Expeditions by Jamey Stegmaier, released in 2023 debuted as the sequel to 2016’s Scythe, which is fairly high on my favourite games of all time list at number 16. While visually very similar to Scythe, the gameplay in Expeditions is quite different, and I think it’s worth being explicit in saying right from the get-go in saying that Expeditions is a fully separate game. Jakub Rozalski returned to provide the distinct art and world building, which helps players familiar with Scythe to feel right at home from the moment they get their hands on the box, but nothing in the Expeditions box can be ported to Scythe, nor the other way around.
The box for Expeditions feels oversized for what’s inside. It is just a bit smaller than the original Scythe box, but it feels like it contains so much less. 5 large mechs, 20 location tiles, a huge stack of cards, 50 worker meeples, a bag of thick acrylic markers, 5 square player mats, and a home bast tile is what that box contains. The included plastic insert holds everything quite well, and should facilitate fast set-ups, when you’re not playing a public copy at the board game café and whoever played it last was not so careful in putting everything back in the right spots.
I’ve never been able to complain about Stonemaier Games component quality. Everything here feels about as deluxe as you want it, and they showcase thoughtfulness in small ways, like including little riser stickers for the player boards to make it much easier to tuck cards under your player board. The home board that holds the glory track has the end game scoring listed right next to it, making it really easy to remember what is worth points come the end of the game.
The play area itself is expansive, which I think is quite good for a game named Expeditions. After all, what kind of adventure would it be if you only travelled 6 metres from where you started? The main play area is
Playing Expeditions is pretty straightforward. There are 3 actions available to you. Move, Play, and Gather. Moving is simple, move your mech from hex to hex, up to your movement value. If you enter an unexplored tile in the centre or north side of the map, your movement ends, but you get to reveal the tile. Play just has you play a card from your hand. Each card gives you guile or strength, and if you place a worker on the card at the time of playing it, you get to activate its special ability. Gathering just lets you take the action of the tile your mech is currently sitting on.
The tiles are laid out in such a way that there’s space for 5 cards between the hexagons. Those cards can be quests, items, or meteorites, all of which can be claimed to be used for a unique ability, and then upgraded, melded, or solved to offer some more permanent effects. The stack of cards in the game is impressively large, offering a wide variety of effects that could show up.
Each turn on the game has you move a cube on your map, covering one of the three actions, enabling you to preform the other two. This was a great mechanic, and figuring out your own tempo on how you want to move and play or play and gather was a good puzzle to try and squeeze some efficiencies out of. The cards you play and the workers you spend on them sit on the table in front of you until you take a rest action. This takes the cube off your board, pulls all your workers back to your mat, and lets you play all your cards again. And, on your next turn, you get to take all 3 actions, which can be very powerful and is a nice consolation prize, making that lost rest turn a little less painful.
The general flow and card play of Expeditions can be quite satisfying. If you happen to pick up cards that compliment each other well, you can find yourself specializing in specific ways that lead you to claiming an achievement long before anyone else can. In one game we played, I just happened to pick up 4 items, and uncover the upgrade action. I very quickly was able to boast to claim the 8 cards achievement, then immediately turned around and started upgrading those item cards to claim my second achievement before anyone else claimed a single one. The downside is that once you hit the achievement threshold for something, continuing to pursue that objective is meaningless. You’ll need to pivot and figure out a different way to get the rest of your stars onto the board.
For a game to be called Expeditions, I expect a fairly heavy focus to be on the discoverability inside the game. I found it surprisingly disappointing that all the tiles are in use in every game. The discovery isn’t about finding new tiles and which abilities are available to you during this game, it’s just a matter of figuring out where the tile you want is hiding. In addition to this, if you happen to find the tile you needed, great luck! Another player is probably crawling across the north part of the map, frustrated that they’ve just collected their 8th map token that have no value beyond collecting 5 for an achievement. Exploring isn’t rewarded, which is awful in an action efficiency game.
The art on the tiles and cards all tell a story. Much like the encounter cards in Scythe, the art is a wonderful vignette featuring a grim 1920’s aesthetic, with the shadows of hulking mechanical behemoths in the background. A tale can easily be told by these cards, but at the same time, the theme can very quickly melt away. Guile and power turn into brain and strength, which are just values you accrue, vanquishing is merely a transaction, solving is just being on the right spot at the right time. Nothing you do in the game feels thematic, it’s purely mechanical.
The interaction between players is merely being in each other’s way. Someone can camp on a tile that you need for a few turns, and someone might sweep the card you were pining for, but that’s really the extent of it. You can’t take anything from your opponent, you can’t bump them off their tile, they exist to just be in your way. A score to compare yours against at the end of the game.
The gripes I have with Expeditions mostly stems from mis-matched expectations. I went in with all the thoughts and feelings of Scythe, but found a game that feels more like Century Spice Road wearing Scythe’s clothing. I really wonder if calling it the sequel to Scythe was the right thing to do, considering just how different the games really are. The Scythe world was so unique and gripping that it does make sense to set more games in that universe, but I really feel that Expeditions suffers from sitting in the overbearing shadow of its predecessor.
