Expansions - Need em, Skip em, and Why?

This is like the second or third thread in a row in which you go ballistic on someone because they dare to suggest that art may not be completely subjective, Southernman. I don't think Repo Man, Josh Look or anyone should have to endure hassling just because you take "that's just your opinion" to its logical extreme.

Erik Twice wrote: This is like the second or third thread in a row in which you go ballistic on someone because they dare to suggest that art may not be completely subjective, Southernman. I don't think Repo Man, Josh Look or anyone should have to endure hassling just because you take "that's just your opinion" to its logical extreme.

Sorry, I am paying atention to you because ....

ubarose wrote: I think this discussion would be more interesting if people challenged each other ideas politely, rather than attack each other and nit pick over how those ideas are expressed. I think we are all smart enough and grown up enough to understand the nuances of each other's manner of expression.

Bullshit.

Sagrilarus wrote:

ubarose wrote: I think this discussion would be more interesting if people challenged each other ideas politely, rather than attack each other and nit pick over how those ideas are expressed. I think we are all smart enough and grown up enough to understand the nuances of each other's manner of expression.

Bullshit.

I would like to formally apologize for the prior post. It was completely inappropriate.

I will ban myself for the next 72 hours.

S.

ubarose wrote: If I really love a game, and play it a great deal, I do like expansions. In many cases they give you the opportunity to customize you experience each time you play, and give you a kind of personal ownership of your game.

This is why I love expansions so much. The ability to customize the experience. Usually they give you some optional rules and I love optional rules. I love how a good expansion lets you feel like a mini designer as you look through what's available and try to create an experience that works for you. One of my favourite qualities for a game to have is robustness, a game that doesn't fall apart when you change a couple of things here and there. It reminds me of the games that first made me love the hobby. Risk was constantly house ruled in our family (as I'm sure most of you did as well) and we did the same thing with many other games. I still play our house ruled Fireball Island regularly and it shines in our version in a way that the original never could. I would love an expansion for that... obviously that's impossible today but still. The point remains.

There is a tendency in modern gamers to get really cynical and assume that all expansions, or at least most, were designed ahead of time and separated to get more money for the publisher. Mostly I think that's bullshit, I bet it happens very seldom and mostly because of cost. Star Wars Armada couldn't list for much higher a price so they have to break it up. I think that is likely the real reason most of the time and I refuse to buy into this depressing cynical attitude towards all publishers. Besides, the expansions I like best do not feel like they were missing before hand. Even Mage Knight and Runewars. I do believe that those games were designed as is from the beginning and that designers leave room for expansions in modern designs or think about them almost immediately and it gives us this impression.

In any case I like options, I like malleable designs. I really like the notion that a game can be many things to many different people and part of that is finding a way to make it work for you. It's the biggest reason why I love Runewars so much. There is a lot of power given to the player in those designs.

ubarose wrote: I think we are all smart enough and grown up enough to understand the nuances of each other's manner of expression.

Speak for yourself.

A few thoughts, as someone who loves most expansions.

On BSG, the fleet board is a must. I also think it is being undersold on how much the extra skill cards add to the game. It is a lot. And that's almost no rules overhead. The game is much better when you don't give Adama the hairy eyeball for not playing an executive order every turn cause there are only 2 types of green skill card.

Runewars is another expansion where just adding the cards to the seasons deck make the game so much better that I think its worth it for that alone, But that the units and tech trees add a ton to the game as well.

Clash of culture has a pretty fantastic expansion, very lite on the rules added.

Another game I don't want to play without at least the first expansion is Core worlds. I happen to quite like the second expansion there too.

I approach expansions warily now, because I have seen good and bad expansions over the years.

BSG: I haven't played enough with the expansion material to be certain, but my gut instinct was that the base game was a finished game that might only benefit from more characters and more crisis cards. It definitely didn't need a lot more rules.

