Month: April 2026

Overall

Putting chapter 2 encounter sets to work to replace the original sets works out very well in the Dunwich campaign. You could even just go straight up with the sets from the substitution chart in the Grimoire, but i do have at least a few adjustments to propose.

Easy recommendation. If you can get the Dunwich campaign alongside your Chapter 2 Core, that’ll work out just fine.

Extracurricular Activities

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Locked Doors, Agents of
Yog-Sothoth
FFG suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Arcane Lock, Eldritch Lore
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Arcane Lock, Mad Science

The House Always Wins

Original Core Sets: Rats, Striking Fear
FFG suggestion: Whippoorwills/Bystanders, Torment
My suggestion: Torment
Note: Torment is set aside during setup and brought in in stead of Striking Fear when the scenario calls for it. We aren’t replacing Rats at all, just ignore them.

The Miskatonic Museum

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold, Locked Door
FFG suggestion: Bad Weather, Arcane Lock
My suggestion: Eldritch Lore, Arcane Lock

The Essex County Express

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear, Ancient Evils, Dark Cult
FFG suggestion: Torment, Cosmic Evils, Cultists
My suggestion: Torment, Cosmic Evils, Cultists

Blood on the Altar

Original Core Sets: Nightgaunts, Ancient Evils
FFG suggestion: Flying Terrors, Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Flying Terrors, Cosmic Evils

Undimensioned and Unseen

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear
FFG suggestion: Torment
My suggestion: Torment

Where Doom Awaits

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear, Ancient Evils, Chilling Cold
FFG suggestion: Torment, Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather
My suggestion: Torment, Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather

Lost in Time and Space

Original Core Sets: Agents of Yog-Sothoth
FFG suggestion: Eldritch Lore
My suggestion: Eldritch Lore

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Extracurricular Activities: The Agents of Yog set is difficult to replace, while the Yithian Observer isn’t specifically required, i do think this scenario does need the threat of one bigger enemy from the encounter deck so it’s not just all Thralls and Whippoorwills. Of the options available, i went with Mad Science here but i could definitely also see Flying Terrors be an option or taking the Lupine Thralls from the Dunwich encounter sets.

House Always Wins: The role of the Rats encounter set is providing some low impact “breather” enemies. Usually that’d be something i’d like to preserve, but the encounter deck in House already has lots of low impact cards. The scenario isn’t really driven by what comes off the top of the deck in the same way that most others are. Trying to replace the Rats with some other encounter set would introduce more impactful threats that the scenario doesn’t really require.

Miskatonic Museum: Let’s not have random flash floods and rain in the museum, shall we? Instead, Eldritch Lore sounds like a very smooth fit into the theme of the scenario while also providing some anti-clue treacheries.

Lost in Time and Space: In this case replacing the Agents of Yog without having an analogue for the Yithian seems fine to me. There is a lot of chunky enemies still left in the encounter deck.

Overall

I have a couple of issues with the proposed substitutions from the Grimoire chart, but with a bit of shifting things around the Carcosa campaign can be made to work pretty well. It does require treating the Bat Horror as a Byakhee, but that doesn’t seem like a huge stretch. The Bat Horror is pretty much a Byakhee with the serial numbers filed off anyways.

The campaign is worth a bit of handwaving here and there and overall the replacements i came up with here look pretty good even if they required a few more extra notes than i’d usually like. While following the official substitution table seems dodgy at best, i have no issues with recommending the campaign with the following adjustments in mind.

Curtain Call

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear, Rats
FFG suggestion: Torment, Whippoorwills/Bystanders
My suggestion: Hallucination, Arcane Lock, Bystanders

The Last King

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG suggestion: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils

Echoes of the Past

Original Core Sets: Midnight Mask Treacheries, Dark Cult, Locked Doors
FFG suggestion: Dead Ends, Cultists, Arcane Lock
My suggestion: Dead Ends, Cultists, Arcane Lock
Note: Treat the enemies from the Cultists set as if they had the same “Spawn – Any empty location” text that the original Dark Cult has. It’s heavily factored into how the scenario works.

The Unspeakable Oath

Original Core Sets: Agents of Hastur
FFG suggestion: Hallucinations
My suggestion: Flying Terrors
Note: The Bat Horrors start out in the Monster pile, as one of the seven cards in there.

