Essential Board Game Expansions: Add-ons That Actually Improve the Core Game

Transcript:

You're listening to No Plot Only Lore, a podcast about games and the tables we play them at. Your DMs tonight and every

night are Josh and Chris. You can find us on all podcast platforms or check us out at noplotonlore.com.

If you like what you hear today, please rate and review the show and share it with everyone you've ever met.

Welcome back to No Plotonly Lore. This week brought to you by the Carcassone

expansion. We got some more [ __ ] They Yeah, I would say overall with with

one maybe two exceptions, they're all [ __ ] I Okay, maybe a bit of a weird admission

for this deep in the podcast. I've never played Carcassone. Oh, really? Um Yeah, never.

Carcassone is base. Carcassone is like considered one of the the four pillars

of modern board gaming. Um, and it's fine. It's pretty simple,

pretty quick. I think the the one expansion that I do own for it, I just

technically I got to the version I bought has a mini expansion for the anniversary, but um, no, uh, the the

true expansion I bought was called the the princess and the dragon. Um, which adds a dragon, a princess, and a fairy.

Uh, I think the dragon is a super fun mechanism because when a dragon tile is drawn, then everyone at the board gets a

turn moving the dragon around and he can chase off villagers and things like that. So, there's it just adds a fun

element of take that that's not super serious. Um, if you buy that expansion on its

lonesome, it costs like $33 maybe. I I can't recall what I paid for.

I think maybe Yeah, 2530 bucks, but I mean, I I think it's amazing that Carcasson

Okay, so like having never played the game, I don't actually know what the draw on Carcasson is, but like I I think

it is absolutely incredible that they're able to put out a Matchbox sized

expansion every once in a while and people will rush to stores to pick them up. So, first of all, not Matchbox size.

They are the the the Carcasson expansions are pretty significant. Um, obviously the the boxes are a little bit

bigger than they need to be, but they're not like 12 tiles, right? They they add

a good amount of extra content. Um, what's that game that has all the tiny little ones then? Cuz there there's a

bunch of like I remember having to stock these and hating them and I was sure it was Carcass.

Uh, I don't know. Like

Oh, maybe was it a Gricola? Does a Gricola have a lot of like expansions? Yeah. So, a Gricola, what they did is

they would put out new decks for the game, which is just a small pile of

cards, like the size of a the size of a deck of playing cards. Um, so that would

definitely smaller than that. Like I'm thinking like a couple of inches across and like square were the

boxes that I was dealing with. And I'm sure they were carcass. No, cuz they they all come in like uh

I'm going to say like a a I don't know 6x10

box. I'm looking up Carcassone miniature.

Okay, cuz Yeah, like the ones I bought have

all been I mean not quite but close to the size of the original box.

H I don't know which game this was that annoyed me. So,

oh well. There was definitely a game where like Okay, so like I'm I'm not a big fan of

expansions kind of in general. Okay, I am usually the type of person who like if I if I've spent $80 buying a board

game, that better be all the board gaming. Oh boy howdy. Could I not

disagree more considering that we started like okay

without knowing what the themes of today's pod were. We started this conversation with you

scrolling through some crowdfunding site specific for board games telling you all about the various expansions that you

were going to think about funding. Like clearly you have a very different take on this. I mean, first of all, what what

I just funded this month for myself isn't even like an actual expansion.

It's just upgrading the components of what I have, which is more or less the complete game. But now, I will have 3D

plastic terrain pieces for my pretend zoo.

So, you're welcome to laugh, but I will have a semi-realistic polar bear exhibit.

Did you ever play much of like the tactical

war games from like the 1970s? No. Like the like the the Avalon Hill

type ones? Yeah, the ones where like all of your units are represented by little cardboard chits.

Yeah. No, I hate those games. Yeah. So, in my head you've just upgraded your cardboard chits to little

bins. But yeah, I super duper did.

cuz cuz I get a bunch of little cardboard enclosures and and and kiosks

and and special exhibits and now they're in plastic and I can never mind.

