Scythe by Jamey Stegmaier and published by Stonemeier Games is one of my favorite games. I was quite hopeful when Stonemeier published Expeditions, a sequel to Scythe and also by Jamey. I was not disappointed.
Expeditions is set in the same world as Scythe. That world is a post-World War I, steampunk designed and illustrated (truly phenomenal artwork) by Jakub Rozalski. In this world, technology advanced during the war quite a bit further than in our own, at least in the development of mechs.
Even though Expeditions is set in the same world as Scythe, it is a completely different game. In Scythe, various post-war factions try to dominate the remains of Central Europe. In Expeditions, various expeditions (They said the name of the game!) are exploring the Tunguska area of Russia. With a mild Lovecraftian flavor, the story goes that repeated meteor strikes have spread corruption throughout the area. The players compete to remove the most corruption from the area and to gain the most glory.
Each player is represented by a mech. The board is a hex map with most of the hexes concealed at the beginning of the game. During most turns, a player performs two of three actions. They cannot perform the exact same set two turns in a row.
The first action is the move action. A player can move one to three hexes. They must stop if they reach an undiscovered hex. If they stop on such a hex, they turn it over and get a map token to commemorate the discovery.
The second action is to play a card. Cards are multipurpose. Playing any card gets the player strength or guile, which are used to clear corruption. The player can also deploy a meeple to activate the card’s special power. Meeples come in several colors. A card’s power can only be activated by the appropriate colored meeple. Cards have other uses that are covered below.
The third action is gather. Gather addresses the hex on which the player’s mech stands. Many hexes allow players to gather resources - cards, more meeples, coins/victory points, strength, or guile. Some allow players to take a special action. Most of these special actions involve the player tucking a card behind their player board. Tucked quest cards provide a multiplier to glory points at the end of the game. Tucked item cards provide an on-going benefit. Tucked meteor cards provide an immediate benefit whenever a new meteor card is tucked. Having two or more tucked meteor cards also increases the power of meteor cards played from the player’s hand.
The final special action is bragging. As in Scythe, one of the main goals of the game is to complete certain conditions that gain the player glory. In Expeditions, these include tucking four quest cards, tucking four item cards, tucking four meteor cards, getting a certain number of workers, getting a certain number of cards, and so forth. Unlike in Scythe, where the equivalent of glory can be claimed immediately upon meeting the conditions, in Expeditions the player has to move to a hex that allows them to gather the brag action. In my game, this difference had a significant impact. Towards the end of the game, I was in the position to get the glory for a few conditions pretty quickly, except that I would have to travel across the board to claim them.
Some cards also allow players to take special actions. One of these is to solve a quest. If a player is on a hex whose number matches the number of a quest card they control, they can solve it. They pay the required amount of strength or guile, get a reward, and get to tuck that quest card. The other special card action is vanquish. Vanquish allows the player to clear corruption off of the hex their mech is on by spending strength or guile to remove corruption tiles.
The game ends when the first player gets four types of glory. Corruption tiles are turned into coins. Tucked items cards each award coins. Each type of glory awards coins, with the amount for each going up based on the number of quests cards the player has tucked. Coins are victory points. The player with the most wins.
The solo game is enjoyable. The AI is basically two mechs wandering around the board hoovering up corruption and map tokens. That can be good, because they reveal hexes and activate gather special power hidden under corruption tokens. It can also be bad, because those hexes and map tokens score points for them and not you. The AI is also the game’s clock. After a slightly variable number of rounds, if the player has not won, the game ends. The closer the game gets to running out the clock, the more points the AI gets. The AI difficulty can be scaled. Jamey recommends starting on the 2nd (of 5) easiest for the first game. I still got handily beat. Even on the lower difficulties, the player needs to be focused and not dawdle.
The components are Stonemeier’s usual high quality. Does the rulebook need a linen finish? Probably not. Does there need to be an insert? Probably not, although it does keep the mech minis from being knocked around and beat up. The insert is well designed - everything has a place, the places are fairly obvious, and the box closes. The mech minis come in five unique designs. They are made from very good quality plastic and are quite detailed. The wooden meeples have a different design for each color. The design differences are subtle but make the game more accessible. The corruption tiles are chonky pieces of wood. Both types (strength and guile) are the same size, but they do have dots in different corners. Again, a subtle difference that adds to the accessibility of the game. The coins and the map tokens are decent quality cardboard. Not surprising. Stonemeier learned a long time ago that many people will pay to bling out their game with metal coins.
This is exactly the type of game I enjoy. I love figuring out a strategy and then figuring out what sequence of turns will get me there. Expeditions rewards both long-term and medium-term strategies. Victory points can come from many directions. The game is essentially a race. Whoever ends the game might not win but will most of the time. That means that the player needs to focus on a few goals and make each of their turns get them closer to at least on of the goals.
Den of the Red Wolf 