Phantom of Truth

Original Core Sets: Agents of Hastur, Midnight Masks Treacheries
FFG suggestion: Hallucinations, Dead Ends
My suggestion: Flying Terrors, Eldritch Lore
Note: The Byakhee trait is mechanically relevant in this scenario, pretend that the Bat Horror has this trait.

The Pallid Mask

Original Core Sets: Ghouls, Chilling Cold
FFG suggestion: Gangs of Arkham, Ashen Pilgrims, Bad Weather
My suggestion: Cult of the Yellow Sign, Reeking Decay

Black Stars Rise

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Dark Cult
FFG suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Cultists
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Cultists
Note: Surge doesn’t stack. So if you come across text that gives Surge to Ancient Evils, then it will only add to the first mode on Cosmic Evils. The second mode already surges, it won’t draw two extra encounters, only one. So you end up with two choices, both of which will draw a new encounter. This is fine and makes sense within the context of the scenario.

Dim Carcosa

Original Core Sets: Agents of Hastur, Striking Fear
FFG suggestion: Hallucinations, Torment
My suggestion: 2x Eager for Death (from the Whippoorwills set), Torment

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Curtain Call: There’s nothing terribly wrong about running Torment here. But using Hallucination and Arcane Lock works probably a little better. One of the wilder things about Striking Fear in this scenario is pulling Frozen in Fear while trying to get away from the spreading effects in the theater in the final bit of the scenario and Arcane Lock does give you at least a taste of that.
Whippoorwills aren’t great here, i think. The Bystanders fit the scenario well thematically, representing other guests, stage hands and the like. They add to the doom mechanics of the scenario somewhat uncomfortably, stacking with Black Stars Rise and Spires of Carcosa… but since the agenda is one that repeats, it’s probably fine. It’s a bit concerning, but should be evened out by not having Striking Fear around.

Echoes of the Past: I often use something other than Arcane Lock to replace the Locked Doors because the treacheries are so different in what they actually do. Considering that much of the scenario is about getting to enemies fast as they pop up all over the map, Arcane Lock kind of works even better than Locked Doors here however!
Speaking of enemies popping up… you definitely need to pretend that the cultist enemies have the Spawn instruction to not just appear on you right away for this scenario to have any bite.

Unspeakable Oath: Hallucinations doesn’t have an enemy in it that could go into the Monster deck, so it’s not a great substitution here. The Bat Horror is a solid stand-in for the Byakhee, so that’s an easy fix.

Pallid Mask: Rain, Gangsters and fire cultists. The substitutions following the Grimoire are thematically a huge miss. Bad Weather is easy to replace with Reeking Decay instead, a set that works thematically very well and also replaces Chilling Cold mechanically (just a different aspect of the mechanics than Bad Weather would do).
As for the Ghouls… mechanically they are mostly here to provide some Humanoids that can be turned into Corpse Dwellers. Instead of doing some thematically inappropriate half-measures with Cantors and other Cultists from the Core, i think the best way to solve this is using the Cult of the Yellow Sign from the Carcosa campaign specific sets. That way you get to preserve the mechanics without having clashing themes.

Dim Carcosa: In earlier scenarios i opted to use Flying Terrors to replace Agents of Hastur, but i don’t think that’s necessary here. There’s plenty of big monsters in this scenario even without the two Temu Byakhees from Flying Terrors.
Considering that Horror is a huge deal in this scenario, i don’t want to let you off without a replacement specifically for Rotting Remains. The closest we have for that in the new Core is Eager for Death, so in it goes. The encounter deck is already pretty chunky, so i don’t want to put the whole Whippoorwill set in there. I try to avoid splitting up the sets in these substitutions, but i think in this case it’s worth using only the treacheries.

Overall

Substituting the encounter sets in TFA with chapter 2 encounter cards works surprisingly well. There are two scenarios that have a lot of these sets in them. One of them substitutes very well, the other needs a bit of handwaving concerning a specific creature that is called out by name and needs to be replaced with something similar enough.
Aside from those two scenarios, the campaign uses very little in terms of Core encounters however and when it does it’s mostly just Ancient Evils which is smoothly replaced by Cosmic Evils… which is actually an improvement.

This is a campaign that i would suggest as a possible one to get if you only have the Chapter 2 Core, however i very strongly suggest not to go with the FFG substitution chart for City of Archives, but to follow my notes instead.

The Untamed Wilds

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils
Exploration deck: Unchanged.

