I've got The Great Rail Wars and I play Deadlands a lot too. So when I saw Boomtowns on the shelf at the game store here in Tokyo, I thought, "Cool, buildings!" on top of that the set included a copy of the Marshal's Log.
At ¥4,800 this boxed set didn't come cheap, and frankly, didn't deliver. Maybe I was expecting too much? What you get is basically a set of floor plans, a book with short write-ups of four towns in the Weird West and the Marshal's Log.
The blurb on the rather hefty box says, "16 extra thick, full color, double sided map tiles." I wouldn't go so far as to call them 'extra thick'; this had me thinking they were like cardboard tiles that perhaps could be connected together. The maps are no thicker than your average softcover book cover and will wear out or tear just as easily. The art is passable, but really, I could have done it myself.
The Boomtown book summarizes four towns, Liberty, Montana, Tuscon, Arizona, Laramie, Wyoming, and Bonasco, New Mexico. There are descriptions of the towns and the inhabitants which will probably be useful for the NPCs. The Tombstone Epitaph, a kind of Deadlands newspaper, gives a bunch of adventure seeds (which I usually never use).
The Marshal's Log is really a waste of a good tree. It has some sheets for recording player stats, critter stats, and drawing town maps, then about 15 blank pages for you to write your adventures up in. If you buy this separately, it's $9.95. You can get a nice blank notebook at the stationary store for a lot less.
Why the huge box? It's got to be one of the reasons for the price tag on this product, big and hefty as it is. If the 'map tiles' had been made out of the box material I might not be moaning so much. Better art would probably also have shut me up.
Deadlands GMs, everything in this box you can do yourself. Don't buy Boomtowns.
Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)
