What are the core differences between this and Descent? With limited funds should I concentrate on Descents expansions or pick this up as well? I noticed it uses some of the same tokens as Descent. TIA

Descent is a Dungeoncrawl, while Runebound is an Adventure Boardgame, similar to say, Talisman. See these geeklists for more details.

Dungeoncrawl geeklist: boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/21380

Adventure Boardgame geeklist: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/21379

If you already own an adventure boardgame, I'd say go with a Descent expansion?

I have both games and love them.

They are set in the same world and feature (mostly) the same heroes. There the similarity ends.

An encounter in Runbound is the equivilent of a Quest in Descent. Each player will need to complete a dozen encounters in a Runebound game.

You could say that Descent is the missing dungeon-crawl part of Runebound. In Runebound you have adventerues, but they are abstract (i.e. a token, if you move on ith you draw a card and fight the monster). I love to play Runebound but I don't like Descent (too much preparation, setup time)

Thank you gents for your help, I think I'll build up the expansions first then after Ive played ALL the scenarios move on.

All i can say is get runebound you will love it its great and you can play it solo if you want

Runebound is awesome, I play it all the time at my friends place :)

Incredible customisation... another game on my play list!