Expansions, we have mixed feelings about them! Sometimes, adding more content to a game can expand its lifespan but sometimes it can also have the opposite effect. Adding more content to a scenario-based game like Mansions of Madness or Destinies makes you play the game more often because you run out of game to play quite quickly. But adding more content to a game that can already entertain you for many plays on its own… can also make a game more convoluted.

Some games have failed to get played at our house because, as the saying goes, because of all the trees, we couldn’t see the forest anymore. Expansions and Big Boxes sometimes make it hard to enjoy a game because of all the things that are added (even if they are optional). A great example of this is Battlecon (technically not a Big Box release but it surely has the contents of one). We like the essence of the game but it’s just too much in the box to discover and that makes it somewhat intimidating and that was also the reason we haven’t played it as much as we thought we would. Big Boxes can sometimes overwhelm you with ways to play a game and, of course, you can just play the base game, but… apparently it could be more? But that also means learning new rules every time you play it and that can be a hassle.

Then again, in the current board game landscape with so many new games being released, I understand that expansions are a way to keep games ‘hot and fresh’ and prevent them from being forgotten too quickly. For designers, it’s their chance to add a mechanism that they feel improves the game (or fun ones that didn’t make it to the base game). I’m not sure where I’m going with this, so to make a long story short: we’ve become more careful with adding expansions to a game too quickly. 😀

Back to our current gaming life or, well, last week’s. We played some smaller classic games like Jaipur and Can’t Stop and we started the Exit: Advent Calendar! We’ve completed eight puzzles now and we must say we’re enjoying the creativity of the production. Almost every day has introduced a small little gimmick so far. The puzzles are quite easy and we haven’t touched the booklet with the hints yet but that’s ok – it’s a great little activity for during lunch time or breakfast.

One of our Black Friday impulse buys arrived! Horrible Guild had an irresistible sale on the big Unicorn Fever horses and the big mat (plus the storage box) so we caved. So, not an expansion for the game but an upgrade! Playing the game with these big silly horses just adds to the spectacle on the table, we can’t wait to play it again.

We also introduced Distilled to a friend. He had seen it in one of our videos and he was very curious about the game. We wanted to get the game to the table again, so that worked out perfectly. The game has a lot going on on the table without it actually being very complex and everything feels really thematic. This week, we’ve got three (maybe four!) game nights planned so that’s exciting!