Expeditions Around the World

Intrigued? Then pack your bag and prepare for your upcoming Expeditions Around the World.

Expeditions Around the World is an abstract racing-style game where world adventurers compete to complete treks to the destinations on their expedition cards. It is for 2-6 explorers, ages 8+, and plays in approximately 30-45 minutes.

Set Up

Place the board in the center of the table and shuffle the expedition cards to deal the appropriate number for the player count. These cards serve as secret individual objectives.

Stack the remaining cards as a draw deck near the board and turn over the top six to serve as common objectives for all players to work toward.

Each player takes the large token and four small tokens of their chosen color, along with three tickets.

The arrows are shared among players, so pile them near the board within reach of all.

Taking turns, each player will put their four tokens on one of the locations that matches one of their secret expedition cards, making the spot a “Key Location.”

Gameplay

Game play for Expeditions Around the World couldn’t be simpler: each player places one arrow to advance that color’s expedition path, attempting to drive it towards the destinations on their objective cards.

As soon as one of the three expeditions hits a player’s location, regardless of who placed the arrow, the player announces it and places their expedition card face up in front of them. (Or the current player may take one of the common objective cards and refill the row.)

Blue square hubs allow you to immediately place a second arrow on any expedition.

Red star hubs allow you to take a ticket. Tickets can be used on your turn to add an extra arrow to an expedition, remove the last arrow on any expedition, or swap an expedition card.

There are some basic rules to follow for arrow placement but play continues until someone has completed their final expedition card or all arrows have been placed on the map.

Points are awarded for completed objectives and tokens earned from visiting key locations. Points are deducted for cards still in hand and colored tokens still on the map.

Impressions

Expeditions Around the World is simple to learn. There’s a fun stress of attempting to direct the expeditions so you can collect your tokens and visit your locations the fastest. That creates some fun tension in the game, but ultimately, it wasn’t enough to hold our interest at 2-3 players.

With so many expedition cards to keep track of, it’s easy to miss one when a player crosses your destination as they add to a path. In all our plays, at least one person missed out on claiming a location. That could be frustrating particularly for younger players who then need to figure out how to get back to passed locations.

We adore a travel and exploration theme, but beyond the cards and the map, this is ultimately an abstract route building game. The cards display interesting educational information, so perhaps this game would find a place on the family shelf for those who homeschool or gameschool.

This game also feels it would benefit from more robust player counts, so the tension is further amplified.

We have liked many of Wolfgang Kramer’s designs and often look for his new games, but this one fell flat for all of us and we won’t return to it.

But if Expeditions Around the World sounds like the right adventure for your family, try it on Board Game Arena, look for it on Amazon, or at your local game store.

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The Family Gamers received a promotional copy of Expeditions Around the World for this review.

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