Plays: 6 Players: 1 – 2
Appearance
The front of the box is beautifully illustrated and lines up with the original box art. The back of the box shows all the components you get in the expansion along with some more artwork of the leaders. The cardboard tiles and cards match the quality of the base game and are marked with a small symbol in case you need to identify them for some reason. The new player boards are larger than the base game and are stored folded and due to this larger size you get great detailed artwork of each leader. The cards for each leader are very easily identifiable from one another with a picture of the leader in the top right corner. The additional components (new items and artifacts, sites and guardians) match the brilliant art style of the base game. The new temple board fits seamlessly on the original board. The expansion can be stored in the base game box easily thanks to its large box size. Overall, great quality components matching the base game.
Gameplay: New Mechanics
For a gameplay summary of the base game please see my previous review. The game comes with two main types of components, ones to increase variability and the expedition leaders themselves. New cards, assistants, sites, guardians and temples are simply shuffled into the base game components. The new item and artifact cards offer new abilities including flipping guardians for a different benefit or resetting them for their new abilities. Several artifacts offer different abilities depending if they are played from your hand (where you can exile it) or when bought giving them more flexibility. The two new temples have higher resource costs and are more balanced for use with the leaders. As well as different benefits, including removing a level one site from the game after activating it, they also offer very different things for your magnifying glass. The monkey temple offers you the chance to activate a face up 3 compass cost artifact when you move onto it with your journal moving on an adjacent track. The lizard temple has a guardian on the fourth row up which is revealed when a research token enters that space. No research markers can move past this row until this guardian is overcome. If any research markers are present on the guardian row at the end of the turn you receive a fear card for each similar to when your workers return from guardian guarded sites at the end of your turn. 336
You are now allowed to buy bronze and silver research tiles from 1 to 2 levels respectively below the final step of the temple.
Each of the six leaders plays very differently from one another with different starting cards, tokens and different idol benefits. Each leaders starting cards will be related to an area you should specialise in and 2 of the leaders will receive resource income at the start of each turn. The final 2/3 idol slots for each leader are marked blue will have a different benefit that is specific to that leader and you can now cover idol slots in any order you choose. The captain starts with 3 workers and has an additional worker placement spot on their board to activate the silver side of a specialist on the board. The falconer has an eagle token which advances at the start of every turn and you can flip a guardian face down ignoring its boon to advance the eagle. At any time you can return your eagle to activate the effect of the space it is present on or before. These include gaining resources or activating a level 1 or 2 site on the board. The baroness receives a money income each round and draws 4 cards at the start of each turn and adds the special delivery card to their hand. This special delivery card allows you to add a bought item directly to your hand by discarding it.
The professor has an income of compasses and tablets which can only be used for artifact activations. They start the game with 3 artifacts in their area which are only available for them to purchase. If they ever empty this area it refills and they gain a compass for future artifacts. The explorer only has one archaeologist figure and can move them from site to site by placing a snack token marking where they have been and that they cannot return there that turn. One snack is free and the other two cost either a money or compass with the compass snack available from round 3. Finally the mystic starts every round with an additional fear card to their 5 card hand. Their starting cards can either be used as usual or they can be exiled to perform a ritual. This means you return exiled fear cards (which are stored on your player board) for various benefits including resources, buying an artifact for a 3 compass discount or overcoming a guardian on a site you are present at.
Theme and Game Length
The base games theme really comes through and this is aided by the leaders in this expansion. They feel very thematic in how they work mechanistically with the captain being in charge of 3 workers and the explorer needing to eat food in order to keep visiting new sites. The average playtime of the game is slightly increased as you gain more actions and resources using these new leaders. The game however does not outstay its welcome. 629