Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder as I step
off the train and deliver an episode to you while I walk home.
I'm Brendan Riley.
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Well, good afternoon listeners.
It's a cloudy but pleasant day here in suburban Chicago.
The temperature is in the low 60s.
So it's very comfortable for walking home.
It's a little warm for late April, but I'll take it.
We've got a nice weekend with my mother visiting.
Played a number of different games, including a couple games that I played expansions on.
I finally got around to trying to get all three expansion boxes for Sagrada into the core
box.
And I figured out with a little bit of work, you can get the entire base game of Sagrada
plus all four expansions into the game.
I also have the three Great Facades expansions each in their own box inside the big box
because you generally aren't going to want to play with more than one
at a time, it would get too much.
But it's nice to have all of them available because then you can mix and match as desired.
So I finally got rid of the plastic insert and was able to fit everything inside the box
with a little bit of careful planning.
So that was fun.
But I got me thinking about expansions.
I did go and look at my list of expansions that I have to articulate how I'm doing because
you know when I play a new expansion then I want to mark off.
Yes, I played that.
We also played the game Wild Serengeti, which I'll talk about later, but it came with
a mini expansion, the specialists, which we did not play with because it was a new game.
And, you know, there's enough going on.
We didn't want to make it too complicated, but so I went and added that to my expansions
list.
It got me thinking about expansions when I play with them when I don't.
And I was really thinking about which expansions would I consider essential?
So I do have a fair amount of them.
Some of them I play with sometimes or often or all the time, but it did get me thinking
about when do I consider expansion essential.
And I will say in my prep for this episode, I did not look at anything.
I did not look through my boardgamegeek account.
I did not look through my BG stats, so I may have completely forgotten some expansion that
I consider essential, but such is the way of it.
So I came up with five expansions that I would consider essential and I put them in order.
So I'm going to do a countdown from five to one.
And at number after number four, I will do a honorable mention of one more I thought of
that I think is really good, but did not take my top five.
And it's possible I'll remember more as we're talking that I want to add in to that
mix.
So let's jump right into it.
Number five expansion that I really like.
It's the least essential of the five, but still really good.
This is Altiplano: The Traveler.
And I like Altiplano a lot.
It's a really interesting game.
I've talked about it a number of times.
I've waved back and forth on whether I like it better than Orléans or not.
I like the theme better than Orléans, but I think maybe Orléans is slightly better playing
in the base version.
But if you mix in The Traveler, well, things get all interesting.
So The Traveler is a modular expansion that you can add in to Altiplano that adds a person
who's sort of conducting trading and introduces a new resource into the game.
With both of these things in there, it ameliorates some the pain of not drawing the chips you
like that you want.
And it adds one more thing that you can do.
And Altiplano, once you've got it down how it works, it gets a little bit rote.
Perhaps.
And the trader or The Traveler gives you that one extra little soupçon of pleasure that
I think works really well.
It also comes with these cool little pink gems that I like a lot.
From that perspective, I would say Altiplano: The Traveler gets to the top of my list of,
or the bottom of my list, makes the top five of expansions I think you should play with.
And then I'll go with the expansions.
Number four.
Now this one is number four down on the list because I think it's a little bit better expansion
than The Traveler.
But I also don't think it's essential.
In fact, I rarely play with it because it is so complex, but also because it's not available
on board game arena.
And I tend to play this game on board game arena more.
This is The Bad News Bears expansion for Bärenpark.
The Bärenpark is maybe my favorite tile-laying game, definitely in the top five, if I were
making that list right now.
It'd be competing for number one.
I'm not sure off the top of my head what would be it.
But as a base game, it gets a little samey.
The base game you are competing for the three goals.
You're competing for most points.
And once everybody's played a couple times, you get to a point where you're kind of all
operating at peak capacity.
And then it's just sort of a matter of who found the right set of combinations to finish.
I've played a number of different games at Bärenpark where everybody either finishes
their board all in the same turn or is one turn away from finishing the board.
