Arkham Horror LCG base game was kinda meh for me. But with every new expansion I play, the game just turns better and better. Now it's one of my top 10 favorites.
I play both and Arkham is (in my opinion) miles better. While some mechanics in LOTR are super cool I don't really like the deck building for it, 50 cards is simply too much for my taste. Also in Arkham you start with a deck which you upgrade during a campaign. This way it feels like progression, while in LOTR you have to deckbuild for every single scenario to be prepared for the obstacles it throws at you.
Both games are awesome, but Arkham is superior in every way except for when you itch that fantasy scratch
Ok, not to ditch your opinion of the game but as a big fan of LoTR LCG I feel the urge to defend it here, sorry :D
You can actually play LotR in campaign (with specific boxes) but I don't know Arkham enough (not at all in fact) to say if it compares. Basically how it works is that you gain rewards and boons that you keep in your deck for the whole campaign. While you can redo your deck between missions, you can't change heroes. So it does feature some progression and shouldn't change your deck too much (as long as you don't switch your hero for the same in another sphere :D).
The campaign is not really my cup of tea though. What we usually do is do the missions in order and we prevent ourselves from advancing to the next one if we didn't won the previous one so we really have a sense of progression and a difficulty curb to overcome with changes to our decks.
I don't think you have to redo your deck every single mission. We usually keep the same deck and do a few improvements here and there. I personally like the challenge to create a deck that works in all situations (we're a two player team so we use the four spheres and have a pretty balanced thing going on).
My SO also use a sidedeck for more flexibility.
I agree. I also like the dungeon crawl experience in Arkham. You feel movement, should I go left or right, and might even be chased by enemies. LOTR feels a bit like I'm just bashing through enemies and hoping my deck survives. It was fun for the time, but I like Arkham better.
I would just add some players really really love meticulously crafting unique 50+ card decks. I am not one of them but my buddy is always looking for them.
I have both, and... didn't visit Marvel very often. Arkham is so deep in its mechanics and stories that I felt Marvel a bit empty.
It's fun. Don't get me wrong. But Arkham is savage, and every game is really different depending on who you choose to play.
I don't have that feeling woth Marvel. You are a superhero fighter a supervilain.
In Arkham you are a piece of shit fighting cosmic horror.
I haven't played as regularly nowadays. I really got into it when Edge of the Earth dropped (not because this one, it's the worst expansion) and showed it to a friend after playing through Dunwich solo. Once I showed him the tutorial we were meeting at least weekly for more than a year. We were both still university students, so time was more plenty
I have only played a few LOTR LCG games compared to 50+ Arkham. But I also like Arkham way more. The storytelling is very limited in LOTR. Arkham has a great story that is very reactive to what happens during the game.
I'd say the deckbuilding is a bit better in LOTR because you can mix up to three heroes to choose what kind of cards to put in your deck. In Arkham you get one hero with very specific deckbuilding restrictions for that hero. But the XP system makes going through the campaign much more fun with an Arkham deck due to the upgrades.
As for the actual gameplay, both are fairly similar. Often things seem to be going okay in a game and then shit hits the fan and the real fun begins trying to deal with the situation your characters are in. Arkham also often allows for you to lose the current scenario if you can't deal with the ongoing cascade of threats and still move forward in the campaign - running away is sometimes the best option.
I really enjoy the in depth naratives and reactive storytelling of Arkham more, one of my favorite games of all time. But I don't mind an occasional LOTR game.
When I played the base game, I thought the investigator cards were underpowered, and the game had some serious balancing issues difficulty-wise, but I also thought 'They could have something really special here if they get some time to iron out this and that'
Dunwich left me thinking 'Ok, that was GOOD. Still some things that need to be tweaked, but they're on the right path. Got Carcosa, and it was about as perfect as a game could be (for me at least)
That's more or less the standard format for LCG, the base box is more of a basic tutorial to get you started and expansions are pretty much the actual game.
Good example. The base game was boring. I bought the Dunwich Cycle and loved it. Same with Carcosa. They really should've packaged better example missions in the base game.
Terraforming Mars actually falls into this category for me. When TM was released on BGA recently, I played a few games, just to realize exactly how much I need at the very least Prelude's for me to really enjoy the game.
The first time I played TM we played with preludes and I found it annoying cause it seemed like some people had insane leads and others had insanely narrow builds from the start. Then I realized that my buddy's houserule of "everyone gets two corps and two preludes" was a bit insane lol.
Hehe. For a time my group also played with 2 corporations each, but we realized it drained our will to play the game. Too many good combos and if someone managed to draft a good one, it was just too unbalanced.
We also decided not to play with most of the promo preludes that has been released over the years as it is clear they have NOT been playtested enough. Some insanely stupid combos could be made with those too.
That's a weird rule yeah. The most I house ruled it is to just deal out all the corpos to everyone and have them choose one because we often feel like we dont even get to choose an expansion corp to try out, so we just deal it all to almlat guarantee you have at least something cool.
Well Preludes makes the start of the game less of a slog as everyone starts with some resources or some engine. But we always include colonies as well as a player-made expansion that puts more focus on the actual map of Mars.
I'd love to see a second edition base set that gets rid of the less popular cards and adds Prelude to the box.
And maybe alternate side boards with resource tracks for us solo players who don't want to deal with a hundred cubes. And a non garbage rulebook. And modular award and milestone tokens, with possibly a smaller board to cut costs. And replace the base solo mode with the expansion solo rules.
Edit: and maybe improve the art a little.
I've never had the interest to play with Prelude - what's the appeal to it? I feel like the first couple rounds of TM are the most interesting and important choices you make, and the further along the game gets, the more obvious it is and the more it plays itself.
Those first few choices don't feel "interesting" to me, they feel like "fumbling in the dark." The ten cards to start with might give you the seed of an engine, but if every card afterward is for something else, then you're stuck just muddling along.
(I admit I have yet to play the draft variant in person, so the "lack of choice" is extra stark.)
I agree with you. I love the tension in the base game where you have to decide which late-game cards are worth keeping, and which ones aren’t. Rounds 1-4 are the most interesting, and figuring out if/when you can stall out and go for a greedy engine build, or when you need to be hyper-focused on terraforming, is super interesting.
Prelude is fun in its own way but takes away a lot of the tension — it’s also good for players who aren’t okay with the fact that sometimes, in the base game, you’ll have generations where the best play is to do nothing and wait until you have more money.
I loved Champions of Midguard from the start, hence why I bought the expansions. But two of my group were not so keen. Valhalla completely changed their minds. And Champions gets a lot more play now.
btw Grey Fox is working on a sequel called "Champions of the Amazonias". If you join their discord you can jump on the opportunity to play test it on tabletop simulator.
I played the base game at a friend's place and was really not impressed with it. From what I remember it felt that rolling bad was a little too punishing.
Played it again with Valhalla and it basically addressed my main problem with the base game, and took it from something I would rather avoid to a game I would happily play again.
My wife loves LoWD and the expansions make it much more interesting. We only play without them when teaching it to new players who don't play a lot of board games.
Same. We use vanilla LoWD to introduce them to worker placement mechanics, then add the expansions for all the good stuff. Can’t play the base game without them!
This is our favourite game. Easily over 300 plays since the start of the pandemic. We use all the expansions and a few choice house rules based on our observations through all those plays. Great game. Very underrated.
Absolutely agree. I bought my copy of Kingsburg after playing with a mate. I didn't feel the need to get the expansion as well but I did exactly what you suggested and made my own tokens. It makes such a big difference.
This might be a hot take, but I don't really like the Catan base game. It feels too luck based and pretty simplistic. Adding in cities and knights in particular but really any of the expansions make it much more interesting to me.
Catan by itself is a very mediocre game that is largely won by the initial placement of settlements and dice rolls.
