This adventure is based on mass combat, it could have been great but falls short of what it could have been. When i first looked at the description I imagined something like the seige of helms deep from Lord of the Rings, or Assault on Kings Landing from a song of ice and fire but i suppose my expectations were too high. The mass combat rules accomodate only a single player and that leaves me coming up with another way to entertain the other 3-4 players while 1 of them is commanding.
The Good:
Interesting idea to give command of an army to players and the addition I loved the NPCs presented but my players arent quite as fond of them as the ones presented in the first one with the exception of the bard, Nurrah. Finally an introduction into the worldwound and plenty of nasty encounters to throw at them and alot of shiny items that borders on "loot porn." Mass combat rules are cool at least. The mythic bad guys in this game are very fun to use and if their stats are reworked then they are very deadly and challenging and more to what a mythic challenge should be like.
The Bad:
The mass combat rules should have included multiple armies or skirmishes to insert during a battle. It was exciting for the player in command of the army but everyone else was bored. I put some other stuff for them to do but there was only so many before we just needed to finish the mass combat or abandon it. At one point the army was reduced to a single hit point and at least half of my players breathed a sigh of relief because they thought they can finally ditch the army they were given and the army's commander felt like her shiny new toy was taken from her. So either all players should get their own army, no one should or have something to make the other players feel equally as important to the war. But it mostly feels like it was in there just to sell Ultimate Campaign because looking ahead, after the second module mass combat is not touched again. A series of encounters and optional encounters keeping track of "siege points" based on completed tasks would have been a much better way to do it.
On an unrelated note the wealth per level i dont think is taken into account of the pre written encounters leaving an average party significantly stronger than most of their adversaries. The railroad here also gets very wide allowing more freedom but little choice in the direction of story progression.
Final Verdict: 3 stars. It was a fun adventure but sharing many of the same faults as the first adventure in that it was heavily railroaded, the challenges were a little too easy and the mass combat was just not very enjoyable.
Oh, and the hard copy book could have just been a bad batch but it was falling apart within a week. After returning it for a new one it had the same problem where the glue that holds the pages together would not hold up to actual use.
