As one who's never had the patience to get past the second mission of the first campaign, I'll tell you why you should buy them both.

What does Dark Avatar have that Dread Lords didn't? Better tech tree, asteroids, three new races, super abilities, smarter AI.

What does Twilight of the Arnor have that Dark Avatar didn't? Individual race tech trees, much better ship and planet textures, a new form of victory, a more powerful ship builder, and even better AI.

Anyway, I certainly don't feel like it's been a waste of my money to get both. I'm glad to have them. Keep in mind, however, that Twilight won't work without Dark Avatar, so don't just buy Twilight without DA. You can run DA without Twilight, but at this point, why bother? Twilight is the game Stardock always wanted to give you.

If you have any other questions as to why you should or shouldn't, I'd be more than willing to clarify or go into more detail.

There is. I don't play huge or immense sizes, I get bored to tears by a game that takes too long, but immense size is ridiculous.

Dont hesitate, get them. Stardock, whilst like any company need to make a profit, will only release a game/expansion if they believe its of real value. They put their money where their mouth is, and proved that in the past. Therefore if you like "an original", its almost certain you will like their expansion.

They will also give give real value in expansions, its not just a case of leveraging existing code to provide more characters yaddie yadda, and in effect you end up paying for a set of pretty pictures. With Stardock expansions, you will get genuine value for money as additional concepts / abilities are added into the game, making the whole thing a richer gaming experience.

Catchup with the packs and get both DA & TA, then play TA, skip DA (not because its bad, its not, its just that as always the last expansion in a genre from Stardock is always the best one). They do bundle deals which minimises the cost of catching up.

Regards
Zy