My group started playing JitD a few weeks ago and we are having a blast. I love OL'ing and they really enjoy playing the Heros. I've heard amazing things about RtL and really want to introduce it into my group. However, I'm curious if it would be a bad idea to skip WoS and AoD and get right into RtL, as that is what I am heavily considering. I'd love to hear from those of you who have all 4 or possibly any of you who have skipped an exp. I know the rulebook for RtL has a section on "simplified rules" if you are missing AoD, I believe. Would it be detrimental to my RtL experience to skip the two exps, at least for now?

I'm torn, as the advanced campaign sounds like so much fun. What should I do?

I have played with all the expansions and I feel you need at least 1 more Expansion (Well should be good enough) along with the RtL expansion. After trying out 1 or 2 campaigns, you may then decide if you want to add AoD to it (though, I think Well should suffice)

Either adds treachery to the game. good additional heroes from Well though only Tahlia from AoD is great. The monsters in Well is fun to play with - Ferrox and Kobolds! but the dark priests and Trolls from AoD would be a good addition.

Yup, start with Well and enjoy it first before rushing in to grab more.

I think that AoD is my favorite expansion. It adds a danger to your deck and gives one for treachery as well...not to mention an extra dark charm and trapmaster if you like that sort of thing (you should). As a OL, I love trolls, dark priests, and even the occasional deep elf or blood ape. I think tahlia is great, and could see an upgraded eliam being pretty good in rtl with his sweep ability if you customize him towards melee. And then there's the ring of protection. Heroes are gonna want that.

WoD has GREAT heroes like Nanok, Runemaster, Laurel (glass cannon, but highest possible damage output in the game with her hero ability), and the others can be fun. Plus, power potions may suck for "vanilla," but they can have huge effects in rtl. So you'll want them. It also gives the OL crushing blow and much of the "main" treachery. Ferrox can be pretty sweet.

In Rtl, I definitely find that the right treachery (especially monster treachery given how you can upgrade different types of monsters..elite beastman war party with diamond humanoids=command 6, for example) really makes a big difference, and the simplified treachery simply isn't that good. Also, I tend to find myself using the AoD and WoD minions pretty often. I know I played one that let me have a master troll in a recent dungeon, and lucked out into drawing an aim right away. Needless to say, there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth by the heroes when the blank I rolled on one of my power dice became yet another surge and I did a reach/sweep attack that was 22 damage pierce 4.

I also think it's best to play with the new sets and learn about the new abilities/affects before jumping into rtl. Once you have learned how these things work, you can put them all together for a much more complete rtl experience. I think you'll enjoy/appreciate rtl more with more options/minions/heroes, equipment, etc.

In either case, you have a lot to look forward to!

You should get WoD with RtL. The treachery cards are a critical tool of the OL in RtL, and the meat and potatoes of treachery are in WoD.

That doesn't mean you have to play any WoD quests before getting into RtL. You will be spending time to learn the new stuff at some point, so no difference between doing so in RtL or WoD quests.

I might recommend not getting AoD, actually. It has some cool monster types, but almost everything that breaks the game in RtL is in AoD(although the latest FAQ has fixed most of them). For instance, there is a bow that can spend surges to add web tokens to a monster. So if you are the Titan (giant model) OL, they just stick 10 web tokens on you the first turn and you lose.

Why did no one mention, WoD also adds replacement cards for all the revised monster cards and item cards in the base game ?!

Also you should get WoD, so you can get your hands on the trechery and test it out a bit + the game balances back a lot, Heroes will start having a lot of bad days if they don't start to be even better players. I'd still recomend for AoD after WoD (just for the hell of it) but if you want to go for RtL as soon as possible you can get AoD after that.

StarBurn said:

The revised monster and item cards are already in the latest prints of the core game.

I'm at the moment playing RtL campaing with WoD, and I have a feeling that the AoD monsters would really be nice to have. I have AoD also, but as we started without it, I think it's better to play this campaign without, and add it perhaps to next campaingns.

kalle said:

I don't think its a very big deal to add in the extra stuff from expansions mid campaign - at least not the general stuff. Adding in entirely new rules sections (like feats, or treachery) is pretty drastic, but a few new OL cards, different monsters, additional Treachery (if you are using it already), additional treasures etc make very little difference I think.

We have two campaigns going. In both we immediately added the monsters, dungeon levels (which are more interesting too), encounters, treasures and additional OL cards etc immediately - it breathed some new interest mid campaign actually. We waited for a new campaign to introduce Feats though, as that is a significant change to game play.

Corbon said:

I agree, and I also have ToI (no feats) in addition to WoD in campaign, just forgot it... ToI doesn't do much for the campaign, but AoD does, so for the time being I think it's OK to go on without AoD. At least there's something to add to the next campaign then . ToI's Dungeons are nice addition, but the ToI monster spawns aren't that tempting.

I'm sort of waiting how the campaign advances, and if there are bad balance problems, maybe it's then time to draw some AoD features into play...

This is great info guys. I appreciate all of the input. I think I'll get WoD either before or at least along with RtL. It sounds like it adds some important features. Can't wait to get rolling on a campaign.

I work in a Boardgame shop, and all the Descent Games I sold recently were all actually old versions, as a fact I didn't even know about the revised versions since all the games bought by customers up till now seem to have the same old unrevised cards.