Review: Expeditions

Introduction & Overview

The eyes of the world are on Siberia, where a massive meteorite crashed near the Tunguska River, reawakening ancient corruption. An expedition led by Dr. Tarkovsky ventured into the taiga to uncover more about the meteorite and its impact on the land. Eager for adventure, heroes from the war privately fund their own Expeditions to Siberia in hopes of finding artifacts, conquering challenges, and ultimately achieving glory.

This is the premise of Expeditions, designed by Jamey Stegmaier (Scythe, Viticulture). First published in 2023 by Stonemaier Games in English, with art provided by Jakub Rozalski (Hero Brigade, Scythe).

It is published in Spanish by Maldito Games (the game is language-dependent beyond the rulebook). It accommodates 1 to 5 players, with a recommended minimum age of 14 and an approximate playing time of 60 to 90 minutes. The MSRP is €75. For this review, a copy of the Spanish edition from Maldito Games was used, kindly provided by the publisher as a review copy.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 36.5 × 30 × 9.8 cm (a large rectangular box identical in size to Scythe), we find the following items:

• Base Camp Board (cardboard)
• 5 Mech Mats (cardboard)
• 20 Location Tiles (cardboard)
• 5 Mech Miniatures (plastic)
• 5 Base Snaps (plastic)
• 50 Workers (10 of each color) (wooden)
• 133 Cards (63 × 88 mm):
  • 12 Starting Cards
  • 25 Item Cards
  • 25 Meteorite Cards
  • 40 Quest Cards
  • 10 Player Aids
  • 14 Automa Decision Cards
  • 5 Automa Progress Cards
  • Automa Glory Card
  • Automa Player Aid Card
• 5 Action Tokens (wooden)
• 5 Power Tokens (wooden)
• 5 Guile Tokens (wooden)
• 20 Glory Tokens (4 of each color) (wooden)
• 24 Map Tokens (cardboard)
• 37 Corruption Tiles (wooden)
• Corruption Bag (cloth)
• 80 Coins
• Achievement Sheet (cardstock)
• Rulebook
• Automa Rulebook

How to Play

Expeditions is a card-driven game in which players attempt to accumulate the most victory points by playing cards. Each participant begins the match with two cards: their character and their animal companion. These cards are arranged flanking a personal player mat (to the left is the player’s hand, and they shift to the right once played). Each card displays one of the game’s two resources (power or guile) in the top-left corner, featuring additional income once one or two glory stars have been placed, alongside an effect at the bottom that typically requires assigning a worker of the matching color. Some of these cards can be tucked under the mat (quests require solving at a specific tile, items can be tucked to trigger their ongoing abilities, and meteorites can be melded to immediately trigger their scoring condition as well as those of previously melded meteorites). On each turn, the player must slide a cube to one of the three available action spaces (Move, Gather, and Play) and resolve the two actions that remain uncovered (alternatively, they may Refresh to later resolve all three). Moving allows a player to traverse a board composed of hexagonal tiles offering various benefits; gathering allows them to reap the benefits printed on their current tile; playing lets them activate a card from their hand. As players reveal new tiles, corruption tiles will be placed on them, which, once cleared, unlock advanced actions on those tiles. One such action is Boast, which allows players to place glory tokens on available milestones. The game ends when a player places their fourth glory star. At end-game scoring, players earn points for completed milestones based on the number of completed quests, for items tucked under their board, and for the coins accumulated during the game.

Key Concepts

Let us start with the Location Tiles, which will make up the game board by being laid out in rows, leaving specific slots that serve as market card slots. Each location tile features a representative number and an action on its lower section. Tiles are divided into three tiers, with the second- and third-tier tiles initially having one of their actions blocked by corruption tiles (indicating the minimum corruption value that must be drawn for that spot).

These Corruption Tiles come in two colors corresponding to the resource required to vanquish them, displaying values ranging from 3 to 5. They also provide victory points at the end of the game.

