The second in the CORE series from Baldman games. Continuing in Melvaunt, you will find another mystery. Do you have a party that thinks highly of themselves? Send them through the mysterious portal! Continue the investigation from BMG-01 into the mystery, and see who returns. It is a bit easy for a party to get sidetracked here, so be sure to reinforce the time constraint of the adventure. You may even have an opportunity for a cinematic chase scene.

A Cog in the Wheel is fun, odd, and quite memorable. The descriptions of Mechanus are wonderful, and the addition of the moignos is superb. This is really a flavor piece, like CORE 1-1, rather than a combat adventure. It continues the story nicely and is conceived as a means of introducing D&D characters to the variety and creativity of the multiverse. In that it is a tremendous success.

However, the adventure is a bit flat in terms of the actual plot, and it is too bad that we are not given a statblock for the Decaton, even just for the sake of amusement and curiosity. The lack of variety and depth in the explorable portion of Mechanus is also too bad. However, these are small criticisms. From a players' perspective and a practical play perspective, this is a nice, solid adventure that leaves a strong sense of lore and flavor and is quite of fun.

Part 1 is definitely superior in terms of variety, intrigue, and ease of play. This adventure is far more complex to run and is not recommended for a rookie DM or players. Even experienced players can find this adventure overwhelming if a bad decision is made. Of the many adventures I've purchased, this has the most chances for a complete and nasty TPK by far. In fact, every few decisions can lead to a complete TPK. I recommend prepping your players before running this.

All that said, the adventure is definitely unique. Even more than the 1st part of the trilogy (and that was very unique in its own way). Most tier 1 adventures are straight-forward hack-n-slash with some puzzles and most enemies are usually goblins. This adventure has some unique antagonists, some gray areas in terms of who is a villain and who isn't, and it definitely has a very unique setting. In addition, the way it plays out calls for some very interesting play styles (lots of sneaking and tactics), which is seriously lacking in AL (especially tier 1).

Overall, I would highly recommend this trilogy for a fresh and very interesting story and setting. I don't give it 5 stars because it is extremely complex and requires experienced DM and players in order to be enjoyed to its fullest potential.

I've heard that many people had problems with this module. I will say that the 4? times I ran it EVERY SINGLE TIME I prefaced it with, this is more Metal Gear Solid less Call of Duty. Once I had the players framed in to that they seemed to sing, if you try to fight everything you will die horribly. I love it, its sneaky, tricky, and pays off in spades if you don't just try to kill everything (helps DM fatigue with some of the hack and slash modules out there!)

Yes the CORE modules are light in magic items.... but its TIER 1 they come later for sure. But yeah its a super fun and different module to run, every time I ran it my players did it a different way.

3 stars for the adventure itself. Things can derail pretty quickly, but it isn't necessary to finish all the tasks before ending the D&D session. An extra star for the planar aspects. I definitely couldn't give 5 stars because, as designed, I didn't see a way to finish CORE1-2 as written in 4 hours. We went 5+ hours and only completed half/two-thirds before I wrapped things up.

A great setting, some nice flavor in the single story award - but ultimately complete fluff. Is this worth $1 more than an DDAL 'season' module? My opinion is no.