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Talking about Gaming the Irish Way!

Aug 21, 2019

Episode 554


This week's hosts: Liam, Séan and Shane


This week the party sit down to talk about board game expansions. When is it time to burst that base box with a boatload of bonus bits? When is the bucket of baubles just burgeoning bloat? What makes a good expansion and what should have been left on the cutting room floor? Stay tuned to find out!  

Show notes:


03:00 - Expansions that exist at the time of the original's release has another name - Cut content.

06:35 - Cities & Knights of Catan - Arguably kicked off the current thirst for expansions.

11:00 - Splendor - Expansions that don't work together but change the flavour of the base game. Neat!

12:55 - HARDCORE!!! There is no help. Buy more shelves.

13:45 - Collectible Boardgames? CBG? Re-enforce those shelves.

15:15 - Munchkin is expanding at a rate faster than current quantum theory can account for.

16:30 - The sharper operators are going to start selling you the box 2.0. Adding more (laser-cut)board to boardgames.

18:50 - Disk vs Pad brakes. The Adventuring Party - Bringing you the hottest takes on bike set-up.

19:30 - Escape the Dark Castle - A cautionary tale from the Kickstarter krowd.

22:10 - Expansions in the base box. ಠ⌣ಠ

25:25 - When is an expansion not an expansion?

28:25 - The Expand-Alones. A rag-tag collection of spin-offs on a mission to sell you something roughly like that thing you like.

31:30 - Small Worlds - When the reskin eclipses the original. Adding skellingtons and wizards was always going to be a winning move.

33:45 - When to pump the expansion pedal and when to run the base game tank dry.

34:45 - Should some games even have expansions? Is 'fixing' a game worth grabbing the expansion?

35:20 - Memoir '44 - The game that expanded and Expand-Aloned AND basically spawned a genre. Zero chill.

36:30 - Time Stories - A game that needs to be refueled with expansions after each mission to warrant another play. Hmm...

Bonus Content - As promised, Liam's long-serving Cities & Knights box

She canne' hold Captain!

If you have a favourite board game expansion and want to share it then send an email to party@theadventuringparty.net 

You can leave comments below or on twitter through @adventuringpty 


The hosts can be contacted by email at party@theadventuringparty.net 


The Adventuring Party is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike version 3 licence