Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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Greetings D&D Beyond Community,
I saw the design for the Alternate Cover Art for the new Arcana Unleashed and Arcana Unleashed: Deadfall and they resemble awesome Tomes!
ARCANA UNLEASHED ALTERNATE COVER:
ARCANA UNLEASHED: DEADFALL ALTERNATE COVER:
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
But why I can't pre-order them with the Ultimate bundle? :(
The whole point of the alt covers is to give FLGS a unique selling point that the online bundles don't have. Many local stores have their own preorder mechanisms you can use; try calling yours and see if they offer one that will let you reserve one of these.
In my opinion, the moment you make the book available to the public in any way, shape, or form, you can no longer claim it’s unreleased. A set release date is just an arbitrary day that was decided for stores to sell the book; it means nothing if you are selling the book beforehand. The book is now officially in the hands of people who didn’t sign an NDA. Calling it “unreleased” because of a technicality is disingenuous at best.
call/reach out to your local game store! that's the only way to get the alt covers, and you can support a local business!
oh, I didn't know! Thanks!
But why then it's available for WoW books?
https://marketplace.dndbeyond.com/root/D60530000
this appears to be a collector's edition only available with the ultimate bundle. The alt covers have been a thing for I think all the 5e/5.5e books that have been consistently only available at local game stores, and haven't been marketed as "collector's edition" just as "alternate covers". So this seems to be a little different.
For those that are curious, Alternate Covers have been around for a while, and always from your LGS, but the Early Release access was announced back in March of 2024 with the Local Game Store Early Access Program.
Breathe, dragons; sing of the First World, forged out of chaos and painted with beauty.
Sing of Bahamut, the Platinum, molding the shape of the mountains and rivers;
Sing too of Chromatic Tiamat, painting all over the infinite canvas.
Partnered, they woke in the darkness; partnered, they labored in acts of creation.
A book is released on it's release date. Copies made available before that date are early access/review copies. That's the difference. It's not disingenuous to say it's not been released, it wouldn't be a technicality. The book hasn't been released—you can't get it on DDB, you can't get it at your local gaming store or bookshop. A limited number of copies were made available, but to say it's been released would be incorrect.
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Different things. The WoW book actually has three covers: Standard, Collector,'s Edition and Hobby (FLGS). Here they are side by side: