Tribes of the Heartless Wastes

[DKEvermore]

Just received my copy yesterday.

It's in a different format, reminiscent of the Gazetteer format (which I love)
and I like the fact that it has a Player section and a GM section. The map,
while smaller, is still up to the standards of the previous BR maps. This one
is actually small enough I can resonably easily laminate it.

The down side:

The war cards however seem to have a printing error. All the backs have the
sillouette of varsk riders rather than sillouettes of the actual troops type.
Also, it would have been nice to have had them punch-outs rather than try to
get the card sizes right with scissors.

The up side:
The domains have far more detailed info, YEA! I like this. Plus every domain
has indicated precise military units. Four domains are left "blank" on the
map(you'll see what I mean), but after reading the descriptions about these I
think it's quite appropriate. It means even the Vos are scared of these
places.

All in all, I have to say I'm very excited about this latest BR release and
will now begin studying it in detail!

- -Dustin Evermore

[Ed Stark]

At 11:21 AM 1/7/98 EST, you wrote:
>Just received my copy yesterday.

Yay!

>The war cards however seem to have a printing error. All the backs have the
>sillouette of varsk riders rather than sillouettes of the actual troops type.
>Also, it would have been nice to have had them punch-outs rather than try to
>get the card sizes right with scissors.

That wasn't a printing error. In order to get the product out when we did
(late, but a lot closer to on time than it could've been), we went with the
single silhouette. This makes them easily-recognizable as Vos war cards, if
not as individual units. Sorry for the inconvenience, but we wanted to get
these to you as quickly as possible.
As far as the cut-outs go, that was a cost thing. You would not BELIEVE how
much more it costs to do the perfs. It's insane. We basically had two
choices: do 32 war cards without perfs or do none at all. (Or raise the
price on the product substantially--that, we did not actually consider a
choice.)

>The up side:
>The domains have far more detailed info, YEA! I like this. Plus every domain
>has indicated precise military units. Four domains are left "blank" on the
>map(you'll see what I mean), but after reading the descriptions about these I
>think it's quite appropriate. It means even the Vos are scared of these
>places.

That was exactly my point. Vosgaard is very wild and very undeveloped. It's
dangerous and tougher than any other region of Cerilia. Hopefully, that
will encourage true hero-kings to forge their own realms and empires in the
northlands.

>All in all, I have to say I'm very excited about this latest BR release and
>will now begin studying it in detail!

Can't wait to hear about it!

-- ->-- ->-- ->--@
Ed Stark
Game Designer, Wizards of the Coast/TSR Division
Asst. Brand Manager, BIRTHRIGHT/GREYHAWK/MARVEL Group
TSR Website: http://www.tsrinc.com
(soon to be http://www.tsr.com)