Game Review: Endeavor – Age of Expansion!

Endeavor: Age of Expansion is, as I’m sure you guessed, an expansion, of the popular game that was reprinted by Burnt Island Games and Grand Gamers Guild through Kickstarter, Endeavor: Age of Sail. If you’re familiar with the base game, you will be able to dig right into the expansion. If you are not, I would suggest you first read our review of the base game here.

OK, now that you’re an Endeavor expert thanks to JT’s review, here we go with the expansion review:

All New Buildings and New Actions

The meat and potatoes of the expansion is an entirely new set of buildings. In a bit of a genius move, the original buildings are printed on the back of the expansion buildings, meaning you can completely replace the old ones with the new ones in the original box, allowing you to play either set! I thought that this was amazing. These new buildings add two news abilities to the game and add an ability that hadn’t been seen on a building before, but in one of the original Exploit mini expansion. These new buildings have many more double actions than the base, which will speed up your “expansion” across the world. For reference, there are only 2 1+1 buildings (excluding Lvl5) while there are 5 in the expansion. You’ll also find that nearly all of the buildings have an attribute associated with them that will increase you on that specific track when you gain it. I’ve found that the double actions and associated attributes on the buildings definitely speed up your ability to advance each attribute track faster than the original base game. Part of that is in order to utilize one of the two new action abilities!

–Trade – The trade ability allows you to trade any attribute token you currently have (Culture, Industry, Wealth or Influence) and swap it with any other token on the map. Don’t need that extra Industry token, well swap it for the Blue Action token with the money bag to pay off a building worker to use it again! Already to 13 in Culture but you’re at 9 on Wealth, well trade one for the other and now you’re on the top tier for both! I’ve found that the Trade ability can be helpful in rounds 1-4, but is amazing in rounds 5-7! Clearing the map of the Blue Tokens to get extra actions, or to manipulate your attribute track to maximize your endgame scoring is so powerful late game.

–Conscription/Mobilization – Are you ready? Because this one is great. Conscription buildings basically act as a bonus +1 action that you can immediately play after activating a building. Need to finish out a shipping lane to become the Governor, but there’s two slots left and you don’t have a double Ship Action, well now you can! What’s even better is that these Conscription actions are “primed” during your growth phase, meaning that you put a free worker there during growth. To use the bonus ability, you mobilize the worker and use it to ship/battle/etc. This adds so much fun to the game because you are able to get a jump into shipping lanes that you may have frozen out of otherwise, or can close them out earlier than your opponent may have anticipated, or you can double occupy to take that bonus token that you really need! Best part is that these actions are essentially free since the action is a bonus and the worker on the building is what you use to ship/occupy. Soooooo gooooood.

New Region Card Decks

The 6 Regions (not including Europe) come with a new deck of cards, and 3 of each deck have some wild new abilities (plus a micro expansion that adds a level 6 card, but we’ll discuss later).

-Merchant Fleets

All level 1 cards now have the ability to hold an EXTRA CARD! This is amazing. The 5 card cap was always tough, especially at the end of the game when you are trying to balance getting to the 5^th tier of all of the attribute tracks. The only thing to keep in mind is that once you attach the second card to the Merchant Fleet, you cannot break the pair apart, meaning you would have to discard both to free up a slot. Also, you can’t stack a Merchant Fleet card on another to have 3 or more cards stacked.

–Subsidies

All level 2 cards in each region have the subsidy ability. In addition to the attributes the cards have, they will allow you to immediately pay off a worker on a building of a specific type. For instance, the Far East 2 card allows you to immediately pay off the worker of any Ship “Action” building. There are 3 Ships, 2 Occupy and 1 Attack subsidies between the six regions. This benefit is so useful to be able to re-activate an ability on a turn, and for half the cost since you get the worker back into your harbor! Keep a look out for these if they are returned to Europe near the end of the game as well when you tend to be worker rich and may want to re-activate an ability to get those extra Glory points at the end!

-New Level 5 Cards

Are you ready? No really, get ready. These are wild and have the chance to net you a lot of Glory! These have a little bit of everything. – Side note – All of these cards are named in the rulebook and have REALLY COOL historical significance in how they function!

