Part of what makes games like Magic exciting is the continuous influx of brand new cards. Right from the start, I wanted to do something like this for TaleSpin in the form of small expansion sets. Originally, I had drawn up plans for a Thembrian-themed set and a Pirate-themed set... but it seemed cruel to make players wait for Sky Pirate cards, so most of that imaginary expansion went into the current "base" set.
With TaleSpin being a single deck card game, there comes a point where you can have too many cards. Especially when they're sleeved, which almost doubles each card's thickness. Shuffling can be a bitch. So I have settled (probably) on two separate expansions, approximately 20 cards each. That will bring the final deck size up to around 140, which is plenty. (Although I'm considering adding variant rules that would split the deck into two decks for a 2-player Baloo vs. Karnage game. That will require some investigation into balancing two halves of the main game deck.)
The first of these expansions - aptly titled Expansion #1 - is online now, along with a revised rulebook that evens out some rough spots.
Expansion #1 contains the fully-realized Artifact card type, which is now sort of a specialized Cargo card. Playing Artifacts isn't exactly elegant under the new rules, but it works well enough. There's two ways to play them: you can play them directly to a cargo hold by replacing an existing open cargo card. The idea being that the Artifact was what was inside the box. The second way is to play them as normal, facedown cargo and wait for someone to open them... thus exposing what was hidden inside. In both cases, the Artifacts apply permanent effects to whoever controls them. There are good Artifacts and there are bad Artifacts. All five of them are rather powerful.
The balance between red and blue characters is now equal with the Expansion (unless you're playing with less than 4 players and have shuffled in the Passenger versions of the main 4 Player characters), so things are a bit more fair there in terms of red vs. blue. The blue "good guys" get a rough new Pilot named Joe McGee, who has a Damage, a Reward of opening 1 cargo, and uses your Player's Pilot stat as his... he could add up to one mean dogfighter. (If you know the episode Joe is from, he is a famed pilot instructor, so having him share your Pilot stat is thematically appropriate!)
As promised, the Thembrians have arrived: Spigot, Dunder and one of my favorites, the Firing Squad. Loyal Dunder's stats get bigger if Spiggy is around, and the Firing Squad move any Passenger to last position, putting them under crosshairs, as it were!
And there's now a Group Passenger that doesn't suck: Khan's Board of Directors. The Board lets you re-roll any die roll, and they have +2 Shipping. These guys hit the table quite a bit.
So that's a taste of the new cards, but what did I have to change in the game's overall rules? Well, I believe they call these "patch rules" in the biz, and that's usually not something to be proud of. It tends to indicate something majorly wrong with the game design, and a quickie patch rule must be fashioned to shore up the leak. My big patch has to do with the number of cards in hand. All players still draw up to 5 at the start of their turn, but now they can't have more than 10 cards in hand, and all players must discard down to 7 at the end of EVERY turn.
What we learned is that unchecked hand growth created unstoppable players. And since card-drawing is most often associated with the better skilled Pilots, a player with a high Pilot stat was almost impossible to stop. The 10-card hand limit severely weakens the game's big dogfighters. Yeah, it's an ugly patch... but my playtesters have incorporated it perfectly so I'm not ashamed. Of course, now I think I'm sensing a new problem: the tide has turned towards the game's big shippers...
Several cards from the original set were tweaked or changed. Claws for Alarm is now playable and much cooler. Louie got a major upgrade to his die roll table, plus a cool combo effect with the otherwise chumpy Monkey Workers. My favorite revised character is the Passenger Molly. She now has an adorable effect I call the "stowaway." If you reveal her as bluff cargo, instead of being discarded she jumps to your first position and all opponents must discard a card. Of course, you'll only use this card if no one is playing Molly, but it is sooo thematic that I just love it.
So check it out; you'll find the game a little more even-handed than before, and a lot of the expansion cards really kick ass. Now it's off to think about Expansion #2.
