Many board games, if not most, have some sort of "expansion" that comes out eventually. If the game was popular enough to make money for the publisher, it's almost a guarantee you'll see an expansion of some sort anymore. In theory, this is great for people who love the game -- an expansion is more options, more cool bits, more cards and strategies... and more is always better.
Right?
Well, of course not, but it's easy to get sucked into the excitement of new stuff coming out for a game you love. The other day, I was reading a review for an expansion to Eldritch Horror, a game I don't even own (nor do I have any intention of owning it), and I got that little feeling of "Oh, this sounds great." Maybe it's just sort of a generalized positive feeling that someone out there who loves that game are getting something that will expand and improve their experience. Maybe it's just a generic rush of brain chemicals when I see something new. It was a decidedly weird experience.
Don't get me wrong, I have some game expansions that I really love. They are core to the game, for me.
But it's easy to fall into a trap of buying an expansion that you neither want nor need, and this can happen for a variety of reasons. Maybe you are new to a game, and in the excitement of discovering new strategies and exploring the depth of the game, you find out about a set of new spell cards or enemy encounter tokens, and you just can't stand to be without them. Perhaps you own a game that you used to play all the time, but as the weeks and months pass, you find you are playing it less and less... but a new expansion has come out, and it might be the very injection of newness and excitement the game needs to go back to the top of your list.
I've fallen into those traps before, and recently I've been thinking more and more about the expansions I regret buying. Not because they destroyed the game, or made it boring, too complicated, or otherwise unplayable. It's just that I sometimes have added an expansion, and the addition has done the opposite of what I wanted.
When I first got Pandemic, I fell in love with it: a cooperative game with an easily accessible theme and a real sense of danger... and without fail, every time I have introduced someone to the game, they have finished and immediately asked to try it again. It was fantastic. So when I saw that there was an expansion that had come out, I leapt at the opportunity. Inside the box were more player roles (more than doubling the original game), a handful of ways to make the game more difficult, and even a one-vs-many variant, where a "bioterrorist" took over the role of one of the viruses.
But I didn't want Pandemic to be more difficult or less predictable. In it's base form, the game can be nearly impossible, even on the easiest setting. I really didn't care for the "one-vs-many" option, either. The cooperative nature of the game was one of the best selling points. In the end, I only really ever used the extra roles, and even those were a mixed bag.
Dominion has ended up similarly, although I realized its expansion problems years ago. The original game was ground-breaking, taking the "meta-game" concept of constructing a deck of cards by choosing the best distribution of the best combinations, and making it the game itself. Like Pandemic, it is a game that people always want to try a second time. It's fast and it's unlike anything they've seen. It's also a game with more expansions than anyone could imagine when it first was published.
We played Dominion dozens of times in a single sitting when we first got it. As time passed, we played less, our attention drawn to other games, but we still really liked the experience of building up the deck from an assortment of cards. So we bought Intrigue, the first expansion, and it gave a bump to our enjoyment. New cards! New strategies! New combinations! But it began a gradual slide down as well. So we bought Seaside, the second expansion... but the bump was less. And as the number of expansions grew, we found more and more that we could pass on, and less and less time to play the game. It just wasn't as much fun. We never got to see the old classics like "Chapel" or "Village," and more and more we had to deal with cards that were more complex and more difficult to use effectively. How many different kinds of "villages" do we need?
As I look through my collection, I realize that there are many other games that have suffered a similar fate. Race for the Galaxy was slowed, overburdened with awkward rules... Agricola was turned from a dense but fun system of interlocking parts into an impenetrable engine with free-spinning flywheels... The tactical options of Alien Frontiers were buried under a deluge of factions...
I love all of these games, and I want to re-emphasize that none of them are made into "bad games" by their expansions. But I find that I play them less now, in part due to the expansions themselves. For me, expansions work best when they simply add more of the same, and they work poorly when they try to add new, bumpy sub-systems and strategies to the smooth play of the original. So, I've begun the process of separating out the parts I don't like from the parts I do.
Race for the Galaxy is great with the new worlds and developments, but the chunky mess of rules for attacking an opponent's worlds are out. Dominion is perfect with its core and one expansion - probably Prosperity, because where Intrigue and Seaside actually add new rules to how the game works, Prosperity is in most cases "regular Dominion, but BIGGER." We're giving away our copy of Pandemic: On The Brink, just sticking to the core game from now on, and I'm weirdly excited to see it go.
I'm careful with expansion purchases now. I need to know what's in them, and if it's not what I'm looking for, if it's not "the same, but more," then I definitely won't get it... and even if it is, maybe I shouldn't! Mage Knight (the board game, not the minis) is fun, but I don't really think I need more artifacts and enemies... I barely have touched the ones I do have. 7 Wonders is fantastic, but the expansions throw off the meticulous balance of the core game and add entirely new phases and paths to victory. Who needs it?
To close, I want to quickly touch on a few games that I don't have any regrets in buying the expansions:
Small World - in this game, the players take the roles of a flood of fantasy civilizations, all trying to colonize a crowded map. These civilizations are made up of power, such as "Rampaging," and a race such as "Elves." It is only improved by the expansions that add new powers and races (Be Not Afraid, Grand Dames, and Cursed!). The base game had only just enough power/race combinations to cover what was needed, but the expansions add variety, surprise, and fun without changing anything about how the game is played. I recommend staying away from expansions such as Leaders, which try to add an extra concern during the game...
Sentinels of the Multiverse - Superheroes vs. supervillains! Every villain requires a different strategy, and different combinations of heroes provide that. So why not add more heroes? Why not add more villains? Why not add environments that can take a chump of a bad guy and turn him into a virtually unstoppable menace? With all of the different heroes, villains, and environments, there is so much to try that it is hard to get bored.
Summoner Wars - A game designed around factions beating the tar out of one another. There isn't any worthwhile deckbuilding to do (although some people might disagree), but there is a lot of depth and variety to the factions, and there is no faction that isn't worth trying. Each faction brings something new while shining a new light onto the old factions - this is a game that could expand forever, and never lose anything because of it.
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