EXPEDITIONS (2023)

PLAYERS	TIME	DESIGNER	PUBLISHER
1-5	60-90 mins	Jamey Stegmaier	Stonemaier Games

In this follow up to SCYTHE, players are war heroes exploring the North in hopes of discovering more about a strange meteorite and its effects on the local landscape.

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For a game drenched in beautiful and thematic art work where every image tells a story, the game’s overall theme doesn’t really come high on my list of things I love about EXPEDITIONS. If I hadn’t read the blurb, I couldn’t tell you what it’s all about.

But I still really enjoy the game on a mechanical level, and I do so love the artwork and design of this Stonemaier created universe.

So the setting, the artwork, and the scoring mechanisms are all very SCYTHE. But the similarities stop there. Instead of working hard to gather resources, control land, and hopefully be intimidating enough to discourage conflict, players will instead be roaming the hex tile landscape and mostly minding their own business.

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EXPEDITIONS is the race to game end trigger. It’s the efficiency puzzle of the original with some minor getting in each other’s ways (especially at higher player counts).

I like the action selection mechanic here. Instead of one blocked action each turn and the remaining ones available, you’ll spend most of the game switching between pairs of actions. You have Move, Play, and Gather (as well as rest), but each turn you’ll cover one up and do the other two.

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The game has a nice variability in its set up. The three regions (South, Central, and North) are randomly laid out, and the combination of Mech and Hero gives plenty of possible pairings.

As with its predecessor, this game can start slow and suddenly ramp at the end, so it pays to keep an eye on others as the Scoring Stars start piling up.

EXPEDITIONS is same enough to draw in fans but different enough to warrant its existence as a separate project. And the art and components make it a beauty on the table.