The Doom of Eztli

Original Core Sets: Chilling Colds
FFG replacements: Bad Weather
My suggestion: Reeking Decay
Setup: When putting together the exploration deck, use a Putrid Vapors in place of Crypt Chill.

Threads of Fate

Original Core Sets: Midnight Masks Locations, Midnight Masks Treacheries, Locked Doors, Nightgaunts, Dark Cult
FFG replacements: Arkham, Dead Ends, Arcane Lock, Flying Terrors, Cultists
My suggestion: Arkham, Dead Ends, Eldritch Lore, Flying Terrors, Cultists

The Boundary Beyond

Original Core Sets: Dark Cult
FFG replacements: Cultists
My suggestion: Cultists

Heart of the Elders, part 1 and 2

Original Core Sets: –

City of Archives

Original Core Sets: Agents of Yog-Sothoth, Locked Doors, Chilling Cold, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Eldritch Lore, Arcane Lock, Bad Weather, Torment
My suggestion: Flying Terrors, Arcane Lock, Eldritch Lore, Dead Ends
Setup: Whenever the scenario, including during the setup, refers to Yithian Observers, use Bat Horrors in their stead. Treat the Bat Horrors as if they had the Yithian trait.

The Depths of Yoth

Original Core Sets: –

Shattered Aeons

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils
Setup: One of the Cosmic Evils goes into the exploration deck, in place of Ancient Evils.

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Doom of Eztli: Bad Weather would be fine here, but i think Reeking Decay is better here for two reasons. One, the scenario is indoor so treacheries that deal in floods and rain are a bit weird thematically. And two, the exploration deck asks for a copy of Crypt Chill, and the best analogue to that in the new Core is Putrid Vapors from the Reeking Decay set.

Threads of Fate: Considering the amount of cards from the Core Set that this scenario uses, even the basic substitutions following the table from the Grimoire work surprisingly well. The only adjustment i would make here is using Eldritch Lore instead of Arcane Lock to replace Locked Doors, to keep the encounter deck laser focused on impeding clue gathering.

City of Archives: The biggest challenge with replacing the old encounter sets in TFA is finding a solution for the missing Yithian Observers from the Agents of Yog. The Bat Horrors seem to be the best fit here and with a bit of handwaving this works well enough i think.
For my suggestion of how to put together the encounter deck, i deviated from the FFG suggestion because i really don’t like the Torment set here, at least not as a default. Torment heavily features hand discard, which is already very present in the scenario specific cards. Hand size is a big deal for finishing the scenario and while adding another six treacheries that attack the hand could be an interesting angle for veteran players looking for a challenge, it’s not something i would want to push on someone who isn’t aware of what they are in for.

Overall

Replacing the old Core encounters with the new ones in Circle Undone is for the most part unproblematic, but the two problems there are are major enough that i wouldn’t suggest getting this campaign if you don’t have access to the chapter 1 encounter sets and the Arkham Woods locations.
The Secret Name is a major showstopper and it’s one where i’d definitely suggest you do proxy the original Swarm of Rats enemies for instead of trying to cobble something together. But at least something can be cobbled together, i don’t really see that working out for the missing Arkham Woods locations in The Witching Hour.

The Prologue

The prologue has a special thing going on. You play an introduction using four special investigators with a preconstructed hand of card through a few turns. These preconstructed decks list player cards from the original Core and from the TCU investigator expansion. If you don’t have these cards, then here is a suggestion on how to replicate their instructions with cards from the new Core Set to get a similar experience.

Gavriella Mizrah:
In play: M1911(0) with 2 ammo tokens, Endurance(0)
In hand: Resilience, Bodyguard, Scene of the Crime, Counterattack(1), a second copy of M1911, 2 copies of Fedora

Jerome Davids:
In play: Nothing
In hand: Sharp Rhetoric, Through the Cracks, Working a Hunch, Deduction, Mag Glass, Fingerprint Kit, Local Map, Unexpected Courage

Valentino Rivas:
In play: Thieves Kit
In hand: M1903 Hammerless, Out of Sight(0), Out of Sight(3), Silver Tongue, Decisive Strike, Breaking and Entering, Broken Bottle

Penny White:
In play: Broken Bottle, Hand-Crank Flashlight, Level-Headed
In hand:Bandages, Meat Cleaver, Timely Intervention, Scrape By, 2 copies of On The Brink(2), 2 copies of Jumpsuit

These substitutions aren’t perfect of course, but should be good enough for the purpose of the prologue.