Anyways, how many did you spend on your little plastic elephant, Josh? I'm not going to admit how much I spent

on if Okay, anyone who'd like can look up the Ark Nova three edition they call

it. It's addition but with a number three um on game found and just look at

the uh elephant pledge because that's what I did. Um okay

and yeah that that pledge costs more than

all of the other components like all of the base game plus expansions that I

have purchased to date. Um okay but

it's worth it. No. Okay. So, so my my big question is

sure why. Um, so I if there is a game that I like

that I really get value out of and I enjoy playing a lot, I want to deluxify

it as much as I can to get the premium

experience. Um, I already have a weakness for cool miniatures from

various games. Um, but things like metal coins or

um anything that can be like taken from like a little plastic square to like

something even even some that just take like the materials like the food or or

other components that you need in the game and upgrade those to a 3D physical

tactical thing is really really really good for me and my brain ghosts. Um,

okay. So, like a game like Everdell that every version of it comes with like rubberized

little berries and like little smooth flat plastic glass stones and little

plastic pieces of wood like that that is perfect for me. But I've, you know,

games like um Scythe or uh Charter Stone, I've gone and purchased the

upgraded components for them because that tactical little bit not only

enhances my experience with the game, but actually helps me stay on the table

and engaged in the game that's happening, even if it's just because I can fiddle with my little rubbery

berries. So, it's it's very much a tactile thing. Oh, 100%. Yeah. Um there are there are

sometimes where like the overall experience is just improved by having

like a a a better component. So like I have purchased these things called iron

clays which are essentially really well-made poker chips for board games.

Um, and I use those instead of basically everyone's stupid coin component because

if it's just some dumb little piece of cardboard, half the time it's small and flimsy and kind of hard to pick up and

it's not as fun as like riffling through a stack of poker chips that count your money. Um,

now I think I remember you saying something about how you

edge away from these things in role playing games. Like the idea of having props for a role playing game isn't

really something that you jive with. Am I am I remembering that correctly? Um,

props no miniatures. Yes. Okay. Like I I had a extremely large D&D

miniatures collection. I still have some significant pieces, but for the most part, first of all, I sold a huge chunk

right after my ex left and I used it to pay my mortgage for two months. And then

the rest that I had, which is still a big usable chunk, uh is now with my buddy in his basement for use in our

campaign. Um so I I love a miniature. Uh I just

when people kind of go over the top with like, oh well, here's I'm handing out actual coins for my D&D game. Like I'm

just like, "No, come on." Like we could just track this on paper. If Keith gives you like a small pouch

full of like gold coins and trinkets Yeah. that is going to rile you more than anything.

Yeah. I just Okay. Yeah. It drives me up the wall. I need things to be functional, but because so

because so many board game components I have to interact with physically anyways. Like I I I rarely sit there and

I'm like, "Oh, well, I guess I will purchase my meal at the tavern and need to hand Keith a quarter, right? That

that's that's not a thing that happens in Dungeons and Dragons, right? But I do need to make purchases and move, you

know, game components around when I'm playing board games. So having a better board game component really does not

just enhance the experience but in a lot of ways improve and speed up the experience.

Do you remember three dragony? I am aware of it but I never touched it.

It I think it had coins. Yep. And the coins correlated very well to

Canadian money. Like you could just replace all of them with Canadian money and just play for

real dollars, right? Let's just condone underage gambling on the pod.

Not underage, just, you know, illegal and unsanctioned. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um

anyways. All right. So, yeah, those those are I would not consider those

um component upgrades an expansion. I I would consider that an enhancement to the game. expansions to me things that

add new content, whether it's iterations on the existing game or whole new

mechanisms. Okay, so I guess my question was a little broader than just like why tactile bits? Like why why expansions?

Because to me, like sure, maybe I'm just very old school, but it

feels like cardboard DLC to me.

Okay. or like cardboard microtransactions. Okay, which like thanks but no.

Okay, so my my counterpoint to that is that um

when a game launches with an expansion, I'm frustrated for sure. That tells me

you took content and held it aside. Um first day DLC bad.

Yes, universally. That being said, I sometimes see how in the design process

they got to which parts can be sheared off. So, the example that I want to use is a game that came out not long ago

called Kelp. Uh, Kelp is a two-player only game where one person is an octopus and one person is a shark and they are

uh in a a kelp forest with the the shark trying to find and eat the octopus and the octopus obviously trying to avoid

that. They had a day one expansion that added new mechanisms and and kind of

iterated on that. It was a very small expansion. It was like 20 bucks.

