Paizo Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull & Shackles Base Set

If you were tempted to play Pathfinder (or Dungeons and Dragons) but were intimidated by the massive library of massive books that contain massive quantities of massive rules,... then your massive solution has arrived! This great story based RPG is easy to learn, the rulebook is little more than a pamphlet, and the game mechanism is fun and very unique. What is massive is the amount of cards included in the core pack! Literally hundreds of items, spells, monsters, etc... fill out the universe of this card-based game. Pathfinder Adventure Card Game also has the advantage of not requiring a Game Master; the cards dictate the events in the game. All you have to do is lay it out properly, and the story unfolds. So, everyone at the table can just play. To get started, just pick one of the Iconic characters, and set out the cards called for in the scenario, and you are rolling dice in minutes, and having all the RPG fun without the Massive headache. Be sure to read everything on the cards, including all of the color and descriptive text, because it really informs the game play, and gives you a feeling for the story, and sometimes makes a critical difference in game play. OTHER ITEMS TO CONSIDER: One set of dice is included (d4,d6,d8,d10x2,d12), but every player at the table needs a full set of dice. Typically we play with individual dice sets, and use the game set to supplement those! The Character Add-On decks are great, and if you are playing with more that four characters in the game, you actually need those extra cards. The class decks are also a good to have, and ultimately, if you like this game you will start to buy the story expansions 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 (expansion st 1 is included in the core set). THINGS TO NOT CONSIDER: The Pawns are fun, but the S&S Pawn set DOES NOT include the Iconics (those are the characters), and to collect them you need to buy the Inner Sea Pawn set and the NPC Codex Pawn box, and even then, the Pawns from the S&S set do not reflect all of the bosses from the ACG! So, it may be easiest to leave those out of the process. If you cannot live without a few pawns, you may want to consider buying the PDFs from Paizo publishing, and making them yourself.

It’s a pretty hard game to get a hang of as there’s a lot of moving parts to the game to make sure your playing right but when you do it’s a blast ways to make it harder or easier depending on how your doing in it ways to get more cards via dlc but a ton of stuff comes in the base box I have 4 different versions and love them all

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Skull and Shackles is one of mine and my group's favorite tabletop games! I purchased this for all of us to try it out, despite getting overwhelmed just looking at a few videos of how it's played. Well, I am REALLY glad I did. Our small group of gamers are almost all fans of co-operative play, making things like this ideal. It's also great if you want to get into the genre but don't want to find of become a Dungeon Master. All cards/actions/scenarios come with written instructions that acts as a DM/AI. There are a plethora of items, spells, weapons, monsters, and characters for quite a bit of replay value. Character decks and Adventure Expansion decks can be purchased for even more in depth gameplay and customization! After getting all of the cards and characters sorted out, you're looking at about 30 minutes to an hour per game, depending on luck and how familiar the group of players are with the game. Now, a few not so great things; As I stated before, overwhelming. When you open this game you WILL be overwhelmed if you have never played anything from the serious before. The rules are long and in depth, sometimes hard to understand. The marks on the top right of the card do help, but not as much as they could. Be WELL prepared to spend hours on just getting the first game set up and making characters. There is a section in the back of the manual that suggests starting card decks for certain characters, this is -highly- recommended. Pricing; While I find the price well worth it, buying expansion decks for the adventures can easily be seen as expensive, especially if you're not enjoying it as much. The class decks are needed, but we found to be fun for the price. (Although this adds even MORE to the whole overwhelming presence of cards.) All in all, I plan on getting most of the adventure expansion decks and already have almost all released class decks. I can highly recommend this game if you like co-operative DnD-style games and are looking for something to sit down with several of your friends to play. (Or solo, if you'd like.)

So does Pathfinder ACG give you the full roleplaying game experience in a box? Well, no -- and nothing ever will -- but it's a great substitute that let's you make checks relative to personalized skills by rolling dice, with a fun theme and good motivating factors to keep you wanting to play. I had passed on Rise of the Runelords, so I went into this game skeptical -- wasn't overly impressed with the art and was concerned about the repetitive nature of the gameplay (find and defeat the villain) -- but I have to say, this is one of my favorite solo games; I reach for it often and think about it when I'm not playing. Be prepared to add expansions if you want to play this game over the long-term. Yes, you can play the same missions over and over or make your own, and maybe try the missions with new characters, but you will soon be looking for more variety in the cards if you play often. The fantasy/pirate theme plays out nicely; I enjoy the new characters and the new ship mechanics are thematic. However, if you don't like pirates in particular, there's little reason to choose this game over Rise of the Runelords; they are essentially the same game. That being said, you don't have to like pirates to enjoy this; I can generally take or leave the pirate theme, but I enjoy it here amidst a relatively familiar fantasy RPG setting/gameplay style.

Organizing the cards I noted that the scenario cards listed on the base adventure are missing

Full game great for groups of ppl to gather and have fun

Received this today but the box was very badly damaged. Was planning on giving this as a gift but I'm unable to now