I know that it has been asked before, but the Search tool won't let me pick a specific forum, and I don't have the time to browse all the posts...

We like to keep characters from game to game, so can we jump straight to RtL, or should we get another expansion as well?

In addition to RtL, what is the most interesting/useful/fun expansion?

Heh, this came up just last week

I would say that yes, you can jump right into RtL and don't need any of the other expansions. They /help/ make the game feel a bit more fleshed out, but not required in the least bit. As for which expansion to add on, I think that might depend on your group. If your Heroes are having a hard time, I'd add Tomb of Ice. The Feats give a very minor boost to the Heroes that some have loved, and they've got some really creative Heroes.

-shnar

Cool. That's the kind of info I want...

Maybe I'll change my question to:

I'm going to get RtL, can everyone share the pros and cons of the other expansions?

ronin3338 said:

Though I feel like I'm slightly repeating myself...

WoD (Well of Darkness):

Ferroxes, Kobolds and Golems aren't really that awesome in RTL, but much of the base treachery is. Crushing blow exists in this deck, and many new treachery powers and spawns for the base monsters. Ferroxes are pretty good in vanilla...and Kobolds have trickster which is pretty cool.

For the heroes, you have Runemaster thorn (teleporting mage), Nanok of the Blade (highest possible armor in the game, and as it increases so do your melee dice), and Laurel if bloodwood-highest damage potential in the game since she can convert range to damage. Lord Hawthorne, Brother Glyr, and Tetherys are all fun, but so-so imo. You add some new treasures and shop items, including sunburst, which is a shop rune that gives blast with 3 surges--very handy if prodigy or landrec the wise are in your party.

AoD (Altar of Despair):

OLs rejoice! Not only are dark priests and trolls two of the best monsters in the game (dark priests generate threat and a master troll with and aim can tpk all by himself), blood apes and deep elves are pretty darn good, too. Chaos beasts are just ugly, but not fun to fight when they show up. You can now use treachery to add a second dark charm as well as a second trapmaster. You get a danger (10 threat) in your base deck for free and a second one for treachery (there's a treachery one in WoD as well).

Heroes gain tahlia, possibly the best tank in the game (usually the debate is between her and nanok), Kirga, who is your best friend to stop spawns in rtl and has good survivability, and 4 other heroes..largely mediocre...maybe corbin could be ok. The ring of protection (shop "other" item for $250 that gives +1 armor) also included in this set. You will never play a quest/campaign without it ever again. Totally worth it for somebody. There are also cursed items which can give you more powerful stuff early on but at the cost of increasing your conquest value. Use with caution. Staff of the grave is among these and ignores undying--that one is worth it.

ToI (Tomb of Ice):

The monsters are ok, the dungeon levels/rumors are strong. The OL gains some treachery, but this one definitely is better for the heroes..at least in rtl. Stealth is cool for both sides.

Heroes gain a great shop off-hand. They gain stealth potions which, combined with a dodge, make it very hard to hit someone...very hard. Okaluk has 16 health and stealth...he dodges a lot. Zyla is the best runner available. She automatically has fly and ghost (no adjacent melee), excellent fatigue, good speed, and is only worth 1 cp. If you want to properly utilize the "blitz" strategy for the heroes...she's hands down the best there is. Send her zooming around to get all the stuff, let her die twice and you're still beating the OL that level. Feats aren't as powerful as some would have you believe, but they add a great element to gameplay and give the heroes some tricks up their sleeves.

Personally, I would rather have all the expansions for rtl as that will give a broader experience, but if your OL needs help get WoD or AoD and if your heroes need help ToI is the way to go.

Sweet! Thank you very much for the info.

Sounds like we'll need to get a few more games played to determine what we want besides RtL, but since I am usually the OL and can take the players down, we'll probably get ToI.

If any others still want to chime in, I'm all ears!

I just ordered Altar of Despair. That leaves Road to Legend as the only one I don't have yet.

Very good summary, Feanor!

Put this on BGG a while ago and updated it slightly to include ToI. Main focus is how useful the goods in each expansion are in the general game, as a lot of the material is quest specific. It's very subjective, so disagree as you will.