But but I can see how removing those

interactions that are in the expansion and those mechanisms tightened up the focus of the game.

Um, so the expansion actually made the game worse.

not worse, just it added a level of complexity and and

decision-m that I don't think was necessary to communicate the core idea

of the original game. Okay. It's just like there are so so

many expansions come out that add a new mechanism that

for better or worse often just add like

analysis bloat to the game. This isn't one of them, but it definitely gives you

like more options for ways to to play the game. It's like it's like okay if

you're playing chess the famous first expansions

famous first expansions and you just in instead of having the standard setup

there was an expansion that was like now you can have now you can take all of

your rooks and swap them out for extra knights.

It's not like significantly different. It's just a different decision to make

on how you play the game. Um because there Okay, so I don't own a lot

of expansions. I don't own a lot of games that have expansions, but there is one that I am thinking of where like

the game itself honestly felt incomplete until we got

the expansion. Yeah. For it. It's a card game called Boss Monster. Oh, yeah. I've played it. Yeah.

Yeah. And it's cute, but it's basically playing solitude. Yeah. Right. Like there there isn't a lot of interaction between your play and your

opponent's play until an expansion later on added some like [ __ ] you mechanics.

Okay. Uh in the industry we call them take that. Sure. Um

I I'm not making board games so I'm just going to continue to call them [ __ ] you mechanics.

But like that level of interaction I felt was like actually missing from the game. And that's something that I see quite a bit in like base game releases

is that you're essentially playing Solitaire with a friend. Sure. Um and then later on you'll see

expansions come out that that fix that. So like that's that's one reason that I've not always hated expansions, but there

are a lot that don't do that. Yeah. So, what I would say is

there are there are a lot of games that are

essentially multiplayer solitire um that their interaction with people is

basically just coming down to like denial of opportunities or denial of resources

and that I think is fine, you know. Um,

disagree. Hard disagree. Why do you say that?

Um, because if I'm going to be playing a game with somebody else,

right, the expression of skill in that game

should include interaction with that player. And I I understand why you would think

that, but that is not a

universally held belief when it comes to board game design. Um that is deeply silly and all the board

game designers are wrong. So let me tell you why they're not wrong because it's not about them being right and wrong. It is a methodology approach.

Um, the board game designers in a lot of

situations view Euro games as essentially a large

moving puzzle. um that has been the the classic sort of

German, European, Italian influence design space for board games, for games

that have heavy economics with a lot of systems, but the player

interaction is a lot less um confrontational. What you're describing

is uh colloially referred to as a trash

game and and Okay. And and I I I say that loving a lot of

Ammeritra games. In fact, the ones that we were talking about when we before we went live are expansions for what would

be considered a trash games by a lot of people. I don't consider them that. But things that define that type of game are

asymmetrical powers, um, high player conflict,

and a lot more elements of, um, output randomness or luck than the typical Euro

game. Um, okay. So, two of those things. Yeah, I understand that. Um,

but just because a game doesn't have that type of direct conflict doesn't mean it

doesn't have interaction if you're playing heads up. Even with a relatively, and this this is this is

something that gets leveled at games as a complaint is that they are just multiplayer solitire. Um, I one of my

favorite like styles of game is something called worker placements. I

most of those games don't have actions that I can choose that are direct attacks against people. However, I still

need to be playing heads up and see what other people are doing because where I place and the actions that I choose that

block other people out of them are just as important as the actions that I

choose to give me a benefit. But how do I how do I kill your workers?

Hey, you can't. I hate it. These these aren't these aren't war

games. Like that's that's where so that's where you've got the differences that come in the styles of games,

whether it's war games or Euro games or ammerit games is is the varying levels of conflict. you know, we're not playing

Warhammer or an old Avalon Hill style, you know, simulation game because we

what we want on the far other end of the spectrum is a a pure economic simulator that I have 100% control over with no

randomness, right? Um, so how do I entice your workers to come work for me?

