War…war never changes…well…until it does. I’m very lucky to have a awesome wife who got me the New California expansion for my Birthday this week.
We’ve reviewed the base game here before and in a nutshell thought it was an excellent theme and great experience but with some odd scoring mechanics that undermined it a bit. You can go have a read of that review or if not, I’ll briefly explain the issue.
The advance of scoring tracker can essentially end the game prematurely and mid quest for players. The game does a good job of getting you into the world and it winding things down with no winners can be frustrating.
So that said, let’s get this vault opened up!
First thing that jumps out is new map tiles giving you California to knock about in, the art style and cardboard quality is the same high standard as the base game. You get 12 new tiles, some are new key locales and a couple of new vaults. As before it’s a mix of green, red and named locations. They are marked with a little cactus so you know which bits are from the expansion and that carries through to the other cards.
You get new shop items and loot decks, I’ve not had a proper delve yet but I look forward to finding out as I play what new wonders await.
The same is true with the quest cards – I’m sure it will be great fun encountering these and you get 66 more encounter cards, 32 quest cards and 9 special cards. I’m going to get into spoiler country on these 🙂
On to the minis then!
New characters all have nice Miniatures and new rules. There are 5 to add to your adventures. The caravan merchant makes me smile as this is a new game experience here, the opportunity to play as a trader is a great addition theme wise to the game. The ability to set up shop for other players is also interesting – more on that later.
The NCR ranger is faster and can start the game ahead of the pack. You also can’t be ambushed by enemies thanks to ignoring the surge icon. It is nice to see sniper/ranger in the game.
The lone gunslinger is a nice combat buff character but they have gone all out on the Lone part while you have your starting gear. Companions add a lot to your bag of tricks so it’s a big trade off.
Mister Handy!! What a lovely little miniature this is. He can carry more stuff. The extra card in this case is to allow you get rules in place to be more robotic, meaning you don’t suffer rads, can’t use drugs or meds and can’t get any traits other than hero/villain ones.
This leaves the enclave deserted. Another nice mini but a bit dull rules wise. It’s nice to have power armour and all but you don’t get a lot else to hang your hat on. It’ll still be fun but very singular minded fun.
You get more of the tokens, they look nice but more of the same from the base game.
We also get 6 new villains for the opposition. This is nice for adding more variety, really like the mirelurk queen.
The perk cards are back and resplendent in there Fallout artwork.
Why the rush, Carl? Why the casual run through components? Well dear reader, the most exciting thing about this is the rules changes (hang in there).
When you look at the new scenario card you’ll notice a couple of things.
Firstly, the box says there are 2 new scenarios but we have 6 scenario cards… hmm and secondly one of the scenarios has CO-OP RULES!
So this is essentially a redo and expansion of the original scenarios as well as the new ones. The bow on this gift is this:-
New scoring mechanics that should fix that scoring issue we had. Now – agreed, some playtesting is needed here and it only technically fixes it in CO-OP but I’m looking forward to testing and seeing if it can be applied across the board. Co-op mode is a great way to get this to the table more and will create an interesting play experience with the new characters as choices in a party rather than individual characters.
Keep Rolling!
Carl
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