Many of these tiles start face down, bearing a Map Token on top. Players can explore these tiles to reveal the location and make its action accessible. Amassing these map tokens is one of the milestones available during the game.

To traverse these location tiles, each player commands a Mech. Each location can only hold a single mech at any given time; while mechs may move through occupied spaces, they must end their movement on an unoccupied location.

Paired with their mech, each player receives a Mech Mat featuring a unique ongoing ability. On the left edge sits a track with spaces numbered 0 to 10 where two markers advance: one for power and one for guile. These resources are primarily needed to solve quests and vanquish corruption. Along the sides, different types of cards will be tucked. In the upper-right section, we find the turn-track spaces across which the action marker moves.

This Action Marker dictates which actions may be resolved each turn. The cube can rest on one of the three action spaces, unlocking the other two; on the refresh space (which allows players to retrieve cards and workers); or on the starting setup spot, which allows resolving all three actions.

Cards form the central core of the game. They come in three varieties: quests (marked by a heart icon, showing the cost to complete the quest along with the target location in the upper-left corner, followed by the reward), items (which can be upgraded for permanent effects), and meteorites (which feature scoring criteria along their edge). Regardless of the type, all cards feature an ability stripe activated by placing a matching-colored worker (the worker’s color dictates the card frame color), and the upper-left corner displays the resource income (power and/or guile). Tucking four of each card type corresponds to three of the game’s available milestones.

Each player starts the game with two Starting Cards: a character and their companion animal. These cards grant two distinct abilities in addition to solving quests and vanquishing corruption. They begin on the left side of the mat, representing the player’s hand, and shift to the active area on the right when played.

Players can recruit Workers, available in five colors. Workers are used to activate card abilities. They sit on the played cards and are reclaimed only when those cards return to hand. Gathering a specific number of workers represents another milestone.

Positioned below the location tiles is the Base Camp Board, which displays the milestones achievable during the game, serves as the starting spot for the mechs, and details end-game scoring values.

Every player has a set of Glory Tokens used to claim these milestones. At the end of the match, each placed glory token awards victory points based on the number of completed quests.

Throughout the game, players can earn Coins by executing various actions. These coins directly translate to victory points at the end of the game. The primary engine for acquiring coins is melding meteorites.

That is enough to get started.

Preparación de la Partida

1. Place the Base Camp board in the center of the table.
2. Sort the location tiles by their three tiers. Shuffle each tier separately and lay them out as shown in the diagram, leaving five empty slots. Only reveal the tier-one tiles.
3. Shuffle the card deck and set it to the side. Reveal the top 5 cards and place them into the 5 open card slots within the board layout.
4. Form a general supply with the workers, coins, and map tokens.
5. Place a map token onto each face-down location tile.
6. Set aside the 20-value corruption tile.
7. Place all remaining corruption tiles into the cloth bag.
8. Each player chooses a color and receives 4 glory tokens, a base snap, and an action cube.
9. Each player chooses a mech (attaching their base snap and placing it on the starting zone of the Base Camp board) and its corresponding mat along with the power and guile tokens (placed on their starting values), placing the action cube on the Refresh space.
10. Each player takes a matching numbered pair of starting cards and places them to the left of their personal mat.
11. Randomly choose the starting player.

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Expeditions unfolds over an indeterminate number of turns, starting with the first player and continuing clockwise.

On each turn, a player must move their action cube to a different space than the one it occupied at the start of the turn. Next, they execute the actions that remain uncovered (on the very first turn or immediately after a Refresh turn, all three actions may be resolved) in whatever order they prefer, fully completing one action before proceeding to the next.

