Greetings fellow overlords and heroes! I am looking for suggestions to expand on the base game of Descent 2E. I told myself that I wouldn't buy anything else for the game until I 1) played at least two full campaigns and 2) painted all of the models. I finally have a regular group to play with, and we are almost finished with our first campaign (which will be my second). The models are almost finished as well.

Since we have 4 players in our group, we are going to play the Road to Legend campaign(s) next. With that in mind, I am wondering what would be the best bang for my buck in terms of new content and variety. I am tempted by the hero and monster packs because I played a lot of the 1st edition (my friend owned that set), and I miss some of those monsters. On the other hand the full expansions have the extra classes and items, but they cost more (I have a limited game budget). Looking around online, I could get either two monster packs or one full expansion for about the same price.

On a related note, how are the lieutenant packs? I really hate to have such important characters represented by tokens instead of actual figures. I want to start with Lord Merrick Farrow, since he is guaranteed to show up twice, but do any of the others really stand out?

All opinions are welcome!

Do you have the Lieutenant packs for the core set? Those might be a good transition to some of the new mechanics and OL abilities that they provide, (as well as new minis to paint, YAY!).

If you want to enhance the game with side quests I would go with a small box to introduce the side questing mechanics and rumor cards. Once you have that you can expand into hero & villain packs.

If you're done with the repetitive core campaign i would consider a big box expansion with a new campaign to play through.

So there's a few different options depending on what direction you want to go.

The lieutenant pack adds a bit more diversity and balance to the game (imo), but doesn't add much content to the existing campaigns.

Basically it gives the OL a chance to play around Wildlander's Danger Sense and other discard mechanics by instead buying Plot Cards by purchasing Threat Tokens (or otherwise laying claim to them during an encounter). Thus giving the OL another place to spend his XP in a meaningful way as opposed to a card you may or may not draw, and it may or may not be discarded before you get to dish it out.

They usually add both to the hero's decisions and the OLs. If you are going to play the Road to Legend campaign however, I would absolutely not recommend a lieutenant pack for now.

If you are short on funds for buying more content, I would probably recommend a small box expansion, as it adds relics, monsters, heroes, classes and shop items, and you can incorporate the quests from there into the Shadow Rune or Heirs of Blood campaign, whichever you have (by rumor cards).

If you rather save up a bit I'd recommend Shadow of Nerekhall expansion (a big box one), I really enjoy that one as OL, and so far the heroes seem to enjoy it as well.

I, personally, wouldn't bother with the Hero and Monster collections until you have possibly expanded the other parts of the game a bit, but each to their own.

Best of luck on your decision!

Lieutenants: Merrick, Splig and Alric are the important ones for the first RTL campaigns.

Try to expand to a big box first, adds more content: 4 heroes, 4 classes, 4 monsters groups, items, a new condiction, and a new side quest (for RTL)

Small expansions adds the same, but with less heroes, classes and monsters. They have the same price range in comparison with heroes and monsters packs.

I highly recommend to add more monsters, for more variations in the encounters.

Shadow of Nerekhall is a great Big-Box expansion. 4 New Heroes and classes, 4 new monster groups, new tiles, a new OL class and a great campaign. Plus new items and relics. If you like to the campaign play, this is the box to buy.

Lieutenants are kind of cool, but in my opinion you don't get so much fun for the price.

H&M packs don't add new classes or campaigns.

Shadow of Nerekhall is a great Big-Box expansion. 4 New Heroes, classes, 4 new monster groups, tiles, an OL class and a great campaign. If you like to the campaign play, this is the box to buy.

Lieutenants are kind of cool, but in my opinion you don't get so much fun for the price.

H&M packs don't add new classes or campaigns.

H&M packs do, however, add a quest.

with RTL all things will only give you 1 extra side quest. So it is the other items you need to consider.

After 2 Base campaigns I would probably say most important would be extra classes for variety. Both big boxes give 4 small boxes give 2. I enjoy the Nerekhall ones, I don't have any others yet.

After that I would say Monsters would be important (for open groups). Again Changelings and Rat Swarms are really fun.

At the end of the line for an RTL player would be the OL stuff and campaign, which we have been enjoying, for when you wish to go back to OL Vs Players.

Lieutenant packs do not give that much bang for the buck, I find. And of course, the plot decks are overlord centric, no real gain for heroes here, aside from getting "destiny tokens" that give re-rolls.

Monster packs are quite okayish, but the added variety depends on how you use them.

Big addons (e.g. Shadow of Nerekhall) include a big campaign. Since you do not want to play that, but instead already decided to play RtL, that would be a waste, for the moment.

So my conclusion would be to go for a small expansion box. Which one is a matter of taste, I guess. Manor of ravens has a cool theme I find, even though I don't like the monsters included. Very situational and generally rather weak(e.g. bandits).

A very balanced addon I found to be "Lair of the Wyrm". It has nice additions in all fields of the game and the monsters are quite useful in my book. E.g. I really like the Sentinels.

Here you can check out the content of the box:

http://descent2e.wikia.com/wiki/Lair_of_the_Wyrm

I also recommend browsing through here . Scroll down to the "Community Opinions" heading.

So many great replies. Thanks everyone! Looks like my best bet is to skip groceries for a few months and buy all of the expansions.

Seriously though, I'll probably go for Shadow of Nerekhall. I like the look of the new classes, and the campaign will be good to have for the future. I may try to sell off a few games that I don't play to squeeze in a H&M pack. I do miss some of those 1st edition monsters.