I swear. No one knows how to write a short story. They like to write brief moments of wonder and perhaps hope and dreams, but there is never any oompf for its conclusion. Its as if they put forth a page from their WIP novel. Here we have a master showing everyone just what an audience wants from a Short Story. Study this book well writers, the short story form done right can be very powerful.
Ok, this particular Map Pack blew me away. I guess you could say that my expectations were pretty high. And when I finally put it together, I was a little upset to see that this could have been a flipmat instead. It takes all the cards to make the picture you see above. It is exactly a flipmat size. It is beautiful to behold.
It was only when you look at it closely that you realize the genius part of this map. The design of the map is cut perfectly so you can take as much of these docks as you want, or as little. The cuts run along the water edges, not down the center of the docks or something absurd.
This allows everyone to mish mash the product just the way you want it. It is somewhat interchangeable, and that adds real value to this product.
I highly recommend it. Very highly. If you take the boat flipmat with this product, you really can go wild.
Countryside is very helpful for above ground encounters. One cannot describe adequately the colors and depth that this product has. Absolutely the best I have seen so far in the Map Pack series. As for the title, there is little contryside other than locations of interest one would find in the country side. There is no hill or bend. There is no slightly forested path such as one saw in Lord of the Rings. There are however bridges and the like which a major encounter would surround itself. So, for those looking for a path ambush, you may have to go to another Game Mastery product. I will say the same complaint that everyone else has said. The "L" shaped ruin is the one you see in the preview above, but it is missing all that green that makes the above the square shape it appears as. That thing above has 4 pages put together, where the "L" shaped one has just three. Maybe I am missing something. Eer, nope. Just looked at the thing and there is no doublesided tile or anything like that.
Regardless of these quibbles, I am very pleased to own this product.
Very impressed with this set. It has the same feel as Dungeon Tiles in the department of different ways to lay them out. There is one 5" by 8" which is pretty useless however. I could not figure out what to do with it. It is open space on 4 sides and seemed to have nothing that it connected to. I can see easily acquiring more of this set to make more tunnels and caverns. I have bought 3 WotC Dungeon Tiles Sets for each new release. I believe this Map Pack would deserve multi purchasing as well for its 60% interchangability.
Though I found this pack useful, I think it's name needs to be made smaller in context. There is definitely a need for a Map Pack: City II, Map Pack City III, etc. I would hate to think this is all that one could find in a city.
Though I will say that these slummish homes look ragged, I think that is what one would expect in medieval times of the peasantry. Overall, I was not particularly happy with the upscale look, and not too excited to see another market ( I have flipmats for markets anyway). At least from a bird's eye view, these slums appear standard middle age stuff. I was hoping to see true poverty. The only thing I can recommend to Map Packs as a line is to create pop out Map Packs called Object Packs. At least then, I could throw in more slum into the slum pack.
By far, this particular Map Pack fills the niche that it should. It takes a theme that is quite tangible and makes it real. I am very very pleased with this product as well as the imagination to look into the themes that are available in both fantasy and the medieval.