The available actions are:

• Move. The player moves their mech up to 3 locations away. They may traverse occupied locations, but must finish their move on an unoccupied location. If they move onto an unexplored location, their movement ends immediately; they collect the map token, flip the tile face up, and draw corruption tiles from the bag one by one onto the advanced action space until the sum equals or exceeds the printed threshold.
• Play Card. The player chooses a card from their hand and moves it to the active zone. They gain the depicted resources and may optionally place an available worker of the matching color to trigger the card’s ability. The order in which resources are gathered and the ability is resolved is up to the player.
• Gather. The player activates their current location’s action. If the location provides two alternative options, they choose one. These options may include:
  • Gain Face-Up Cards: the player selects one of the cards available in the market slots and places it into their active card zone. Certain actions require gaining cards from adjacent slots.
  • Gain Face-Down Cards: the player draws the specified number of cards from the deck, adding one to their active card area and discarding the other if a choice is involved.
  • Sweep: the player discards any number of face-up market cards, immediately refilling them from the draw deck.
  • Gain Workers: the player takes the matching worker from the supply and adds it to their personal board.
  • Activate Adjacent Location: treated as resolving a Gather action on that neighboring tile.
  • Activate Adjacent Card Ability: treated as playing the adjacent card with a matching worker.
  • Play a Card from Hand: equivalent to resolving the standard Play action.
  • Refresh: the player returns all active cards to hand and reclaims all workers.
  • Vanquish Corruption: the player may vanquish 1 or more corruption tiles from their current location. Tiles must be cleared in order (top to bottom), paying resources matching each tile’s color equal to its numerical value (placing cleared tiles onto their mat). Clearing the final corruption tile permanently unlocks that location’s advanced gather action.
  • Rescue: the player returns a card from their active zone to hand (freeing up any assigned worker).
  • Upgrade: the player tucks an item card they control (from hand or active zone) under the top edge of their mat, granting its ongoing benefit from that moment onward.
  • Meld: the player tucks a meteorite they control (from hand or active zone) under the bottom edge of their mat. All tucked meteorites trigger their scoring effects, including the newly melded one.
  • Boast: the player places a glory token onto any completed milestone.

Alternatively, a player may choose to Refresh. They place their action cube on the Refresh slot and return all played cards and assigned workers to their pool.

After this, the turn passes to the player on the left.

Game End

The end of the game is triggered during the turn in which a player places their fourth glory star on the Base Camp board. Each player takes one final turn, finishing with the player who initiated the game end. Final scoring then commences, with players tallying:

• Coins accumulated during the game.
• Points printed on upgraded item cards.
• 5/6/8/10 points per glory token placed on the Base Camp board, depending on whether they solved 0/1/2/3+ quests.
• 2 points per corruption tile collected (including the 20-cost tile).

The player with the most victory points wins. In the event of a tie, the player who scored more points from glory stars (scaled by completed quests) breaks the tie. If the tie persists, victory is shared.

Variants

Solo Mode. The player faces an Automa engine that uses decision cards to govern how the action marker shifts, where the mech moves, and what actions it prioritizes, running on a uniquely structured board layout to ensure the mech follows a steady route.

Personal Opinion

Love him or hate him, Jamey Stegmaier is the undisputed king of building hype around his releases. A marketing maestro capable of generating intense anticipation for Stonemaier titles without revealing all that much upfront, pacing information with surgical precision. Still, setting expectations that high can be a double-edged sword, as meeting such towering hype is nearly impossible.

Now, Jamey doubles down by delivering a spin-off to what is, in my eyes, his finest design to date: Scythe (the only title of his that still holds a spot in my collection). Naturally, once you see Jakub Rozalski’s evocative artwork, the lavish components, that hefty box, and those chunky plastic mechs, it is easy to take the bait. Let us dig into what Expeditions actually brings to the table, but not before thanking Maldito Games for providing the review copy that makes this lengthy write-up possible.

In Expeditions, the sprawling factions take a back seat. Instead, we step into the boots of one of six characters paired with their loyal animal companion, tasked with probing the meteorite strikes in Siberia. We navigate our mech across a grid of interlocking hexagonal tiles (arranged with intentional gaps). These locations allow us to resolve an assortment of actions.

