Expeditions Review – Mech My Day
Wingspan might have pushed the publisher far beyond their wildest dreams, but it was 2016’s Scythe that really put Stonemaier Games on the map, moving them out of crowdfunding and into direct-to-retail sales, often a key indicator that a publisher has enough ‘evergreen’ titles they no longer need to rely on interest free loans. Expeditions is the long-awaited sequel to Scythe, narratively and aesthetically following its predecessor while jettisoning some of the mechanics that supported it through half a dozen expansions and kid-friendly spin off, My Little Scythe. Supporting 1-5 players out of the box and going up to 6 with the Gears of Corruption expansion, Expeditions was designed by Stonemaier head honcho Jamie Stegmaier, with the solo Automa coming from their longtime design partners Automa Factory.
Expeditions sets a tone from the get-go with an enormous box adorned from every angle with Jakub Rozalski’s striking art, mixing an anachronistic, alternate history Europe with mechs and backpack-carrying bears. Instantly familiar to Scythe players, the large map tiles detail the shifting landscape of Europa with the introduction of Meteorite cards injecting more colour than the typical browns, greys and occasional greens that defined Scythe. As with every Stonemaier title, the components here are of excellent quality, balancing material choices and usability in the standard edition which contains plastic mech miniatures, while the deluxe Ironclad edition has metal minis. Dark art to the edges of cards usually has me reaching for card sleeves, but because there’s not really any shuffling outside initial setup, I haven’t felt it necessary even after a handful of games. The box size is a bit much for the included base components but given the empty indentations, the plastic insert is clearly forward-thinking with space for multiple expansions. It also prepares players for the table size necessary to comfortably fit the 20 large hex tiles and five random cards that make-up the map for Expeditions, these then surrounded by small-ish player boards which themselves will house tucked cards on three of their four sides – the cumulative effect of which is anything above two players will need a good amount of table space to play Expeditions comfortably.
Before further discussion, I want to get this caveat out of the way first; I haven’t played Expeditions without its expansion, Gears of Corruption, and nor should you if possible. That’s not to say you need to purchase it at the same time as the base game, but I couldn’t see any opening rounds of the game measuring up without the course-corrections the expansion adds to the experience, notably the starting faction setup with preset Guile and Power values, a gold Hero worker that acts as a wild to get early card activations happening, and the replacement Map tokens which provide an immediate bonus when obtained – great for pushing people towards the more advanced ‘North’ Map tiles right away – rather than solely functioning as a prereq for a single Star scoring space and a small bonus for a single faction. There’s more in the box, but these relatively small elements have Expeditions firing on all cylinders out of the gate, akin to Prelude for Terraforming Mars in the way it jump-starts each player and removes some meandering early rounds. These expansions feel like they are becoming de rigueur for a lot of new medium-heavy Euro games, helping when the sheen has worn off after a few plays and players patience wears thing, wanting to get to the ‘good stuff’ much faster, more-so when the player count climbs past three and an opening round can stretch right out.
The game flow of Expeditions is generally straightforward, obfuscated on occasion by an insistence on using a mixture of thematic and standard game terms for its moving parts. After randomly drawing a faction board and Character/Companion card combo, players take turns Moving their mech figure between one and three spaces (or four if you happen to be the Marsh Strider) around the Map, Gather the resource or trigger the Effect shown on the tile they occupy or Play a card from their hand, taking its ‘Core value’ of Guile or Power and placing a matching worker on the card space to trigger its effect. While players can complete these actions in any order, which they are allowed to do is governed by a simple action-selection mechanism that plays out on each player’s board using the most versatile of boardgame components, a single 10mm cube. This starts off on the ‘Refresh’ space and moves to the left which signifies players can Move, Play and Interact in any order. On their next turn, the cube moves up into one of three slots, blocking out one action completely and leaving the other two revealed, thus making choices much tighter because of course it would be great to get all three actions each turn. Alas, players must take a Refresh action to line up another triple, returning played cards to their ‘hand’ (herein the left side of their player board) and any worker meeples they own back to their board, finally moving their cube back down to the Refresh space.
