A $30 game in a $50 box

It's always especially disappointing to me when a great (or even a merely adequate) game is let down by sub-standard production values. You could argue that it shouldn't matter that much, as long as the playing pieces work your imagination can do the rest, and that may have been true in the '70s and '80s with games like Dune or Aliens that have some great game play but fall short on component quality.

In the current board game renaissance, however, the bar has been significantly raised, so much so that a game that doesn't look good is at best embarrassing, and at worst difficult to find players for. The Expanse Board Game, published by Wizkids and based on the television and book series, is such a game.

The game itself is fairly good. Players control the planetary governments that hover in the background of the TV series, manipulating events in order to control the solar system. The core of the game is a row of action cards which are purchased by players using their victory points, and then used either for their printed game effect, or spent for more general actions such as moving fleets around the board. There are several scoring cards shuffled into various points of the deck, and when one of these comes up, players score points based on the number of planets and moons they control, with ties broken by the strength of a player's fleet.

It's a fairly basic area control game, with two important elements that make it feel like the TV show it's based on. One is that each player has a series of tech cards that are earned at various points throughout the game, which serve to escalate the conflict between the planets; early in the game there is an uneasy truce in which players are not allowed to openly attack each other, but this quickly escalates into open warfare, much as it does over the course of the show.

The other interesting game element is the Rocinante, the misfit ship whose crew are the main characters of the show. In the game, James Holden and his crew change their alliance from turn to turn, with control of them going to whichever player is in last place. I particularly like this touch, as it reflects their shifting alliances and also their tendency throughout the series to support the underdog.

The aforementioned poor components -- mainly muddy images on the cards, a bland board that is sometimes difficult to read, and too-small cardboard counters to represent each player's mighty warships -- stop just short of actually being distracting, and might be acceptable if the game's asking price were a little lower.

On the other hand, maybe that's appropriate for a game that takes place in the Belt, where resources are scarce and everything is more expensive than it should be.

Rating: 3 (out of 5) A decent game that would probably rate higher if either the production quality were better, or the price point were lower.

• The Expanse Board Game official website
• The Expanse Board Game on BoardGameGeek

Delivery drivers of the wasteland

Wasteland Express Delivery Service has a little bit of everything. At its heart it is a pick up and deliver game where each player attempts to be the first one to complete three "priority first class contracts," usually a multi-step process involving several pick ups and deliveries across the board. At the same time, players need to play the cargo market, a supply and demand system that requires them to purchase resources and then sell them on for a profit. This money is then used to buy upgrades for their trucks, in order to be able to play more efficiently.

On top of all that, what would a lawless wasteland be without raiders? The game includes three raider trucks that move around the board and attack the players, or at the very least get in their way, forcing them to take longer routes to get to their destinations. Players move the raider trucks depending on where their own trucks end up after moving, which introduces some additional tactical decisions ("if I move there, I can move that raider out of the way, and/or have it land on my opponent") and also a bit of "take that" player interaction.

Depending on how you decide to use your truck's limited upgrade space, you can even make a viable income out of chasing and attacking the raiders. Each raider truck carries resources which are won when they're defeated, and those resources can then be sold on for cash to use for further upgrades.

The game uses a ton of tokens and cards which make it seem more complicated than it actually is. There is a lot to take in, but the game play flows well, and we have found that once we get going we rarely need to refer to the rule book. And the amazing component trays that come with the game (a rarity these days) do a great job of keeping things organized.

It's a lot like Firefly: the Game, with the pick up and deliver mechanic and the non-player raiders wandering the board, but in some ways I like Wasteland Express better. While Firefly does an excellent job of immersing its players in the world of the TV show, and provides solid game mechanics, it can also fall victim to a "supercrew" situation where a player with the right combination of crew cards is pretty much unbeatable, and that removes a lot of dramatic tension from the game.

Wasteland Express doesn't take place in quite such a well-developed world (although it does a lot with the flavor text on the cards), but it does a better job of retaining the tension: combat with the raiders is always at least a little uncertain, and the cargo market can drop out from under you, suddenly devaluing all that water you were planning on selling for a massive profit.

Rating: 5 (out of 5) A great game that's easy to play but with a good amount of depth, with a fun theme and very well-made components.

• Wasteland Express Delivery Service official website
• Wasteland Express Delivery Service on BoardGameGeek

Follow the clues

When I picked up Deadline, I was hoping for a mystery-solving game somewhere in between 221B Baker Street and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.

While not quite as simple as Clue, Baker Street spends too much of a player's turn on uninspired game mechanics: roll to move, then read the clue for the location you find yourself in (if you're not stuck in the game's too-long spaces between locations), which is frequently a misleading word-puzzle that has no relation to the story being told. Consulting Detective, on the other hand, offers a much more intense, story-rich experience, but is extremely light on game mechanics, so much so that playing it feels more like a collective Choose Your Own Adventure than a board game.

Deadline is indeed somewhere in between the two, but in this case that didn't turn out to be nearly as interesting as I'd hoped.

The game features 12 separate cases, with clues provided via a sealed pack of cards, one for each case. Each case starts with a few clues revealed, and each clue card depicts a series of icons, 1930s gumshoe staples such as a pack of cigarettes, a glass of whiskey, a bundle of money, and so on.

Players play cooperatively, each with their own hand of cards drawn from a common deck of lead and plot twist cards. Leads, which compose the majority of the deck, feature the same icons in various combinations. Game play involves players taking turns playing down cards in an effort to match all the icons shown on the clue they're working on: once they do, the clue card is turned over, revealing information which may or may not point to the mystery's solution, and also indicating new clue cards which may be added to those available to be worked on.

The catch (and there's always a catch) is that new leads can only be played by overlapping the symbols at the bottom of the cards, and players aren't allowed to talk specifically about the cards they have in their hands, so you can't stop a player from overlapping a particular icon, even if you have a better play in your hand. Once a player can't play any more lead cards, they have to play a plot twist if they have one, which is usually a negative effect. Too many failures mean that clues start getting removed from the case. Play continues until the clues run out.

The first card played can be any card, but the second must have at least one overlapping icon. Blanks are wild and can cover or be covered by any icon.

This next card can be played on either end of the chain, overlapping the hat on the left or the cigarette and the gun on the right, depending on what icons the players need to solve the current clue.

This card isn't playable to the chain at all, since it isn't possible to match all three symbols, or play on either end of the chain.

It's a weird game system that doesn't really feel connected to the story, and isn't particularly interesting or satisfying on its own. Plus, you still have to interpret the clues correctly in order to solve the mystery, which frequently comes down to the players' best guess. And the cases (at least the ones we've played so far) aren't very compelling stories either.

In short, Deadline's game mechanics don't really mesh with the storylines at all, you end up with the worst parts of Baker Street and Consulting Detective:  a mystery that the players have to solve using as few clues as possible, and a largely unrelated and uninteresting symbol-matching card game.

Rating: 2 (out of 5) Not a terrible game by any means, just not a very interesting or compelling one.

• Deadline official website
• Deadline on BoardGameGeek

1/12/2023 Note: on a much later reviewing I've noticed that in the final example above, the card in question could actually be played to the right end of the chain (the cigarette pack icon). Still a mediocre game though...