The Witching Hour

Original Core Sets: Agents of Shub-Niggurath, Ancient Evils, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Mad Science, Cosmic Evils, Torment
My suggestion: 2x Mutated Experiment (Mad Science), 2x Hellhound (Ashen Pilgrims), Cosmic Evils, Torment
Setup: The Experiments and Hellhounds replace the four enemies from the Agents of Shub and are set aside in their stead. When the scenario later asks you to encounter either Goat Spawns or Dark Young, draw randomly from those four set aside enemies instead.
Major problem: However, The Witching Hour also uses the Arkham Woods locations from The Devourer Below. And you don’t have replacements for that in the new box. The sewers from the Queen of Ash scenario do have a similar mechanical vibe, but their connection icons don’t match to the Arkham Woods, so you can’t just swap those. This scenario might just not be salvagable without printing off the original Woods.

Death’s Doorstep

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Bad Weather
My suggestion: Reeking Decay

The Secret Name

Original Core Sets: Rats
FFG replacements: Bystanders/Whippoorwill enemies
My suggestion: Whippoorwill enemies, ignoring the Aloof keyword on them
Note: This does increase the difficulty of the scenario significantly, the Whippoorwills are much more dangerous than the Rats are. My actual suggestion here is to just proxy the damn Rats and play the scenario as it was designed.

Wages of Sin

Original Core Sets: –

For the Greater Good

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Dark Cult, Locked Doors
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Cultists, Arcane Lock
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Cultists, Arcane Lock

Union and Disillusion

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather

Clutches of Chaos

Original Core Sets: Nightgaunts, Striking Fear, Midnight Masks Treacheries
FFG replacements: Flying Terrors, Torment, Dead Ends
My suggestion: Flying Terrors, Torment, Dead Ends

Before the Black Throne

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Dark Cult
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Cultists
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Cultists
Note: Consider pretending that the new Zealots and Dark Magician have the “Spawn – Empty location” text on them that the original cultist enemies have, to preserve certain aspects of the scenario mechanics.

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Witching Hour: If you are only playing solo or two-player, then setting aside the two Experiments is enough to replace the Goat Spawns you will encounter. They are a close mechanical match and work well enough here. If you have three or four players, you need additional enemies to encounter. My suggestion is Hellhounds, but if you are feeling spicy (or you want to replicate the terror of facing a Dark Young on your own) then Bat Horrors are a suitably dangerous enemy as well.
For the Arkham Woods, i simply don’t see a good solution for substituting them. They are part of the FFG print and play files, so you’d have to get them from there.

Death’s Doorstep: Reeking Decay fits the vibe of the scenario much better than Bad Weather. You are indoors, after all. And there is a weird creepy mist rolling in that might very well bring Putrid Vapors and Unnatural Decay with it.

Secret Name: It’s a scenario built around Rats, it doesn’t really work properly without them. Whippoorwills do collect all the bonuses to combat, health and evasion that the agenda and Brown Jenkins have to give and that does make them the substitution that comes closest to keeping the scenario in spirit. That makes the scenario significantly more difficult and you could try and come up with ways to account for that, for example by ignoring more than just Aloof or by lowering the bonuses from the agenda and Jenkins. But really, the easiest way forward here is to just proxy the Rats.

Before the Black Throne: Without the spawn instructions on the Cultists that makes them spawn in other locations, handling them before they get discarded by the agenda is a lot easier in this scenario than it is in its original form. For that reason, i’d consider houseruling the new Cultists to have that text on them for this scenario. It’s not strictly necessary, but it’s an easy step to do to conserve an aspect of how the scenario was designed.

Overall

This campaign has the scenario in it that is probably the hardest to find good replacements for. Thousand Shapes without rats and ghouls is going to be a bit yikes no matter what you do, and that scenario is barely keeping it together at the best of times…

Most of the Core encounter sets in this campaign can be substituted reasonably well, but Ghouls is enough of a problem that i would advise against Dream-Eaters if you can ge a different campaign instead. Or you could just accept that Dream-Eaters would require you to at least print&play or proxy the Ghouls and Rats.

