by Cain.rpgorg in Mar 26,2012

   Last week AEG produced a highly demanded expansion for Thunderstone Advance : a Compatibility Guide. This means that from now on you may use your old Thunderstone cards with the new game (almost) without a problem. If you don't know what I'm speaking about, I mentioned the compatibility issues in an earlier article.

The Good

   Since the new game added several new concept to the brand some of the components from the older game needed some clarification to use. For example monster groups hadn't levels back then (useful at setup), while heroes didn't had a race (useful for Dwarf Hammer).

Thankfully the Compatibility Guide assign levels to monster groups (so now you could know a monster group relative strength without fighting it first), and define tha races for heroes. Well, most of the heroes are definitely human, but there are exceptions (see below).

Dwarves : Dwarf, Clan, Deep, Stoneguard, Magehunter

Elves : Elf, Feayn, Sidhe, Slynn, Veris

Half-Orc : Half-Orc

  The rules also offer clarifications that cards effecting the original Militia has the same effect on Regulars and it's the same for Diseases and Curses.

The Bad

   Some monster groups now has some abilities which could turn them unbeatable in some setups : if the Village lacks food or edged weapons. This means that you may pass the monster group (so you must check the reference in the guide) or to add Daggers or Iron Rations to the Village as additional options.

   Also, because the meaning of the Battle ability changed, all old Monsters featuring a Battle ability count as having an Aftermath ability instead. This is confusing. Honestly, I don't understand why they didn't changed the timing of Battle, and add a new ability to the effects happening earlier.

Surprise and confusion

  The first surprise to me that they mention Spear and Polearm (the weapon) as potential candidates for the Polearm weapon group, but it's not official, just a house rule thy tried. Interesting at least.

   What is even more suprising, that the Ranger and Archer classes are different, and not the same class with a new name as most people (myself included) predicted.

All in all, I think the Thunderstone: Compatibility Guide is a must have to merge the new game with the old, so I recommend to download it. I provide a download link here.

Zoltán "Cain" Mészáros

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