Expansion remorse: What makes an expansion good?

Modular expansions are infuriating to me. Invariably I end up using one or two modules at most, and the rest won't ever see the light of day.

My favorites are the ones that add extra stuff that was already in the base game, like in Cosmic Encounter or Wiz-War. They usually end up adding new elements anyway, and the basic structure of the game is unchanged. Argent did this too. It's expansion changes very little about the game, aside from more content.

I also like those ones that leave the game mostly the same, but make it more advanced. Think Mare Nostrum or Clash of Cultures. A lot of longer games benefit from this most.

I like expansions, but I've been burned before by them.

It works best in miniatures games for variety's sake, like Heroscape and X-Wing.

Any game that you find out you like a lot more than your friends is when I've had buyers' remorse the hardest. I liked Descent 1E a lot, and went all in on expansions (before Road to Legend was a thing), and then found out my friends had basically already tired of it.

On one hand, an expansion for a game that is getting a lot of love is more likely to be money well spent than money on some new, unknown to you and your group game. But these modular expansions that people are talking about can end up making you feel like you're not getting your money's worth... even if you're using it!

SuperflyTNT wrote: Only one kind of expansion will ever be purchased and retained by me: More of the same/ extension of the same.

For example, Heroscape expansions don’t change the game, they simply extend options. Elder Sign expansions (not Gates) extend the game without fundamentally changing it.

I don’t buy “ fix it “ expansions. If the game needs fixing, it doesn’t get bought.

I agree with this, although I will say there's a difference between "oops we fucked up" fix-it expansions that land six months after relase, and "this game has been out two years and thousands of people have played tens of thousands of games and there's some great improvements that can be made" fix-it expansions. Shattered Empires and Dunwich Horror are good examples of the latter.

I don't really consider stuff like heroscape units expansions. I mean, that's like buying any model outside of the AoS starter is buying expansions. Are Shadespire warbands exapansions? Eh, I dunno. Selecting what to and not to buy of these sorts of units are the point of these sort of games.

To me the only expansion that was worth buying was The Reaper for Talisman. It made the FFG edition the definitive playing version of that game.

I find most expansions generally aren't worth buying. A base game should be good enough not to need them. If the base game does need them...that's a red flag.

Agree largely with the sentiments above, I try to avoid games that need an expansion to patch "fun" in. But other than that, I usually like them. They can keep things fresh and make them more interesting once you've explored the space of the base game.

Best expansions in my collection

• DUNWICH HORROR for ARKHAM HORROR--mentioned numerous times at this site, it adds Madness/Injury cards, which are so good I play with them every time, even if not in Dunwich for that game.
• HADES for CYCLADES--Adds another layer to a game that really benefits from them. This game is tight, and anything to help you exploit a turn a liiiittle further could get you the win. Contrast with TITANS, which makes the game a weird sloggy mess.
• THE TAKEN KING for DESTINY--a video game! (sinner, I know). This might break my rule above, in that for a lot of folks, this patched the fun in, but I got in after this was added, and it was great. Added a new threat and tons of backstory, new gear, missions, and all this stuff that made this once of the best gaming experiences of the last decade. I still played through the base game content, and I get why folks really enjoyed THE TAKEN KING, it practically doubled the content of this universe we all wanted to do stuff in.

Jeb is opening the door to video game expansions?!??!

FREEDOM CRY for Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag has to be best ever done. What an awesome piece of DLC.
LAIR OF THE SHADOW BROKER for Mass Effect 2: It brought back Liara (and an awesome moment) and an actual boss fight!!
EPISODE TWO: Half Life 2 - omg, so amazing
I hear the UNDEAD NIGHTMARE for Red Dead Redemption was incredible.

I don't seem to have the same hate for expansions that others appear to have. Expansions that I have brought and the reason why include:

Making a decent (not broken) game better
Arkham Horror;s Dunwich Horror
Mare Nostrum's Mythology
TI3's Shattered Empires
Civilizations' Fame & Fortune and Wisdom & Warfare
Warrior Knights' Crown & Glory

More content or a new rule/mechanic to increase replayability
Most of the Arkham and Eldritch Horror expansions.
Descent 2E expansions
Cosmic expansions
Firefly expansions
Spartacus expansions
Star Trek Ascendancy expansions
Memoir 44 and Tide of Iron expansions

Give a game a different story path or outcome
Battlestar Galactica expansions
Lord of the Rings (Knizia boardgame) expansions

In a way, they were a noble idea, but the three BSG expansions probably represent in some respects the nadir for me because not only can you not realistically thread your way through the combinations, but the later expansions started "fixing" the content of the first one.

