First, the good:

Really interesting ideas on integrating real world technology changes into the technology of the near future. When I first played Shadowrun in 1989 there was no wifi. Most people didn't even have home computers, much less networks of them in their home. Fast forward 10 years and it wasn't uncommon to have a home network, but it was a wired one. Fast foward another 10 years and people routinely had personal wireless devices in their pockets with more computing power than basically anything anyone had when the game came out. A setting that tries to predict what techology and society could be like 70 years in the future is likely to need tweaks from time to time, and I like a lot of the metaplot in Shadowrun and how its adapted concepts like wireless computing and the Cloud™. Then add in Magic and how old beliefs are seen in a new light and you have room for a lot of chaos. Yet, the world is still somewhat recognizible. People are still people, for the good and bad that brings.

Some of the new mechanics are interesting. Edge actions are interesting. You benfit from having a high Edge stat, but its not insane to not build your character around it. You'll be able to build up Edge points to spend over the course of a confrontation (physical, magical, technological, or social) if you are in an arena you excel in compared to your opposition, but it will take time. Time you might not have. And there's uses for anything from 1 to 5 points of Edge. So if you only have Edge 1, you might not be able to easily pull out that utlimate move right out the gate, but some creative thinking and planning might let you do it by shifting the arena mid confrontation. I generally like this, at least as a concept.

The books look nice and high quality in layout. Art is good (but sometimes not great), and evocative. It feels professional at first glance. But see below.

And the bad:

There are unacceptable problems with the editing that do not really get addressed, and this is true throughout the line. Having some typos is expected, even with professional editing in a paid product. But many other things are never addressed and really shouldn't have made it beyond the proof-reading stage. But the core PDF not having bookmarks added, even years after being released? That's not just a low bar, that's the bar still being on the floor. Add in the problems that aren't really addressed. Can a hacker hack your cyberarm? Yes, but what can they do other than brick it? I have no idea in the core book! Maybe they can control it like a drone and make you keep hitting yourself over and over, or shoot your friend? That's not really addressed until the Matrix book that didn't come out until very recently, and only as a Technomancer ability. That's not really something that should be left up to each GM because it has really fundamental effects on the game.

Some parts of the changes to combat really strain the suspension of disbelief. Armor doesn't provide direct protection anymore, it instead only helps prevent the enemy from gaining Edge when they attack you? For some weapons that might make sense, but for others it feels far too strange. A average person using a knife to stab someone with heavy security armor probably should have more trouble than just giving the target one or maybe 2 points of edge (which they could then use to attack someone other than the knife wielder on their turn!). That seems all kinds of wrong to me. It's also ripe for abuse, which they had to call out in the rules, so obviously was a problem during playtesting. They propbably should have reworked that part opf the system rather than releasing it, though I also get the problem earlier editions had where someone could be so tough and armored it was really hard to hurt them, which isn't fun and could make combat really bogged down without progress on either side at times.

Overall: If this is your first exposure to Shadowrun you will be confused. There's important things left in the air that are not defined but should be. There's some very dense lore that won't make sense without the context of prior editions. But you will probably have less frustration with some of the changes from earlier editions.

If you've been playing SR for a long time, you will probably like the setting advancements and plot development. You'll probably find lots of Easter Eggs that will bring back fond memories of ealrier editions. You will probably also had a lot of the new rules, at least at first, and maybe forever. I'm currently in a love/hate relationship with the combat system in general.

Verdict: Interesting ideas, but the execution is defintely lacking. I honestly don't know if the problem is CGL, but if it isn't they should have addressed these problems through updates by now. It might be worth picking up for the lore updates and finding ideas to mine for other systems (or earlier editions).

Don't just stay away from this one, RUN away from this one.

While the content is interesting in places, the editing here is so very poor it rivals the problems the core book had on it's first release. Some sections can't communicate the ideas they are trying to explain, others have examples of rules that are harder to parse than the core concept and use different modifiers than the tables they reference. Rules that are intended to connect to each other go by different names in two sections of the book and are never connected in the text. Some rules are simply absent or too vague to be meaningful. In one part, the text switches from prose to rules in mid-paragraph like it was copy-pasted into the wrong place. This is beyond bad from an editing perspective, which is a shame because it's got some interesting ideas under all the jargon, insider references, poor organization, problematic layout, edition blindness, missed spellchecking, and odd art choices. I thought at first those owuld be enough to salvage this book a s purchase for me, but it just isn't.

This feels like someone posted an early draft by mistake. The editors and proofreaders really did their authors no favors here. In a perfect world, CGL would fix this up and re-upload it, but let's face it, that has no chance of happening. Poor quality (particularly in editing) is a staple of CGLs Shadowrun products, and this one is a big example of how bad it can be. I'm totally fine with the occasional typoes and missed table updates from any publisher. It happens. This is a whole step beyond that.

If you still want this book for some reason, at least wait for a sale or a bundle. This is really bad shape for any game book. I'd honestly suggest DTRPG remove it until it's given a proper do-over. I would say it's hard to believe this was released in this state, but it sadly is totally believable. I had higher hopes after seeing how nice Sixth World Companion was, but this shows how illusory that was. I've never requested a refund on any gaming product before. I am today.