Beyond the Gates of Sleep

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Bad Weather
My suggestion: Bad Weather

Search for Kadath

Original Core Sets: –

Dark Side of the Moon

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils

Where The Gods Dwell

Original Core Sets: Dark Cult
FFG replacements: Cultists
My suggestion: Cultists

Waking Nightmare

Original Core Sets: Locked Doors, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Arcane Lock, Torment
My suggestion: Eldritch Lore, Torment

Thousand Shapes of Horror

Original Core Sets:  Chilling Cold, Ghouls, Locked Doors, Rats
FFG replacements: Bad Weather, Gangs of Arkham, Ashen Pilgrims, Arcane Lock, Whippoorwills/Bystanders
My suggestion: Just print out the original sets, replacing these sets for this scenario is awful
Alternate suggestion if you really have to: Arcane Lock, Eldritch Lore, Spiders, Creatures of the Underworld. Pretend that the Ghast and Gug from Creatures of the Underworld are Ghoul traited instead. Ignore the text about Rats on the act/agenda.

The Point of No Return

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Ghouls, Nightgaunts, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Gangs of Arkham, Ashen Pilgrims, Flying Terrors, Torment
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Flying Terrors, Torment, Mad Science, Whippoorwills. Ignore all mentions of Ghouls.

Weaver of the Cosmos

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Waking Nightmare: There’s nothing wrong with the FFG suggested replacements here, they work perfectly fine. My suggestion of using Eldritch Lore instead of Arcane Lock does replicate the effects of the original sets a bit better (horror, action tax, anti-clue), but it’s not a huge deal.

Thousand Shapes of Horror: Yeah, this is rough. We got mechanically relevant Rats here. And also the Ghoul set which is awful to replace at the best of times, but even gets references to its trait here. Honestly, the best course of action is going to be proxies…
But we are here to also figure out what’s the best we can do without doing that. So my suggestion uses two of the unused sets from this campaign to plug the holes. The spiders set is thematically still on point and does offer the swarming bit on a small enemy that the Rats are supposed to do. And from the Creatures of the Underworld we can get the “3 small enemies and a big one” that Ghouls has. We should pretend that those are ghouls for the graveyard and that one location on the stairs however.
Speaking of the stairs, Arcane Lock sounds like a nightmare during that last part of the scenario, but to be fair so does Locked Door. As a final bit, i also include Eldritch Lore as that is the only set out of the Core encounters that has a treachery that stays in the threat area, something that a couple of cards in the 1000 Shapes encounter deck care about.
That should make the scenario at least okay. But yeah, not loving it.

Point of No Return: Also has the issue of Ghouls that are referenced by mechanics of the scenario, but i think this is a lot more salvageable than 1000 Shapes is. Pickman’s ability isn’t at all super relevant and missing out on it is okay. Instead of weird Arkham Gangsters and Fire Cultists, i am adding Whippoorwills and Mad Science. These sets play up the prominent horror/damage ramping that the scenario does and gives a couple enemies that interact well with the treachery from Flying Terrors. I believe this should overall play quite well.

Overall

The elephant in the room when it comes to playing Innsmouth without the chapter 1 encounter sets is definitely Agents of Cthulhu, as the Deep One trait is mechanically relevant in the scenarios that employ that set. You can work your way around this reasonably well however and i believe that especially In Too Deep works perfectly fine if you just don’t replace it at all.

Surprisingly, the rest of the replacements are very smooth and barely worth talking about. I was particularly surprised by Vanishing, which features four Core encounter sets, but even just the FFG suggested replacements do a great job here at filling the gaps, i didn’t even need to get creative here.

I’d recommend this campaign as one that can be played with only the Chapter 2 Core.

Pit of Despair

Original Core Sets: Rats, Agents of Cthulhu
FFG replacements: Bystanders/Whippoorwills, Reeking Decay
My suggestion: Whippoorwills, Mad Science (pretending that the Experiment is a Deep One)
Alternate suggestion: Whippoorwills, Deep Ones (from the Drowned City campaign)

The Vanishing of Elina Harper

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold, Locked Doors, Midnight Masks Treacheries, Nightgaunts
FFG replacements: Bad Weather, Arcane Lock, Dead Ends, Flying Terrors
My suggestion: Bad Weather, Arcane Lock, Dead Ends, Flying Terrors

In Too Deep

Original Core Sets: Agents of Cthulhu
FFG replacements: Reeking Decay
My suggestion: just leave it out without replacement
Alternate suggestion: Deep Ones (from the Drowned City campaign)

Devil Reef

Original Core Sets: –

Horror in High Gear

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils

A Light in the Fog

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Torment
My suggestion: Torment
Alternate suggestion: Whippoorwills

