I don’t remember having pigs or horses, so most likely we didn’t play with it. Thanks, @yashima.
Then again, from the off, it is such a huge game that expansions sound… unnecessary?? It is good to know most people agree it does good for the game.
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Certainly when it was released the consensus from reviewers seemed to be “I quite liked the game before, but I want never to play without this expansion again”.
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This is not a „more content“ expansion but more of a balancing one I would say. Yes, there is a bit more content but as I said the changes to the actions (see top picture for 1-2 players) are the main thing.
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I don’t think the route is a “con”, but it’s probably a thing that sometimes it happens to work out and sometimes it doesn’t. I expect it is intended to be balanced so that choosing whether or not to do the route is an actual choice.
One would need to be much braver and cleverer than me to ignore it I think!
I talked about the Norwegians expansion over in the thread on board games made better by an expansion. Didn’t say much over there, so it’s basically what others have said here.
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Unfortunately it’s not that generous; you still need to take the hut-building action and spend the wood to build it before you can use it. Still quite good, but in multiplayer games it often falls down in priority for me because there are some other action spaces that it’s just too important not to miss out on.
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The streak is broken! I won a game of Memoir 44 to snap a sequence of 7 consecutive losses. My partner succeeded in sabotaging the Schwamenauel Dam but yielded Urft Dam and managed to kill only 1 additional unit. A 6-5 triumph for the allies!
The return leg… I mean, it was really close. Look, I know losing 6-1 looks bad, but I was really close to blowing up that dam. REALLY close. But yes, a new losing streak begins…
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My copy of the CE-Box of Architects of the West Kingdom arrived with the 2nd expansion „Works of Wonder“ and I took it out to play against the new Aristocrat AI… obviously because I had not played in a while I immediately jumped into a game with both expansions.
I am not entirely happy with these big boxes. The inserts are… fine. This one is better than the one for Paladins, at least somehow the number of „slots“ matches up with the types of resources, cards and player materials.
Also where is the orange signature color?
In any case here is the game set up and ready to play. The first expansion is the Age of Artisans: which contains a bit more stuff, a new Guildhall board with recessed worker spots, the artisanal „decorations / tools“ cards seen above the main board to the left and the big artisan worker that works exactly like these big workers work in every such game: they count twice! All in all Age of Artisans is quite intuititve. It didn‘t change the gameplay up a lot.
The second expansion is called „Works of Wonder“ and it adds a little bit more than just stuff. Yes, new apprentices and new buildings and even the wonders are more or less „just buildings“ but the Princess and the Profiteer change—while very intuitive—the priorities in the game a bit more. They are represented on the board by a black and a white meeples that are assigned to a location each that give you some bonusses when using that location.
Most of the changes are during the black market phase where the contributions to the wonders (made at the Princess‘ location) get evaluated and the people who pandered to the Profiteer get „punished“ Architects-style by going to prison (mostly)—but you may also gain influence and influence and tons of resources is what pays for the wonders. Everybody can contribute to a wonder by spending a resource at the Princess‘ location and gaining influence but only one person gets to build the building eventually and takes the card and places the figure on a location which from then on has bonus effects for that player.
And here is the board after a somewhat confusing game because first I couldn‘t find where the AI would contribute a resource if the one they wanted to contribute was already blocked. I assumed it would be the next one which was confirmed by Shem Philips on BGG about 3 minutes after I asked the question.
Then the AI ran out of workers… because I couldn‘t find the rule for that which has been omitted in the updated AI (yes lots of AI updates are also in the 2nd expansion) and because my base game is in German the language switching between rulebooks helped me overlook that it states on page 7 of the Appendix that if the AI starts with no workers it recovers them.
So I kind of won the game but maybe not… too many mistakes. Running an AI and playing the game sometimes is a little too much. Playing 2 handed would have been easier.
Overall, I enjoy the expansions even if they turn this from a simple game into more of a sandbox where there is so much to do, if you try everything… nothing sticks.
Edit: And from all the spelling errors I deduce I should now go to sleep.
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Love this. Not sure I’ll go in for another expansion simply because the current boxes are so right.
Re: the manual, these manuals are so bad. I wrote a massive post on the Viscounts forum over at the geek after I’d waded through all the confusions/errors/omissions so that future generations wouldn’t have the same struggles. Paladins was also spotty. Architects used to be ok, but I guess not anymore. Are they getting worse rather than better?