In general, I prefer the add-in-and-forget approach. I tend to have near-total mastery of a game's rules right before I teach it and then lose almost all of it at some point afterward, so I don't want to have to read the base rules then read through two or three more booklets before I can play.

I disagree about the BSG expansions, they tell the continuing story of the source material and probably the worst thing FFG did was not provide some sort of campaign or system to link them all together - many at BGG have already done this and I was working on it before my playing group dropped so low in numbers I've never been able to get it out again. But even then we'd just play whichever expansion that we felt like on the day, the New Caprica one could have been better but otherwise they were designed for fans just like every other themed game.

I hear what people say in terms of BSG expansions "fixing" earlier faults. And in some cases these are valid concerns - games where the Cylon Fleet would never re-appear after the first jump were boring. But at the same time, when the game was hot, there were groups playing it A LOT and in many cases I think exploited things that 95% of players would never come across. You get a group of players together in a semi co-op and they will be sure find stuff after many playings.

And elements of the expansions were merely adding different content - characters, Crisis cards - without adding rules overhead. These are the best kind of expansions IMO. When they started adding in extra mechanics in many cases I think the game started to strain under the weight of some of them - New Caprica, the Exodus stuff. The beauty though was that they were very modular, you could pick and choose what you added.

I disliked most of the expansion material for BSG. It was like the show, in a way, in that each additional expansion seemed worse than the one before, just like each additional season got worse. Making them ala carte was a different kind of pain, potentially forcing a long discussion of what to use before each game. In my opinion, there were only two problems with the base game: the gamey balancing element of the sympathizer, and the potential for a long easy stretch with no new base ships showing up. I wish FFG had fixed those two issues before publishing the game, but since they didn't, it would have been nice if they had published a mini-expansion that fixed just those two elements.

Shellhead wrote: I disliked most of the expansion material for BSG. It was like the show, in a way, in that each additional expansion seemed worse than the one before, just like each additional season got worse. Making them ala carte was a different kind of pain, potentially forcing a long discussion of what to use before each game. In my opinion, there were only two problems with the base game: the gamey balancing element of the sympathizer, and the potential for a long easy stretch with no new base ships showing up. I wish FFG had fixed those two issues before publishing the game, but since they didn't, it would have been nice if they had published a mini-expansion that fixed just those two elements.

1. It's no surprise that someone who disliked the show would dislike the expansions that basically were each following season
2. The fix for the 'quiet' space issue was as simple as building the crisis deck like many other games did (many BSG players did), shuffling in the Cylon fleet cards evenly dispersed through the deck.
3. Yeah, Sympathizer sucked in that you could game whose side they came out on and playing it sucked (my main hate of it and why I don't play with it). Back when the game came out I actually made some tables based on distance jumped and state of the resources (and a dice roll I think) to determine which way the symp flipped (I'm sure i mentioned or posted it here at the time and think that it may have even been you who liked it ... but it was a while back so don't trust memories that much) ... but since I still hated playing the symp and there was a chance I'd be it I never used it in the end.

I don't remember trying those house rules back when I was playing a lot of BSG, but those fixes sound good. Will give them a try the next I play.

The pilot season and the first season of BSG were great. My only complaint was that Gaius Baltar was an idiot and his invisible friend became annoying. Second season was okay, just not as enjoyable as first season. Third season started okay, had some dubious episodes, then got ridiculously bad. I didn't bother watching season four, and from what I heard about it, I would have disliked it. What really killed the show for me was the Final Five, Kara becoming an angel, and the retcon of a Bob Dylan song into the distant past.

Shout out to Christian Marcussen for making the gold standard in expansions. MM Seas of Glory and CoC Civilizations were both fantastic additions despite neither being necessary.

They also fall into a category I'm generally QUITE wary of, the grab bag expansion model.