Lair of Dagon

Original Core Sets: Dark Cult, Locked Doors
FFG replacements: Cultists, Arcane Lock
My suggestion: Cultists, Arcane Lock

Into the Maelstrom

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Pit of Despair: I think Bystanders are out of the question here, Whippoorwills are mechanically a much better fit. And if you pretend that they are Swarm of Bats, then they are a great fit thematically as well.
Replacing Agents of Cthulhu is always going to be a bit dodgy here due to missing out on a Deep One, but thankfully Pit of Despair’s interactions with the Deep One trait are fairly minimal so the replacement with Mad Science does give you a good way to get an enemy into the deck that is very similar to Young Deep One in practice. You can houserule the Experiment to have the Deep One trait to make it an even better fit. That’ll primarily matter for its interaction with the Deep One Bull.
If you do own the Drowned City campaign, there’s an even better fix: replace the Agents of Cthulhu with the Deep Ones set from Drowned City. It’s a genuinely great fit, i actually would suggest trying this to anyone, even if they do own the chapter 1 encounter sets.

In Too Deep: This scenario does rely heavily on the enemies having Hunter which means that the Experiment from Mad Science kinda misses the point here. You could pretend that it had Hunter and also the Deep One trait… but at that point just proxy the Young Deep One.
If you don’t want to, i think you are fine just leaving the set out completely. The original encounter deck is a massive 37 cards, reducing that size by 4 means that the remaining Deep Ones matter more without making the deck too thin. I think that’s preferable to diluting the deck with random cards like the ones from Reeking Decay.
If you own Drowned City, the option to bring in its Deep Ones set is again on the table however… and it’s great! Heavily recommend it if you got both TDC and Innsmouth.

A Light in the Fog: Sure, Torment works just fine. But hear me out on an alternative suggestion: The Whippoorwills set gives you the closest replacement for Rotting Remains in Eager for Death and those birds (or Swarm of Bats, if you will) are absolutely horrifying in the cramped caves. Throwing Whippies into this scenario is definitely a more spicy pick for a scenario that is already difficult which is why i didn’t want to put it as my primary suggestion. But i do believe it makes for a better scenario (albeit a harder one) than the Torment replacement.

Overall

Out of all the campaigns available for Chapter 1, Edge of the Earth is the one that uses the fewest Core encounter sets. Only four of them are used and they can be subsituted fairly smoothly with the Chapter 2 offerings.

This is a campaign that is very easy to adapt for players that don’t have the original encounter sets.

Ice and Death (all of them)

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils

Fatal Mirage

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Bad Weather
My suggestion: Bad Weather

To the Forbidden Peaks

Original Core Sets: –

City of the Elder Things

Original Core Sets: Locked Doors, Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Arcane Lock, Bad Weather
My suggestion: Eldritch Lore, Reeking Decay

Heart of Madness, pt. 1

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Locked Doors
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Arcane Lock
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Arcane Lock

Heart of Madness, pt. 2

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Chilling Cold, Striking Fear (without Rotting Remains)
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Bad Weather, Torment (without… ??? probably just use the full set?)
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Reeking Decay, Torment (without the Torment card)

Justifications (mild spoilers)

City of Elder Things: The FFG suggestion of replacing Locked Doors with Arcane Lock is perfectly fine, but i think Eldritch Lore is a better fit overall to preserve the function of an encounter set that hinders cluevers.
Also, at this point the campaign doesn’t use any of the weather related treacheries anymore, there is a distinct shift from the “ice and snow are trying to kill us” of the first half of the campaign” to “the miasma is trying to kill us” in the back half. So i don’t like Bad Weather as a replacement here at all. Thankfully, Reeking Decay is great here. Not only does it conserve the asset hate part of Crypt Chill, it also fits perfectly into the miasma flavor.

Heart of Madness, pt 2: I put Reeking Decay instead of Chilling Cold here for the same reason as before. It’s an excellent tie in with the miasma stuff from the campaign specific encounter cards.
The original setup asks us to gather Striking Fear, but only specifically the Frozen in Fear and Dissonant Voices cards, leaving Rotting Remains out of play. The Torment set from chapter 2 doesn’t have a direct analogue to Rotting Remains, so you could just use the full Torment set here. The encounter deck for Heart of Madness is pretty large, so it probably doesn’t matter too much if you remove one of the cards from Torment here. If you do want to cut one, throw out the Torment card, as the action taxes on Languor and Dissonance do the best job of of replacing Frozen in Fear.