Excellent product for the 3051 ilClan era. Just disappointed that there was not more Wolf's Dragoons material in the book, especially after the new novel.

In my childhood, there was a cartoon that played on a cable network for kids. A cartoon with eye catching CGI battle sequences. Battletech. It would be years later I would discover it is based on a tabletop war game with an expansive universe. The series this suppliment is based on it on youtube so can be watched by anything, but this book is a must have for fans of the toon, and a curiousity for the TT game purists. Sadly though, there have been updates to the game which leaves this book behind. While the scenerios based on battles in the eps are still playable, you will need tweeks to use some of the other things. For example, there are stats for the MW3 RPG (Which can be found here on drivethrurpg as Classic Battletech RPG) but if you want to use these characters in ATOW, you may want to run them through the update guide in the ATOW Companion book. (Also making Clan chars Trueborn and such) Perhaps what makes this book interesting is the designers notes in which why the dicisions made in the series were made. For example, as kids cartoons need clear and consistant groups of good and bad guys, the choice to set it during the Clan Invasion seemed obvious. So yeah, give this book a look over, especially if you remember the cartoon. After all, Star Colonel Nicholi Malthus gets mad if you refuse his batchal.

Excellent work, cleans up previous story lines from Hour of the Wolf and Redeption Rift. It was good seeing Wolf's Dragoons reborn for the IlClan Era.

This book has nostalgia values to me. Once upon a time I owned a second-hand well-thumbed and used dead-tree copy of it. Over the years, it was lost and now that I'm given a chance, bought the PDF version of it.

Content-wise, this book is jam-packed with Mech details. An absolute must for any Battletech tabletop or RPG fans. However, the scan (as mentioned by another reviewer) is horrible! There's a faded shadow underlay of each characters in the book that make reading difficult (especially for these pair of eyes belonging to a 50+ years old man).

Please produce an updated version with crispier scan, let this avid fan download it again and feast upon the content and reminiscene his childhood dreams in clear details instead of a blurry mess.

Book cut from 450 to 186 after purchased without a change in price and currently on sale for $15 with an original price of $15, which is damn near an FTC violation.

Boring story, with boring characters. The least enjoyable story written in the IlClan Era, BattleTech: Elements of Treason: Duty is similar story much better written with far more intriguing characters. Jason Schmetzer and Blaine Pardoe are much better BTech writers.

"Missing Blood" instead of "The Universal Brotherhood". There seems to be a mix up. Between the Covers of The Universal Brotherhood Sourcebook awaits the Adventure Missing Blood on the unsuspecting buyer.

This review is for the physical version. Save yourself the money. The printing is poor quality. Any section with text against a dark background is completely unreadable.

I love these turning points, and this one is especially fun. I'm already painting up a Crab- er, Night Chanter in all it's golden century glory.

Harlequin is a classic, sure, but it falls well short of other First Edition adventures like Mercurial and Dreamchipper. Ultimately, it's closer to a 3 than it is a 5 but I'm giving it a little lee way for being an adventure that paved the way for much of Shadowrun's early lore. Let's get in to specifics though:

Harlequin follows the player team through a series of about 8 adventures, with most of them seeming to be disconnected unrelated jobs to all but the most perceptive players. This is by design, truly Harlequin is meant to be played alternating with at least one other campaign but given the length of the book it's a lot easier to play it straight through even if it weakens the mystery. That's because at 8 adventures, and each adventure being about two or three lessions in length, you're going to be spending half a year or more just on this campaign. Which can be a good thing if you want a longer story to bite your teeth in to!

The greater story itself is interesting. The ancient elven battle between Harlequin and Ehran that the players don't even realize their pawns in is very interesting, and many of the characters are intriguing. Even at the highest point of frustration my players had with the writing (we'll get to that) they were still so intrigued with the mystery they never wanted to stop. Especially because they had been so diligent in collecting clues and putting together that every single job had, in some way, revolved around Ehran.

The biggest weakness of this campaign is all the "cutscenes", that was how my players coined it. Every Shadowrun adventure has a "Tell it to Them Straight" section to introduce each scene. In Harlequin they're long, very long, sometimes a page or two or even three long. I know this is a game from an older era when tabletops were finding their feet, but I can't imagine even back then players enjoyed being read to for 15 or 20 minutes. It seems as if the adventure intends for you to pause or stop to get player input during these cutscenes, but doing so often requires you to awkwardly stop in the middle of paragraphs.

Often times my players felt like they had very little agency compared to other 1e adventures like Mercurial, and often disgruntled on how the adventure seemed to wisk them along or imply thoughts or actions that didn't meet the players view of their characters requiring some small rewrites. Now, to be fair, most campaigns have a little of this, but I want to emphasise here that Harlequin clearly crosses the line from it being an acceptable part of pre written adventures and getting in to frustrating territory.

