So my group is starting an SoB campaign finally and we were working on the set up and I noticed something.

Why would you ever buy starting equipment prior to the first game week in SoB? You start in Gafford, which has a Market rating of 2 and an Alchemist of 5 (and potions only cost 25gold).

If you buy equipment before the start of week 1, you outfit everyone and spend the 1200 so you have no money left for Week 1 probably.

If you instead buy no starting equipment and keep the 1200 coins, you go into Week 1, pull 2 Copper items in the Market. If they are good, you buy them and then finish equipping with Shop Items and buy 5 potions for half price.

The OL...gains 1CT since he gets no starting Lt.

So is there any legitimate reason at all to not just go right into Week 1 and give up the 1CT to the OL and take the chance on getting some good Copper treasure?

The same question is posed in RtL a lot, though Gafford's 1/2 potion cost changes things. Our group tends to forego the shop-first-week because 1) not enough money to make it worth while (they tend to spend ALL their starting money) and 2) get right into the action and blitz a dungeon. In the dungeon, you can come back and shop anyways, so let's just get going!

At least, that's their attitude.

-shnar

Well RtL I can see not doing it, especially since the OL gets a free Lt and depending on where he is he can get that Lt to a city on the first turn. But SoB...I don't know, I can't see a reason not to do it.

lol after reading you post i have found our OL started us in the wrong city

he started us in garnott not gafford.

i agree spending week one in town is worth doing

wblackthorn

I was under the understanding that they can't buy treasure from the market (chest treasure items) until they actually opened one chest from a dungeon, and hence why they can't do this? That was all I understood, I could be mistaken.

RebekahWSD

That they can only buy treasures of the type of which they've opened quests already is only the case in the base game. In the advanced campaign, the market always offers treasure of the current campaign level.

I guess there's nothing that keeps the heroes from shopping in the first week indeed. They still give the Overlord one free conquest token. Which is nowhere near as bad as a Lieutenant moving around of course.

haslo said:

This has been argued in the past. It depends on how much weight you put on placement of a rule in the FAQ.

James McMurray said:

Which rule in the FAQ are you talking about?

The rule that says you can't buy a treasure unless you've opened that color chest. It's on the first page, not the Road to Legend section, which many feel is enough to say that it doesn't apply to RtL.

Buying Treasure Cards from the Shop
Heroes can only buy treasure cards from the shop if they’ve previously opened at least one chest of that color this game. For example, until the heroes open at least one silver chest, they cannot buy silver treasures from the town shop.

James McMurray said:

It is definitely not an errata TO Road to Legend due to the simple reason that it predates Road to Legend. It was an existing and established rule of vanilla Descent already when the Road to Legend rules were written.

An argument could theoretically be made that it still carries over into Road to Legend as a basic rule that isn't specifically modified for campaign play, but I don't see how its location in the FAQ has anything to do with anything.

I have to admit, 1/2 cost potions is a very compelling reason to shop the first week...

Quick question, if one person goes to the Alchemist and not the store, can the other hero buy his equipment and just give it to him? We've been playing that at start-of-week (or really anytime during the week except in a dungeon or an encounter) that the heroes can freely swap equipment amongst themselves, figuring that they're spending a week together, why can't they trade equipment?

-shnar

I think what prevents this tactic is exactly what RebekahWSD said. Road to Legend is still Descent, just campaign style. The rules to Descent apply unless overridden by Road to Legend rules. That would include the rule that you cannot buy a treasure until a chest of that same treasure type has been opened already. I'm not getting how you think that particular rule can just be arbitrarily ignored any more than any other Descent rule. In my opinion, the strategy Big Remy suggests is clearly illegal.

This is when one would hope a FFG employee would step in/up and tell us how it should work. I'm not holding my breath. :|

Antistone said:

Me neither. I'm not saying what I believe, just what I've seen others say. We use the rule in vanilla and Road to Legend (and will presumably use it in SoB as well).

shnar said:

Yes, you can trade freely while on the overland map. At least you can in Road to Legend. I assume the rule carried over to SoB as well.