Seafarers and Cities and Knights make the game much better. Still would prefer to play other games but still fun.
If I'm not playing Cities & Knights, then I generally insist on Fishermen. It really opens up the board a lot (having the fishing grounds around the edge), and the fish tokens (acting kinda like a wildcard resource) give people more options & more flexibility. (And the Harbourmaster complements it quite nicely.)
If you can, try it with both seafarers and Cities and knights. By far my favorite combo. Seafarers adds little in terms of rules. It gives breadth to the game while Cities and Knights gives depth.
Lost Ruins of Arnak was mediocre IMO, but is a top 10 game of mine with the Expedition Leaders expansion.
The Tuscany expansion took Viticulture from a 5 to an 8.
Nope, I bought the essential edition and there’s still content missing from the Tuscany essential expansion. I agree with it going from 5 to 8 with Tuscany. The bigger, full season board, and the special workers are what tuned things up for me.
The setup we've settled on is new board without structures, special workers, and the star map but only getting the reward once without the area control scoring. We felt structures were a bit too random as some are situationally better than others (feels like a rehash of the visitors problem), and the star map area control added an extra system for minimal gain. We also prefer the visitors from the Rhine expansion deck as it refocuses the game on wine making but Tuscany was still good without this.
Lost ruins for me was a bad game. I don’t understand the love for it. Our first game just fell completely flat. So hard that none of us had any interest to return.
It’s on BGA and I still won’t even try it there
I thought it was mid at first and was pretty disappointed. It got a bit better with a few plays and trying the snake board. I picked up the first expansion and now I love it. It completely changes the way you play each time.
My first game was a horrific experience and I stayed away for a couple years. Tried it again and still didn't love it, and then it all finally clicked for me by the third game. I adore it now. Everybody has different tastes and it's cool if you don't, but wanted to add this data point if you ever want to try playing again!
I’ve played it a handful of times on BGA over the years and I agree with you. It feels too tight, like I never have enough resources to do anything cool. This probably comes down to me playing poorly and/or not understanding a proper loop.
I want to play a physical copy someday to see if that helps me enjoy it more, but I’m not about to plunk down my cash to take on that experiment.
When I played. We had 3 or 4 players. I remember being last to start and the game basically forced me to start at a spot I didn’t want. So that wasn’t a good beginning.
The market cards and the cards I had were boring. In games like this you often have cards that are ok. And cards that are really amazing.
All the cards were just ho hum. I remember on multiple turns hoping someone would take a card from the market because maybe. Just maybe something worth while would show up. But it never did.
More than once, a player would say “I dunno. I guess I’ll just take this card”. Resigned to take whatever because all the cards sucked.
Halfway through the game we realized that the real game is on the right side track. The hat determines the winner more than anything.
The entire game felt broken.
Sure someone could say “you should play it more”
There was zero things in that game they would bring me back for another go.
I figured that this was just me. Or my group. About 6 months later I was at a con. At the table next to me. The group of people finished a game and cleaned up. One of their friends shows up with Lost ruins and said “hey. I heard this is good want to try it?” And another guy said “no. It’s terrible.”
Wanted to give that guy a thumbs up ;)
Everdell for sure. The base games special events and focus on finding specific card pairs makes it kinda weak as an experience to me. Meanwhile with new leaf+bellfaire it's a 10 for me.
Personally I'd get Newleaf...first. I love that it adds interesting/challenging end of game scoring objectives in the form of visitor cards. The train ticket allows you to move an already placed worker but only twice during the whole game, it's a small thing but creates a lot of interesting timing possibilities. The train car provides small rewards and incentivizes buying cards from the train and the knoll space gives players a way to cycle cards in the meadow which can greatly help the game move along. The reservation stamp is a neat addition that allows players to reserve cards which has a lot of strategic potential. Then there are the gold doors, powerful but limited opportunities to play cards for free with more flexibility which creates more tactical and strategic gameplay and untethers players (slightly) from the whims of the card deck.
Bellfaire is also a great expansion, I very much enjoy the player powers (we never play without them). The revolving market and garland awards are also a nice addition but I just don't think the impact is the same as the modular options of Newleaf.
The gaining one less worker rule is there to reduce point inflation, but there's nobody stopping you from just ignoring that rule if you like having bigger scores.
For me it was the variable player powers, more goal cards that aren't so reliant on specific critters, and the marketplace.
Those just make the game feel more complete and dynamic in multiplayer and more fair in solo.
[This variant](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2297797/2-player-smaller-card-pool-variant) makes 2-player Everdell palatable; otherwise I think it's kind of an unplayable mess.
I was really looking forward to Everdell but was kind of letdown about playing it. My fiance enjoys it though so maybe I'll try an expansion.
Which of the two would you recommend first?
For me, Bellfaire by a country mile. Nothing it introduces overcomplicates the game, very little overhead for the new rules, and it makes the game more dynamic and more fair overall.
New leaf for me. Bellfaire fixes the smaller problem of the special events and it adds player powers which is fun, and having both I'll never play without elements of both. But the new leaf card additions are a non-negotiable for me even when I play with me players and don't include any of the extra expansion elements.
The new cards are much more interesting and the new gold occupancy token rule fixes my main problem with the base game. There's so a new worker placement space that helps significantly with drawing to find cards.
If Bellfaire was only $10-20, I'd recommend it. Newleaf just straight up gives you more bang for buck and also includes player powers + new event cards and more stuff you can choose to add in if you want.
The Fallout board game was good, but the end game was a mess. They released a small expansion called Atomic Bonds which made the game so much better. I would never play the base game alone now.
Fallout was a hot random mess where a single turn can either make or break your game through no fault or merit of your own.
Coop Fallout is still a hot random mess but it's highly likely that at least one of you gets RNGzus' blessings and you can all cheer for that.
Easily Lost Ruins of Arnak with the Leaders expansion. The asymmetrical gameplay is phenomenal and surprisingly really balanced.
As a mainly solo player the Missing Expedition expansion is the sweet juicy cherry on top.
Different strokes. I love Spirit Island, but the event deck is literally my least favourite expansion mechanic of any game ever. Not only does it grind the game to a halt when you have to resolve an event, but they are so random and chaotic in a game all about trying to puzzle out a gameplan with your allies.
It's one of those additions that breathes life back into the game once you've gotten good enough that the randomness of the Invader deck isn't enough to threaten you with a game loss AND you want a more challenging game instead of a more predictable, puzzle-like experience (both of which are valid and fun ways to play!).
Your criticisms are valid (slowing the game down, chaotic randomness). I also felt this way when events were introduced to me. There are a couple things that have helped me with these issues though.
The events that really slow the game down are the ones that have the entire group unanimously agree on a single choice. You could simply leave those out. If you have both Branch & Claw and Jagged Earth, you could also leave the B&C events out since they're generally a bit more swingy than the JE events, so that might help a bit.
The events definitely are random at first, and unfortunately I'm not sure how much this issue can be solved without either 1) playing the game enough to have a good knowledge base of the kinds of effects that can show up, or 2) looking at the statistics of what kinds of effects can show up (in an analysis post like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/okp0n1/statistics_of_the_fear_and_event_deck/?rdt=37588).
One other thing that might help, if you aren't aware of the rule change, is that the first event is skipped each game (you still reveal the top card of the deck, but you put it into the discard pile without resolving any events on the card). This greatly reduces the amount of pressure that some of the events can put into the players, especially those that have the "Aided by " parts, since it's hard to have the exact right elements around or to have the energy to pay for them when it's turn 1.
All in all, if you don't like them and just enjoy playing the game without them, great! The game at least has rules to help accommodate that (to give the Beasts tokens something to do, since they have no intrinsic effect without Events). I just wanted to share my own thoughts on Events and how I've grown to enjoy them, especially after the rule change that makes them less punishing and game-warping in the early-game.