Arkham Horror: I am notorious here for loving Arkham Horror, and I tend to play with everything in. But to be honest, the first three big box expansions are frustrating, because each one contained something that is so important to the game that they should have been part of the base set, if Kevin Wilson already had those ideas. Dunwich had the madness/injury cards, Kingsport had the final battle cards, and Innsmouth had the personal story cards. The extra boards definitely offer some nice options in terms of flavor combinations, and as a long-term player, I really appreciate every single one of the 48 characters. Dollar for dollar, the small box expansions are a better deal, because each delivers a strong theme, and if the matching herald is used, that theme will definitely impact the game. There is no need for long, silly sorting projects when playing with specific Arkham expansions, because Wilson did such a great job of making each expansion present itself in the overall game. The Miskatonic Horror expansion is the only one that I consider completely optional and really just for big fans of the game. It gives you more of everything, plus many cards that connect expansions to other expansions.

Spartacus: I have acquired but not yet played the Shadow of Death expansion, but I look forward to the boasting mechanic and more Primus action. But I suspect that only the first expansion is important, for expanding it from a 4-player to 6-player game. I kind of resent the corporate strategy of expansions that increase player count, because they usually happen with games that needed the extra player potential in the base set. Cosmic Encounter and Sons of Anarchy are good examples of this.

Fury of Dracula: I don't see any reasonable way to ever expand FoD, and fortunately FFG seems to feel the same way. Unfortunately, the new version appears to be an attempt to get more cash from FoD fans anyway, by presenting different mechanics. FoD isn't perfect, but it is one of my top five favorites, so it's hard to see how FFG can improve it without messing up.

Twilight Imperium 3rd: I have only played a handful of games over the years, but I believe that the first expansion is necessary, because FFG had a tendency at that time to fix design problems in a base set through modifications introduced in an expansion. I personally don't think that TI3 needed any additional complexity, but I realize that is probably what sets me apart from the real TI:3 fans.

Death Angel: Nobody has mentioned Death Angel yet, but those small expansions to this small game add a large amount of repeat play value. Dollar for dollar, they are just about the best expansions that I have bought for any of my games.

Sons of Anarchy: This really should have been a five-player base set. As pointed out up thread, the best deal is to buy the new Calveras expansion and use the Grim Bastards clubhouse card included in the base set so that you have six possible gangs to choose from for your five-player games. As a high-interaction game with straight-forward rules and excellent component design, it is really easy and more enjoyable to add in more players, so I'm glad that I bought both expansions.

Cosmic Encounter: I haven't played enough of CE so far, but I gladly purchased the three expansions that add a player. CE is still fun, even in one of those short games with several players where I didn't get a turn before it ended. I haven't played with any expansions that don't add players, but I hope they have avoided putting either Moons or Lucre back into the game. Those were needless complications to the original edition that made it worse.

Illuminati: Just for laughs, I will mention this old-school Steve Jackson game (not the CCG), because I think it was the first game that got me to buy expansions. Setting aside the inherent flaws of the game itself, the first two expansions were great because they added a player, some theme, and just a couple of extra rules. Both expansions fit in seamlessly with the base game and added a fair amount of additional content. The third expansion added in the ability to change the alignments of every organization in the game, and it was terrible. It added a lot of complexity to gameplay, but managed to make the game less fun.

Dune: Some people insist that Dune must always be played with the expansions, probably because they bought that weirdo French language edition that came with the expansions included. Those people are wrong. The Spice Harvest just increases the setup time before the real game gets going, while the duel expansion adds an unwelcome subsystem that increase play length without making the game better. Both of these expansions feel like artificial grafts stuck on the game, and don't match up with the overall design of the original.

I like expansions, provided they're well done. I can justify buying them for games I enjoy because they have a very high likelihood of getting played and enjoyed. I don't like when companies hit "Franchise" mode with their expansions. FFG had gotten pretty bad about it for awhile, and to be honest I think they just took that mentality and applied it to their minis and LCG lines, where it makes more sense anyway.

