Ready to go on an expedition?
Have you played Expeditions? The game leads you to the same universe you might know from Scythe - with the breathtaking art from Jakub Rozalski. 😊 This time everything is a bit more sinister and supernatural: a meteorite crashes in Siberia and it awakens some kind of ancient corruption. Now expeditions mount up to scout the area, learn about the phenomenon, and try to rid the lands of this corruption. 🫢
The cover of the box actually says “A sequel to Scythe” and I think this does a disservice to the game. If you are looking for another Scythe, you won’t get it here, this is quite a different gameplay experience. And if you dislike Scythe, this text might deter you from actually trying Expeditions - which would be a shame! 😉
So what is the game about? In a nutshell, Expeditions is an optimization puzzle with a simple-but-brilliant action selection mechanic. The game has you moving around on hexagonal tiles, activating their bonuses, and managing your hand of cards. The game has some deck-building but you never shuffle your cards; you always have them in your hand or in your played “active row”. There are several main things you can do in the game, and these have some achievement categories (like in Scythe). The game ends when someone claims their 4th of these achievements, but ultimately whoever has the most coins (points) will win the game.
💬 I’ll give more details about the gameplay in a follow-up post, but today let’s stick to some impressions. We really enjoyed our first foray into this game. It’s not complex, but has a surprising amount of depth, and thus choices you make are always interesting. The essence of the game is how you usually can only do 2 out of the 3 main actions, and the sequence of actions and the way you play cards matters a lot. The game comes with a nice amount of cards, which means that you always have some variety so subsequent games and strategies feel different. To boost this, the map tiles are also randomized, and there are 5 asymmetric mechs and characters you can play as.
💭 In summary I have to say this game turned out to be surprisingly good, a lot better than I originally expected!