Friday Night Shots – Modular Expansions & Stories

It’s vacation time!

Today was my last day of work for 4 weeks, and wow has this been needed.

I’m hoping that my blog output will increase a bit this month as I have more mental capacity to actually write.

But we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, welcome back to the bar for another Friday night of talking about boardgames!

I will do my best not to fall asleep on you.

What? Oh, good. You’re still here. Sorry, must have nodded off.

Let me get you something to drink and let’s chat. Nobody else is here to interrupt.

Not sure how I stay in business, now that I think of it.

How about we talk about modular expansions and expansion stories?

After a few weeks of one of them, I need to get it off my chest!

There are two kinds of modular expansions that have become more prominent over the last few years: ones that just let you add individual components to the base game, and ones that introduce all of the components in a “campaign” style and then, when you’re done, you can just use everything.

Let me start with those, then.

I’ve been playing a lot of Oh My Goods (the Alexander Pfister classic multi-use card game) over the last little while.

When I first played it, for some reason it just didn’t click to me as far as how to play it well.

Then it did finally, and I do really enjoy it.

My friend ended up getting both expansions for it, and we decided to play through both of them.

Both expansions introduce the new cards and elements through a campaign story (Chapters 1-5 in the Longsdale in Revolt expansion and Chapters 6-11 in the Escape to Canyon Brook expansion).

Of course, you can just throw all the cards in, using the “all-in” setup instructions, and not even do the story.

That’s what you do once you’ve finished the story anyway, choose a random story card and just play that one along with a selection of the event cards.

Most of the story cards have an endgame condition, like pay 15 gold worth of certain types of goods or lose 7 points, so whichever story card is chosen, you would do that one.

Many people do just that, not even bothering with the story.

But the story is fun! And also gets you playing the game.

A lot. In a short period of time.

I enjoy Oh My Goods, but I’m ready to give it a break now. Eleven plays in two months.

I’m exhausted.

Another of my favourite games that also has had story expansions that introduce everything in a modular fashion is Space Base.

The first two major expansions (not counting the Dreadnaughts and Biodome card mini-expansions) were modular story ones.

The Emergence of Shy Pluto and The Mysteries of Terra Proxima both had a story that players had to get through, bringing new ships and colonies into the mix, along with some new rules.

The Space Base modules weren’t necessarily as fun, even though the stories were a bit shorter.

The reason for that is you had to satisfy certain conditions to advance the story, which didn’t always happen!

If you didn’t, then you had to play another game and try to meet the conditions this time.

In Oh My Goods, the story continued after each game, no matter what happened.

Space Base again allowed you to just throw everything together if you just wanted the new stuff without the story.

However, the new concepts introduced did actually benefit from not having to learn a bunch of new stuff at the same time, so I’m glad we went through the story.

Even though it was a bit more tedious.

The other difference between them is that the second Oh My Goods expansion did actually require the first expansion, at least a few cards.

Space Base, you could buy the second one without having the first one.

It did create a bit of a disconnect for those who did have both, though. The second expansion introduced rules that were also introduced in the first one, so you had to figure out what you already knew and what was actually new to you.

I remember a couple of times where this became confusing, though it was a year or two ago so I don’t remember exactly where (and it would be a spoiler for the story anyway).

Once you’ve completed the Space Base sagas, you can mix and match which modules you want to put in, especially some of the new board additions (no spoilers!) and fighter tokens (what they’re used for is a spoiler, but if you have the expansion, you already had to punch them out so you know that they’re there).

Then there are those expansions that just throw everything in, including the bathroom sink, and say “have at it! Play with what you want”.

The biggest game like that which I can think of is one where I haven’t actually played the expansions yet: Teotihuacan.

This is a game that I really do enjoy but haven’t actually played in forever and even though I have all of them, I haven’t played with any of the expansions.

Three expansions have been released for this game, along with a Deluxe Master Set that will hold everything with deluxe components.

The Shadow of Xitle expansion just adds some more technology tiles and new starting tiles.

That’s pretty easy to incorporate into the game.

The other two expansions, though, add a bunch of new stuff.

Late Preclassic Period adds a whole new temple!

It also adds asymmetrical player powers, because of course it does.

There are also some other additions which are pretty cool too.

The big one, though, is Expansion Period (I see what you did there!), which adds a ton of new modular content.

There’s the obsidian “wild” resource that is used in almost every other module.

There’s the new Mansion action board, Altars & Shamans, Expanding the Empire (with a new board), and an enhanced solo bot!

Add to this new Major Discoveries (more powerful Discovery tiles but harder to get), more different Mask tiles to make collecting masks actually lucrative, and a bunch more.

Is it bad to add every one of these modules to your game?

Yes, yes I think it is.

But I don’t know, as I haven’t played them yet.

I would think table space would be at a premium, though.

I hadn’t thought a lot about Teotihuacan recently, but now I think I need to play it again, with at least one of these modules!

Shadow Kingdoms of Valeria is another game with a couple of modular expansions, which again I haven’t played (at least much). I think I’ve played two modules of the expansion that came with the original Kickstarter, Rise of Titans.

I’ve had this game for a couple of years now, and still only managed to play two of the four modules, but they all seem pretty interesting.

This one adds Wraith dice, Ancient Spells, Great Battles, and Shrine of the Titans. All four of these modules are fairly small and easy to incorporate (though we didn’t dump all four at once into our one play, just Great Battles and Ancient Spells.

Then Daily Magic Kickstarted the Riftlands expansion, which adds a whole new crop of stuff.

This one includes asymmetrical player powers (because of course it does), relics, a new side board and new champions.

All of this can be integrated in a piecemeal fashion based on what you like, what you don’t like, and what you think other players can handle.

It’s a cornucopia of stuff!

I’m sure there are other modular expansions out there, but these are the four I’m most familiar with.

Do you like modular expansions, or do you prefer “all or nothing” expansions?

What about stories and sagas? Do you dump everything in or do you go through the story?

Let me know in the comments.