Shadows of Brimstone: Other Worlds Blasted Wastes Deluxe Expansion

I love Shadows and this adds so much to the base games.

Huge expansion. Cool Other World theme

After having a few plays with this expansion, I can definitely say that it’s crazy fun. It is not just “more of the same” type of expansion but rather “more of the same PLUS completely new gameplay additions”. First of all, you essentially get two worlds in one pack: a new otherworld (Blasted wastes – an alien desert planet used as a prison) and a new “earth” world (Canyons, which is great if you want to change things up from the typical “mines” start. As always, the expansion content is highly thematic: from beautiful illustrations to immersive narrative text on cards. The missions design in general seems to be a step up from the core boxes. I also really enjoy enemy variety of this expansion: Ghost warriors and Sand crabs can be easily introduced into the Mines and Wasteland scavengers’ ranged attacks can really spice things up (albeit with added bookkeeping and fiddliness). Besides that, warband cards help further increase variability of enemy encounters by granting different abilities to Wasteland scavengers – something that I find to be very exciting and thematic (and, frankly, quite clever from the game design point of view). This expansion also adds day cycle mechanic (which is only used in Blasted Wastes) – essentially time of day changes during your adventure which can affect certain map tiles (e.g. acid pools are more dangerous at night) and encounters. Kind of a mixed bag for me because it just adds more rules and elements to keep track of and doesn’t really bring that much gameplay-wise. But the main highlight of this expansion is probably an introduction of the Barter Town – an alien world equivalent of Earth’s Frontier town. I really like the way FFP approached this game element – it doesn’t feel like a simple reskin of Frontier town. It’s more of a thematic reimagining. The brand-new elements that I particularly enjoyed are: new currency (in the form of tech and scrap – but again it comes with additional bookkeeping), gladiatorial arena and, most importantly, temples. Each time you visit Barter town you determine which idol (there are 6 of them) is worshipped in this town. Each idol comes with its own small set of rules. And it should be obvious by now that these temples are highly thematic and wildly different – I love it. Overall, I think that “Blasted Wastes” bring a lot of good stuff to the table. I would especially recommend it to those who don’t yet own “Frontier town” expansion: Barter town can serve as a light version of expanded town phase that “Frontier town” introduces (but please don’t get me wrong – “Frontier town” adds a lot more town related content and is considered a “must buy” by many for a number of good reasons). Probably my main gripe with this expansion is the fact that it doesn’t come with a town daily event deck out of the box (which is a really cool mechanic present in “Frontier town”) and you need to buy it as a separate card pack.

There are plenty of additional models in this expansion. The tiles are double-sided and include the blasted wastes on one side and the canyon on the other. There are new missions for both worlds and they integrate perfectly with the base game. A wonderful addition to the Brimstone world.

One of the best Expansions for Shadows of Brimstone.