortunately this issue left me very unsatisfied. I know the Big Bad End Guy is supposed to be chaotic and otherworldly, but I just couldn't make sense of the villain or what was going on. I felt it was nothing but a big mess of color and shapes. This is not what I expect out of a comic. I can understand the desire to show the other worldliness of the villain, but this went past what was necessary.

I've been back filling some item cards which I didn't pick up when they were originally released. I was surprised when I got these in my recent order because the deck box was so much thicker than other decks, even though they have the same number of cards as other decks. This got me a little worried. Upon opening them I found out why.

The art quality is right up there with all of Paizo's high quality art. As there is a good chance I'll never run every AP they produce, I'm not so disappointed that there are generic items in the deck. I like having the options and having lots of items for use in other adventures.

My biggest problem is with the stock used for the cards. All the previous cards were printed on stock that looks and feels like playing cards or CCG cards. This is a much thicker stock that has gloss finish on the front and a more matte finish on the back. I'm guessing that due to the thickness of the stock during the die cutting the cards are warped. They are convex on the front and concave on the back. Much more so than any other cards I have. Again this is probably from the die cutting process and the thickness of the stock used for the cards. The edges of the cards are not as sharply cut and are rougher. The printing looks like it could scratch off much easier than previous cards. This honestly looks more like the stock used to make the card boxes the cards come in rather than the typical cardstock for cards.

I'm disappointed with the quality of the stock used. Fortunately I've gotten some other decks since then and they look to have switched back to the more tradition CCG style stock. We also use 9 slot card sleeves to hold our cards so there is a reduced chance of the printing being scratched, but I can't in good conscience give a rating of higher than 3 for these.

I'm not normally a big paper miniature gamer. That being said I read the first volume of the Skull and Shackles Adventure Path and I quickly realized I wasn't going to be able to field a satisfying pirate crew with my collection of miniatures. So I decided to take the plunge into paper miniatures with this AP. I'm so glad I did.

The artwork is outstanding. All the characters and monsters for the AP are there. There is some slight duplication of the more generic stuff, but there is still variety in those, as there are at least two different versions of each of the generic stuff. There were a few problems with the file, but they were quickly fixed. This is one resource I've been pleasantly surprised with.

I hope to see more in this style and quality. I was so surprised by this one that I decided to take a chance on another AP's paper miniatures. I will reserve comment for that one other than to say it does not stand up to the standards set by this set!

I've been meaning to buy the original three books this one replaces for a long time. I've just never gotten around to it and then I would have had to convert the stats all to Pathfinder stats to use them in Pathfinder. Now that's all been done for me and it's all in one handy tome! I am so glad all these great monsters are now in one book.

My only real gripe is the 17 pages of advertising I had to pay for in the back of the book. I don't mind a page or two, but 17 pages is just ridiculous, even in a book this size. For that reason it only gets 4 stars from me. Fortunately I purchased the print edition and got the pdf version with it. The PDF also contains some web enhancements as well, so it takes away the sting some.

I really enjoyed reading these stories. They are pretty light reading and nothing that you really need to think about. I like how you never really meet Gallegher Plus. It puts you into the shoes of Gallegher. Somehow Gallegher always manages to find his way out of his situations and figure out just what Gallegher Plus invented and what it was for.

Unfortunately it suffers a little from repetition. It is an artifact of this being a collection of short stories written over a number of years for publication in a magazine. He has to continuously reintroduce the character in each story, with a heavy handed manner to emphasize just how much of a drunk he is. This is to be expected considering the format of original publication. I don't have any problem with the character being a drunk; unfortunately the repetition just starts to get a little old. Mind you the stories themselves aren’t repetitive, just the constant emphasis on him being a lush.

If we could give half star ratings this would definitely get a 4.5 from me. As I just can’t give something a higher rating than it deserves it only gets a 4 from me.