Category Archives: Expeditions

Wait I told you that!

Expeditions, game night

Last night saw Expeditions hit the table for the third time since it arrived.

I’m really enjoying the game. It’s fastly becoming a favourite of mine.

The game last night saw Julie, Dave, and myself exploring the frozen tundra.

The bgstat app randomly chose Dave as the first player. Which meant I got to choose first based on seating order.

This is how our chosen champions and mechs matched up after our choices:

  • Olga & Changa with Highlander – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Odin’s Wrath – Julie
  • Vesna & Voltan with Tatanka – Dave

I really need to try another champion next time I play. But it’s hard. Olga is the champion of the Rusviet faction in Scythe. And we all know how I feel about that faction.

Whilst setting up the tiles, I particularly thought how cool that the two tiles that gave workers were on opposite sides of the board, with all the card draw clustered in the middle. This was going to force a splitting of the mechs depending on the plans of the players. No grouping, congestion here.

It was another game where I only refreshed once and that was early on in the game. And if my memory isn’t failing me Julie and Dave refreshed about three times each. The rest of the time it was the tile or card ability that was used.

We also saw less use of the sweep action to reset the face up cards. Which meant we saw less of the deck. That meant less of the cards I like to get came out.

Supplies for exploring

One thing I noticed at the end as I was boasting about my fourth and final glory star was how few cards I had left in hand. Not counting the two starting cards of the champion and their companion. I had two! The rest were either quests that I solved or items that had been to upgrade my mech.

The glory that I was able to boast about!
My end mech state

My victory was pretty comprehensive. I was particularly happy with the ruthless way I triggered the end of the game. My last turn saw me block off the second boast tile stopping Dave and Julie from getting a third glory token out.

Now I did help/advise both work out their best last turn to maximise points gained.

Final scores

It was at the end whilst packing up that Julie and Dave said that next time they knew to look for combos/synergies more.

Wait I told you that at the start. I pointed out during my early turns what I was looking for in a card! That I liked cards that gave me one of the main actions, such as move when I played it. It was particularly galling that Julie had said it as I told her, nah pointed to the cards that were out that fed into her mech ability of being able to use/get maps. Sadly I wasn’t able to do the same for Dave.

I ended up taking one of the cards seeing as Julie refused to act on my advice and go her own path.

I’ve played at different player counts now for each game, and I think it scales pretty well. Except when you have players inflicted with ap.

Turns are normally pretty quick, so little down time.

Although I think I’d max out the player count at four. I like that at the higher player count there is more blocking. Whether it’s intentional or not.

It was a fun evening and I loved that I got to share one of my favourite games to new players.

Wait did I just say it’s a favourite game?

Two venture in to the taiga

Expeditions, Game day

Yesterday I had to cancel the planned D&D session so I could look after mum. Friday night whilst I was at game night mum fell over and banged her head on the sideboard. I wanted her to rest, and make sure there was no concussion.

So yesterday evening I messaged Ben to see if he was free to play Expeditions this afternoon depending on mum and how she was feeling.

This morning after a gentle start to the day I checked on mum to make sure she was ok. Her head was still a little sore. Which was expected. But otherwise seemed ok

I’m still blown by just how quick the game is to setup.

Luckily no teaching the game was required as Ben had already watched the Watch it played video a couple of times.

So this is how our champions and mechs matched up.

  • Olga & Changa with Odin’s Wrath – me
  • Anna & Wojtek with Highlander – Ben

I’ll do the tl;dr first I enjoyed Expeditions as a two player game.

Obviously it felt a little different to the game Friday. Mainly because the board was less congested with mechs there was no blocking of spaces. Which on the odd occasion is done deliberately, but most likely by accident.

It was funny because Ben and myself didn’t have to do a refresh action until right before the end of the game was triggered. In fact the more powerful all three actions turn after the refresh was our final turn. As my three actions allowed me to get enough corruption tokens, and claim my fourth and final glory token.

How did we play so long before having to do the refresh? Tile and card abilities. They allowed me and Ben to stay out cycling our activated cards back to our hands more or less as regularly as we wanted without skipping a turn. Granted we don’t get that more powerful turn. But being able to get an action plus a recycle was more useful.

Once I triggered the end of the game and the final scores calculated I snuck in a victory.

Our final scores

We followed up our game of Expeditions with a game of Lakshadweep. This Indian boardgame had an interesting eco inspired theme. However it is pretty paper thin.

The art is very functional and children bookish. Which sums up the level it’s aimed at I think.

The game itself is very Carcassonne inspired with its tile drafting and placing on a combined area.

It felt very Carcassonne light.

The game wasn’t unpleasant but I’d rather play Carcassonne.

I had a great afternoon with a good friend. Who kindly listened to me unload about the mornings family missives. You don’t want to know.