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.