Adding Expansions

I was initially just going to write about Terraforming Mars, and how the expansions gave the game a lot of variety in techniques to play/win the game. Someday I'd like to see a game where players had so many varietal ways of choosing how to play, no single game could ever be the same strategy. But, we should probably discuss the nature of expansions first.

One of the challenges of games is adding expansions - covering board games this time around.

Different types of expansions

• More money: Additional revenue streams for a successful game
• Bigger: Couldn't fit the "full" game into the base game
• Ooops!: Fixes for a game's mechanics

Finding more money from a successful game is not the worst thing. What could take the same designer a year or more for another completely new game (without a guarantee of greatness), an expansion might only be 3 months of design & test time. These expansions usually feel more "tacked on", as if it was an afterthought. The base rules need to change in order for new mechanics to work properly, or it feels like the expansion should be a different game altogether. (For example, Turmoil for Terraforming Mars has voting and a ruling council - not matching any of TM's basic game structure.)

Occasionally you'll see games that need patches to address core gameplay issues. Trading card games run into problems with massive discard, or maybe an engine where an opponent simply doesn't get another turn. A game like Eclipse (1st edition) orange missiles were such a dominant endgame, they included anti-missile tech in later expansions as well as weaker missiles with extra battle-speed components. (It still didn't necessarily "solve" the orange missile problem, just added possible counter-measures.)

Sometimes there are games that are some big in scope, it would bombard the players with too many mechanics or concepts...or increase the cost of the base game to become too big of a risk for a casual buy-in. Everdell is an example of a game that was designed to include expansions - made clear by board expansion arrangements that fit together as a puzzle around the core release.

Downsides of expansions

Might not be found - the publisher might only make 2000 copies. In 5 years time, all of those copies have been purchased, but the publisher doesn't want to get stuck with a remainder...they don't print it again. Base game might see reprints, or had a larger 5000-count print run, leaving a lot of copies without the extra fun. Companies will sometimes follow-up years later with a "big box" version, with all the components and expansions. Feel like re-buying your base game?

Some expansions might rely on other expansions for their gameplay. As the publisher, they're stuck adding more components (just in case they don't have the earlier one), adding extra rulebook parts (and needing to match consistency), or ignoring the other expansions as if they weren't necessary (removing interesting gameplay interaction).

Where does that leave us?

Oh man, some expansions really make the games complete. Race for the Galaxy (card game, first 3 expansions) show how things can come together...but they were forced to add extra components. Terraforming Mars (Colonies (more interaction), Prelude (fixing a slow start), Hellas/Elysium (variety for replay) are solid additions, whereas Venus Next (TR for focusing on Venus slows down the overall endgame) and Turmoil (Voting blocks and events also slow down the game) start branching into inconsistent areas).

That said, I feel like expansions are 50/50. Someone might want to play a game, but only play expansions 1 & 3, and someone else might 1 & 2 - maybe it means that game doesn't come to the table. At the very least, one or more of the players don't get the experience they hope for at game night. Maybe the "big" version of the game is too much for a new player, meaning the expansions don't even come to the table. (And the experienced players feel like they're playing an incomplete version.) I still haven't gotten the airship expansion into a Scythe game yet, years later.