I am mixed on: Expeditions (Review)

if there's only one thing you take away from this review I would like it to be this Expeditions is a game you must play at least twice to really understand if it's a game for you or not games like heat Ark NOA Earth or Dune Imperium took a single game to wow me Expeditions is not that kind of game in fact my first play of this was absolutely abysmal the game seemed to lack any sense of passion behind the design there wasn't really anything that got me engaged in the experience and I felt like I spent 2 hours doing the same few actions barely engaging with someone the mechanisms available in the game and still somehow coming out on top at the end it was such a disappointing experience that I honestly hesitated bringing the game out again but I'm glad I did as the plays that followed were far more enjoyable with the game's intricacies and synergies becoming much more apparent and the smoothness of the gameplay coming through much better a fair bit of the issues I noticed in that first place still remain but Expeditions has gone from a game I wouldn't recommend to anyone to one I will gladly play again what is he doing he's is beginning to believe Expeditions is a sequel to the immensely popular side though unlike a lot of the sequels we've seen recently this one actually feels like a brand new game if you've played side before there will be elements here that you'll recognize but the way they're utilized in Expeditions and the way they interact with everything else in the game feels different and not just like scite with a few more bells and whistles the game play is completely different to scite gone are the Larger than Life leaders and their countless workers and resources gone is the cold Wares feel of that game and an army of mechs for you to command and gone is the goal of spreading yourself all over Eastern Europe like a college kid looking for cheap Adventure on a summer holiday $183 American what are we going to get with [Music] that in Expeditions all you get is a single me and a couple of starting cards representing your leader and their pet that's right kids it's another worker placement deck building hybrid well kind of it's definitely a pretty big part of the game but there's a lot of other stuff going on here as well so the game ends up being a bit of aorus board of mechanisms the core of the game revolves around three actions move gather and play on your first term you'll do all three of them but afterwards you'll have to cover one up with a cube and perform only the uncovered ones this seems like a very simple idea but managing your actions properly can be absolutely crucial and planning ahead to make sure you have the right combination available when you need it can totally make or break your game I can't count how often I had the brilliant plan all mapped out only to realize that I miscalculated which actions I'll be able to use at that point and had to waste the turn taking a reset action instead the move action is pretty self-explanatory you move your MEC a number of tiles and if you've landed on a previously undiscovered tile you end your move there and flip the tile over it's nothing you haven't seen before but to be fair how Innovative can you get with a move action and honestly simple as it is I like how it translates the idea of exploring the far reaches of Siberia by having you progressively uncover more tiles moving on to gather then this is the action that lets you use the benefit of the tile you are currently on this can range from getting cards workers or one of the true resources in the game to completing the plethora of objectives that Propel you closer to the end of the game the iconography here is very clear for the most part though there are a few actions that can be a bit harder to understand from the Icon alone and given the sheer number of icons press the reference card is a real godsent and something you'll definitely keep referring back to at least for the first few games the final action play is the one I find to be the most interesting and the one that adds the most depth to the game through an absolutely brilliant implementation of multi-purpose cards initially playing a card just gets you some resources which is about as exciting as eating a plane digestive with no cup of tea to dunk it into however the cards also come with worker placement spots which can give you some pretty powerful bonuses a friend of mine for example managed to go the entire game without having to waste a turn to refresh because he got a carard that let him rescue some of the cards back into his hand while during the same game I had a card that allowed me to move to another location without having to use a move action allowing me to be a lot more flexible with how I approach the game however the real Brilliance of the design here is that all these cards will usually also serve an endgame purpose as cards is split into quests meteorites or items which can be completed smelted or upgraded giving you some sort of benefit and putting you closer to completing one of the endgame goals but also losing that card and personally I absolutely love that constant dilic of having to weigh up the potential future benefit of getting to continue to utilize the card's action versus getting a nice benefit from it now and potentially pushing yourself a bit closer to Victory given the relative ease of understanding the actions you perform I would consider expeditions to be a fairly straightforward game to play and certainly a lighter experience than side but if I'm being honest learning the game was an unpleasant experience the rule book though fairly clear once you've played the game is not particularly welcoming to new players often using terminology that is either not intuitive or is not explained until later in the book which resulted in me still having absolutely