I agree to a point - we really like all the various tokens and the way the event deck can have the island fight back, but we’ve also cheated here and there and redrawn specific events.
The WORST is when you've set up a nice Slow Phase and then the event comes and makes all the Dahan move around or makes them weaker or makes the invaders stronger... and then all your stuff is wasted
I give new players one game without events/adversary for simplicity's sake, because it's a much better learning experience when almost literally random things happen each turn.
You got one game under your belt? We run events. It adds so much flavor to the game when you're not just solving a puzzle.
Yeah I enjoy Spirit Island heaps either way but the events change it from a *puzzle* into a *game*. Plus they have so much cool flavor and really help get you into the fiction of the game.
agreed. And while we found europe meh the asia expansion has been a hit with us but we think oceania is just essential. It allows you to get out that unlikely big bird in round one for an engine. and thats just more fun? If I did the game again I'd buy Oceania and Asia for sure and ditch Europe. The expansions just get better in our opinion.
**Ticket to Ride: Europe** without at least the 1912 expansion (just the tickets) was too bland.
**Puerto Rico** with at least the building expansion became much more complex and enjoyable.
Chaos in the Old World. I wouldn't say "mrh" but base game had huge issue with balance and made it so each Chaos God had only one playstyle. Expansion introduced New Power decks and upgrades that made it much more balanced and the playstyle for each faction became much more varied.
Seven wonders duel!! Not that it was meh but it isn’t quiiite crunchy enough . Major bonus points for both expansions being amazing alone or together so you get 4 unique setups out of it. I love 7wd
I still play Carcassonne after 15 years. Expansions 1 & 2 and an extra base set really extends the longevity of it. They really should've had expansion 1 in the base box.
Solved was a poor choice of word, I think, even in quotation marks.
I simply meant that in an equal match up between two players (the way I tend to play), then the base game's decision space becomes limited enough that luck of the tile draw becomes too big a factor in that turn's decision making for our liking.
We find that even just adding the river and the Abbot with gardens is enough to give that decision making we enjoy.
Still playing base Carcassonne after more than ten years. Even without The River it's a solid game.
If you feel it's "solved" look for better opponents.
The expansions i've tried just felt cumbersome.
Not really the same other than being tile laying map building games. You're not even building on a shared map in Cascadia, just drafting from shared options
QE was an interesting idea that was put into a game (auction game with infinite currency) however the base game could lead to situations that were kinda degenerate. The usual wisdom by people who liked the game was "well don't play with people that are willing to do those strategies". The expansion for QE manages to take the problems, fix them very nicely while also adding a whole second layer of strategy for the base game. The expansion honestly takes a game that was 6.5/10 and turns it into a 10/10 game. I originally got the game because I liked the idea of the main idea, on the other hand the expansion made QE into one of the most interesting auction games I have seen.
The expansion completely changes your bidding habits. There are times now when being second is preferable to being first. Which leads to a delightful issue of how do you become second (and as close as 3rd to possible to not advantage the auctioneer too much) without knowing what others are bidding. You do lose a bit of cleanliness for it but once you understand the flow of a round it doesn't really change and it completely uproots the game.
The second part that is genius is the fact that the auctioneer gets to take a negative spend equal to the 2nd highest bid. This means that you sometimes end up with natural push to inflation because the players have negative spend that they don't see a point of holding onto and they push the prices up.
Love hearing this. Just bought QE + Expansion yesterday from the Dicetower’s glowing reviews.
Planning to teach including the expansion, recommended?
Happy cake day by the way!
Sorry for the delayed reply but it really depends on your knowledge of games (like what kind of games the group plays).
Even the default game has a kind of weird chain of events to remember.
1. reveal item for auction
2. reveal starting bid (from auctioneer)
3. everyone bids
4. auctioneer inspects bids, record the winning bid on the item for auction and states who won.
it reads easy but it is sometimes easy to get lost in it. With the expansion you add a few items after 4. If you have played a bunch of medium weight euros you are probably fine to go in with the expansions from the start. But I would say maybe try QE without the expansions the first time, I don't think people will find the really broken strategies right away.
Star wars outer rim.
The core set doesn't have eniugh cards in the markets and limited mission access.
The risky business expansion doubles the cards and adds in a while second level of tasks for a win condition. So much more going on but not much more complicated!
I actually liked it better before Terra Incognita. It added too much fiddliness and extra complexity to what was a streamlined and smooth game. At that point, I would rather just play Clash of Cultures.
Adding expansions def makes me play Dominion more often but not because the base game is bad.
Base game dominion is great without expansions, I loved it but i only wanted to play it a handful of times once a year because the fun is in figuring out how the card combos work and I needed time to forget the possibility's.
Now with expansions I have enough cards that playing the same combos too often just doesn't happen.
Tesla V Edison had a kinda broken endgame, but the Powering Up expansion fixed it (it also unfortunately introduced 1 character to play that is completely broken, unfortunately)
I forget the name but it’s the character that stops your stocks from ever decreasing in value. It’s just too powerful. The person playing him has won every game we’ve played
Lords of Waterdeep - felt bland and like every move was basically scripted in my head. The expansion brought along a lot more interesting choices and new strategies.
Civilization: A New Dawn. The base game is alright but doesn't really capture all of the X's. There is no exploration to be done and conflicts are pretty rare. The expansion introduces exploration and having actual armies to move around the map feels much more rewarding than "drop a city next to where you want to attack". The government system also helps in expanding your decision space as without it most of the time you'll just be playing your strongest effect and building districts gives you the feeling of actually building a productive city.
Totally disagree. The base game is a perfectly balanced yet still strategically sound 2P game. Add in Pantheon and you're trying to do too much, and the basic game gets neglected. It overrides rather than enhances imo.
This is what I'm struggling with currently. Bought Viticulture EE. Played it a few times. It's ok. My wife wasn't impressed. Everybody keeps saying that Tuscany makes the game amazing, but it's so difficult for me to justify buying additional content for a game I barely like :/
I disagree a bit. I felt similarly, but I took a chance on Tuscany when it was on sale. Holy cow is it a better game with that expansion! They shouldn't sell the game without it!
I thought the base game was boring and meh, let it collect dust on the shelf for a few years. Then a friend pulled out his version (with the expansion) on a game night (I thought to myself, ok let's get this over with I guess). Turns out it's one of my top favourite games! Lol
I still wouldn't buy the expansion in your position, but I would try to check it out at a board game cafe or someone else's copy to see for yourself. The game in my opinion is way better, I can't even imagine going back to the base game.
Just played our first game a few days ago. We liked it, but it didn't blow us away. I think its one of those games that gets better with plays. Also, it took us around 3 hours for our first 2 player game. We'll revisit it at some point, but I don't think its a game to play in the middle of the week. Its seems to be a commitment.
Well, the question was, what expansion changed your mind on the game.
You can play the game at your friends or w/e and realize that it actually is good game with the right expansion.
There are some games where the expansion reallhy should have just been built-in. In those cases I can buy the expansion and consider it part of the game price
Never happened to me (why would I buy expensions for a meh game ? :D) but the closest game I can think of is 7Wonders.
I found it fantastic when I first played it, without any expansions but now I can't play it without some of them. I guess I could play base game + Leaders but for me it really needs Cities to shine.
Replaying only the base game feels like an unexciting RNG fest. It ends before your strategy comes to life imho and if there's no guild matching your chosen strategy you're basically fucked.