So glad Shem remains active in the forums but I would think by now he’d have learned to enforce a better manual for his games…
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Some of the confusion was due to me not having played in a while especially not against AI and jumping straight into a game with both expansions and the new AI. There is an omission with the rules for new AI that is in the base game… and some things have to be inferred from surrounding information. I was dealing with 4 booklets im 2 languages and it was late and I learn by doing rather than studying… sadly a consolidated rulebook is not in the new box. So some of it was in me but I would say the rules for the AI could be better. BGG forums were very helpful though.
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More Railways of the World! This time with the Portugal map, which proved to be very tight and compact, but since the map is very small, money is very easy to save and spend, as the distance between cities is like 1 or 2 hexes away from one.
CuBirds
Felicity: the Cat in the Sack - pretty good and fun party game from Friese. Each player puts a card and you’re bidding on the total sum of all the contributions (some of them are minus cards or take-that cards). Everyone bids to stay like For Sale, and whenever someone pass, a card is revealed. Very good!
18West - Wyvern enjoyed this one more than I did. It’s not my style when I am becoming biased towards 1844: Switzerland, 1846: Race to the Midwest, or 18New England. But I reserve the right to change my mind once we learn how to weaponise those “protected shares”, which I am not a fan, at the moment.
Mare Nostrum: Empires - Always love Eurotrash, whether it came from Eurovision or from board games. It doesn’t drag too long, but I felt that the map staying a bit static wasn’t a good look for me.
Ethnos - I remember years ago that I was unimpressed with Ethnos (in comparison to other area majority games like Web of Power) due to how the game always devolves to auto-pilot gameplay. The reason why the game whips around so fast half of the time is because players aren’t really thinking about the next move during those time, because there’s no alternative moves to make.
Well, the problem persists. But I am appreciating the other side of Ethnos - the choice between making sets and struggling for area majority. To be efficient, you have to choose one or the other when making a set. I never appreciate this bit fully until now.
Mykerinos - Way better than I expected. Tight decision all over. This is one of the stronger old school games I’ve played this year.
Scout
Magellan: Elcano - decent auction game. Most of the cards have two values: each has a different suit. You can only bid on items with the matching suit (e.g. blue on blue). So you’re weakening yourself on one suit if you bid on one suit. A game from Michael Schacht that is easily like a Knizia. It was just fine.
Favour of the Pharaoh - Shocker! I like this Lehman dice-chucker more than any dice-chucker that Knizia has design
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest - the owner set up the basic variant, so it was the nicey-nice version of Libertalia. It was boring. The reputation track was rather useless other than a tie-breaking mechanism. And with the new rules where you can carry over 2 crew members, rather than one, was an unnecessary decrease of tension. Will want to play the mean variant, but so far, I wasn’t wowed with the new Libertalia. I like that it’s more colourful though.
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Hoped for last week-end,canceled, moved, almost canceled, then canceled and re-instated game night with our boardgame friends (the ones that always buy the same games I do—this goes as far back as Princes of Florence btw)—well, father and son anyway.
Yay! Playing games with more than 2 people offline! So rare. Hopefully, less and less so.
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So we tried a round of Ghosts of Christmas. Wow—this is a hard teach. Just play one round openly to get them to understand the trick taking. Then hand out fresh cards and tell them they have to guess (aka bid) how many tricks they will take over the full 12 tricks. I think I could play this a few times if there was more time. As it was I like trick taking just fine but I wanted to get to the „real games“. Ghosts is definitely going to stay, if only so I can confuse the hell out of people who think they know trick taking (which everyone here does).
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Space Base. They already knew Machi Koro, so the teach here was easy. The son skipped out to go walk the dog with neighbor‘s daughter who mysteriously appeared at our door… however he came back after we had played around 7 rounds and we just gave him 7 random cards for his display and „phased him in“. I love the game. We have some pieces of the 1st expansion in the game now so there are some fun new play things like the cards with the clear dice for private rolls. For the longest time it looked like our friend who had grabbed the double-arrow on the 9 slot early was winning. But somehow I had steadily been gaining on him and then some luck came my way and I had two consecutive high rolls that allowed me to gain 7 VP total from my own roll. I bought a few VP cards and on the very last die roll of the game, gained 2 VP which put me at 45 to his 44. My partner who had hoped for 2nd place is still miffed about it… however… we then played
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Terraforming Mars Ares Expedition my first 4 player of this. They all knew „the real game“ (a family favorite) and RftG and so the teach was: „you know how this works, lets play!“ —not quite but almost. Still the first turns were a bit slow… and we all struggled to get a good engine running. Somehow, very quietly, my partner managed to cobble together a bunch of cards that played really nicely off each other: allowing him to draw more, value cards higher, play cards cheaper and at the end when temperature was the last gauge being filled said „so I raise temperature 7 times which gains me TM and an additional VP every time“—despite that he came in next to last place… which would have been terrible if not for the rest of us sharing 2nd place. (He was at 31 and the three of us at 24).