South America: 3 attributes, gives you 4 Glory, and a Conscription/Mobilize attack in SA only. Why SA only? Because you lose 1 Glory for every city in SA that you don’t control at the end of the game. Potential for 7+ Glory

North America: First, you give up ALL of your cities in Europe. Yup, you read that correctly. The card is called the Declaration of Independence, so, peace out Europe! Then you stack 3 Fortification tokens on the card. They are worth 2 Glory each at the end of the game. You can spend them to completely repel an attack on your cities in NA. WILD! Oh, and there’s 3 attributes on the card. Potential for 6+ Glory.

India: 5 attributes, can be kept on a Governor Slot and you get to choose one previously used blue token. Potential for 5+ Glory.

Far East: 4 attributes and you are able to store 1 card under this card after every round, but never more than 1. The stored cards attributes don’t count on the scoring track but you will gain 1 Glory for each unique symbol, including Glory. Potential for 9 Glory.

Caribbean: 3 attributes and you stack 5 previously used blue tokens of your choice here. Each token at the end of the game is worth 1 Glory. Opponents can attack this card to gain a token of their choice into their Harbor. It’s a great way to potentially deflect attack away from you. Potential for 8 Glory.

Africa: 5 attributes and allows you to change the building action type to anything other than a subsidy! This can be so useful at the end!! Potential for 5+ Glory. I think the power of this card is well balanced with its immediate gained Glory.

As you can see, there are some really fun new powers and abilities here. It’s been fun to see them played against me, and more fun to play them for myself! I personally love NA, SA and Africa.

New Europe Cards

The entire deck is new, and now goes to Level 6! Some of the highlights are the level 2 card that makes all opponents discard a worker token, Level 3 which forces an opponent into an alliance with you in Europe so you can’t attack each other, and Level 5 that gives you 3 Wealth, 3 Glory and a worker token while giving all other players 2 worker tokens if they discard a Wealth token. Additionally, these cards are named and function according to their historical significance. Love this.

Dominium Miro-Expansion

More Level 6 Cards! That’s right, every region can go to Level 6!  Again, they’re named for their historical relevance. These abilities trigger immediately when gained.

South America “City of Gold” – 2 Culture, 4 Glory and 2 Payment subsidies. TWO FREE SUBSIDIES! This is a game changer and can allow you to just wreck people when you gain it.

North America “We The People” – 2 Influence, 4 Glory and move all of your worker discs from the NA shipping lane to your harbor. If you’re playing on the 4-5 player side of the board, you could potentially gain 4 or 5 worker tokens to your supply. If you can spend them all, you will do some damage!

India “Jaipur the Pink City” – 2 Industry, 4 Glory, and replace one of your unoccupied (non-triggered) buildings with another within your building range from the tray. Wow! Buh-Bye level 1 building, hello double action Tower that is Attack+Fortify!

Far East “The Canton Cohong” – 6  Glory and perform 3 Trade Actions. What a way to grab those last blue tokens on the board!

Caribbean “City of Havana” – 4 Glory and keep the card in your Harbor. Not as much Glory, but its free, free, free!

Africa “The Gold Coast” – 5 Wealth and you may score all attribute tracks that go over 15. This can net you so many points!

My personal favorites here are Africa, Far East and South America. If you can reach for one of these, they will definitely reward you richly!

Prominence Tiles

The prominence tiles offer the players new ways to gain presence in the ever-combative Europe region, as well as new ways to score Glory. These tiles essentially create a “side board” that you can now place your worker tokens on. One important thing to remember when you play with one of these tiles is that you DO NOT stack the Slavery cards as normal. Instead, spread them out on the table so that all are visible. You may now draw any Slavery card that you are eligible to draw at that moment. If you have 4 presence in Europe, then you may bypass drawing the level 1-2-3 cards and go right for level 4.

–Naval Superiority. You can use a Ship Action to ship one of your worker tokens here. The top part of the card is strictly to earn a Glory point or two and presence in Europe, while the lower portion offers a really great ability. Once you place a token here, you gain a new worker to your Harbor, essentially using the action for free while still gaining presence in Europe. Additionally, once you have a token here, before you act on your turn, you may remove one of your tokens from the lower track and move it to the open sea of any region! Need that level 6 card but you don’t have any more ship actions, well now you can move a token off of this tile to that region without shipping!  What is really neat is that if a slot at the bottom opens up again, you can once again gain an extra worker to your Harbor by reclaiming that spot on the tile! This is extremely useful early game to gain influence in Europe while shipping and not occupying, and late game to quickly ramp up in a region to get the level 5 and 6 cards Lastly, the player with the most tokens on the tile at the end of the game earns two Glory while second place earns 1.

