One of my main concerns picking up this book up after the release of 2e was whether any of the changes conflict with the contents of this book. I'm happy to say that this isn't the case!
Not only does all of the information in this book remain consistent with the Galaxy Guide and Player Core, but there isn't any information in this book that's been reprinted since. This makes it a must-have for anyone wanting to explore the lore to further deepen their stories.
While the pawns themselves are nice, the packaging needs to be improved to prevent damage. There's no barrier between the pawn bases and the heavy block of pawn sheets, so I have gouges and scrapes on some of the pawns on the first sheet. A single extra blank sheet between the bases and pawns would have prevented this damage.
After returning the first unit to where I bought it, I bought another from a different store. This one has some denting in the Animated Armor, but not nearly as bad as the first. One of the big issues is that the huge pawn bases are in a bag that's too small, so they stack up higher than the space physically left for them in the box. When the boxes get stacked, the box above drives the huge pawn bases into the first pawn sheet.
The second unit I got even has a clear indent in the bottom of the box where the pawn box below it had the "ridge" of a huge pawn base pressing up.
This is a decent product that does its job as expected. I had expected something a bit more substantial to hold in your hand. As long as you mostly leave it laying down behind a GM screen, it should last a while, but I wouldn't want to be holding it in my hand for the entirety of combats. session after session.
The selection of magnets is plentiful, though I find the number of condition markers lacking. Doubling or tripling the number of those (dropping a couple of the unnumbered enemy ones) would be a big improvement.
The main issue I see is that the metal(?) piece inside doesn't fill the entire sheet. You can see a slight outline of where it is, and it doesn't extend close to the bottom edge of the pad (while it does come close to the left and right edges). The bottom initiative slot just doesn't have any way to hold magnets, making it unusable.
