Quest for El Dorado is my favorite deck-builder and one of my favorite games, period. I was really disappointed by this expansion. On the surface, the expansion seems to add a lot of cool modular-style tidbits, but they all have their problems.Curse Tiles: The idea of having a free movement through a curse hex but having to take a curse tile is good. HOWEVER, some of the curse tiles are FAR FAR FAR more penalizing than others. For instance, one allows the player on your left to move you to any adjacent spot. The hack is to just move them back off the curse so the player has to move through the curse AGAIN. This is broken. Other curses are way to easy to lift. The curses are not well-balanced. I have been playing with the top curse tile face-up, so at least you know what you're getting into when you go through a curse hex.Heroes: Really cool abilities! HOWEVER, they are SO POWERFUL that players no longer need to even buy cards anymore. Seriously. Might as well have a tiny deck with one extremely powerful card! Now, the market is stagnant and everyone just races to the end with a tiny, powerful deck. Broken. Helper Animals: These are cool but Polly is the best because you can buy a powerful card super early if you discard her. Also, the expansion forces you to play with the Cave tiles, which IMO are take-it-or-leave-it. I don't think they add anything interesting to the base game. "Oh, cool. I went out of my way to grab this ONE MACHETE cave tile. Finally, all of this nearly doubles the set-up and extends significantly the playtime of QfED. tldr; Really disappointed with this expansion. The added elements seem fun and diverse in the beginning but they really screw up the nice balance of the movement, market and flow of the game.
I have to agree, I loved the original game, but I didn't like the expansion. The original game had lots of strategy in how you build your decks, and you had some control over the game. I felt, that the expansion made it MUCH more random, mainly because of the hex tiles, we haven't found them to be any fun in the end. I also agree, that Polly is the strongest pet by far. What we did was removing all the 1 icon tiles from the cave tiles, and removing some hexes that were too oppressive. I sill don't like the hexes this way, but the new board tiles are cool (maybe the hex tiles could be replaced by other effects, and we could use them without the curses module :D)
i was very tempted to get this expansion. I like the heroes (as much as I dislike their names), and the companions and new market cards. I was also into the new tiles and curses, but it seems that some of those curses are unbalanced. That is my only grip (for what I read or looked online). It looks very luck dependent and some of the curses you can get are too powerful compared to others. So it seems like a big gamble that IDK if it makes the game far more appealing, as it lessens the tactics and lets luck be a major factor for victory.
Yep, same here. I was excited when the expansion was announced, but I think I'm gonna skip it, mainly because of the randomness. I just wanted a deck of new market cards, not all this stuff. If Agricola can have 20 expansion decks maybe this great game also will, at some point...
@@mihneacateanu3808 yeah, I wont' ditch it yet; I want to play it at some point. But I thought that the first expansion would also just be adding more cards (just like in Dominion) for the market, to the point where you could just randomize a set of cards for every game and have unique experiences that way.
I quite liked the base game. I had only played 1 deck builder before, reluctantly as the mechanic seemed disagreeable and in the end I did not like it, but the Dice Tower review for El Dorado showed promise, and I was rewarded with a fun game. However, now that I had found a deck builder I liked, I went and bought Clank! In Space! I thought there was a great chance I would like it as it was a race of sorts. And I loved it even more. In fact it was briefly my #1 favorite game, and replaced El Dorado completely (it is currently my 3rd favorite game). I have little to no interest in playing El Dorado, so was wondering if the expansion would bring it back. I think I am gonna hold off as Zee's excitement is reversed in the comments by a couple of people who disliked it tremendously. I will continue to promote The Quest for Eldorado as a great gateway deck builder, but will continue playing and enjoying Clank! In Space instead.
I have to agree. Clank in Space is one of my all time fav games and I also view El dorado as a nice gateway deckbuilder game. I still enjoy it but I probably will not be getting the expansion either.
2 years later update: I actually got burned out of Clank!. In Space!, as I played it to much and went back to this game. I liked this expansion, however, I was not a fan of the curses and curse spaces. However I loved the heroes and pets. And getting more boards in general is good. But adding the next expansion, lowers this expansion's usefulness and enjoyment quite a bit. I mix Temples and the base game into 1 game. I know Zee didn't like doing that, but others have, and it seems to be a toss up amongst players to do so. But temples really improved the game a lot, and now the game is my favorite game and for my wife. But Heroes & Hexes has dropped considerably for me. The heroes now seem less useful, although the pets remain helpful in the beginning of the game. My wife enjoys the randomness of the curses more than me. And when I set up the game, I rarely use the tiles from this expansion, as we have plenty from the base game and Temples. if someone is gonna have the base game and not the Temples stand alone expansion i would recommend this expansion. But if they are gonna get Temples I recommend passing on it, unless you wanna pay the cost to use a small part of it.
Wow! This was a very very good review. I like your system! Shame I haven't stumbled on more of your reviews. Normally I catch Tom Vasel who I also enjoy very much too.
Great review… but did anyone else store at the headless dinosaur through the “Final Thoughts” of the video until the Seal of Excellence covered it up?? 🦕 There’s a story there, and we want to know. 🤣