At the start of a game, only the first six ‘South’ Map tiles are revealed, meaning players will need to push further into the distant sections to flip the unrevealed tiles and access more powerful actions that will let them tuck the games multi-use cards under their player mat. Unfortunately, each of these newly revealed Map tiles has Corruption, a mechanic that involves randomly drawing tiles from a bag to cover the more powerful in-game actions – each tile has a value from 3-5, while the map might state a space has a minimum of 8 Corruption on it. To remove Corruption, players spend Guile or Power to Vanquish it, tracked on their player board and earned on the Map through Gather actions or by playing cards. Vanquish the last Corruption tiles on a space by using your Companion card, and you’ll also get to perform the action you’ve just uncovered – did someone say efficiency?
Each of these mechanisms reveals much about Expeditions which, like Scythe before it, is an efficiency euro-puzzle wearing a thematic coat, as players scramble to meet the many different requirements available to put out Stars and trigger the endgame, ideally at a point when they’re in the lead. Yes, Scythe’s Stars have returned and will be a familiar sight and mechanism, requiring a ‘Boast’ action only available on four of the twenty tiles, none of which can be accessed before clearing the Corruption tokens from the Map tile. A peek at the rules for Expeditions will reveal Stegmaier giving thanks to the many designs that inspired this game, which feels pretty jam-packed with mechanisms considering we haven’t even covered the multi-use cards in depth or the minor ‘worker placement’ aspect yet. Expeditions manages to juggle its many mechanisms deftly due to effective iconography (bar one or two glaring issues regarding slightly angled icons) and the simplicity of taking a turn – very rarely can players chain together a large set of moves and it will often take a fair bit of planning to pull it off.
Movement and action selection is crucial, but competitive play also relies on effective use of cards and triggering their unique actions using workers. Expeditions contains three types of cards; Meteorite, Item and Quest. Each is linked to an individual end game goal of tucking four cards of each type under your board, as well as another overarching goal to have 8 cards in your hand at any one time. The main point of interaction in the game stems from Mech positioning, Corruption tokens and card drafting, with only five Cards on show at any point dotted around the map. If players are following similar paths, they’re more likely to get in each other’s way as they lean into the most efficient loops to achieve their end goals, with some Actions spaces few and far between depending on the random layout. As mechs can’t inhabit the same Map tile, decisions become even more agonising when a competitor squats on a space you needed to get to on your turn to execute its Gather action and set off a sequence moving you further toward an end-game goal. The most punishing thing about Expeditions is that putting down a single Star using the Boast action often feels unsatisfying and can cause jockeying around these four spaces, some of which may stay Corrupted and thus inaccessible without someone putting in the work. Clearing Corruption is another action that, whilst tying into an end-game goal and also assisting the final score, doesn’t feel glamorous. Chipping away at Corruption is even worse, as being unable to clear it on subsequent turns means it’s left open for another player to swoop in and combo together the Corruption removal and the Gather effect triggered by clearing it away with their assistant card.
Each of these factors compounds to create a game that has quite a lot of variability but it’s often easy to tell early on who is making the better use of their actions. Most frustrating is an inability to focus on obtaining certain cards without staying towards the bottom of the map and leveraging the ‘Draw two, keep one’ action. Games where the map is awash with nothing but Items or Meteorite cards mean Quest cards, which significantly enhance the amount of endgame points each Star placed is worth, become impossible to obtain if you aren’t up next in turn order when they appear. Scores can vary wildly as well, with a ‘rich get richer’ effect creeping in when a player is able to get exactly what they want, with little recourse for others as hindering other players often harms your own goals. There’s also been some debate amongst myself and those I’ve played with as to how balanced the individual faction powers are, with some feeling far more situationally useful than others – being able to move an extra space, paying less Power and Guile to remove Corruption and gained cards entering straight into your hand are all incredibly valuable, whereas trashing Map tokens for points relies on other players not scooping them all up first.
Expeditions sings at 2-4 players, with lower counts reducing the impact of occupied spaces and 5-6 players stretching the gameplay thin and making my somewhat minor issues with the game felt a bit too strongly, not to mention playtime dragging on longer than the experience can support. Personally, I would always play Expeditions over Scythe going forward – I’m far too much of a sucker for multi-use cards and engine building to choose otherwise. Scythe fans may similarly find Expeditions lacking in interaction and the nature of expansions like the phenomenal Rise of Fenris make it a more robust experience for now, as there is at least one more Expeditions expansion in the works.
Expeditions was reviewed using a base game provided by the publisher and a Gears of Corruption expansion purchased by the reviewer.