Well of Darkness:

Replacement cards giving alterations for Beastmen, skeletons, bows and a few treasures (that said, you could easily check these changes on these forums and add them to your current cards with a pen)

Nine quests. Much longer and MUCH harder than JitD. Heroes rarely win if played seriously and they take forever, but there's a great atmosphere to them.

Six interesting characters (probably better than AoD's but not much in it)

New skills: Twelve varied, including a Fighting familiar. Fairly poor magic skills. (However in RtL, one is not allowed and several others are not good enough to be chosen.

Three monster types. Of these, the golem appears in two quests only (and some RtL dungeon levels). 2 Kobald and a Ferrox spawn get added to the standard spawn deck though so these are seen a lot and are fun.

Town Items: Great additions! Two runes for more varied magic attacks from the start, one stun and one blast. More varied ranged weapons. A reach weapon. A town 'cloak' (tunic). The runes make the biggest difference.

New potion: Power potion (lets you roll five power dice once) not used often. This is not very useful in the base game where you can use a fatigue potion for the same effect, but extremely useful in RtL where it can also 'boost' to silver and gold power dice.

Treasures: The proportion of melee/ranged/magic based weapons and other items is evened out by this expansion (magic-heavy in JitD). Includes daggers (bleed), reach weapons, ranged weapons with daze and ranged weapons with sorcery.

Terrain types (quest dependant): Mud (slows you down) and lava (hurts you). Only used in a couple of WoD quests and barely worth mentioning in RtL.

Effect tokens: Daze, Bleed. Bleed is an effect of Ferrox and hero treasure and is therefore common. Daze is a rarer effect, stemming mostly from hero treasure.

Treachery: Big boost for the Overlord. Many and varied.

New traps: Rolling Boulder (used in only two quests... can be used as a card but VERY rarely as most people agree it's overpowered and it is not allowed in RtL)
Scything blades and dart fields (permanent trap markers that are fun, but in most quests, the OL would have to select them from the treachery deck) A 'Lightning bolt' trap template is even less likely to be used.

Altar of Despair :

Only six new quests. I think the AoD quests are as interesting as the WoD ones, but much better in terms of balance. Heroes will very rarely win WoD quests unless the OL is lenient or you house-rule in some way, especially in terms of treachery. Our AoD games have been generally very balanced)

Six new characters: Again, a good mix. probably not as good as those in the other expansions, but hard to say.

Skills: Twelve interesting and varied. However, four of these are not used in RtL and several of the others are not good enough to be chosen.

Prolonged actions: Great fun, but entirely quest dependant and only appear in four out of six quests (and not at all in RtL). Great for homemade ones if you're into that.

Five monster types: AoD probably has the best monsters. Dark Priest (great) and Blood Ape spawns are added to the regular deck and are common. Trolls and Deep Elves can be added with treachery or appear in quests (RtL some dungeon levels). Chaos Beasts appear rarely (three quests) but are wonderful just to own.

Town items: Wizard's robes (2 armour normally but 0 against melee) are a great addition for changing the party dynamic. Wizard's really need to be sheltered from melee now. Also makes razorwings more handy. Also some expensive items for purchase later in the game, curse dolls for removing effect tokens (for 200), and a ring of protection for armour +1 (for 250) gold).

New potion: Invulnerability potion. Gives armour 10 against one attack. Great addition (but not available in RtL, although we allow it in treasure caches as a rarity)

Treasure: Some very good additions for the Copper and Silver decks. Melee weapons with Knockback, Ranged weapons with Web, Magic weapons with Breath&Burn. Cursed weapons (one of each type) available at Copper are more powerful than a standard copper weapon but come with a curse token. Several interesting Other items as well (an imp familiar with Aura, a one-shot immovable Boggs, a pack of holding and fatigue-regaining gauntlets among others).

Terrain: Fog (can't see through), Corrupted (OL gains threat while fighting on). Like the WoD terrain, quest specific and therefore rare (and barely in RtL).

Effects: Curse (hero worth more conquest) used a lot. Frost, heroes risk losing equipment (rare as mainly only from master deep elves)

New traps/Props: Some very nasty Overlord options. Dark relics give heroes an evil treasure sometimes worse than an instant kill. Dark glyphs can substituted for regular ones. Dance of the monkey God gives four-monkey-amusement. Crushing walls appear in one quest only and are a better idea than in practice (and do not appear in RtL). Good and Evil altars are quest specific.

