Something that I'm surprise nobody has brought up: The boxed set is really a lot more for players than for GM's. Considering all that's in there, only the monster card-bards(cardboard stand-up action figures) and the ToA is for the GM.

With the non-duplication of most cards, this makes sense. "Hey players, stop being so cheap and get your own set !":

Now..whether or not my players will bite is another matter. D&D Players Handbook 1&2 costs: $46. Makes me think that there should have been a GM's set (complete) and a Player's set (sans cardbard's and ToA). They could probably spank that out for $46 (Whama-Bama-Amazon.com).

Am I correct that there are no Cardbard's in the first expansion set?

jh

There are cardboards in the expansion (e.g., images of the new characters, some tokens).

First of all, the monster standups are interspersed with the other cardboard bits onto the fewest number of sheets possible. If you want to seggregate them, that would raise production cost.

I contend that the lack of duplicate action cards (other than the basic action cards) is a feature that promotes diversity in the group, although a player lobbying for how unfair it is that they can't take card X because someone beat them to it would go a long way towards winning me over if they had their own copy of the card. Same for Talents.

Every player doesn't need their own Wound deck, Miscast deck, Conditions deck, or Insanities deck however.

The ToM and ToB are mostly fluff, but also contain the rules for casting/invoking. Fully half the action cards in the Core Set are spells/blessings for the 3 Orders/Faiths they included in the Core. Although some people are complaining that they will have to wait on an expansion for the others, all of this material is only needed if you have a PC in one (or both) of these Career tracks. While I can't see how they could have left them out of the Core Set entirely, that's a lot of material that not every player needs a copy of either.

So there are a lot of things besides the monsters standups and the ToA that you either don't need every player to have or that every player would want. Nevertheless, every player needs access to the rules, character sheets, Career cards, Talent cards, and Action cards, just to be able to create a character. Then they need dice, tokens, and stance pieces to play. I'm pretty sure that a box that is only missing monster standups and ToA wouldn't be much cheaper than the Core. Even if you removed Wounds, Miscast, Conditions, and Insanities as well I'm not convinced that more players would buy such a set.

I think it was well balance for info for players and GM. The should not have name the core set... The Basic Core Set lol. There should have been more in bestiary. The lack of monsters was disappointing. Now I know they are planning for a Big Bestiary but it should have came out at the same time.

How the info in the player rulebook was kind of out of order. Economy & Equipment should have been part of chap 3 Character Creation.