So there's a tightness to it that makes it really poetic, really elegant is the word I was
looking for, not poetic.
But also makes it a little bit rote.
It goes completely out the window when you mix in The Bad News Bears expansion.
So Bad News Bears expansion is a terrible name, but it comes with two modules, either
one of which makes the game quite a bit more delightful.
The first module is the Grizzly Bears.
Basically what that is is there are extra large tiles that you can get.
And when you're using the Grizzly Bears expansion, you add in a fifth board.
So the game gets 20% longer, I guess.
You get to take a fifth board.
And then the Grizzlies, the way that works is if you want to take a Grizzly, when you get
I don't remember which thing it is, I think is when you get a orange, when you get the orange
special thing, you can trade in one of your unplaced cement mixer tiles for a Grizzly Bear
instead.
And like I said, the Grizzly Bear tokens are, they have, they're worth more points and they're
bigger and they're really cool.
So one thing is just the extra board gives you a little bit more room to breathe and a little
more time to play, but also the Grizzly Bear tiles are extra big and pretty neat that way.
So those are fun, but the brain melting part are the monorails.
So one of the things you can add, the other thing you can add is monorails.
And the way those work, you have these tiny little cardboard towers and on your turn you
can add the monorail tower in as one of the things you might add.
I don't remember exactly, it's been a couple of while since I played it.
I don't remember exactly what you do to add it in, but when you add it in, you then have
a tower that the monorail is going to attach to.
And then you're going to connect that monorail to other monorail towers and they have, they're
always connected at a 90 degree angle.
And so the monorail towers have to be placed to specific distance apart and then you add
the tracks as you're going along.
The tracks of course are worth extra points, but you also have to think about the path the
monorail is going to take because you can't go in a circle, you can't connect the track
back to the path you had been taking.
It's a whole thing.
So sort of layer all that together and you have this really convoluted, not convoluted
is the right word, you have this really thinky extra layer that gets put on top.
And if you ever are playing with somebody who's played Bärenpark a few times and I'm like,
it's a little simplistic.
You add in The Bad News Bears, particularly the monorails and it takes you to a whole
another level.
It's so crunchy.
I love it.
So that's my number four essential expansion.
Bärenpark: The Bad News Bears.
I guess why it's number four and not higher.
I do play the game without it and I enjoy the game quite a bit without it.
Makes the term "essential" a little confusing but whatever.
All right, the next three expansions are ones that I generally don't like to play without.
I will pretty much leave them in all the time.
So here we go.
Number three expansion, Ark Nova: Marine Worlds.
Now this is pretty new.
It's maybe pretty snooty to say that a game that made it in the top ten on boardgamegeek
in its base form requires the expansion.
But I will say the best critique of Ark Nova and the one that hits the most true with me
is the fact that when you play Ark Nova you often have times where you're looking for a
card and you might go a long time without seeing that kind of card and that can be really
frustrating if you're trying to get a specific combo to go off.
Now the argument is of course if you let yourself be beholden to that, well that was poor
play.
But sometimes you just, you get all the cards you need to set up a combo and then you
don't get the last piece of it.
And that can really stink.
Now the Marine Worlds does not solve that problem per se but it goes a long way towards
solving it by having these wave cards and what the wave cards are is you're mixing in
a bunch of cards in the deck and they have the waves on them.
There you go.
But when they come out then you reset the card display.
And the nice thing about that is that you just get more motion on the card display and
that solves most of the problems with Ark Nova.
I also like the Marine creatures and the additional habitats that are available from them and I
like the player pieces that you get better.
There's a little more thematic.
So all around the Marine Worlds expansion is one I would consider essential and when
I play Ark Nova on the table I always want to use it.
And I don't think it adds much overhead in terms of players thinking about the game.
So that's Ark Nova: Marine Worlds expansion.
All right the number two expansion that I think is essential is Star Wars: Rebellion
Rise of the Empire.