Again, not going to happen. I mean, the the the way that you beat me is by

getting is by hiring more workers faster and blocking out more spaces and getting

more actions than me to do more things that you want to do. You're not you're not necessarily like attacking my

resources, but you're denying me resources actively. Um,

so guess that makes sense, but like yeah, I I don't know. I I find that

and maybe it's just that like I I want to have those interactions where like I

can directly influence the things that my fellow players are doing like not

necessarily kill, not necessarily like name, but like take one of their their workers off the

board. Sure. Right. Or move one of their workers somewhere they don't want it to be. Yeah. Right. Like having the ability to

interact with my fellow players is one of the things that I'm looking for in gaming

experiences. And when it isn't there, it feels like the game is incomplete to

me, right? Right. And and I think that's what it comes back to my original sort

of assertion about what the intention of a board game is, is that like yes,

there's the people who view it as sort of this weird social experiment and the other people who view it purely as a

puzzle to be solved. Um, and the Euro games are puzzles for the most part. Um,

but with expansions they change. Um. Mhm.

So, I mean, my I have a lot of expansions for different games and they

serve different functions. Um, I have a assload of expansions for a game called

SmashUp. And the way that SmashUp works is that you choose or are randomly given

two different decks of um like an archetype. So, like pirates or ninjas or

dinosaurs or robots, whatever. You shuffle those two decks together and now

that is your deck for playing a uh area control card game. Um

the expansions just add more different decks.

So they add Disney princesses, they add uh My Little

Pony, they add Kaiju, they add Sumo Wrestlers, right? Like just an infinite

variety of weird things. and possibly not. The brilliance of Smashup

is that it doesn't really add new mechanisms to the game, but each of

those new decks plays in a unique way. So, it's adding like new mechanics to

the individual cards as opposed to adding like new mechanics to the game as a whole. Yeah. So like like um pirates have this

thing where as so there's there's various bases out there and then you're adding units to those bases with

different power levels. Once the whole base hits a certain power threshold the base scores a certain number of points

for whoever was in the lead second, third there. Normally once that base scores all of the cards just go to the

discard. Pirates have this thing where as a base is about to score they all pick up and sail off to the next island.

Um, okay. As opposed to like the the quote unquote

Disney princesses who their whole thing is most of our deck is like action

cards. We only actually have like five or six creatures, but they are insanely

powerful creatures, each one individually. So, it's it's high impact individual.

Oh, no. It's literal princesses. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, all right. So yeah, like

that's that's one way to add, I think, replayability to a game is through expansions that iterate on what your

game's already doing. So, um, right, again, Wingspan does this, too, where

they add, oh, hey, here's a bunch of new birds. The game plays the same, but maybe these new bird cards have new ways

of interacting with the board because they're from Asia or whatever. Okay. So, speaking of Wingspan, I do have a

question on our our notes that Sure. I think is an interesting one. Okay. Is Wormspan

an expansion? No. Uh I know you can play it as a standalone game, but is it

No. Could it be considered an expansion for Winds? No. And here's here's why not. Uh Worms

is what would be considered an iteration within a genre or an iteration within a system. Um, so

Stagmire and the folks at Stonemer Meyer looked at the design of wingspan

and said what if other things. So the idea the idea

exactly uh the idea of you select an action and that action has cascading

strength depending on what you've done previously in the game. Um, Wormspan is

the closest to just straight wingspan, but what they've done is they've played with what each individual action means,

what the return on investment is for it. Wingspan tends to have this thing where

as you invest into specific actions, you get much better at doing one specific

thing. Um to the kind of detriment of your board because um you can get kind

of locked in, right? Well, I can make a bunch of food. I can't do anything with the food. I can I can lay a bunch of

eggs. I can't do anything with those eggs, right? Um worms problems to have.

Worms span plays with that idea and going on uh going down these different

um uh action rows is less uh siloed. So the results that

you get from a particular action will have a little bit of every action as you get better at them. Right? So, in Worms,

it's far more common for me to be able to completely fill my board every game, whereas in Wingspan, I find it rarely

happens unless like I get lucky. Um, and then Finsspan takes the same ideas as

worms span and simplifies it a little bit to make it faster and more approachable. So, they all have

different ways of approaching the basic idea of how the game mechanisms unfold.