It was so wonderful to just play a few of my games and tomorrow I get to take a look at my new arrivals. Probably Hex-Azul first and then the Dune:IX expansion—I hear this is one that belongs on the „do not want to play without it again“ pile, if only because it adds cards to the too thin deck of Dune:Imp (really my only complaint about the base game).
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A clean sweep for me at a recent games night. A two player Great Western Trail, first time using the B side buildings. A fast paced, snappy game ended 87 to 54 in my favour. Managed to adapt pretty quickly form a cowboy heavy strategy to station masters when no more cowboys appeared till the last few rounds.
Next up, Viticulture with the tuscany expansion. This was a 3 player game I wasn’t involved in until the host had to leave to get dinner ready. I took over form him with a 10 point lead. I couldn’t work out what his strategy was looking at his board, so had to dismantle his engine and put something I could work with together. Squeak out a win by 5 points.
Finished up with a 4 player game of Wingspan. Hadn’t played it with 4 before, but it moves along at such a speed I’d happily play it at 4 or 5 regularly. A close game, but won 79, 77, 77, 71.
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My partner and I got to break out my newly arrived KS Merchants of the Dark Road.
As is typical for Kickstarters, the production value is through the roof. Gorgeous pieces, big chunky metal coins, and fantastic art direction.
The manual… is bad. Not awful, but a lot of things that should be clearly explained are not. Let’s take a petty example: the dice in the game are 6 sided dice with the following faces: 1 star, 2 stars, 3 stars, 4 stars, blank, and 1 hollow star.
What is the hollow star for? Is it value 1? Or 6? Or 5? Perhaps -1? Nowhere in the book is this described (or if it is, I couldn’t find it).
We had fun, though, and the endgame was pretty close… 42 for her to my 39. We have… concerns… about the Deed Cards, but a quick glance at BGG shows we are not alone there.
The game uses two independent “point” systems: money, and prestige. At the end of the game, whichever is your lowest is your Victory Points, and then you add Victory Point bonuses to that value. That’s fine… but the problem is that a lot of cards give you “+3 Money or +3 Prestige”, or it may give you “+2 VP.” The first option (+3 Money or Prestige) is strictly better, since you add it to your totals before they become VPs. The VP-granting Deeds also seem harder? Which, again, nonsensical. What they should have done is made the Money/Prestige cards just one or the other, not a choice.
Anyway. Cautiously optimistic about this one. I like “Lost Ruins of Arnak” better, Andy likes this one better thus far. We will see!
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I got curious so I looked it up. It’s a 1 and the only reason it is hollow is because they needed 6 different faces on the dice for this, whatever this is. I don’t have the game. I just got curious.
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Thank you for saving me doing it. 
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That, whatever that is, is located in the middle of each of the carts for each player. What does it do?
I have no idea! It’s never explained. It is also worse than nothing, because the way it shows them makes it look like a logical progression from smallest to largest… why not put the “hollow star” next to the regular 1-star if they’re both ones?
And why is that list there at all? It certainly makes an implication that there is a relationship between the various goods and the dice, but over our playthrough we never had to refer to it.
Like I said, a good game, but yeah. If I hadn’t given up on KSers before this point, I absolutely would at this point. Just some really silly design decisions coupled to an awful rulebook. I can think of maybe 3 KSers that weren’t rules disasters before helpful BGG people usually step up to fix them.
War of Whispers was/is great. Xia/Sheea/Zia was/is great. There’s probably one or two more. But gosh, there are so many where the rulebook alone is enough to want to set the game on fire, whether the game is great or not (Gloomhaven, I’m looking at you)
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It appears to be the crafting chart needed here during planning to determine what good to take? From my skim of the rule book, I’m definitely agreeing with you it’s all more convoluted than it needs to be - badly worded, things mentioned on one page then explained pages later or in an image but not in the text, etc.
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Ah. Chalk that up to the bad rulebook and some reading incomprehension: “value” meant us both think that you used the “value” of the god in the Grand Bazaar (so if you put a “1” die, you could take either of the “1” cost goods from the bazaar).
This way makes more sense… I don’t know how much it would change, but it does let you plan a little better.
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