Overall

Many of the scenarios use only one or two Core sets and replacing them with something close from chapter 2 doesn’t change too much. In most cases, the suggestions from FFG’s Grimoire work perfectly fine here.
There’s however at least two instances where i felt we could do a bit better, most significantly the Dead Heat scenario.

This campaign works quite well with chapter 2 encounter sets. Dead Heat/Marrakesh is really the only slight glitch and i think it’s one that can be glossed over well with a minor adjustment… if Marrakesh is even a place you want to visit, a decent amount of playthroughs won’t even go through there.

Riddles and Rain

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold, Locked Doors, Midnight Mask Treacheries
FFG replacements: Bad Weather, Arcane Lock, Dead Ends
My suggestion: Bad Weather, Arcane Lock, Dead Ends

Dancing Mad

Original Core Sets: –

Dead Heat

Original Core Sets: Ghouls, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Gangs of Arkham, Ashen Pilgrims, Torment
My suggestion: Mad Science, Ashen Pilgrims, Arcane Lock

Dealings in the Dark

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Dark Cult, Locked Doors, Midnight Mask Treacheries
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Cultists, Arcane Lock, Dead Ends
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Cultists, Arcane Lock, Dead Ends

Dogs of War

Original Core Sets: Dark Cult
FFG replacements: Cultists
My suggestion: Cultists

On Thin Ice

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold
FFG replacements: Bad Weather
My suggestion: Bad Weather

Sanguine Shadows

Original Core Sets: Locked Doors, Nightgaunts
FFG replacements: Arcane Lock, Flying Terrors
My suggestion: Arcane Lock, Flying Terrors

Shades of Suffering

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Torment
My suggestion: Torment

Congress of the Keys

Original Core Sets: Ancient Evils, Locked Door, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Cosmic Evils, Arcane Lock, Torment
My suggestion: Cosmic Evils, Eldritch Lore, Torment

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Dead Heat: The FFG suggested replacements are fine mechanically, but i don’t really like Gangs of Arkham coming up here from a flavor point. Mad Science gives you a different creature that i could imagine much more to be following a rampaging necromancer around. Bonus points, the Mutated treachery works as a good replacement for Striking Fear’s Rotting Remains. In light of that, i also chose to put Arcane Lock here instead of Torment, the discard effects from Torment are a bit random here while Arcane Lock can be a real pain that wastes a lot of actions if unhandled. If that seems harsh, remember that it’s replacing Frozen in Fear here.

Congress of the Keys: You could just use Arcane Lock as suggested, it’d be fine. That being said, there are parts of this scenario where you aren’t moving around a whole lot and when you are, just in one direction. That makes Arcane Lock not that relevant, not like Locked Doors would have been. Since Lock and Door are already very different encounter sets, i think we can find a better fit to replace the Doors here. We’ve also been using Arcane Lock a lot in this campaign already. Eldritch Lore can do a similar job of impeding the clue finding process.

Overall

Four out of eight scenarios in this campaign don’t even use the chapter 1 core encounter sets, which is a good start if we want to play Hemlock Vale with our chapter 2 Core. The remaining 4 scenarios are mostly fine to replace, but there are two pieces of awkwardness here. One is the presence of Ghouls in Written in Rock. I have a solution for this that should work well enough, but does have to make some compromises. And the other is that one of the treacheries in the new Core, Downpour, is actually a near-reprint from Hemlock Vale. And following the substitution suggestions by FFG would have us end up with both the original and the modified Downpour in our encounter deck at the same time which isn’t great.

Still, if you follow these suggestions of mine i think you can work your way around those two issues well enough and play Hemlock Vale without the chapter 1 encounter sets just fine.