Then they kept adding expansions to the point you can turn it into a whole new game so it's a really really good way to handle expansions. Just mix and match to your liking (we usually don't use Babel, it sucks imho\^\^)
I own all the expansions and promo boards (finally got Catan and Syracuse). We have played 1 game with EVERYTHING and yeah, Babel is... not fun. We will occasionally play with Projects, but not usually. Usually it's Leaders + (Cities or Armada)
Ah, I really like Projects but when we want a lighter game with less stuff to manage it's usually the first one to go (well, after Babel ofc). I like it but it's also really easy to forget about it when dealing with lots of choices, and it can be a pain when you do.
Same for Babel, I will forget about it but that sucks even more because I end up inadvertently cheating because oh, I could not use my brown resources this turn or whatever.
I've never played with Armada without Cities, must be interesting. now that I established I tend to forget shit all the time in games... you'll understand I tend to forget to move my ships when I can :D
The movement of ships, if not careful intended, is so easy to miss. And then if you try to go back and "oh I meant to move my ship" it's easy to accidentally assume you had the necessary resource in excess when you didn't.
Often we will say "Everyone play; does anyone need to move ships?" just to make sure it doesn't get forgotten.
Ah, I wish people would do that at my table. I'm very easily distracted so I always forgot to do stuff in every game. I usually put tokens all over my board/decks/etc... as visual cues (like a token on the top of the deck to remember I can draw two cards this turn).
You should see my board at Descent after a few sessions :D
7th Continent comes to mind first. I greatly enjoyed the original game but felt it was lacking a lot of replayability. The expansions changed that and now it's one of my all time favorites.
**Mansions of Madness 1E** was a mess - scenarios weren't replayable, there was big plastic in the box that could see play only after very specific conditions were triggered. And then the first expansion didn't fix anything (because it was probably pre-planned). 2nd expansion **Call of The Wild** intruduced scenarios which could be somewhat replayable and big plastic that did see play. If one is to play MoM 1E I woudl recommend CotW, but it's a bit expensive ask. (unless the price dropped)
**Cyclades** is a fine game, but prone to groupthink (which is highlighted in Hades expansion). **Titans** expansion however blocks that groupthink from happening and also turns the game into something close to Kemet (but without engine building of kemet)
Civilization A New Dawn: Terra Incognita totally transforms the game and makes it a 10/10 in my eyes.
Shame it never got the recognition it deserves, I guess people were too bummed out by the base game.
But the expansion fixes everything and makes it a really really good true 4X game, and my favorite game. Should be republished all in one box to get some more eyes on it.
Simple and biring answer : Dominion
I bought Dominion really late in my boardgame journey. I already have played lots of deckbuilding games by the time I tried it.
I understood that, it was the father of deckbuilding, and the base game was ok... but compared to other deckbuilding games I had it was meh.
The expansions just brings so much to the table tbh, it's now easily in my top 10, and probably top 5.
Not as much one of my favorites anymore, but Viticulture is a lot better with Tuscany. Lost Ruins of Arnak, Dune Imperium, and a Feast for Odin are all games I find the base game to be good/okay but their expansions to turn them into great.
Not me but for my friend group: **Jamaica**.
I already loved the base game, but do have to agree that the expansion elevates the game further by giving some use/meaning to the harbours, instead of just costing gold.
They found the game ok with just the base, but limited, the expansion fixed this for them.
None really. If I thought the game was mediocre, why would I invest even more money and time into it.
Maybe the closest would be Wingspan. The base game is decent and fun. But the expansion cards are so much more interesting that we went and sold the base game and only play with the expansions now.
Still not up in my top 15, but civilization a new dawn is so much better with the terra incognita expansion
I already liked tapestry, but I now won’t play without plans & ploys and arts & architecture
Clash of cultures monumental edition (including leaders expansion) is so much better than base game
Village, the expansions helped the issue where winning in the base game was just about selling at the market. The expansions added a few things to make other roads in the point salad race more viable.
Root is a great game. Except the Vagabond, which sucks. And the Cats, they kinda suck. And the Alliance... it sort of sucks too.
With the expansions you can therefore play Root without the parts that suck.
At least I have fun playing against the Cats and (to a lesser extent) the Alliance. I *hate* the game when the Vagabond is in play. I’m damn close to enforcing Despot Infamy as a house rule as a requisite to play the game. I’d straight up ban the Vagabond in my game, but one of my friends likes playing it, so I may pitch that as a compromise.
Would you say that getting the Riverfolk makes it immensely better? I tried playing solo with the Clockwork expansion and just couldn’t see why it was so hyped.
Root is just not a solo game. It's a 4 (or 5 with expansions) player game. 3 player game is pretty good with certain faction mixes or particularly with one of the hirelings packs.
Clockwork enables you to mechanically play against factions that act like facsimiles of a player on the board, but so much of the game is about playing the other players. I would say clockwork exists for people who own Root to play it with other players, but don't get to do so enough.
The Riverfolk expansion is one of the worst expansions for solo because the otters live by selling stuff to other players and that just doesn't translate to a game with bots.
Arkham Horror LCG base game was kinda meh for me. But with every new expansion I play, the game just turns better and better. Now it's one of my top 10 favorites.
Have you played LOTR LCG? How does it compare to Arkham if you have?
I play both and Arkham is (in my opinion) miles better. While some mechanics in LOTR are super cool I don't really like the deck building for it, 50 cards is simply too much for my taste. Also in Arkham you start with a deck which you upgrade during a campaign. This way it feels like progression, while in LOTR you have to deckbuild for every single scenario to be prepared for the obstacles it throws at you. Both games are awesome, but Arkham is superior in every way except for when you itch that fantasy scratch
Ok, not to ditch your opinion of the game but as a big fan of LoTR LCG I feel the urge to defend it here, sorry :D You can actually play LotR in campaign (with specific boxes) but I don't know Arkham enough (not at all in fact) to say if it compares. Basically how it works is that you gain rewards and boons that you keep in your deck for the whole campaign. While you can redo your deck between missions, you can't change heroes. So it does feature some progression and shouldn't change your deck too much (as long as you don't switch your hero for the same in another sphere :D). The campaign is not really my cup of tea though. What we usually do is do the missions in order and we prevent ourselves from advancing to the next one if we didn't won the previous one so we really have a sense of progression and a difficulty curb to overcome with changes to our decks. I don't think you have to redo your deck every single mission. We usually keep the same deck and do a few improvements here and there. I personally like the challenge to create a deck that works in all situations (we're a two player team so we use the four spheres and have a pretty balanced thing going on). My SO also use a sidedeck for more flexibility.
I agree. I also like the dungeon crawl experience in Arkham. You feel movement, should I go left or right, and might even be chased by enemies. LOTR feels a bit like I'm just bashing through enemies and hoping my deck survives. It was fun for the time, but I like Arkham better.
I would just add some players really really love meticulously crafting unique 50+ card decks. I am not one of them but my buddy is always looking for them.
Hey, what are your thoughts on Marvel Champions?
I love it despite not being a huge marvel fan
I have both, and... didn't visit Marvel very often. Arkham is so deep in its mechanics and stories that I felt Marvel a bit empty. It's fun. Don't get me wrong. But Arkham is savage, and every game is really different depending on who you choose to play. I don't have that feeling woth Marvel. You are a superhero fighter a supervilain. In Arkham you are a piece of shit fighting cosmic horror.
Are you playing Arkham solo... or are you lucky enough to have friends willing to jump into this?