Alongside this movement, players manage a hand of cards that initially consists only of their character and companion. These cards generate resources and activate abilities, though doing so requires recruiting workers of matching colors beforehand.

The overarching goal is to maximize victory points before the curtain falls. There are three primary avenues to achieve this. The first is tucking cards around your personal mat. The cards acquired throughout the game fall into three distinct types: quests (which supercharge your glory stars), items (which grant passive ongoing effects without needing to be played), and meteorites (which establish scoring conditions that re-trigger every time a new meteorite is melded).

The second path is clearing corruption. At the start of the game, only a small subset of the board is accessible, leaving the rest to be discovered through exploration. Revealing these tiles covers their powerful actions (which typically allow tucking cards) with corruption tiles that players must clear using the required resources. Doing so not only unlocks the space once the final tile is cleared (often from a stack), but also banks dependable end-game points, as every tile is worth a flat amount of victory points regardless of its face value.

The third pillar revolves around the milestones, which are undeniably the game’s most recognizable nod to Scythe. Players race to achieve specific goals to lock down glory stars. While they are not awarded immediately upon fulfillment here—requiring an explicit Boast action on cleared tiles—the underlying race dynamic remains unchanged, serving as the definitive end-game trigger.

These milestones cover every core facet of play: collecting cards, tucking cards (with a milestone dedicated to each card type), accumulating maps or workers, and clearing a set amount of corruption from the board.

Another design bridge to Scythe is the action-selection mechanism: both games rely on shifting a marker away from its previous position to cycle through different options each turn. Here, the clever twist is moving your cube onto the single action you wish to forego, freeing you to resolve the remaining two in whatever order you prefer, with the option to take a Refresh turn to unleash all three on the following round.

One might wonder: why throw away a turn resolving nothing just to get three actions next round, when taking two actions now and two later yields four total? Because Expeditions, despite borrowing thematic and visual trappings from Scythe, mechanically aligns far closer to hand-management titles like Concordia (read the tocho-review here) or Lewis & Clark (read the tocho-review here), where resting is an inevitable tax to pick up your spent hand of cards.

This mechanical divergence overshadows any superficial similarities to Scythe, proving to be a double-edged sword. It pulls the game away from area control and engine building toward card-driven hand management rather than a pseudo-4X. Consequently, anyone coming in expecting the strategic grit of Scythe might walk away thoroughly underwhelmed.

Indeed, early plays are likely to produce mixed feelings. It is essential to recognize from the outset that Expeditions is fundamentally a card game. The Base Camp board drives this point home: out of seven available milestones, four directly revolve around card management (one requires amassing active cards, while three require tucking sets of four across each card category).

Furthermore—and this is my primary grievance with the game—these milestones serve as an overly prescriptive roadmap. Matches follow a fairly predictable arc split into two distinct stages. The opening stage centers on building up your capabilities by gathering cards of various types for their raw abilities. Accomplishing this demands drafting enough workers to reliably activate those cards when played.

How many cards and workers should you aim for? The milestones make it abundantly clear: at least eight cards (factoring in your two permanent starters) and at least five workers (though map tokens can substitute for this goal). Neglecting these two initial milestones usually leaves you lagging behind in final scoring, because the subsequent four rely heavily on sustaining a robust hand that lets you string together consecutive turns without being forced to Refresh.

Once those first two milestones are locked down, the match transitions into its second phase: a mad dash to claim two additional stars while squeezing maximum point yield out of tucked cards. Once again, the game telegraphs this pivot through starting card yields. Initially, these cards grant a modest single resource; the moment one or two stars are placed, their output jumps considerably, signaling that it is time to hit the gas.

It is worth pausing here, because the game’s termination trigger inherits the exact same pitfall seen in Scythe: game length and pacing rest entirely in the players’ hands. In a card game, this freedom can easily backfire. Unexperienced groups may fall into a sluggish rut where nobody pushes the pace, burning low-impact turns and dragging the experience out until it feels tedious. Thankfully, this pacing issue fades once everyone grasps the tempo.

