On top of the thematic flavour which I love, it's also how fiddly and cluttered the board got when you had hot spot markers everywhere including on the setup. Not having all these little tiny tokens everywhere clears up the board state a lot and that alone makes it worth it before you think of everything else.
That is the very reason I've considered selling my copy, I just hate tiny tokens in any game, and those in FP are especially small. Now I might go for this expansion and keep the game.
"Does it make it harder" YES. Very easily trackable with statistics, this makes the game so much harder. The 2 saved AP on flare ups is a bit hard to track how much that helps you, but here's the stats of chances of a chain of fires happening on normal difficulty: Hot spots: Right out of the gate 17%. Max hot spots on the board, 29%. Fire deck: Turn 1 we have 11%. Maximum flare ups 53%. Now add in that the majority of events are bad and that having a good draw of the deck makes your next draw statistically worse and also add in the you will hit max flare ups way faster than you ever hit max hot spots and this game is a nightmare to the difficulty in the luck factor, especially with how bad a top of the deck accelerate just ruins your whole game right out of the gate. I feel like this expansion desperately needs house rules to not be a loss most of the time.
On top of the thematic flavour which I love, it's also how fiddly and cluttered the board got when you had hot spot markers everywhere including on the setup. Not having all these little tiny tokens everywhere clears up the board state a lot and that alone makes it worth it before you think of everything else.
That is the very reason I've considered selling my copy, I just hate tiny tokens in any game, and those in FP are especially small. Now I might go for this expansion and keep the game.
What a great review! Thanks, Tom. I'm so glad that you've enjoyed the expansion.
Tom, can you rank the expansions for Fire ?
"Does it make it harder" YES. Very easily trackable with statistics, this makes the game so much harder. The 2 saved AP on flare ups is a bit hard to track how much that helps you, but here's the stats of chances of a chain of fires happening on normal difficulty:
Hot spots: Right out of the gate 17%. Max hot spots on the board, 29%.
Fire deck: Turn 1 we have 11%. Maximum flare ups 53%.
Now add in that the majority of events are bad and that having a good draw of the deck makes your next draw statistically worse and also add in the you will hit max flare ups way faster than you ever hit max hot spots and this game is a nightmare to the difficulty in the luck factor, especially with how bad a top of the deck accelerate just ruins your whole game right out of the gate.
I feel like this expansion desperately needs house rules to not be a loss most of the time.
Love the Events. The card system brought so much more life into the game. Personally I‘ll never play without these again. The characters are okay.
Where can I buy the expansion. Also is it on Amazon?
just bought it off Amazon 2 days ago
I felt the event cards made the turns drag. It felt like it didn't have as good of a flow to the turn. I like the event concept themselves though
Hotspots really did not any thematic sense. The game is cleaner and better with this expansion. I will never play without it.