As a convention GM for many years I am always looking for ways to make Shadowrun more new player friendly. Spell cards are one such way. I was very excited when I heard Catalyst was going to be releasing these and bought a copy of the PDF so that I could utilize them at the next convention I work.

This set comes with 54 cards and there are 84 spells in the core rulebook. The cards are clearly laid out with all the information you need to cast them. This includes color coding based on type of spell. They do not provide any help on how to resolve them though, that is left to the GM's memory or the handy page numbers listed on the cards.

The cards are an excellent player aid featuring most of the spells which are likely to be needed during combat time. It includes 14 out of 18 combat spells with the missing 4 being those I see least often on player made characters. There are 12 out of 18 Detection spells, but most of the missing spells are simply the extended versions of other spells making the cards easy to modify to reflect that. The 3, out of 11, health spells which are missing are ones I have never seen used. Eight of the 19 Illusion spells are missing, but again it was primarily area effect spells which were left out. Lastly half of the 18 manipulation spells are missing. In addition to leaving out the area spells they also left out the popular "Magic Fingers" and "Fling" spells. Overall they did a decent job of selecting which spells were included in this set of cards. My biggest complaint on selection is that they left out spells which the sample characters in the core rulebook have.

As for the cards themselves, I appreciate the color coding, but for a PDF release I would have preferred if they used plain white backgrounds with color highlights instead colored backgrounds to conserve ink. I would also have liked a "back side" for the cards to make them more like real cards. Lastly I am unsure how I feel about it being 1 card to a page. It lets me pick and choose which cards to print, but it makes it that much harder to print (and cut) a full set at home. To those who are reading this and printing at home, print 3 rows of 2 cards per page and you will get playing card sized cards.

For the player who wants a quick reference, these are a worthwhile purchase. They are also useful for the GM who doesn't want, or have the time, to properly explain all the spells to their players, and since its a PDF a GM can easily print out what each player needs. If either of those describe you, then I recommend buying the spell cards. 3/5 stars.