no clue on how to play the game after reading through it I will say though the official rules video from watch it play is absolutely excellent and I would strongly recommend that you learn the game through that instead speaking of terminology I have no idea why they decided to call the area you play your cards from your hand yes it might be functionally the same but it results in a necessary confusion as you have to constantly explain to new players that even though this is called your hand you keep the cards on the table just let me pick my cards up Jamie damn it or call the area something else it rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again when it comes to Art stor Mar games delivers the expected best in the business standard they usually tend to have the game is stunning with some of the most evocative and often Eerie Art doing its best to draw you into the game setting unfortunately as hard as the art tries when it comes to theme the game play absolutely lets Expeditions down resulting in an experience that is completely devoid of anything thematic ties to anything that's happening on the tiles cards or the little bit of narrative you get in the rule book I said previously that I like how flipping the tiles translates the idea of exploring the unknown land and it does but it never really makes the exploration feel exciting I don't particularly care about the tile I discover all I'm interested in is whether the actions on it work with my strategy the map tokens you get from discovering new tiles are also absolutely pointless they serve as one of the potential goals for you to complete but that's it there's no actual thematic element to gaining them finally corruption the big bad thing spreading through Siberia and the main narrative driver behind you embarking on the Expedition is just some wooden tokens that block one of the actions on the tile that you remove by spending either your blue or orange resource and trust me regardless of their actual names you'll be calling the resources blue and orange long before the end of your first game there wasn't a single moment during my plays of expeditions where I felt like I was doing something thematic the theme is completely obscured by the mechanisms and the gameplay puzzle you're trying to Sol and honestly I think that's a damn shame given how strong of an impression the art creates player scaling is also a potential issue it plays perfectly at two but at higher player counts there's a bit of a problem here like I said during the play action players can activate a special ability on the card if they have the right worker the problem is however that there are only two spaces open at the start of the game where a player can get a worker and they are a very obvious autograph on your first move this means that in a three-player game the first two players can potentially spend the first two three turns sitting on those tiles accumulating workers and giving them a significant advantage to build on for the rest of the game finally let's talk about the end game Expeditions borrows its goals directly from side with the Game ending once a player has completed their fourth goal and plays their final stop one key difference here that I really like though is that players actually get one final turn after the last star is placed which helps make some wins feel a bit less cheap than they could have inside however I would argue that there's a bit of a balancing issue here swaying the game quite heavily towards having players complete quests as these are both one of the goals and a multiplier for the points you get for each completed goal the last game I played was absolutely mine to lose the other player had built a much better engine of cards scored a whole heap of points as the game progressed and played a much more efficient game than I did but I still came out on top simply because he ignored the quests and focused on other goals while I made sure to Max my quests out it's hopefully pretty obvious from what I've said that I'm quite mixed on expeditions mechanically I think the game has elements that absolutely shine I love how big of an impact something as simple as only being able to use two out of your three actions at the time can have on your game I love how the engine building you can achieve with the cards can have such a tangible and satisfying effect on how you approach the challenges presented to you and I also absolutely adore the multi-use cards and the Dilemma they constantly put you through however I also can't help but feel disappointed about the absolute lack of theme here when the world portrayed throughout seems to be begging for it I wish the game delivered better on the promise of exploration making the discovery of new tiles more exciting I really don't love how the game scales at higher player counts and I can't help but feel like players are being forced to complete a set number of quests if they want to be in the running to win the game Expeditions presents a fairly solid foundation but I feel like it's still missing a great expansion or two to really make the package shine and to be fair based on what's been shown Gears of corruption already appears to be taking the game in the right direction

Channel: Gems & Biscuits

Views: 256

Keywords: Expeditions, Scythe, Stonemaier Games, Jamey Stegmaier, VIticulture, Wingspan, Scythe Board Game, Rise of Fenris, Expeditions Board Game, Wingspan Board game, Dune Imperium, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Dune Imperium Uprising, Earth Board Game, Ark Nova, Tapestry Board Game, Wyrmspan, Dice Tower, Shut Up and Sit Down, Watch it Played, Heat Board Game, Deck Builders, Euro Games, Broken Meeple, Miniature Games, Kickstarter, Apiary Board Game, Gears of Corruption

Id: LzwaVUHppzQ

Length: 9min 27sec (567 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2024