In The Footsteps of Darwin: Correspondence
Are Expansions Essential on the First Play? That question was a recent topic briefly discussed on the 5G4D discord that intrigued me. When you learn a game for the first time, should the teacher throw in any or all of the expansion material, or just teach the base game?
The query came at an apropos time, because in August, Logan from the Acadiana BGers Discord taught me In The Footsteps of Darwin, a game published by Sorry We Are French and designed by Grégory Grard and Matthieu Verdier.
Since I had just received a review copy of the expansion for Darwin, appropriately called
In the Footsteps of Darwin: Correspondence, by the same designers, and I really wanted to learn it, Logan agreed (and in fact, suggested) to throw everything in.
My answer to the question of whether to throw in all the expansion goodies will not surprise you. I think throwing in expansions should be situational. Let me explain, with Darwin as a good example.
In Darwin, the famed writer and naturalist has retired, but he wants to write more about the state of the natural world. And so, he enlists our help — up to five young naturalists eager to explore the world and return with a recap of our adventures.
To be honest, the theme did not come through that strong to me, but no matter, because the game mechanics did. This is a tight, well-designed game that plays a lot quicker than the box or theme would suggest. I expected, just based on the theme, a typical 90 minute euro. Instead, I got a very thinky 30 minute experience that was perfect for the subject.
Each player gets a board with spaces to build a tile tableau. One direction of the spaces shows the continents that you can explore, while the other direction shows off the animals that you can discover there — things like insects, birds, etc.
The gameplay is simple. Players will look to a shared board that has a grid of nine tiles on it, with a ship token representing the famed HMS Beagle circling the tiled square. Players grab a tile on the row or column that the Beagle is next to — and which tile they take determines how far the Beagle will travel around the tiles at the end of the turn.
The base game is all about filling your personal board with tiles that either fill up rows and columns, or work on satisfying end-of-the-game scoring goals. It’s fast. It’s a little crunchy. And it has a beautiful production.
But the expansion adds just a little bit more. It comes with an additional board, called the “England” board, along with new animal tiles, new character tiles, and some additional tokens. The game still lasts twelve turns (the four x three grid), but some of the actions in the expansion allow you to add even more tiles to your Naturalist’s player board. So, it’s definitely possible due to the immediate bonuses or special actions on the tiles, to get more than twelve tiles on your board.
The expansion is certainly not complicated at all. Mostly, it gives you “stuff” in the form of envelope tokens (that can be used to ‘purchase’ one of the face-up Characters, or for a little bit more, one of the animals on the English board that are available. (These can even give you immediate bonuses.)
I also like the addition of the Advanced Publications. Instead of just getting VPs for completing a column or row in your notebook, you get to write an ‘advanced publication’, all of which seem to be pretty powerful and give you access to new characters and points.
So, why do I say my answer to adding in expansions for your first time to be “situational”? It’s because not every expansion is like Correspondence. It seems to me that Grard and Verdier had a mission to keep the additional elements in the expansion as simple as elegant as possible. No administrative bloat needed here!
I think they succeeded. I honestly cannot see why anyone with access to the expansion wouldn’t just throw it in on every play. Just the addition of the Advanced Publication tiles makes the expansion a necessary one, as it moves the needle from just getting a bucket of five points to giving access to new (if short term) strategies. I hope to play Darwin again soon, and for sure will add in the expansion.
I’ve felt the same way about other games like Takenoko, where I much prefer to play with the Chibis expansion. But there are other games that I would never teach with everything in it, such as Arnak or Obsession, or even Endless Winter. Those expansions, for the most part, are modular in nature. Pick and choose one or two and play the game that way — but don’t teach the game to a new player including every single expansion that had ever be considered.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** A complimentary copy of the expansion was provided to us at GEN CON. **