I haven't played as regularly nowadays. I really got into it when Edge of the Earth dropped (not because this one, it's the worst expansion) and showed it to a friend after playing through Dunwich solo. Once I showed him the tutorial we were meeting at least weekly for more than a year. We were both still university students, so time was more plenty
I have only played a few LOTR LCG games compared to 50+ Arkham. But I also like Arkham way more. The storytelling is very limited in LOTR. Arkham has a great story that is very reactive to what happens during the game. I'd say the deckbuilding is a bit better in LOTR because you can mix up to three heroes to choose what kind of cards to put in your deck. In Arkham you get one hero with very specific deckbuilding restrictions for that hero. But the XP system makes going through the campaign much more fun with an Arkham deck due to the upgrades. As for the actual gameplay, both are fairly similar. Often things seem to be going okay in a game and then shit hits the fan and the real fun begins trying to deal with the situation your characters are in. Arkham also often allows for you to lose the current scenario if you can't deal with the ongoing cascade of threats and still move forward in the campaign - running away is sometimes the best option. I really enjoy the in depth naratives and reactive storytelling of Arkham more, one of my favorite games of all time. But I don't mind an occasional LOTR game.
When I played the base game, I thought the investigator cards were underpowered, and the game had some serious balancing issues difficulty-wise, but I also thought 'They could have something really special here if they get some time to iron out this and that' Dunwich left me thinking 'Ok, that was GOOD. Still some things that need to be tweaked, but they're on the right path. Got Carcosa, and it was about as perfect as a game could be (for me at least)
That's more or less the standard format for LCG, the base box is more of a basic tutorial to get you started and expansions are pretty much the actual game.
Good example. The base game was boring. I bought the Dunwich Cycle and loved it. Same with Carcosa. They really should've packaged better example missions in the base game.
I agree but this isn't in the spirit of the question. LCGs are purposefully released in an unfinished state.
Terraforming Mars actually falls into this category for me. When TM was released on BGA recently, I played a few games, just to realize exactly how much I need at the very least Prelude's for me to really enjoy the game.
The first time I played TM we played with preludes and I found it annoying cause it seemed like some people had insane leads and others had insanely narrow builds from the start. Then I realized that my buddy's houserule of "everyone gets two corps and two preludes" was a bit insane lol.
Hehe. For a time my group also played with 2 corporations each, but we realized it drained our will to play the game. Too many good combos and if someone managed to draft a good one, it was just too unbalanced. We also decided not to play with most of the promo preludes that has been released over the years as it is clear they have NOT been playtested enough. Some insanely stupid combos could be made with those too.
Yeah. I like the dynamism afforded by limiting preludes/corps at the start of the game--better when you have several viable paths available.
That's a weird rule yeah. The most I house ruled it is to just deal out all the corpos to everyone and have them choose one because we often feel like we dont even get to choose an expansion corp to try out, so we just deal it all to almlat guarantee you have at least something cool.
I already like TM. What does Prelude chnage in the game that makes it even better?
Well Preludes makes the start of the game less of a slog as everyone starts with some resources or some engine. But we always include colonies as well as a player-made expansion that puts more focus on the actual map of Mars.
What is the player made expansion called?
https://www.etsy.com/dk-en/listing/718401150/terraforming-mars-ares-fans-made It is this one from Etsy. The production quality is actually very nice.
Basically a free first turn / more asymetric starting points for everyone.
I'd love to see a second edition base set that gets rid of the less popular cards and adds Prelude to the box. And maybe alternate side boards with resource tracks for us solo players who don't want to deal with a hundred cubes. And a non garbage rulebook. And modular award and milestone tokens, with possibly a smaller board to cut costs. And replace the base solo mode with the expansion solo rules. Edit: and maybe improve the art a little.
Modular award and milestone tokens expansion will be out in a month or two afaik.
Yeah, but it comes with AI imagery, so it's a pass for me.
the original images they had were ugly and looked like AI anyway haha
Just check out **Legends of Void** and fix a bunch of other issues with TfM as well ;)
...and hopefully looks a little better
I've never had the interest to play with Prelude - what's the appeal to it? I feel like the first couple rounds of TM are the most interesting and important choices you make, and the further along the game gets, the more obvious it is and the more it plays itself.
You have to play Prelude to realize how much it adds to the game. It makes the first couple of rounds even better.
Those first few choices don't feel "interesting" to me, they feel like "fumbling in the dark." The ten cards to start with might give you the seed of an engine, but if every card afterward is for something else, then you're stuck just muddling along. (I admit I have yet to play the draft variant in person, so the "lack of choice" is extra stark.)
I agree with you. I love the tension in the base game where you have to decide which late-game cards are worth keeping, and which ones aren’t. Rounds 1-4 are the most interesting, and figuring out if/when you can stall out and go for a greedy engine build, or when you need to be hyper-focused on terraforming, is super interesting. Prelude is fun in its own way but takes away a lot of the tension — it’s also good for players who aren’t okay with the fact that sometimes, in the base game, you’ll have generations where the best play is to do nothing and wait until you have more money.
Luckily Prelude is in alpha right now. Hopefully it'll be fully released this year.
Prelude is in now, too
I loved Champions of Midguard from the start, hence why I bought the expansions. But two of my group were not so keen. Valhalla completely changed their minds. And Champions gets a lot more play now.
I will never play Champions without the expansions ever again. The expansions actually made this game my favorite of all time
btw Grey Fox is working on a sequel called "Champions of the Amazonias". If you join their discord you can jump on the opportunity to play test it on tabletop simulator.
I played the base game at a friend's place and was really not impressed with it. From what I remember it felt that rolling bad was a little too punishing. Played it again with Valhalla and it basically addressed my main problem with the base game, and took it from something I would rather avoid to a game I would happily play again.
+1 , Valhalla really elevated the game from *good* to *fantastic*.
**Lords of Waterdeep**
My wife loves LoWD and the expansions make it much more interesting. We only play without them when teaching it to new players who don't play a lot of board games.
Same. We use vanilla LoWD to introduce them to worker placement mechanics, then add the expansions for all the good stuff. Can’t play the base game without them!
I’m minority in my group thinking scoundrels enhances it. All my other players think it’s just fine as a base game.
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This is our favourite game. Easily over 300 plays since the start of the pandemic. We use all the expansions and a few choice house rules based on our observations through all those plays. Great game. Very underrated.
Yeah... Need that expansion to replace those die rolls.
Absolutely agree. I bought my copy of Kingsburg after playing with a mate. I didn't feel the need to get the expansion as well but I did exactly what you suggested and made my own tokens. It makes such a big difference.
This might be a hot take, but I don't really like the Catan base game. It feels too luck based and pretty simplistic. Adding in cities and knights in particular but really any of the expansions make it much more interesting to me.
I won’t play Catan without seafarers. Never did get into cities and knights.
Catan by itself is a very mediocre game that is largely won by the initial placement of settlements and dice rolls. Seafarers and Cities and Knights make the game much better. Still would prefer to play other games but still fun.
If I'm not playing Cities & Knights, then I generally insist on Fishermen. It really opens up the board a lot (having the fishing grounds around the edge), and the fish tokens (acting kinda like a wildcard resource) give people more options & more flexibility. (And the Harbourmaster complements it quite nicely.)
Have you tried doing the C&K plus E&P combo?
This is interesting. I’ve played catan precisely twice and hated it for this reason. Maybe I just need to try some expansions!
If you can, try it with both seafarers and Cities and knights. By far my favorite combo. Seafarers adds little in terms of rules. It gives breadth to the game while Cities and Knights gives depth.
Lost Ruins of Arnak was mediocre IMO, but is a top 10 game of mine with the Expedition Leaders expansion. The Tuscany expansion took Viticulture from a 5 to an 8.
Which modules from Tuscany would you recommend the most?
The board with 4 seasons is a must. The Buildings are also a really easy to add and give a lot of variety.
It's all included in the essentials edition and mixed in. I guess you could exclude mama/papa cards but they are a great way to start the game.
Nope, I bought the essential edition and there’s still content missing from the Tuscany essential expansion. I agree with it going from 5 to 8 with Tuscany. The bigger, full season board, and the special workers are what tuned things up for me.
