I noticed my Tomb of Ice expansion has campaign monster cards (e.g., mega-stat Ice Wyrm) for RtL - can they be used for SoB as well? I'm still trying to decide which campaign expansion to purchase. My understanding is that both RtL and SoB contain a set of 40 (more or less) identical campaign monster cards but, since Tomb of Ice was published after RtL and before SoB, I was wondering if RtL is "better supported" by the expansions.

Logically, one would assume SoB is actually better in that respect, because it could be designed with all expansion content (such as feats) in mind. RtL was not designed with ToI content in mind, because ToI did not yet exist.

In all honesty, though, I don't think it's really much of a factor between the two AC expansions.

I'm pretty sure there are no ToI monster cards in SoB, so whichever AC you buy you'll be using the ones you got in ToI for those monsters.

As far as which AC is "better" it mostly comes down to theme. Do you want a swashbuckling, sailing, sea adventure, or a more standard roaming the wilderness adventure?

RtL has been out longer, which means its rules do not officially anticipate ToI. On the other hand, the AC components included in ToI were most likely designed with RtL (and whatever playtest version of SoB they had) in mind, so it should work fine with RtL. RtL's rules are older, and many errata have been published for it.

SoB is newer, and so those rules theoretically are updated to include errata from RtL, as well as some general revisions to improve the campaign experience ( theoretically , YMMV.) On the other hand, SoB does play much differently than RtL which means that, for all the things FFG may have learned from RtL, it is also full of new mistakes produced by the new content. We've certainly seen more than a few examples of such already in these forums. I'm sure FFG will release errata to fix things as needed, and fans will make house rules to suit their personal tastes along the way.

I guess what I'm saying is that both Advanced Campaigns have their share of issues, including, if you want, the issue of future expansion material being made later and thus not being expressly considered by the core rules. I wouldn't worry about that one myself, though, since the later expansion will (hopefully) take into consideration how it interacts with previous material it is intended to be used with.

I'd recommend picking the campaign whose theme and setting most appeals to you. Rules can be patched up (or house rules implemented) later on if it's really necessary.

Steve-O said:

Thanks; I guess that's what I needed to hear. Sea of Blood it is!