A Swifter Scythe?
EXPEDITIONS
Designer: Jamey Stegmaier | Publisher: Stonemaier Games
Anticipation for Expeditions was always going to be passionately high. Even though Scythe explored more of its world through various expansions, there is still a huge appetite for more. The choice here was to either go for exactly the same, but make it bigger, or try something along the same Euro track, to give the game its own sense of identity and purpose.
The premise is straightforward: a crashing meteorite, a missing doctor, and a quest for glory fuel the reasons for you to go on your journey to Siberia. This time, you’ll take control of huge mechs to traverse the landscape, hoping to overcome any challenges that lie on your path. In front of you is an entire land of unexplored tiles, that you will flip over and use their resources and actions in order to gain the most glory and triumph.
Whereas Scythe gave you loads of options when it came to your turn, Expeditions distils this down to a choice of three main actions (move, gather resources or play cards) and a refresh action. On the first round you can take all three actions, but from then on you are restricted to choosing two or to refresh. You can move your mech up to three spaces across the landscape tiles, but cannot finish on the same tile as another player. If you land on an unexplored space, you’ll flip it over and collect a map token, which goes towards one of your glory targets. When you gather, you gain the benefits of the location your mech currently is on, which may include taking one of the cards that sit face up in the spaces between the locations. You can play cards from the left side of your player board to the right side, then activate the additional ability of that card by adding the relevant coloured worker meeple.
You’ll soon be completing quests, upgrading your mech and adding meteorite pieces to your mech inventory, which are all achieved by tucking cards under sides of your player mat. Gained cards can’t be used until they are refreshed back to the left side of your player board, making the refresh action a necessity, as it not only restarts your game engine, but also puts workers back in your supply and allows you to play your cards again. Hitting milestones in the game gains you glory and once you’ve ‘boasted’ for your fourth star, the game ends after one more round. It all clicks very quickly into place once you have the basic gameplay understood.
Expeditions plays like a series of smaller activities that crescendo into a final race, as players build their own game engine to achieve victory. For the most part it works extremely well, as everyone around the table plans their next move, taking their own path provided they aren’t stopped by another player taking their coveted location first. I’m not currently convinced games with higher player counts aren’t going to be a huge block party, in which tactics will be based around stopping others instead of forging ahead. That aside, it looks intriguing on the table; the tile and card art from Jakub Rozalski is stunning.
It is incredibly easy to learn with a rulebook that is so well done and game mechanics that appear complicated, but rarely cause confusion.
You can certainly see the sibling DNA present in Expeditions, but it’s taken its own interesting journey and I’ve happily bought a ticket to ride this train.
RICHARD SIMPSON
WE SAY
Expeditions dares to take a swing at its bigger sibling and lands some impressive punches that work very well depending on the player count.
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
◗ Basecamp board
◗5 Mech mats
◗20 Location tiles
◗5 Mech miniatures
◗5 Base snaps
◗50 Worker meeples
◗12 Starting cards
◗25 Item cards
◗25 Meteorite card
s
◗40 Quest cards
◗5 Action tokens
◗5 Power tokens
◗5 Guile tokens
◗20 Glory tokens
◗24 Map tokens
◗37 Corruption tokens
◗ Corruption bag
◗80 Cardboard coins
◗10 Players aids
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED SCYTHE...
It’s the same setting and you’ll be comfortable with the key concepts, but probably appreciate the immediacy of action that Expeditions offers over Scythe.