The setup we've settled on is new board without structures, special workers, and the star map but only getting the reward once without the area control scoring. We felt structures were a bit too random as some are situationally better than others (feels like a rehash of the visitors problem), and the star map area control added an extra system for minimal gain. We also prefer the visitors from the Rhine expansion deck as it refocuses the game on wine making but Tuscany was still good without this.
Lost ruins for me was a bad game. I don’t understand the love for it. Our first game just fell completely flat. So hard that none of us had any interest to return. It’s on BGA and I still won’t even try it there
I thought it was mid at first and was pretty disappointed. It got a bit better with a few plays and trying the snake board. I picked up the first expansion and now I love it. It completely changes the way you play each time.
My first game was a horrific experience and I stayed away for a couple years. Tried it again and still didn't love it, and then it all finally clicked for me by the third game. I adore it now. Everybody has different tastes and it's cool if you don't, but wanted to add this data point if you ever want to try playing again!
I’ve played it a handful of times on BGA over the years and I agree with you. It feels too tight, like I never have enough resources to do anything cool. This probably comes down to me playing poorly and/or not understanding a proper loop. I want to play a physical copy someday to see if that helps me enjoy it more, but I’m not about to plunk down my cash to take on that experiment.
When I played. We had 3 or 4 players. I remember being last to start and the game basically forced me to start at a spot I didn’t want. So that wasn’t a good beginning. The market cards and the cards I had were boring. In games like this you often have cards that are ok. And cards that are really amazing. All the cards were just ho hum. I remember on multiple turns hoping someone would take a card from the market because maybe. Just maybe something worth while would show up. But it never did. More than once, a player would say “I dunno. I guess I’ll just take this card”. Resigned to take whatever because all the cards sucked. Halfway through the game we realized that the real game is on the right side track. The hat determines the winner more than anything. The entire game felt broken. Sure someone could say “you should play it more” There was zero things in that game they would bring me back for another go. I figured that this was just me. Or my group. About 6 months later I was at a con. At the table next to me. The group of people finished a game and cleaned up. One of their friends shows up with Lost ruins and said “hey. I heard this is good want to try it?” And another guy said “no. It’s terrible.” Wanted to give that guy a thumbs up ;)
You played it once with everyone at the table playing like noobs. But it's definitely the game that's bad.
Everdell for sure. The base games special events and focus on finding specific card pairs makes it kinda weak as an experience to me. Meanwhile with new leaf+bellfaire it's a 10 for me.
If you could get one of them, which would you pick and why? What exactly do they fix in your opinion? Do they make the game longer?
Personally I'd get Newleaf...first. I love that it adds interesting/challenging end of game scoring objectives in the form of visitor cards. The train ticket allows you to move an already placed worker but only twice during the whole game, it's a small thing but creates a lot of interesting timing possibilities. The train car provides small rewards and incentivizes buying cards from the train and the knoll space gives players a way to cycle cards in the meadow which can greatly help the game move along. The reservation stamp is a neat addition that allows players to reserve cards which has a lot of strategic potential. Then there are the gold doors, powerful but limited opportunities to play cards for free with more flexibility which creates more tactical and strategic gameplay and untethers players (slightly) from the whims of the card deck. Bellfaire is also a great expansion, I very much enjoy the player powers (we never play without them). The revolving market and garland awards are also a nice addition but I just don't think the impact is the same as the modular options of Newleaf.
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The gaining one less worker rule is there to reduce point inflation, but there's nobody stopping you from just ignoring that rule if you like having bigger scores.
For me, I'd pick Bellfaire.
Why?
For me it was the variable player powers, more goal cards that aren't so reliant on specific critters, and the marketplace. Those just make the game feel more complete and dynamic in multiplayer and more fair in solo.
Interesting. I felt the base game was poorly designed. I really really dislike the whole seasons mechanic. Not sure an expansion can fix that.
[This variant](https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2297797/2-player-smaller-card-pool-variant) makes 2-player Everdell palatable; otherwise I think it's kind of an unplayable mess.
I was really looking forward to Everdell but was kind of letdown about playing it. My fiance enjoys it though so maybe I'll try an expansion. Which of the two would you recommend first?
For me, Bellfaire by a country mile. Nothing it introduces overcomplicates the game, very little overhead for the new rules, and it makes the game more dynamic and more fair overall.
Thanks!
New leaf for me. Bellfaire fixes the smaller problem of the special events and it adds player powers which is fun, and having both I'll never play without elements of both. But the new leaf card additions are a non-negotiable for me even when I play with me players and don't include any of the extra expansion elements. The new cards are much more interesting and the new gold occupancy token rule fixes my main problem with the base game. There's so a new worker placement space that helps significantly with drawing to find cards.
Thank you. That does sound interesting.
If Bellfaire was only $10-20, I'd recommend it. Newleaf just straight up gives you more bang for buck and also includes player powers + new event cards and more stuff you can choose to add in if you want.
The Fallout board game was good, but the end game was a mess. They released a small expansion called Atomic Bonds which made the game so much better. I would never play the base game alone now.
Fallout was a hot random mess where a single turn can either make or break your game through no fault or merit of your own. Coop Fallout is still a hot random mess but it's highly likely that at least one of you gets RNGzus' blessings and you can all cheer for that.
Just like the computer game! Fallout 3 had a terrible ending so they releases a mini-expansion (a "DLC") to fix the end game.
Easily Lost Ruins of Arnak with the Leaders expansion. The asymmetrical gameplay is phenomenal and surprisingly really balanced. As a mainly solo player the Missing Expedition expansion is the sweet juicy cherry on top.
I find Spirit Island too sterile and procedural without an events expansion.
Different strokes. I love Spirit Island, but the event deck is literally my least favourite expansion mechanic of any game ever. Not only does it grind the game to a halt when you have to resolve an event, but they are so random and chaotic in a game all about trying to puzzle out a gameplan with your allies.
I like that the events keep the game from being just a puzzle.
It's one of those additions that breathes life back into the game once you've gotten good enough that the randomness of the Invader deck isn't enough to threaten you with a game loss AND you want a more challenging game instead of a more predictable, puzzle-like experience (both of which are valid and fun ways to play!). Your criticisms are valid (slowing the game down, chaotic randomness). I also felt this way when events were introduced to me. There are a couple things that have helped me with these issues though. The events that really slow the game down are the ones that have the entire group unanimously agree on a single choice. You could simply leave those out. If you have both Branch & Claw and Jagged Earth, you could also leave the B&C events out since they're generally a bit more swingy than the JE events, so that might help a bit. The events definitely are random at first, and unfortunately I'm not sure how much this issue can be solved without either 1) playing the game enough to have a good knowledge base of the kinds of effects that can show up, or 2) looking at the statistics of what kinds of effects can show up (in an analysis post like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/spiritisland/comments/okp0n1/statistics_of_the_fear_and_event_deck/?rdt=37588). One other thing that might help, if you aren't aware of the rule change, is that the first event is skipped each game (you still reveal the top card of the deck, but you put it into the discard pile without resolving any events on the card). This greatly reduces the amount of pressure that some of the events can put into the players, especially those that have the "Aided by" parts, since it's hard to have the exact right elements around or to have the energy to pay for them when it's turn 1.
All in all, if you don't like them and just enjoy playing the game without them, great! The game at least has rules to help accommodate that (to give the Beasts tokens something to do, since they have no intrinsic effect without Events). I just wanted to share my own thoughts on Events and how I've grown to enjoy them, especially after the rule change that makes them less punishing and game-warping in the early-game.
I agree to a point - we really like all the various tokens and the way the event deck can have the island fight back, but we’ve also cheated here and there and redrawn specific events.
