I recently purchased The Sea of Blood expansion along with the Quest Compendium (laughed my arse off on one quest) and a butt-load of minis (all the Lieutenants for Road to Legend). Quite an impressive growth on the game honestly. Well, in the midst of sorting through all this stuff I've decided to ditch the boxes and compile everything into a set of drawer storage cabinets (up to 2, will have to get a third one).

I've noticed that many pieces of this game are usable by the basic game setup, others only by the campaign setup, some pieces are useful/required for either setup. Now that I have both campaigns I'm wondering if it's necessary for me to carry around 2 reinforcement markers, 2 sets of health upgrades, 1 set of +1 fatigue and 1 set of +2 fatigue upgrades, 2 rumor markers, 2 party markers, 2 Overlord Keep markers, 2 sets of skill upgrade markers (although Road to Legend has 1 less magic upgrade), and 2 sets of monster reference cards? I realize that some of the monsters in the Sea of Blood expansion has new skills that are relevant only to the Sea of Blood. So what would stop me from just replacing the old ones with the updated new ones and ignoring the Sea of Blood exclusive skills? And are there any official preferences for the +1 or +2 fatigue upgrades? Is there a reason why one expansion uses +1 and the other +2?

One more question that slipped my mind while posting the initial inquiry: Are there official rules for having more than 4 hero players?

The game is made for 4 players , more or less heroes will just unbalance it. So i guess no, there enough problems already to unbalance it more

Road to Legend and Seas of Blood are both meant to be playable with only the base game, and have additions for incorporating the other expansions (Altar of Despair, Well of Darkness, Tomb of Ice). This does, unfortunately, lead to nearly none of the boss monsters being from expansions, and literally no special floor tiles (fog, lava, etc.) being used in the dungeon maps.

Road to Legend and Seas of Blood are mutually exclusive to quite some extent - the only thing you can do is mix rumour and dungeon decks, all the other cards and tokens and whatnot you'll only need those from one of those two. So you'll definitely only need one spawn marker, party marker, set of upgrades, etc. You'll notice that the SoB dungeon cards scale the boss boni with campaign level, while the RtL ones don't - how you handle that is up to your gaming group.

Skills: Nothing stops you from mixing skills exactly the way you like them. Seas of Blood offers new skills mostly because the old ones tended to unbalance Road to Legend, and brought plenty of problems (some of which were addressed in the FAQ). What I'd recommend, personally, would be taking the mix from SoB (it's in the rulebook) for SoB, and the mix before SoB (with FAQ changes) for RtL (which makes no mention of the SoB skills because it was released sooner), but of course you can do anything else as you like as well. If you mix them any other way however, you'll need to change skill availability locations in cities as well, just keep that in mind.

Monsters: If there's been changes between the RtL and the SoB sets of monsters, they have been balance changes (not sure if there's been any), skills adjustements (all the monsters who gained Swim) or bugfixes (Hell Hounds). Personally, I just stashed the RtL cards away and use the SoB ones exclusively for campaign play. For regular play, keeping the ones from the base set (plus erratad ones from expansions) makes most sense.

Fatigue, finally: The change from +2 to +1 was a balance decision. +1 fatigue is quite powerful really, I'd suggest using that for either, but that's up to you as well (there's been no official change for RtL).

Haslo, I'll take your advice under recommendation. I have yet to play any of the campaign modules but can understand the game balance being upset with +2 fatigue upgrades. I'll just take those and toss them in the spare parts box (original D:JITD). I've taken to just replace the old monster cards with the new ones that have the added swim skill and can just ignore that in non-SoB scenarios.

Well, now that I've gotten to look at the lieutenant miniatures I have a thumbs up and a thumbs down on them. The pewter justifies the $10 and $15 price tag. I have to give special attention to them just to keep them in good shape. I'd rather have had them as plastic like the regular monsters. I may end up not using the piece-together pewter miniatures. I'm going to take a wild guess that the lieutenants for the SoB expansion will also be pewter and i'll probably end up buying them anyways just to say I have them.

Caladorn... having once worked for Games Workshop, there are just a couple things that will make sure you don't mess up your pewter figures.

First of all, just make sure to wash them off a bit before priming, or the paint might not stick properly... depends on the release agent FFG uses to take them out of the moulds. The only other main thing to do is to get yourself some flat matte finish spray paint, and hit them up really good after you're done painting... that will keep the paint from chipping off.

FFG has a pretty good tutorial for painting the pewter miniatures:

www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp

Oh goodie! I do have a box with styrofoam in it for protecting the mini itself from damage.

I have been slowly painting all my minis for a number of various FFG games. The one thing I have done to protect them after painting, which has really helped, was to varnish them by using the dip method. This method uses a can of minwax polyurethane and stain combo (I use the walnut color). Take your mini after it is painted and use a pair of needlenose pliers to hold the base. Then simply dip the entire mini in the can. Remove the mini, and tap off as much of the varnish as you can, then shake the mini vigorously, trying to get off as much of the varnish as will come of. Remember to put down newspaper to shake off the varnish onto first!

The beauty of this is the satin in the varnish will run into the deep creases and folds and give the mini some shading, while the ployurethane part of the varnish gives the enitre mini a nearly indestructible coating of protection. You could probably run these over with a car and not have any paint come off. The one drawback to this method is the varnish will dry with a gloss coat. This is easily fixed by spraying a flat coat over them once they dry to knock off the shine. This gives you the best of both worlds.

Also, if you do not wish to use a stain for the shading and wish to keep your painted mini looking as it does just after painting, you can do the exact same method with just a clear gloss polyurethane without the stain added, then flat coat them after they dry. The varnish finish is simply great either way and allows you to store the minis just as you would when they were unpainted, and protects them from greasy fingers, falls on the floor and just about anything else that could happen.

Enjoy!

a side note on using varnish, is they are great for decals. often after drybrushing your figure you;ll have a rough surface which is less than ideal for having a decal adhere to the painted surface. a small layer of clear varnish at the location will provide a smooth surface for your decals. let it set completely before applying the decal. After teh decal is good and set, you can clear varnish OVER the decal to "lock" it place and really protect it. Then, flat spraycoat the model as a whole once all decals are set. I've used this method to great result on some dark angel space marines - great for shoulder pads, squad emblems, etc.