For a GM running the Kingmaker Adventure Path, this offering represents a significant improvement over the presentation in AP#35. The Jon Brazer version does cover the same material presented in AP#35, however the examples actually show all of the features in their description blocks, some of which are omitted in the AP version. There are far more sample armies, for your convenience, and the naming conventions for them make more sense.

This is important when you are trying to explain the system to a table full of gamers that may be completely baffled by this concept. Additional tactical modifications & capabilities are a help as well. I like the army build chart, too. Nice to have convenient tools for the task at hand!

For further details, if you haven't already done so, please read the Dark Mistress' review.

Book of the River Nations: Mass Combat by Jon Brazar Enterprises

This product is 12 pages long. It starts with a cover. (1 pages)

Armies (4 ½ pages)
Next it jumps right into army stat blocks with a paragraph introduction. It deals with the armies stats, build cost, consumption(to keep the army going) special tactics it can learn, special abilities the army might posses. Final it closes with training armies and vassal armies.

Running Mass Combat (2 pages)
This section is how to actual run a combat between two armies.

Sample Armies ( 2 ½ pages)
This section has 20 sample armies with stat blocks to use for them.

It ends with a army stat block sheet and a OGL. (2 pages)

Closing Thoughts. This is mostly a reprint of the mass combat rules from War of the River Kings adventure from the Kingmaker AP. I looked at the two of them, there is roughly 5 pages of stuff in the AP. This book minus OGL, sheet, cover and art. Has roughly 8 pages. Which is a couple of pages of extra stuff. I didn't notice any obvious errors and the art is fair black and white art. The layout is clean and very print friendly. This is a tough one to rate. While most of the information is reprinted and slightly reworded, some of it is new. If you have the AP with the information this gives you a print friendly way to print out just that information and it has a little extra. For those people it is likely a 1-3 rating depending on how important it is to have a print friendly copy. For those that don't have that AP then this would be all new stuff and a lot more useful, in which case I would likely give it a 3-3.5 rating.

So in short if you don't have the AP in question and you want some simple quick mass combat rules this is worth picking up, then I would give it a 3.5. If you do have that AP and would like a little extra and a print friendly version then it is still worth two bucks but not as good of a bargain then, then I would rate it a 3. If you have the AP and have no use for printing it out, then likely this is a product for you, in which case it is a 2. Most of the extra information is sample armies but not all of it.

Trust me, I'm a Succubus