Solotober - I play Expeditions!

The Scythe sequel has much easier solo rules!

Hello friends. In the last newsletter, Expeditions won the popular vote. You can vote for the next game I play by voting in the poll at the bottom of the article.

Today’s solo adventure?

Expeditions by Jamey Stegmaier (Solo by Morten Monrad Pedersen) and published by Stonemaier Games.

This is a big box game. It’s the first game I’ve owned that came in a box like this. (I bought Scythe after and it’s also just as big!)

In Expeditions (solo) the player is tasked with traversing across a snowy landscape in your giant mech solving quests and melding alien meteorites to your mech so you can boast about it to earn glory. You have competition however, as 2 other teams explore the area as well. Whoever returns home with the most money wins.

Before I get too far into this, I think it’s important to point out that Expeditions is advertised as a Scythe sequel. (And it is) People may expect different things out of a ‘sequel’. This continues the story/theme found in Scythe. Elements of the game are very similar, the end game trigger (by collecting glory stars), most money wins, the artwork, the mechs, the icons, the encounter tokens, and the similar top and bottom action options motif. But rather than more Scythe, Expeditions is more like an evolution on elements in Scythe with a new game experience.

The best comparison I can think of at the moment is the difference between the 2 animated Teen Titan shows. The first one is grittier, darker, nostalgic. The new one is friendlier to more audiences, easier to digest, though different, it’s still Teen Titans. (It’s not a 1:1 comparison, but that feeling of folks wanting more of the past is defiantly present with the Scythe fans wanting to play Expeditions, coming with an expectation, and walking away disappointed. )

But I played Expeditions first. So you’re not going to find that nostalgic disappointment with this playthrough. Ok back to the show!

SETUP:

Setup is very straight forward. (You’ll need a big table, my coffee table barely had room) Select 1 of the 6 player/companion paired cards. (This is your starting hand) Randomly select a mech mat. Find the mech that matches and place your color of choice on its base. Lay out the massive hex tiles as shown on the scoring mat. Fill each hex with an exploration token and fill the gaps with cards from the deck. (There’s only 1 deck, shuffle and set aside) All of this is just like the multiplayer setup.

The difference for solo, is that you’ll place 2 random mechs on the board. (I recommend reserving blue for the top and black for the central rows) One mech only travels on the north tiles. The other only travels on the central tiles. The north mech only moves east. The central mech only moves west. (So face them in the right direction!) This is the AI for the game. She doesn’t need a mat, but she does need 8 star tokens and a cube.

There’s a small solo deck of cards. Place the cube on the action tracker card, place the 8 stars on the glory tracker card, keep the reference card available, shuffle the solo deck and discard 2 cards. That’s it! (I love the AI in this one.)

GAMEPLAY:

Expeditions is played until a player manages to place enough stars on the glory track. (4 for you, 8 for the Ai) You’ll alternate taking turns with the AI. On your turn you’ll use the very simple action tracker on your mat to determine what actions you can take on your turn. You can move your mech, you can play a card from your hand, or you gather the resource from the tile you’re on. Occasionally you’ll have to take a ‘refresh’ turn which resets your hand and workers.

At the beginning of your turn, you’ll move your little cube on top of one of these actions. The ones that you can see are your options. This little mechanic is what drives a lot of the puzzle of this game. Working around this to be efficient is most of the fun (to me). In fact, in this game play, I miscalculated my last turn. I needed to move and gather, but I chose wrong a few turns before and lost the chance to place my last glory star and earning another $10! (which is huge in this game)

Move -

This action lets you move your mech up to 3 hex tiles. At the beginning of the game the top half of the board is full of facedown tiles. You can’t walk through unexplored tiles, landing on one ends your movement. Each unexplored tile has an encounter token, you’ll take that and flip the tile. (If you get 7 encounter tokens you can boast about it later in the game and earn a glory star) When you flip a tile, one of the resources gets covered up in ‘corruption’ tiles. You’ll have to spend other resources (power & guile) to remove the corruption. (Collect 7 corruption tiles and boast about it to earn a glory star)

Play -

This action lets you play a card from your hand into the ‘active row’. (some cards refer to the cards to their left or right, so the order matters) Cards give you 2 actions, the top one is gaining a power or guile resource. The bottom one requires the right color worker. If you have the right worker, you can do things like ‘vanquish’ corruption tiles, ‘meld’ meteorite cards, ‘solve’ quest cards, and ‘upgrade’ item cards among a number of other actions.

Meld, Solve, and Upgrade allow you to take cards you control (in your hand or in your active row) and place them under your mat. These earn you bonus resources, extra points at the end of the game, and ongoing effects in some cases.

Gather -

This action lets you gather the resources on the tile you’re on. The better options are usually covered by corruption tiles. Once you work your way through those, you can do things like meld, upgrade, and boast. (Unlike Scythe, when you’ve accomplished a goal, like having 7 encounter tokens, you don’t automatically earn the glory star, you need to boast about it) These options are limited and if you’re not in the right spots or another mech has blocked that tile, you can be in some serious trouble!

You’ll spend each turn trying to maximize everything you have to claim glory.

However there are 2 other teams exploring the region. (They act as one player)

On the AI’s turn, you’ll simply flip over a card from their action deck. It tells you if their cube moves on their action tracker. (This earns them stars) It also tells you the actions of the north and central mechs. If they’ve earned so many stars they get to do actions like taking corruption tiles and flipping over tiles. Otherwise they just move across the tiles. You can’t land on tiles they’re on, so this blocks you from important resources!

And that’s the game!

My Thoughts:

It took me 60 minutes to play this game. I did my best to maximize my turns and got really lucky with the cards that end up on the field. (There’s a card in the game that let’s you boast without being on that particular tile, if you see this you should go for it as soon as you can!) It came up but the AI managed to sweep it away before I could get to it.

I did manage to win with 94 points! The AI scored 59 points. It earned most of it’s points from the stars it accumulated. Because it earned all 8 of its stars it earned 32 points! It did most of the discovering and vanquishing of the corruption tiles that showed up. It earned points for those as well. But I really got lucky and managed to meld and upgrade 4 cards each. Melding earned me $29. I was also able to solve 3 quests. Solving quests acts as a multiplier for the stars you earn. Solving 3 gets you 10 points for every star you placed (I placed 3 stars, so earned $30).

Overall I really like Expeditions. It’s a great solo experience. It’s a fun challenge with a simple AI to control. I’ve played it at 2 players and at 5 players as well. The 2 player game was great, we had a lot of fun. The 5 player game felt really long (took us 3 hours+ to play). It ends when someone manages to get 4 stars and that can get really hard if folks can’t solve, meld, upgrade easily. What’s great about the solo game is the game ends when you want it to or not. In my playthrough, the AI triggered the ending. I could have gone another 10 turns.

This game is too damn big. I’d love to see a ‘mini’ version someday. Every game is too big these days.

I think if you have a solid group of 3 players, this is a must play.

I paid $55 for Expeditions back in June 2023.

Have you played Expeditions? What did you think? Would love to hear from you in the comments or our discord: Atopia.