As an aside, I love BSG but think that the expansions nearly fucked up what was an almost perfect game already. There are tidbits in them that I like, but overall, I don't like them very much.

I think a pretty general consensus is that expansions (with maybe an exception or two) are added to 'complete' games to add either more content or variation (rules, different gameplay), this then gives the owner a choice of staying with just the 'complete' base game or buying expansions for whatever reason.
Now usng BSG as an example I agree with everyone here saying it is a complete game, but then some of us have said we bought (and enjoy) the expansions to give us more fun - so if we now nip across to BGG and check numbers owning the base game we see a shit load but then much lower, but still reasonably large, numbers for the expansions, and they all rate about the same.

And I'm quite happy with people stating opinions as factual if they're got a bit of empirical evidence to throw in - i.e. you can argue that a specific comic author/illustrator is one of the best if sale numbers or awards support it, you can call BSG expansions crap if some data (say ratings at a global board game site) indicate it.
But my short and brusque language (my spoken word is pretty similar to the written stuff) does not come over well sometimes so apologies to those that felt overly offended - I was intending to strongly retort what you were saying but not to offend you for having independent thought.

Personally, if the game is ripe for expansions, I am all for it. To use a game that alot of yall seem to dislike or are atleast indifferent to, Talisman is vastly better with an expansion or two. The Reaper is such a good expansion it should be written in the base game rules on next edition. Sure there is expansion bloat, and playing with all the expansions takes a two hour game into the two week realm, but there are some really good pieces in each one.

Shellhead wrote: Dune: Some people insist that Dune must always be played with the expansions, probably because they bought that weirdo French language edition that came with the expansions included. Those people are wrong. The Spice Harvest just increases the setup time before the real game gets going, while the duel expansion adds an unwelcome subsystem that increase play length without making the game better. Both of these expansions feel like artificial grafts stuck on the game, and don't match up with the overall design of the original.

I do not use Spice Harvest or the Duel (both add way too much necessary bloat), but we throw the extra factions in to the pool at the beginning almost every time. Also if we have a younger player they get the level 10 commander for there set, so far it has not helped one win a game. But I pulled my copy out of the trash so that might be part of it.

I don't think I accept BGG ratings as some kind of empirical truth. According to those numbers, Imperial Assault is the twelfth best game ever released. Just because a lot of people there think that Eclipse is the #10 game of all time doesn't stop me from saying it's kinda crap. Let's not even start on the convoluted snooze-fest that's Le Havre (#15) or Caylus (#20).

I've played a lot of expansions, and most of them are unnecessary, with some even damaging to the game experience. That said, there are many that are worthwhile.

The only two that come to mind that are good enough that I would strongly recommend:

• Friends & Foes for Knizia's Lord of the Rings
• On the Brink for Pandemic

On the next tier are expansions that offer a different playing experience without changing the game. Usually, this just means maps. I have several for Power Grid, Railways of the World, and Flash Point: Fire Rescue. The expansions for Sentinels of the Multiverse fall into this category as well.

Most expansions that increase player count also increase play time, which is almost always a bad thing to me.

I've never liked the BSG game, so I won't get into that debate.

Chaz wrote: I don't think I accept BGG ratings as some kind of empirical truth. According to those numbers, Imperial Assault is the twelfth best game ever released. Just because a lot of people there think that Eclipse is the #10 game of all time doesn't stop me from saying it's kinda crap. Let's not even start on the convoluted snooze-fest that's Le Havre (#15) or Caylus (#20).

It's the only source we have for a large data sample. I was using the data of how the expansions rated against each other as these should be roughly the same gamers giving the ratings, but rating game against game will likely be different due to the numbers of people of different gaming genres (euro, AT, wargamer, light hobby gamer, etc...) there.
And you are quite entitled to say you find Eclipse crap (so do I), but the data says we're in a minority.