Now once again I love Star Wars: Rebellion as it is.
But Rise of the Empire adds some additional dice, additional type of troop, some additional
cards, additional characters and it just makes the whole game function just a little bit
more smoothly.
The original version has a few clunky areas.
The combat isn't quite as smooth as it could be.
And frankly it's not as cinematic.
Once you add in the Rise of the Empire expansion everything smooths out just a little bit and
that little bit is what pushes the game into greatness.
I have the Rise of the Empire expansion shuffled in.
I wouldn't play without it.
I love that very much and it's part of what keeps Star Wars: Rebellion very high on my game
list even though I haven't played it in a long time.
So that's to me hey neighbor I should call it my neighbor who I like to play
Star Wars: Rebellion with and see if we can play.
So if you get an opportunity to play Star Wars: Rebellion ask if the person who has it has
the Rise of the Empire expansion. You won't regret it.
Alright I wanted to mention two honorable mentions.
These are expansions that I think are really good, important perhaps, strong contenders for
things that you might want to play but they aren't essential for me.
First of all these is Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport.
This adds a bit of additional thinking to the game in a game that otherwise can get kind
of straightforward.
I also like the gambling of how much corruption are you going to take are you going to let
that overwhelm you.
I really like that but I do think it is an extra load on a game that we often use to teach
new people and frankly I often don't have it myself and I often don't play with it.
So I can't really argue that it is essential when I don't make much effort to use it.
So that is Lords of Waterdeep: Scoundrels of Skullport.
And then the other one is the Wingspan: Oceania expansion.
So the Oceania expansion of course has a whole bunch of cool birds.
The more I am going to introduce is new player boards and a new mechanism, the Nectar.
So the Nectar and the different player boards adds a really important consideration for
higher level Wingspan players because it kneecaps the taking eggs strategy which can make
regular Wingspan kind of boring.
Players who are really good will often in the fourth round just take eggs the whole time
because there is not a move that they can make that is more efficient point wise than
just taking eggs especially if they have built a good egg generation engine.
That said, I almost never play that way, I don't like it, it is not fun.
I would rather get a lower score and have fun.
But Oceania balances that out, it gives us another place to score using the Oceania or using
the Nectar tiles and I think it just makes the game better.
So that is Wingspan: Oceania.
Alright, my number one expansion, the one I really think is essential, I think you should
play with all the time if you have the opportunity.
That is Upstairs, Downstairs expansion for Obsession.
Obsession is one of my favorite games, it is a really good game about running a house in Victorian
times or Edwardian times even, it feels like you are in a Jane Austen novel.
I like Obsession a lot, there is lots of really interesting stuff happening in the game and
the different servants that you can get and player pieces that you can get work really
well to provide a variety of different things you can do.
But said, there are limitations and sometimes there is stuff that you would like to be able
to do but you just can't because the game isn't flexible enough.
If you have the Upstairs, Downstairs expansion you get this whole other raft of employees
that you can get who give you just that extra angle that you can use to try to tweak the
best experience and I love the wide variety of things you can do when you are making those
choices.
Upstairs, Downstairs gives you an essential mix of things that you can add to your otherwise
already amazing game to make it fantastic.
Already fantastic game to make it amazing, I am not sure which of those different ideas
is better but whatever one is better that is the one that uses Upstairs, Downstairs.
So if you get a chance to play Obsession go ahead and take the extra plunge, get
Upstairs, Downstairs in there as well, you won't regret it.
So that brings me to the end of my discussion of expansions and essential expansions which
ones that I leave out which ones would you put in this list if you are making it.
Head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269 and share your thoughts there.
I'd love to hear them.
In the meantime you can send me a message on boardgamegeek at Wombat929 or by email Brendan@Rattleboxgames.com.
Thanks for joining me on my walk today, I hope that your next walk is as pleasant
as mine was.
Bye bye.
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- Brought to you by Rattlebox Games.
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