Schmiegel said:

Note that the rule preventing the purchase of advanced treasures applies specifically to buying items from "the shop" (see James' quote a few posts up). If the RtL market counts as "the shop" and is subject to all shop rules from JitD that aren't explicitly deprecated, then one could also argue that one should be able to purchase random treasures and skills, training tokens, and an unlimited number of potions (up to the number of tokens that come with the game), as in the shop in vanilla, since the RtL rules don't specifically say that you can't . (There's a list of stuff you can buy at the market, but I can't find any place where it claims that list is exhaustive.)

Alternately, if the market in RtL is not the same as "the shop" in vanilla and doesn't inherit all its capabilities by default, then it probably doesn't inherit its restrictions, either.

Alright, I'm going to get indignant here because I honestly can't believe this conversation is even taking place...

RtL or SoB rulebook:

The Market : Treasure and shop items are bought and sold at the Market.
Visit, Train, or Restock : When the first hero visits a given Market in a given game week , a number of cards equal to the city’s Market rating are drawn from the treasure deck that corresponds to the current campaign level. “Treasure Cache” cards are discarded (and are not replaced, instead representing a market shortage that week).

In a given game week...as in any game week taking place in the game.

Also...the FAQ statement

Buying Treasure Cards from the Shop
Heroes can only buy treasure cards from the shop if they’ve previously opened at least one chest of that color this game. For example, until the heroes open at least one silver chest, they cannot buy silver treasures from the town shop.

Show me in the RtL or SoB rules where there is a Building in a city referred to as a Shop . There is the Market , but there is no Shop . Yes, shop items are available in the Market, but no where is there a Building in cities in the rules referred to as "the Shop" that I could find. Just because the Market is now where shop items are sold does not means that rules pertaining to the Shop apply to it. There is a distinct difference between shop items and Market items in RtL/SoB. The Orc Market in Dawnsmoor has been clearly ruled in the FAQ that Market items get the discount while shop items do not indicating there is a difference in how the Market operates.

I started playing RtL when it first came out, and I've been through the existence of 2 different FFG Descent forums and the BGG ones. This is the first time I've ever heard it suggested that that FAQ ruling is meant to apply to RtL and now SoB. I would think someone would have caught that by now and there would have been a discussion.

Indeed. There is no shop in RtL, only a market.

If the powers that be had thought that specific FAQ ruling should apply to RtL, they would have worded it this way:

"Buying Treasure Cards from the Shop
Heroes can only buy treasure cards from the shop or the market if they’ve previously opened at least one chest of that color this game."

Of course it begs the question: why, for simplicity's sake, couldn't they just name the "market" "shop" in Rtl? Why did they have to use a different name?

The only rational explanation that comes to my mind is that they didn't want the shop rules & restrictions to apply to the markets in RtL.

For what it's worth, I'm in the camp that the heroes are perfectly allowed to do what Big Remy suggests if they like. Firstly I believe - without getting into any inane discussions about the difference between the word "shop" and the word "market" - that the rules for the market in RtL qualify as "explictly overriding the base game rules" concerning buying treasures in town. Secondly, I don't see how allowing the heroes to do this is a disadvantage to the OL at all. They get two random copper treasures in addition to the town shop items. Woot. Potions are irrelevant. I admit I haven't played SoB yet, but in the RtL campaigns we played the heroes had potions coming out the ass from all the treasure chests and skull piles and whatnot they were opening in dungeons. They never once set foot inside the alchemist's shop because they didn't need potions badly enough to bother paying 50 coins apeice for them. Unless there's some big change to potion distribution in chests that I didn't notice, I doubt that's likely to change in SoB.

So, in summary, the heroes get two (possibly) useful items and half price on starting potions at the expense of being able to move the first turn, the OL gets 1 CT for free. This is not game breaking for either side of the equation and I don't think any of the arguements presented so far are strong enough to bother enforcing a ban. It's a game, folks, just have fun!

Of course, that's just my opinion. If you don't want to allow the heroes this play it's not like I'm going to come break down your door in the middle of the night. =P