Um, okay. And that and you see that happen in other

in other people's like like certain designers will get into like a not a rut

but like a little jag of like hey I really want to like iterate on what does a rondelle actually mean and what can I

do with a rondelle game? Doesn't make it an expansion when he puts out a game that's very very similar. It's just an

iteration and the and I think the only reason that people conflate those two with the span series is that the naming

convention is the same. Right? Okay. So to close this out, I

have two very simple questions. Okay. Question number one. What is the worst

expansion of all time? The worst expansion of all time? Yes.

Ah. Oh, that's a hole.

What expansion came out and just ruined a game? I have one in mind that I think is just real bad, but the game itself is

also kind of trash. Okay, tell me yours as well. I think uh literally anything Munchkin after

like the first expansion. Okay, interesting.

Getting to the point where it's impossible to shuffle decks, right? Are you are you including like uh

the um the the iterations of munchkin your star

munchkin your kung fu munchkin whatever munchkin food you are vastly overestimating the amount

of munchkin that I care about. Okay. So, anything for core munchkin that

wasn't like okay interesting cuz cuz I did play some of those where like okay like there is that idea

similar to Smashup where you just like you grab two kinds of munchkin and shuffle them together to play

an even worse game um that is still not funny.

Yeah. Okay. Uh, like I own I own a few Munchkins and after a while it was like

I only really want to play Munchkin Fu ever because I like kung fu and everything else is kind of whatever. But

I can appreciate like when they added like uh Steeds in the in the Wild West or

mutations uh for for the Super Munchkin, right? Like they're fine.

The only the only Munchkin that I own and I don't think I bought it. Mhm.

I think it's something that my ex-wife left is Pathfinder Munchkin, which is

like not funny because Munchkin and then extra not funny because I'm not really invested in Pathfinder.

Yeah. So, like I I don't I don't know any of the tropes of that game, which I think is like a fatal flaw of Munchkin in

general. Just like the Yeah. the genre specificity of it. I was I was but you're your

I think I purchased Warhammer munchkin like the 40k munchkin and it was just like oh yeah every dumb joke you've seen

on a Reddit thread. Okay. Okay. So, I have my vote for worst expansion. Um, is an expansion for a game that I

love, Terraforming Mars. And I think the worst expansion was uh

sorry, uh, Colonies. I think it's called Colonies. Okay.

Colonies ruin terraforming. So, colonies

did this thing. A good expansion to me typically

adds just like more variety onto a thing

that is already there. So, like like Smash Bridge is adding more types of

decks to shuffle in or you know, okay, well, here's new technology cards or or

improvements for a Gricola. Um, a bad expansion

I think takes away from the core of the game and the focus of the game to have you doing like side quests. And to me,

Colonies is all side quests. Um, so you've got the main board that's

Mars and and Venus next is a little bit guilty of this too, but I it's not as

bad to me as colonies. And then colonies, you literally deal out like four or five other miscellaneous little

moons. And you have to be worrying about building and sending your fleet out to

those moons to get the economic benefits in addition to terraforming Mars itself.

um seems like a lot. It is a lot and it's just another little thing that draws your attention away

from the main focus of the game because like the most of the scoring is still just based on the terraforming

conditions and the awards and the milestones for the main board. Like the expansions that added just new boards

are fine. It's the same thing just with slight variance. I don't even mind. There's an expansion called Turmoil that it added a side board, but all that

really did was add political events at the start of the round and when you did

certain things, you would send a delegate over there to vote for certain policies. It and it was like it wasn't

like a decision you had to make to go participate in that. It just sort of happened automatically. And that's

that's a B like an addition that I don't mind is when like it yes maybe it

triggers something off to the side but you don't have to like it happens along with the other decisions you were making

like like ank which I played a couple weeks ago. The pharaoh expansion adds priests in the throne room that move

around and like whenever a battle is triggered they like have different effects based on what room you were

dominating in. But the movement of them and the addition of them happens automatically when you're making your

armies and moving your armies. So it's not like, oh, I have to focus on the

priests now in the temple. It's like, no, you just it's just another thing that happens at the same time. No big deal.

And it's it's very simple. Forming Mars also just seems like maybe it's just me and like my sense of

immersion, but like you have already been tasked with a thing that is impossible. Yeah. Like don't give me a moon too.