Written in Rock

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold, Ghouls
FFG replacements: Bad Weather, Gangs of Arkham, Ashen Pilgrims
My suggestion: Reeking Decay, Whippoorwills

Hemlock House

Original Core Sets: Locked Doors, Rats
FFG replacements: Arcane Lock, Whippoorwills/Bystanders
My suggestion: Hallucinations, Whippoorwills

Silent Heath

Original Core Sets: Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Torment
My suggestion: Torment

Lost Sister

Original Core Sets: –

Thing in the Depths

Original Core Sets: –

Twisted Hollow

Original Core Sets: –

The Longest Night

Original Core Sets: Chilling Cold, Midnight Mask Treacheries, Striking Fear
FFG replacements: Bad Weather, Dead Ends, Torment
My suggestion: Reeking Decay, Dead Ends, Torment

Fate of the Vale

Original Core Sets: –

Justifications (mild spoilers)

Written in Rock: Replacing Ghouls is a mess. The FFG replacements work very well on a pure mechanical side, but in terms of flavor they don’t work at all, not even if we try to suspend disbelief. My suggestion is to instead throw Whippoorwills (or as i like to think of them, “Swarm of Bats”) into this scenario. This does change some of the dynamics, but they do work as another Hunter enemy that interacts with what the scenario is doing already. Bad Weather as a replacement for Chilling Cold is similarly fine from a mechanics side, but the +4 shroud from Flash Flood can be very frustrating in this scenario. I think Reeking Decay is better here, introducing another agility test now that Grasping Hands is out of the picture while giving some neat effects and not having the issue of throwing weather effects into a cave. Also, Bad Weather has Downpour in it which Hemlock Vale already uses as a Day 2 treachery – actually it might already be in the scenario.
Truth be told, my suggestions do change the mechanical identity of the scenario a bit, but i think that’s preferable to the complete thematical dissonance that the official suggestion bring with them.

Hemlock House: The official suggestions are fine here. I definitely prefer Whippies over Bystanders here, they stack up nicely with the Miasmatic Shadows that stalk you around.
Arcane Lock is already a pretty large departure from Locked Doors mechanically, so my suggestion does go for Hallucinations instead. One of my complaints about Hemlock House was that it doesn’t have enough discard in its encounter deck to make the Miasmatic Shadows scary… so we might as well fix that with the discard from Hallucinations when we are already swapping encounter cards around!

Longest Night: I am again not using the Chilling Cold to Bad Weather replacement here, to avoid doing Downpour. Longest Night is always on day 2, so the Hemlock Vale version of Downpour is always used here already. So Reeking Decay brings the asset hate that Crypt Chill provides in the original set.

Intro

I recently went over the Encounter Set Substitution Table which was provided by FFG in their initial release of the Grimoire. I found the table lacking in parts, so i want to go over all of the chapter 1 campaigns and see how i’d replace the sets instead.
There are three parts to each of these:
One, an overall evaluation. This is meant to give you an idea whether this campaign is a good pickup if you went into chapter 2 with the new Core and want to bridge the gap until we actually get some proper campaign content.
Two, the replacements for the sets, in a spoiler free format. If you are on your blind play, you can just follow these scenario by scenario and see what FFG recommends for replacements and what my suggestions are. In some cases i also gave an alternative suggestion, but that might deviate from the initial design or require some extra product beyond the new Core. When in doubt, the replacements labeled “My suggestion” should work for your blind play experience.
Finally, some justifications for some of those picks. I put those at the end because they contain mild spoilers for the campaign and you might not want to read them beforehand.

Index

The following campaigns have their own evaluation for this series:

• The Drowned City
• The Feast of Hemlock Vale
• The Scarlet Keys
• Edge of the Earth
• The Innsmouth Conspiracy
• The Dream-Eaters
• The Circle Undone
• The Forgotten Age
• The Path to Carcosa
• The Dunwich Legacy

Conclusions

The concept of replacing the old encounter sets with the new ones is rock solid, there is easily enough overlap to make this work and convert the Chapter 1 campaigns to a form where they can be played with just the Chapter 2 Core. That makes them viable for new players that don’t have the old encounter sets to bridge the time until FFG finally gets around to actually release some campaign content for Chapter 2 proper.

The only actual issues come from campaigns or scenarios that expect very specific traits or enemies. The campaigns to mention in this context are Circle Undone, Dream-Eaters, Innsmouth and Drowned City.

If you want to play Circle Undone and/or Dream-Eaters, i strongly suggest just printing off the Swarm of Rats for the two scenarios in those campaigns that key off of them. For Circle Undone, you also need to print off the Arkham Woods locations, as those are actually not replaceable. That makes TCU the only campaign i would not recommend getting for Chapter 2 only players unless they are okay with proxying those cards.

For Innsmouth and Drowned City, you can use my suggestions to make it work, but you need to houserule the replacements to have the Deep One trait to get the interactions with all the other stuff in there. Easily done, of course.

For the other six campaigns, i have very little reservations.