The Book of Martial Action 1 and 2

Out of all the third party products I've picked up Book of Martial Action 1 is the first I'd have to penalize for simply not being enough.

The product contains a series of feats that allow you to generate a pool of points based on your BAB that you can spend on martial techniques. Each technique is it's own feat and the martial pool can be regained during the day.

Its a bit similar to Book of 9 Swords but dispenses with the whole 'vancian' techniques, however its is very sparse and shallow leaving me preferring this system but wishing it were longer. The product comes with martial pool archetypes for a number of classes but while that's nice I was left with a hankering for more techniques especially the 2-4 point ones so that I can do more with the pool.
A+ product but gets a C+ for just not being enough.

I was a big fan of The Book of Martial Action I so I was excited to see this.

The PDF consists of new technique feats divided into 5 schools. There is a Tank school, a speedster school, a dueling school, a buff school and a trickery school. Like before each technique feat uses points from an opt-in martial pool that refreshes after a minute of rest. If you're familiar with Path of War/Book of 9 Swords/4th edition these effectively makes them encounter abilities but since they are point based you can pull of a few large stunts or a lot of smaller ones. I like it a lot better than the 'Vancian' maneuvers of Path of War.

The new thing is the schools of techniques and they are a huge hit for me as they put a lot of flavor into the technique feats.

My least favorite part of the pdf are the new base classes representing each of the new martial schools. Because they are not nearly as robust as any other base class I cant help but to see them as unneeded class bloat, especially since I own a lot of third party products with new base classes. I'd much rather just use an archetype from the previous book or just get one base class that was flexible enough to represent any school. As it stands they feel like some extra content I don't care for but someone else may.

Overall the crunch is not useless but not broken and brings fun new things to do as opposed to full-attacking.

Retrospective:

When the stamina system came out with Pathfinder Unchained I fell in love with these books all over again, but by then I also had Path of War from Dreamscarred Press so there was a bit of complementing and a bit of conflict. 

Martial actions definitely have some power creep but way less than Path of War so it puts the GM in a position to decide just how much power creep is acceptable. Despite the power creep martial actions have costs that keep them somewhat more in line with Paizo feats and they have the unfortunate side effect that more martial action feats mean that you have several powers competing for the same pool of points. This means that while they add an interesting dynamic to the game they aren't all that powerful and they definitely aren't as pervasive as Path of War maneuvers and certainly not spells. If Path of War is more your speed then I cannot recommend these books but  if you want a slight nudge for you martial characters they aren't bad products. 

I will say that these aren't as popular with players as I wanted them to be. When you have access to better classes that can mix it up with fighting they just seem like a long list of more feats to think about and the high cost of some of them make them less accessible. Really, if you take a technique feat at the level you qualify for them, using it means you spend almost all your martial pool which puts an end to using them for a bit. The lower level ones are great but I could stand for the higher ones to be less powerful to  have less of a cost.

So overall I think being enamored with this has more to do with the novelty. Pathfinder Unchained has been out for a while but we still haven't had many third party things doing something with stamina but Martial Actions go really well with stamina  giving you a sort of a set of 'martial powers' that can boost classes like the Fighter without ignoring it and replacing it with a new class with a new martial mechanic. If something new came out that was more expansive and streamlined then I'd drop this pretty fast because for right now martial actions seem to fall more into enabling niche builds than being a martial revolution. I still love these products but I can see where it could have been 'more', and would definitely love to see the concept helmed by others.

 You can find this over on Paizo.com over here for part one and here for part two.