Many of the missions themselves are fun, well balanced, and interesting, especially the break ins. The old German town you go to, breaking in to the Policlub, stealing a manuscript, and the last mission in Althian all have the feeling of diving in to places you're not supposed to be and it all works very well. Not just the smaller missions however, there's a lot of globetrotting too. The trek through Aztlan will forever be a highlight of my table, as will boarding suborbital flights and being thrown around the world to other countries. It's a great way to show your players just how big thr world of Shadowrun is. However,

The maps are bad, and a few of the encounters are badly designed The perfect example of this is an early mission where you break in to a policlub office building. The layout is nonsensicle, whoever drew the map forgot to put a front entrance, and if you walk in the back door the entire way the mission is written falls apart. This isn't the only bad map in the game, or the only time where a mission can fall apart because players do something that's not even that hard to expect, but it's definitely the worst case of it. Even in the cases of very well designed maps like Althian you have several rooms the players will almost certainly never go in to, that have art and wistful descriptions.

Some of the tone is inconsistent and the humor is often, uhm, just bad. About halfway through the campaign you go to Germany, you have what I think may just be the best and most intriguing adventure in the whole book, only for me to realize at the very end you were supposed to play it...tongue in cheek? Like a joke? Even re-reading it i'm not sure what the 'joke' is supposed to be, other than German accents are funny I guess. The old tired baron and the castle on the mountain, there's a lot of intrigue there. I recommend you play it straight. But I tell you that to tell you this, the campaign's tone is often inconsistent as is a lot of it's humor in a way that isn't offensive but IS definitely eye rolling.

Overall You have an intriguing campaign with a great overall story and characters but with the glaring flaws such as too many "cutscenes", bad maps, and inconsistent tone. As much as I thought about it, I decided not to deduct anything from the adventure for it's outdated writing and language, no writer can see the future, but there's a few things in here that will make you roll your eyes.

A lot of history about mercenary units, along with unit composition rules for creating your own unit.

However, there's no real information on maintaining your own unit. Cost structures, contracts/pay structure. How much do you pay the jump ship? How much do you pay for the drop ship? How much for the quartermaster, the engineers, and so on? How much to replace a damaged AC/5? What to expect from salvage? How much can you expect to be paid for salvaged materials and mechs?

So, is it useful? Yes, but not if you're actually wanting all the details on how to play a mercenary unit. There's really no information here on how to run a mercenary campaign in actual detail. You may as well play House regulars with no real cost structure except to blow sh!t up.

The book is a great resource or anyone looking to run the shadows of Seatle in 2050, no rules entanglements, just straight information to pull from for whatever you want to do and a full page annotated map to pull from.

The scan? Reasonable. Nothing's illegible and everything's well centered. The OCR, which would let you search for things based on other modules to get more information? Horrible, unsearchable. This is an example of the Matchstick's Bar information that would be referenced on pg 38:

M ... tchstlck·s (I 12. =OJ Nlghl Club .md FilSt FoodfSm.t1l Re51i1urilnl A"he·

rypes/ fourth Avenue North &. Denny W"y/Car! StewMd.

""""nager/ No ~lal 8IaS/LTC_ 2.06 (56-2249).

The Interior of thiS Sffi.\1I. memberHlOIy nightclub

ne=lr the Space Needle resemble5 " jan ·lolm 0( tnt

19lOs. The club 15 iI f"vorlte place foI ~wrunnelS and

rhelr hangers·on.

-- Do note, any = above would normalyl be a less than sign but was causing the review to get cut off

Which I can read from the perfectly legible PDF as: Matchstick's(#12 G)

Night Club and Fast Food/Small Resturant Arche-

types/Fourth Avenue North & Denny Way/Carl Steward. Manager/No Racial Bias/LTG# 206 (56-2249).

The interior of this small, members-only nightclub

near the Space Needle resembles a jazz-joint of the

1930s. The club is a favorite place for shadowrunners and their hangers-on.

So, not exactly usable for searching. Still plenty good for background information, no good for reference.

A classic BattleTech history book -- it walks you through all the events of the FedCom Civil War, in a more-or-less in-universe style, covering the actions in all parts of the Federated Commonwealth, and the additional fighting against Jade Falcon and the Draconis Combine.

There are some flaws, however. The index doesn't differentiate units by designation -- for instance, "Avalon Hussars" gets a single entry, with no indication of which pages would be telling you about the 17th Avalon Hussars, or the 42nd Avalon Hussars.

The atlas skips over some of the worlds that were involved in the fighting -- six of the worlds in the initial Flashpoint chapter don't get write-ups in the Atlas, for instance.

As warned, this is a scan of the book rather than an original printing file. As such, there are some spots where the scan leaves something to be desired. The maps, with star systems marked in small print, are absolutely unreadable.

The Deployment Tables are difficult enough to read given the small font, close spacing, lack of borders on either columns or rows, or any sort of distinguishing shading. Enlarging it to read the text just makes it fuzzier and harder to read.

Still, if you're looking to cover the 3062-3067 period, there's nothing better to have as a reference at hand.