F$@& Spin offs and Expansions

Spin offs and Expansions

Mike (and RxDocSF a bit later) touched on something in the Catan topic that I thought would make a good article, thanks Mike (and doc).

“My main problem with Settlers of the Catan (sic) has less to do with the game and more to do with the marketing. It has like eight? expansions now.”

Yeah good point.  I honestly haven’t played any of the expansions, but I have played some of the spin offs/sequels.  When your board game needs a wiki for its product line you have gone way too far.

Candamir: The First Settlers I mentioned in my “how important are themes” post.  Thankfully I only demo’d this, and a couple of turns was enough to convince me that I never want to play this again.  I bought the Catan Dice Game , and even played it a couple times.  It goes into the filler game category, kill 15 minutes till the next real game can start.  And within those limitations, I will say Catan dice is a success.  

Mayfair is frankly awful about this.  Their Crayon rails were even worse.  Empire Builder/NorAm rails and EuroRails were solid games.  I played or bought Nippon rails, British rails and Iron Dragon (fantasy world).  All of those sucked.  The map in a tube was F%$^ing awful.  The cards were cheap uncoated card stock.  All in all, the materials got in the way of the game.  And the games weren’t that good in the first place, especially the British and Nippon versions.  England is dominated by London, and Japan by Tokyo.  Duh.  So when ¾ of the loads involve London/Tokyo, you have a dumb game.

So to not make this a complete bash Mayfair post, Carcassonne.  According to the Wiki (which has never lied to me), Carcass1 has EIGHT full expansions, TWELVE Mini expansions, SIX compilations involving these expansions, and EIGHT spinoffs.  Seriously, 28 rules additions?  Now I’ve only played “Inns and Cathedrals”, and “Hunters and Gatherers”.  I&C was ok, and H&G was two hours I will never get back.  Carcassonne: The Castle, Mike has mentioned to me more than once.  This game has a huge runaway leader problem, and it is TWO PLAYER.  Jesus H. Christ, invest sometime in play testing.

So a summary of the bad:  A few of these expansions were ok, most were awful, or perhaps better stated, unnecessary.   They added layers of complexity to otherwise elegant games, bogging them down.  I actually have utter disdain for nearly every spinoff produced.   I think the only true winner was EuroRails.

Seguing into good expansions.  I feel in most of these cases, the games were designed with expansions in mind.

In an attempt to keep the snark up, good expansions for games I don’t like.

Munchkin

Ok Munchkin the core game sucks.  It’s cooperative until someone is about to win, then the table unites to gang beat the leader back down.  This pretty much describes every card game Steven Jackson Games has ever released.    However, if this is your thing, the expansions are great.  They add new ways to screw with players, amusing weapons and silly art.  

Zombies

#6298 on BGG, and I think that may be a little harsh, but whatever, it’s not as if they are slamming a game I really like.   Not having played any of the expansions, I really can’t get too detailed.  But the game is throwing down map tiles, getting weapons and loot, and killing zombies.  New map tiles, new weapons, and new ways to kill or be killed by zombies?  Again, if this is your thing, the more the better!  (with the caveat that this game already takes too long for the thought/luck involved.  Map size stays the same please.)

Onto games I like!  Huzzah

Race for the Galaxy

The first two expansions were really good.  They added more cards, made a couple paths to victory more viable.  They had some bumps (takeovers?)  but they listed these as ‘optional’.  Enter expansion 3 , The Brink of War, and the introduction of prestige.  Prestige DRASTICALLY changed the game, to the point acquiring prestige tokens is the most important part of the game now.  I rated this expansion as 7/10 much to the dismay of Mike.  I think I rated it that high because you can choose to play with new cards and ignore prestige.  This will require sorting…there are cards that have prestige related powers that are now useless.  Anyways the point is that expansion worked for this game, but they went just a little too far.

Dominion

I haven’t played too many of these expansion; Intrigue and Seaside a lot, and Alchemy a touch. Dominon has the same basic problem as RftG.  A couple of expansions worked, but the more you tweak the worse it gets.   I played Alchemy only a touch, because after a couple trials, I decided I was done with the game.

Anything else?  I’m sure someone has some words on M:tG, Warhammer and a slew of others but this post is already twice as long as my average.  Someone else talk for a change.