Tomb of Ice:

New tile formats: Provides numerous non-standard tile formats such as rooms without regular exits in the middle of each wall, indoor/outdoor transition tiles and single square corridor tiles. Great for home-made quests but fairly pointless otherwise.

Six new quests. While these aren't as impressive as the AoD, they do have the advantage that they are shorter and therefore more playable. We find them the easiest of the bunch. Also a new rumour and four new dungeon levels for RtL.

Heroes: An excellent mixture of completely off-the-wall heroes, abandoning the conventional approach (hero with 5 melee dice but only two skills, hero with move 6 but only 2 fatigue, hero with fly costing a single conquest).

Stealth Dice: New dice to roll when attacking a creature with the stealth ability increasing the chance of a miss. Fun addition and plenty of use against certain monsters (especially shades) and heroes with Invisibility potions.

No new skills.

Feats: Excellent addition giving a helpful boost to the heroes instead of Treachery to help the Overlord. The main advantage of ToI over the other expansions, although I would say that you need an expansion with Treachery to balance out Hero Feats.

Treachery: a few token cards including Treachery spawns for the ToI monsters and Ice traps, but nothing special.

Five monster types: The monsters with ToI are generally less innovative than AoD. However with three spawn cards for the standard deck (Shades, Lava Beetles and Medusa) they will be more used. Wendigo is fairly underwhelming and is treachery only, while the Wyrms are wonderful but used in a sole quest (with appearance in one each of RtL dungeon/rumour/encounter)

Town Items: Least useful with only two additions. A Morning Star is important for a significant off-hand bonus though, and a Hammer with knockback, less so.

New Potion: Invisibility is a great addition making a hero harder to hit.

Treasure: Least useful in my opinion. Two weapons of each sort with various effects.

Terrain: Only Ice crossing which causes a hero to risk missing their turn. As always, this is quest specific, but does have the advantage that it is also availabel as a trap with treachery which might see it used more often.

Effect Tokens: Disappointingly, none as many of the new monsters use JitD effects (Stun, Burn) The Ice Wyrm has a Stomach tile to place swallowed heroes in, but rarely used.

Traps/Props: Eggs which are used in two quests only and not at all in RtL.

To summari se:

Special Rules:
ToI-Stealth Dice and Feats. Both excellent additions which will get plenty of use in every game.
AoD-Prolonged actions. Great addition but rare in the set quests and not in RtL.

WoD- includes replacement cards from the base game (although AoD includes an improved leadership card)

Treachery: Big overlord boost with AoD or WoD. A token few cards in ToI

Quests: AoD's are best. ToI are shortest. WoD has more but are very long and mostly impossible or only for veterans with a whole day to spend.

Heroes: Pretty equal, really. ToI perhaps the most interesting.

Monsters: 1st AoD, 2nd ToI, 3rd WoD

Town items: 1st WoD, 2nd AoD, 3rd ToI

New potion: 1st WoD best (with RtL otherwise it's worst), 2nd ToI, 3rd AoD (good but not RtL compatible).

Terrain: WoD and AoD equal. ToI 3rd, but mostly quest specific.

Effects: WoD and AoD.

Traps/props/extras: WoD for traps, AoD some nasty treachery, Dark Relics and Glyphs

Skills: Pretty even between WoD and AoD (but with RtL, WoD wins it)

My suggestion -start with Well of Darkness and Tomb of Ice if you can afford both.

The Well adds corrected cards for the base game, treachery for the Overlord and 9 new quests.

The Tomb adds hero feats to balance the OL's new treachery cards plus its quests are quite small generally and therefore probably more playable.

Next I would get Altar which is fun but doesn't add too much to the mix that Well didn't (in fact with the corrupted glyphs, curses and so on it can make life for the heroes much harder...).

Road I would leave for a while because it take's an awfully long commitment to finish and is more fun with the stuff from all the other expansions anyway.

Wow! Thank you all for the information!

I guess I'm going to have to rethink getting RTL until later and go with 2 of the other expansions.

This has been a tremendous help, and I thank everyone for their input.

Special thanks to Feanor, inle_badger and TeufelHund for in depth comparisons!