Ah, a new Iron Claw book. More animal people, new landmasses and settings to explore, and new gripes about editing.

It's Iron Claw. If you already like this system this book is worth picking up. It's not as expansive as the Book of Jade and it doesn't expand the players toolbox the same way the Book of Mysteries does, but it adds another 20 species to play with, including more birds and reptiles, and new wave of careers, with the sandout being the bomb-throwing alchemist. However the big draw is the new setting and the new Warfare system. The Warfare system simplified compared to a table top wargame, though whether you want to see that as streamlined or stripped down is up to you. However unless your playgroup is full of armchair generals who want a meaty wargame this will be plenty.

It also adds a new rule that basically boils down to a "Not Cool" card. An option rule that gives each player the power to pause the game when something in it touches a nerve. It's a neat idea, and while in an ideal world people should be able to just talk things out when something in game is making them uncomfortable, it's not hard to imagine where this rule is super helpful. We've all had jokes come out wrong, or unintentionally bring up bad memories or corss lines we didn't know were there.

That's the good: More animals, more items, artillery and warfare rules, and a big new setting.

Now the bad.

First and foremost it has all the usual Sanguine gripes. If you have any of the Iron Claw books you've seen this stuff before, though hopefully with the book still in Beta they'll fix some of them before the full release. Their habit of numbering their expansion pages as if its all one giant book makes PDF navigation a pain (this book's page 1 is number 727). But at least they're consistant there. The big editing issue is the inconsistancy with the keywords on their gifts. Some of the new elemental spells have the wrong elemental keyword in the gift's description but the correct in the attack's description. None of the new elemental spells have the Battle descriptor even though they function like battle gifts (not sure if this is a balance decision or an omission). There's also a lot of random bolding, or bolding that cuts out mid word, though that's a minor cosmetic thing.

That's all cosmetic issues though. If you've read previous Iron Claw books and are thinking about getting another one then you've already accepted these as part of the package.

Mechanically this book is really light on new Gifts. Five new spells, a pair of gifts for artillery crews, a bare-bones bard gift, a bare-bones potion making gift, an animal companion gift, five new spells, a static anti-magical creature gift, a new Blessed Path, and four new atavism gifts. That's it. For players, that's not a lot, especially when compared to the full martial arts systems of Book of Jade or the suits of spells that come out of Book of Mysteries. Now, to be fair, this isn't entirely a bad thing. The number of gifts available in Iron Claw is already staggering and Book of Horn and Ivory explicetly states you should be using stuff from the other books. With that said, it doesn't leave all that much new stuff for Players to dig into.

Also, devlopers, if you're reading this, can you answer me this: What is an Akhal-Teke? There's a gift dedicated to getting/having one and their stats are impressive, but there's no description of what they are. Their Beastary entry is more concerned with the history of the breed and their use in setting than what they look like, and for the life of me I can't find a picture of them in the book. Are they some kind of giant bird? A flying reptile like a terradon? A beetal? some kind of enchanted loaf of bread? I am confused, please help.

Overall I'd recomend this book to Iron Claw Hosts. It adds enough new systems and an expansive new setting to play around in. Already running campaigns could benifit from the warfare system and the rules for artillery crews (all the attention given to cannons makes me want to write up a pirate crew to throw at my players ASAP), while new campaigns have a 3rd region added to the list of choices. To players I'd give a more tepid recomendation. With only a handful of new gifts there isn't the meat that Book of Jade and Book of Mysteries had.