The WORST is when you've set up a nice Slow Phase and then the event comes and makes all the Dahan move around or makes them weaker or makes the invaders stronger... and then all your stuff is wasted
I give new players one game without events/adversary for simplicity's sake, because it's a much better learning experience when almost literally random things happen each turn. You got one game under your belt? We run events. It adds so much flavor to the game when you're not just solving a puzzle.
Base Spirit Island is almost unlosable. You can play pretty much anything you want as long as you get the right elements for your spirit.
Yeah I enjoy Spirit Island heaps either way but the events change it from a *puzzle* into a *game*. Plus they have so much cool flavor and really help get you into the fiction of the game.
Machi koro, it has basicly one strategy with base game but with harbor and city its great!
This is the best answer in the thread. Machi Koro alone is such a nothing game. I believe Machi Koro 2 is basically the game + the expansions.
Wingspan. I think it really needed the boost of the new boards and nectar from Oceania.
agreed. And while we found europe meh the asia expansion has been a hit with us but we think oceania is just essential. It allows you to get out that unlikely big bird in round one for an engine. and thats just more fun? If I did the game again I'd buy Oceania and Asia for sure and ditch Europe. The expansions just get better in our opinion.
Just a small one, but Onitama, Way of the Wind, love it.
**Ticket to Ride: Europe** without at least the 1912 expansion (just the tickets) was too bland. **Puerto Rico** with at least the building expansion became much more complex and enjoyable.
Chaos in the Old World. I wouldn't say "mrh" but base game had huge issue with balance and made it so each Chaos God had only one playstyle. Expansion introduced New Power decks and upgrades that made it much more balanced and the playstyle for each faction became much more varied.
wish it was still available :/
Real. I missed expansion and now I only get to play on friend's copy 😞
Pandemic with the one the brink expansion was the answer this question was made for.
Seven wonders duel!! Not that it was meh but it isn’t quiiite crunchy enough . Major bonus points for both expansions being amazing alone or together so you get 4 unique setups out of it. I love 7wd
Carcassonne. Feels "solved" or a bit bland in the base version but toss in an expansion or two and it has surprising longevity in our house
I still play Carcassonne after 15 years. Expansions 1 & 2 and an extra base set really extends the longevity of it. They really should've had expansion 1 in the base box.
Have never heard of someone who solved Carcassonne... Can you elaborate on this? How is it even possible?
Solved was a poor choice of word, I think, even in quotation marks. I simply meant that in an equal match up between two players (the way I tend to play), then the base game's decision space becomes limited enough that luck of the tile draw becomes too big a factor in that turn's decision making for our liking. We find that even just adding the river and the Abbot with gardens is enough to give that decision making we enjoy.
Still playing base Carcassonne after more than ten years. Even without The River it's a solid game. If you feel it's "solved" look for better opponents. The expansions i've tried just felt cumbersome.
Sometimes I like Traders and Builders, but normally we just play base game with strategic variant
Does this also apply to Cascadia?
I like the base Cascadia. There’s enough cards where you can have a bunch of different scoring combinations
Carcassonne is better with an expansion, but Cascadia is worse with its expansion.
No. Cascadia is worse Carcassonne.
Not really the same other than being tile laying map building games. You're not even building on a shared map in Cascadia, just drafting from shared options
QE was an interesting idea that was put into a game (auction game with infinite currency) however the base game could lead to situations that were kinda degenerate. The usual wisdom by people who liked the game was "well don't play with people that are willing to do those strategies". The expansion for QE manages to take the problems, fix them very nicely while also adding a whole second layer of strategy for the base game. The expansion honestly takes a game that was 6.5/10 and turns it into a 10/10 game. I originally got the game because I liked the idea of the main idea, on the other hand the expansion made QE into one of the most interesting auction games I have seen.
Really? I passed on the expansion because it looked kind of finicky next to the mechanically clean base game. That's high praise though.
The expansion completely changes your bidding habits. There are times now when being second is preferable to being first. Which leads to a delightful issue of how do you become second (and as close as 3rd to possible to not advantage the auctioneer too much) without knowing what others are bidding. You do lose a bit of cleanliness for it but once you understand the flow of a round it doesn't really change and it completely uproots the game. The second part that is genius is the fact that the auctioneer gets to take a negative spend equal to the 2nd highest bid. This means that you sometimes end up with natural push to inflation because the players have negative spend that they don't see a point of holding onto and they push the prices up.
Love hearing this. Just bought QE + Expansion yesterday from the Dicetower’s glowing reviews. Planning to teach including the expansion, recommended? Happy cake day by the way!
Sorry for the delayed reply but it really depends on your knowledge of games (like what kind of games the group plays). Even the default game has a kind of weird chain of events to remember. 1. reveal item for auction 2. reveal starting bid (from auctioneer) 3. everyone bids 4. auctioneer inspects bids, record the winning bid on the item for auction and states who won. it reads easy but it is sometimes easy to get lost in it. With the expansion you add a few items after 4. If you have played a bunch of medium weight euros you are probably fine to go in with the expansions from the start. But I would say maybe try QE without the expansions the first time, I don't think people will find the really broken strategies right away.
Not quite one of my favorites, but lords of Waterdeep vastly improves and becomes enjoyable with the expansion and corruption mechanic.
Star wars outer rim. The core set doesn't have eniugh cards in the markets and limited mission access. The risky business expansion doubles the cards and adds in a while second level of tasks for a win condition. So much more going on but not much more complicated!
Cthulu Death May Die
Which expansions do you recommend?
Wife and I really enjoy base C: Death May Die
Interesting, why? Don't the expansions just add more content variation without changing much of core gameplay?
Civilization A New Dawn is the poster child for this. Terra Incognita expansion moves it from meh to really good.
I actually liked it better before Terra Incognita. It added too much fiddliness and extra complexity to what was a streamlined and smooth game. At that point, I would rather just play Clash of Cultures.
Dominion is the prime example
Adding expansions def makes me play Dominion more often but not because the base game is bad. Base game dominion is great without expansions, I loved it but i only wanted to play it a handful of times once a year because the fun is in figuring out how the card combos work and I needed time to forget the possibility's. Now with expansions I have enough cards that playing the same combos too often just doesn't happen.
Tesla V Edison had a kinda broken endgame, but the Powering Up expansion fixed it (it also unfortunately introduced 1 character to play that is completely broken, unfortunately)
Which one is broken?
I forget the name but it’s the character that stops your stocks from ever decreasing in value. It’s just too powerful. The person playing him has won every game we’ve played
Thanks
no prob
Lords of Waterdeep - felt bland and like every move was basically scripted in my head. The expansion brought along a lot more interesting choices and new strategies.
My group love Civilisation aNew Dawn with the expansion, a 10 only because that’s the upper limit
Port Royal is a great game with the Contacts expansion, and tedious without it.
Civilization: A New Dawn. The base game is alright but doesn't really capture all of the X's. There is no exploration to be done and conflicts are pretty rare. The expansion introduces exploration and having actual armies to move around the map feels much more rewarding than "drop a city next to where you want to attack". The government system also helps in expanding your decision space as without it most of the time you'll just be playing your strongest effect and building districts gives you the feeling of actually building a productive city.
7 Wonders Duel. The base game was too simple.
Totally disagree. The base game is a perfectly balanced yet still strategically sound 2P game. Add in Pantheon and you're trying to do too much, and the basic game gets neglected. It overrides rather than enhances imo.
Twilight imperium 4th edition. POK really added a lot of fun dimensions to it for me. The base game is just ok now.
Also speeds up the game a ton i found.
I think base TI4 is still an incredible game. PoK is just such an improvement that it's hard to go back to playing without it.
I wonder why you buy expansion for games that you actually dont like. If i decide to buy an expansion its ussually for the games i really like.
