After getting the Midnight expansion, I discovered that the two sets of heroes really weren't that compatible for playing a mixed game (you couldn't put all of the heroes into one big pile for everyone to chose from, regardless of whether you were playing the expansion or not.)

Do the other two expansions allow you to effortlessly mix two sets of heroes together in one fashion or another (expansion play only or core game play only?)

For me, the coolest would be to allow for a large library of heroes from the core game and two expansions that could be used in a variation of the game.

Hi there,

unfortunately Midnight is a single case in the vaste Runebound set of expansions. Although it requires the base game to play, there are too many differences in balance and way of playing. For this reason most of the Heroes are below the normal game standards and you can't mix Heroes together to create a single pool. It's a pity, since the miniatures and Special Abilites are great.

On the contrary, every other big box expansion features Heroes that are compatible with base game balance. The only difference is they have some bonuses that are not generally applicable. For example, Island of Dread adds Lore ability that many new Heroes have but has no use in the base game.

Island of Dread, Sands of Al-Kalim and Frozen Wastes give you exactly the type of Heroes you need.

Yeah, the heroes from Midnight are a bit weak to work with the other expansions. Many of them have only one damage in each phase. That works okay in Midnight, where you can (eventually) attack in multiple phases, but it's a big handicap in the normal game.

I think the heroes in Isle of Dread tend to be a bit stronger than the ones in the base game, so they don't mix all that well, either.

The heroes from Al Kalim and Frozen Wastes do mix pretty well with the original set.

Maybe there's a good way to handcap the heroes from the different sets? An extra 3 gold (so, 6 gold total) for the Midnight heroes, and no starting money for the ones from Isle of Dread?

Lindsey said:

Well, if the big issue for Midnight heroes is that they only do 1 damage per attack phase, maybe allowing a Midnight hero to pick one attack experience upgrade of his choice before gameplay begins would help? Then at least one attack type would be +3. I don't own Midnight myself so I'm just going on what's been said here.

That sounds like another reasonable possibility. Red Scorpion in the base game only has 1 damage in each phase, and is supposed to make up for it with her high skill values and a good special ability. Gold, on the other hand, gets you a better shot at increasing damage with a weapon or such, but there's no guarantee that there will be an appropriate item available.

For reference, here's a page with a (mostly legible) picture of each of the Midnight character cards:

www.boardgamegeek.com/image/136989/runebound-midnight

Hi,

in sands of al kalim is a character with the prophecy skill which is only useful in that expansion (shala the shaman is anyway a good character to play in the core game). I have recently bought IoD and have noticed that some characters are not well balanced especially trenloe the strong who gets the next level for one experience counter less being one of the strongest in his attributes at the same time.

seba74 said:

Yes, Trenloe is quite unbalanced because his ability gives him a big advantage, considering he has very good stats. But other Heroes are not overpowered by any means, some are very different from base game ones and require some skill to be played properly (Landrec & Ispher are quite tricky, but can be very effective). I'm not very convinced of Grey Ker's Errata. 4 Mind and 2 basic Ranged Damage is very much. 3/2 is definitely enough to get a fresh start.

Hi,

yeah, I looked through the character cards again and I agree with The_Warlock - the characters are not unbalanced (even the Grey Ker in comparison to other rangers from e.g. Frozen Wastes is ok I think) except for Trenloe who is maybe overpowered on purpose - as a flag hero for Runebound, appearing in every corner on the Runebound FFG web pages... with his ultimate quest...