Returning to the cards, meteorites are easily the most compelling type in the deck. Each presents a unique scoring metric worth optimizing right away, because every tucked meteorite re-evaluates across the entire row whenever a new one is melded, much like the building scoring in Deus (read the tocho-review here).

Claiming a meteorite shapes your movement across the board, nudging you toward the elements that feed its scoring condition. This is easily one of the game’s strongest aspects, forcing players to carefully time their turns. Because it remains an outright race, it introduces genuine tension; at any moment, a competitor could drop their fourth star and trigger the final round before you are ready.

Conversely, items proved to be the hardest category to leverage effectively. While they offer handy perks, tucking an item essentially just saves you the action of playing it, sometimes sacrificing a potent worker-activated ability in the trade-off. It can serve as a decent fallback when workers are scarce, but it rarely feels as lucrative as melding meteorites or solving quests.

Quests, meanwhile, are not only appealing for their resource-conversion rates, but also significantly inflate the point value of your placed glory stars. Players will naturally gravitate toward quests and meteorites to secure those final two milestones, leaning on corruption as a viable alternative that secures points and immediately grants access to freshly uncovered actions if you wipe out the final token.

Ultimately, Expeditions crystallizes into a hand-management card game that, despite feeling somewhat on rails, remains consistently entertaining thanks to varied card abilities and board topology. In fact, it delivers a genuine sense of exploration that Scythe notably lacked.

Like any true card game, player interaction is mostly confined to drafting cards from the market and incidental blocking when a mech camps on a vital hex. Consequently, the game shines brightest at two players, where turns flow briskly with minimal downtime. Introducing additional players clogs the turn order and drags out the overall experience, even if a busier board makes movement slightly more competitive.

Replayability holds up reasonably well. The core loop is straightforward, and the strategic patterns are obvious, but the card deck is generous and chaining together clever combos feels satisfying. Pairing different mechs with asymmetrical characters and companions also nudges players down distinct paths. If a character specializes in recruiting red workers, you will naturally hunt for cards activated by red workers. While somewhat restrictive, it works well enough for a game that wraps up in under an hour at two players when played at a healthy clip.

Turning to production, this might just be the game’s true Achilles’ heel. Not because component quality is lacking—quite the contrary. The cards are outstanding (as expected from Stonemaier Games), boasting substantial cardstock, a delightful linen finish, and excellent snap (sleeving is recommended, though they are quite durable). The mech miniatures are imaginative and sharply detailed. The wooden components feature solid density and clean paint, while the cardboard tokens are thick and punch out effortlessly. It all comes housed in an oversized box (matching Scythe’s dimensions) with an insert designed to accommodate future expansions. The rulebook is logically organized and leaves little ambiguity.

The core dilemma is having such an opulent production wrapped around what is fundamentally a card game. Comparing it loosely to something like Dale of Merchants (read the tocho-review here)—another deck-building design where cards are retired from your hand to score—one comes in a portable tuckbox, while the other claims the shelf footprint of Scythe. Component-wise, the price tag aligns with modern manufacturing realities, but buyers will inevitably weigh it against more affordable games delivering comparable mechanical depth. Despite being a solid design, this contrast might keep it from finding a wider audience.

And let’s wrap this up. Expeditions is a spin-off set in the evocative world of Scythe. It transposes recognizable hallmarks from Jamey Stegmaier’s crown jewel into a snappy, combo-friendly card game. Its biggest shortcoming is an overtly predictable arc split into two phases: gathering cards and workers early on, then pivoting into a race to drop stars and maximize scores. Fortunately, this predictability does not ruin the fun once you embrace the game for what it is and leave Scythe’s baggage behind. That second half delivers sharp tension, leaving you wishing for just one more turn to execute that crucial play before someone slams the door shut. Provided players avoid overthinking and keep the game moving briskly, it leaves a very pleasant taste. For all these reasons, I rate it a…