Yeah. Right. Like half halfway to Mars, NASA rings you up and they're like, "Hey, by the way, can you also a moon?"

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like it it was one thing to have like a couple of little Martian moons around the board that was

just like, "Oh, by the way, that's a square that if you get the right card, you will just throw a free city on there. No big deal." But to have like a

separate board that you have to like keep track of like, "Oh yeah, how many fleet do I have to send over there to start, you know, literally harvesting

from the extra plan?" Like, "No, this is dumb." That's hilarious because Mars'

moons are shitty and little. Yeah. Yeah. They're they're tiny. Not even cool enough to like be round.

Yeah. Um All right. And then final question. Yeah. Uh what is the best expansion ever put

out and why? Uh oh. Uh

this is Oh, there's so many. Only the best. I don't want second best. There's so many good ones. Um unassailable.

If we catch comments about how it isn't actually the best, I'm blaming you. [ __ ] Okay.

Oh, why would you do this to me? You should have warned me cuz Okay,

I didn't even put it in the notes. I know. This is rude. I'm like looking around the room at games I own with

expansions. Um, okay. Uh, right now for me

it's a

Okay. Tell you what, can I do one expansion and one re-implementation?

Yes. Okay. So, the best pure expansion to my

mind is to

is to scythe the wind gambit expansion. Um, it adds a

uh an airship to everybody's team that they start with and they have

uh a randomly generated set of powers that everyone shares every game and it

it flies around the map. It doesn't participate in battle. It doesn't get hurt by anybody. It can pick up and move

things. Um, but that's it. But what it does is

it really Oh, no. I lied. This isn't the best expansion.

I one just occurred to me. Okay, that was a really good expansion. I love it because it makes the board

that much more accessible and you can move things around faster. No, the actual best expansion is Terraforming

Mars Prelude. Um, Ter Mars has this problem where because it's an engine

building game, it can take a long time for the game to really get rolling. You spend a lot of turns just kind of doing

stuff that doesn't like the Mars itself doesn't start

terraforming for a while. Spend a lot of time just like, okay, now I can make enough resources to start playing

effective cards and start actually terraforming the planet. Um, Prelude is an expansion deck I put out

that adds a pregame phase, the Prelude phase, where you choose two out of four

randomly dealt Prelude cards. And what they do is they just do like a one time,

for the most part, one time start of game kickstart where it's like, hey,

we're just going to skip like the first four turns. You get this is this really smoothing the game out like the

early game and making it so that you're getting into like the meat of it faster. Yes. Like Okay. It it makes it so like hey you have

resources to start with. You have some things already to go so you can just get into like playing the game you know the

good part of the game. Um, now my favorite re-implementation

is Terraforming Mars Aries Expedition, which takes the whole game of

Terraforming Mars and shrinks it down to just

to to this like super fast card heavy. Like both games are card heavy, but it

just strips all of the fat out of the entire system and just says, "Hey, just

put down cards and all of our actions are going to be simultaneous instead of turnbased so that you can think faster

and play faster and half the decision-m is going to be." So, what it does

there's there's there's five possible action phases every round. Everyone has

a hand of cards that they select which phase they would like to activate that round h and then everyone reveals which

one they want and then those are the phases that are going to happen. Uh and then you can't play the same phase two

turns in a row. So, it becomes a game of of timing and like, "Oh, I know I need

to build this thing right now." But I I can see that Dave needs to also build

cuz he's got he's sitting on a bunch of resources. I bet you if I select the action one instead of the build one,

I'll get to do a build anyways and then also do actions that I wouldn't normally do.

Do you think that if I were to say that we are not sponsored by Terraform and

Mars, anyone would believe us at this point? I mean, they can think what they want. Terraforming Mars is one of the best

games designed ever, and it it it is only recency bias that has caused it to

fall down in the rankings on board gamegeeek because it is awesome. And

somehow they've done two different re-implementations. There's Aries Expedition, which is like just focus on

the cards and not the map. And then they did Terraforming Mars, the dice game, which is also super good and feels like

Terraforming Mars. It's unbelievable. And this is the only game these people have put out that matters. It's insane.

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