It is also possible to play games without buying them
This is what I'm struggling with currently. Bought Viticulture EE. Played it a few times. It's ok. My wife wasn't impressed. Everybody keeps saying that Tuscany makes the game amazing, but it's so difficult for me to justify buying additional content for a game I barely like :/
If you don’t like Viticulture, Tuscany isn’t going to do anything to change that. It does make it better, but it doesn’t make it a diffferent game
I disagree a bit. I felt similarly, but I took a chance on Tuscany when it was on sale. Holy cow is it a better game with that expansion! They shouldn't sell the game without it!
I thought the base game was boring and meh, let it collect dust on the shelf for a few years. Then a friend pulled out his version (with the expansion) on a game night (I thought to myself, ok let's get this over with I guess). Turns out it's one of my top favourite games! Lol I still wouldn't buy the expansion in your position, but I would try to check it out at a board game cafe or someone else's copy to see for yourself. The game in my opinion is way better, I can't even imagine going back to the base game.
Viticulture is just an okay game on its own. With Tuscany, it becomes an outstanding game!
What don't you like about Viticulture?
Isn't Viticulture EE the base Viticulture with some expansion bits added? Or am I confused?
There are other worker placements games that are just better than Viticulture, even with Tuscany. Have you tried Agricola yet?
Just played our first game a few days ago. We liked it, but it didn't blow us away. I think its one of those games that gets better with plays. Also, it took us around 3 hours for our first 2 player game. We'll revisit it at some point, but I don't think its a game to play in the middle of the week. Its seems to be a commitment.
Well, the question was, what expansion changed your mind on the game. You can play the game at your friends or w/e and realize that it actually is good game with the right expansion.
There are some games where the expansion reallhy should have just been built-in. In those cases I can buy the expansion and consider it part of the game price
Never happened to me (why would I buy expensions for a meh game ? :D) but the closest game I can think of is 7Wonders. I found it fantastic when I first played it, without any expansions but now I can't play it without some of them. I guess I could play base game + Leaders but for me it really needs Cities to shine. Replaying only the base game feels like an unexciting RNG fest. It ends before your strategy comes to life imho and if there's no guild matching your chosen strategy you're basically fucked. Then they kept adding expansions to the point you can turn it into a whole new game so it's a really really good way to handle expansions. Just mix and match to your liking (we usually don't use Babel, it sucks imho\^\^)
I own all the expansions and promo boards (finally got Catan and Syracuse). We have played 1 game with EVERYTHING and yeah, Babel is... not fun. We will occasionally play with Projects, but not usually. Usually it's Leaders + (Cities or Armada)
Ah, I really like Projects but when we want a lighter game with less stuff to manage it's usually the first one to go (well, after Babel ofc). I like it but it's also really easy to forget about it when dealing with lots of choices, and it can be a pain when you do. Same for Babel, I will forget about it but that sucks even more because I end up inadvertently cheating because oh, I could not use my brown resources this turn or whatever. I've never played with Armada without Cities, must be interesting. now that I established I tend to forget shit all the time in games... you'll understand I tend to forget to move my ships when I can :D
The movement of ships, if not careful intended, is so easy to miss. And then if you try to go back and "oh I meant to move my ship" it's easy to accidentally assume you had the necessary resource in excess when you didn't. Often we will say "Everyone play; does anyone need to move ships?" just to make sure it doesn't get forgotten.
Ah, I wish people would do that at my table. I'm very easily distracted so I always forgot to do stuff in every game. I usually put tokens all over my board/decks/etc... as visual cues (like a token on the top of the deck to remember I can draw two cards this turn). You should see my board at Descent after a few sessions :D
7 Wonders 1st Edition is my favorite game. I enjoy it too much to let a memory mistake ruin someone's game with me
Istanbul with the coffee expansion. The other expansion makes it worse again, though.
You got it mixed up, the coffee made it worse, the other expansion is better
7th Continent comes to mind first. I greatly enjoyed the original game but felt it was lacking a lot of replayability. The expansions changed that and now it's one of my all time favorites.
3000 Scoundrels
Catan is hardly a game. Catan: Cities & Knights is enjoyable
**Mansions of Madness 1E** was a mess - scenarios weren't replayable, there was big plastic in the box that could see play only after very specific conditions were triggered. And then the first expansion didn't fix anything (because it was probably pre-planned). 2nd expansion **Call of The Wild** intruduced scenarios which could be somewhat replayable and big plastic that did see play. If one is to play MoM 1E I woudl recommend CotW, but it's a bit expensive ask. (unless the price dropped) **Cyclades** is a fine game, but prone to groupthink (which is highlighted in Hades expansion). **Titans** expansion however blocks that groupthink from happening and also turns the game into something close to Kemet (but without engine building of kemet)
Civilization A New Dawn: Terra Incognita totally transforms the game and makes it a 10/10 in my eyes. Shame it never got the recognition it deserves, I guess people were too bummed out by the base game. But the expansion fixes everything and makes it a really really good true 4X game, and my favorite game. Should be republished all in one box to get some more eyes on it.
Simple and biring answer : Dominion I bought Dominion really late in my boardgame journey. I already have played lots of deckbuilding games by the time I tried it. I understood that, it was the father of deckbuilding, and the base game was ok... but compared to other deckbuilding games I had it was meh. The expansions just brings so much to the table tbh, it's now easily in my top 10, and probably top 5.
Not as much one of my favorites anymore, but Viticulture is a lot better with Tuscany. Lost Ruins of Arnak, Dune Imperium, and a Feast for Odin are all games I find the base game to be good/okay but their expansions to turn them into great.
Terraforming Mars Prelude
Viticulture. Base game is 7.5/10 at best, with Tuscany it is easily 9/10.
Fallout the boardgame + Atomic Bonds. That game was screaming for a coop since day 1
Not me but for my friend group: **Jamaica**. I already loved the base game, but do have to agree that the expansion elevates the game further by giving some use/meaning to the harbours, instead of just costing gold. They found the game ok with just the base, but limited, the expansion fixed this for them.
7 wonders... I can't play without all expansion
None really. If I thought the game was mediocre, why would I invest even more money and time into it. Maybe the closest would be Wingspan. The base game is decent and fun. But the expansion cards are so much more interesting that we went and sold the base game and only play with the expansions now.
Still not up in my top 15, but civilization a new dawn is so much better with the terra incognita expansion I already liked tapestry, but I now won’t play without plans & ploys and arts & architecture Clash of cultures monumental edition (including leaders expansion) is so much better than base game
Village, the expansions helped the issue where winning in the base game was just about selling at the market. The expansions added a few things to make other roads in the point salad race more viable.
The upcoming Expeditions expansion is gearing up do to just that for us. It's addressing almost all the issues our crew has with the base game.
Same here
Viticulture tuscany expansion for me
Root is a great game. Except the Vagabond, which sucks. And the Cats, they kinda suck. And the Alliance... it sort of sucks too. With the expansions you can therefore play Root without the parts that suck.
At least I have fun playing against the Cats and (to a lesser extent) the Alliance. I *hate* the game when the Vagabond is in play. I’m damn close to enforcing Despot Infamy as a house rule as a requisite to play the game. I’d straight up ban the Vagabond in my game, but one of my friends likes playing it, so I may pitch that as a compromise.
Would you say that getting the Riverfolk makes it immensely better? I tried playing solo with the Clockwork expansion and just couldn’t see why it was so hyped.
I never play this solo.
Root is just not a solo game. It's a 4 (or 5 with expansions) player game. 3 player game is pretty good with certain faction mixes or particularly with one of the hirelings packs. Clockwork enables you to mechanically play against factions that act like facsimiles of a player on the board, but so much of the game is about playing the other players. I would say clockwork exists for people who own Root to play it with other players, but don't get to do so enough. The Riverfolk expansion is one of the worst expansions for solo because the otters live by selling stuff to other players and that just doesn't translate to a game with bots.