"This exciting new combat exapnsion...drmatic combat maneuvers...lethal opportunites....surges of power....thrilling turns of fate...." it says on the back of the packet. After reading that maybe it was easy to be dissappointed.
Most of these cards are 'play a card for a bonus to hit/save/confirm crit with occasionally the choice of taking a lesser bonus to be able to play a card again in the encounter, "continuing the tide" as they say. There are a few other cards (play to use an Attack of Opportunity to block an attack, play to make a 5' step to avoid an attack and some more) but it all seems unexciting. There's no sense of a 'tide of battle'.
Very, very few of the cards are about 'the team' and just give the card player a bonus for that player, and there's other mechanics available to do that. The cards are in suits but that's just to break the cards up into four catagories and they play no role beyond that. When players pick their cards there's no restriction - you just take the cards you like.
To stop things being stacked against the GM, the hand size is restricted by the encounter level and playing a card costs points which the GM can use to give his NPCs bonuses to hit or other minor benefits. (The top one making a player be unable to play any more Tides of Battle cards this encounter).
Maybe I was expecting too much but as I read through the cards one by one I just found them all very dull. I won't be adding it to my game.
Mark
