A sequel to one of the best selling, highest rated games of all time? Sign me up. Expeditions is in the same universe as Scythe, having players exploring Siberia and investigating a meteorite crash. Instead of a sprawling map, this game consists of maneuvering along tiles with a single (insanely cool) mech. Players will take control of a character and their animal companion as their starting hand and on their turns they'll do 2 of a possible 3 actions (sometimes all 3). Each turn, you'll move your action selection token on your player mat and cover one of the options leaving you with the other two as what will be done on your turn. Move will allow you to move your mech as many spaces as their movement will allow. Then if possible, flip the tile and take the map token. Play will let you play a card from your hand (which is to the left of your mat face up) to your active row (right of the mat). Playing cards will let you increase your power and guile to help remove corruption on the map. Cards also have abilities that you can do if you have the matching worker type. Workers are generally picked up from the gather action. Gather will let you activate a map tile. Here is where the bulk of your improvements happens. Gathering will let you gain workers, new cards, clear corruption, upgrade cards, and more. The final thing you can do is refresh. Here you'll move your active row to your hand and move your action selection token below the chosen actions. The advantage here is that on your next turn you'll be able to do all 3 possible actions. In the same vein of Scythe, once enough objectives have been completed, the game will end and players will convert what they've done to coins and the player with the highest will win.
The Good: Expeditions manages to remain faithful to its predecessor while still feeling fresh and different. Something about Scythe was always very intimidating to me even though I've played heavier games. Expeditions is a game I can easily pull out and it's much more approachable to newer players but its still plenty deep enough for seasoned vets to have plenty to think about. As always, the artwork is top notch. It feels grim and dark but it's engaging and interesting to look at. The automa is really simple to run. It essentially has two non player mechs hoovering through the central and top sections to block you and collect tokens while eventually triggering the endgame if you don't first. I love the overall look of the mechs. They're bulky but they're beautiful to look at and play with.
The Okay: There can be too much planning to be done at times. While most actions are simple for the most part, getting to fully execute a plan can span across multiple turns ensuring that you're in the right place at the right time. There's also a ton of content on each card type. There's the main abilities, costs, upgrades, and core abilities. It can feel busy at times. I would have liked to see more tiles to further randomize the setup. For balancing I can understand why what you get is everything you need but the addition of a couple extra for each could have been a cool touch.
The Not So Good: While playing with two players, the game can drag on a lot longer than you may anticipate. Since you'll need to clear the corruption on a tile in order to boast (complete an objective), there isn't as many people fighting to do the same thing. If you're the only one working on clearing this then that means that you can be sitting for a while. There are 2 spots total where this can be done. The box is the same size as the Scythe box with a fraction of the content. This makes storage a pain. It certainly has a presence on the shelf but it could have been so much smaller. I also found the insert to be a bit funny with the way it was laid out. There's a space for the base rings but they do not actually fit which bothers me to no end.
Final Thoughts: If you're looking for Scythe 2 Electric Boogaloo, Expeditions isn't it. Expeditions stands on it's own legs without relying on it's big brother. While keeping the same setting and giving it a totally new gameplay style it was a true joy to experience Expeditions. It's not always the cleanest experience but it is one that I truly enjoy every single play of. I hope there's plans for expansion content in the future because this is a game I want more of. Especially to justify that massive box.
Thanks to Stonemaier Games for providing a review copy.