–Military Buildup. Similar to Naval Superiority in terms of two different zones (top and bottom) and gaining a worker token to the Harbor when placing on the bottom. What’s different is that the bottom tokens can be used as your casualty when attacking. So, basically your casualty is a net zero since you already gained a worker earlier for placing one on the tile. If you are able to pair your attacks with an occupy, you can cycle this lower ability to great success, and great frustration for your opponents!

–Political Agenda. Each of the 4 attributes have a token spot on this tile. You may use a ship action to ship a worker token here and choose 1 of the 4 attributes. You’ll score 1 Glory at the end of the game for each token you have here. In addition, you do not have to slide your attribute marker down for that attribute when scoring at the end. This one doesn’t really engage the players during the game, but can make a 3 point swing per attribute at the end if you didn’t make it to at least 10!

–Changing Alliances. This tile can only be used in a 4-5 player game. This one can explode in points at the end. You can spend a draw action to place a worker token in either the orange or green Alliance tracks. There are three spots on each and only one of them grants you a free worker back to your Harbor. You can only have a token in one track at a time. To change Alliance tracks, you must bring your others back into your Harbor. You may not attack any cities in Europe of players on the same track as you. At the end of the game, the Alliance that has the highest total presence in Europe is the winning Alliance. Each player of the winning alliance scores 4 Glory for each token in the Alliance box. This could potentially net you 12 Glory if things go wild for you in Europe, but will most likely get you 8 or 4, which is really amazing. Just make sure you align yourself with the winning team!

Seize Your Fate Mini-Expansion

If your mind isn’t blown by all of these amazing upgrades yet, here we go. This mini-expansion lets each player select a historical nation to start the game with which introduces an asymmetrical starting point for everyone! In addition to the asymmetrical start, you will gain an action that is triggered by using a specific action as well as a mobilization ability.

The triggered ability allows you to do the action on your nation card instead of the triggering action. The mobilization can be used as any other mobilization would be used. The game starts with a worker covering up each of the attributes. The worker is removed and “used” to do the action/mobilization. Once it’s used, you gain the attribute to your scoring track.

The third ability is triggered by activating an occupy action. Instead of occupying, you move the Monument Token on your nation card to any one of your occupied cities and place it on top of the token there. It counts as an additional presence in that region and that city may never be attacked! Next, you flip over your nation tile, losing the two attributes that you had exposed, and you can now Seize Your Fate.

The last part of this expansion is the Fate cards. There are 6, and you play with one more than the player count. If you have at least 4 presence in the two regions indicated on any card, you may perform a Draw Action to “Seize” a Fate card and place it on your upside-down Nation tile. These Fate cards offer a few attributes and new way to score Glory at the end of the game. You can only “seize” one fate card per game.

Using this expansion speeds up the game a ton as you are able to start the game with one or two presence in one or two regions immediately, perform extra actions in the first 2 or 3 rounds, and granting you new ways to score Glory. This mini-expansion can be played with the new or old building tiles, but should probably be used once you’ve explored all of the other expansions as it has a lot to keep track of and utilizes nearly every new ability/action in the game.

In Conclusion……

Yes. Just all the Yes. It’s amazing. If you liked the original or the KS edition, you will absolutely love this expansion. It’s overflowing with historical reference text, the new abilities speed up the game, heighten the player interaction, and really make you pay attention to everything your opponent is doing! There’s not a moment to relax in this game, as every decision has immediate consequences. The half dozen games I’ve played with the expansion have all been really close, even two of them being decided by 1 point! Even the 4 player games had no clear winner until the very end. Speaking of points, it’s almost impossible to count up each players points during the game as the board state is constantly changing and there isn’t a “total” score track, which I love! You never really feel like you’re out of it since anything can happen at the end. The last thing I’ll mention is that this game is almost modular. What I mean is, it can be really tight by just playing with the original buildings. You can then expand it by playing with the new region cards. Then add in the Dominium Level 6 Cards. Then thrown in the Exploits from the original KS. And then everything! The game can be as “straight-forward” or as “stuffed” as you want it to be. The replay-ability is so high when you mix the expansions around between the original buildings and the expansion buildings. For my taste, this makes it really special, and a game I am always itching to bust out and play!