Expansions are tricky. They have to expand the base game, without changing its identity. It’s a fine line between enriching the experience by offering something new or changing it for the worse. This doesn’t always work, as these two expansions show.

7 Wonders Architects – Medals
Designer: Antoine Bauza
Publisher: Repos Production

On its release 7 Wonders Architects impressed people with its approachability. Many critics praised the quick and effortless setup using the game’s sorting boxes. But the game itself was also incredibly quick to grasp and play. It’s an underestimated quality of a game design (and rulebooks), that is often responsible for a game repeatedly hitting the table.

A good expansion then must hold on to the strengths, that made 7 Wonders Architects interesting to begin with. This is even harder to pull off, when the base game has already been released with very few compromises. How do you add to a game, that isn’t actually missing anything?

With Medals designer Antoine Bauza chooses an unexpected, but safe path: there are no changes. This expansion includes two new world wonders (that is to say sorting boxes including content). This increases the choice of world wonders to build from 7 to 9 in each play of the game. But the expansion doesn’t derive its name from these wonders, but the stickers and plastic tokens which, when combined, create “medals”.

Just as the individual steps of the world wonders offer interim goals, medals offer another source of victory points. This parallel to the overall structure of the base game, helps preserve the identity of 7 Wonders Architects. Unfortunately they also lead to Medals feeling more like a collection of promo items than a full expansion. You can easily imagine these medals (alongside additional wonders) being sold on the Repos website or at gaming conventions. With Medals even players who aren’t familiar with those spots get the opportunity to use these gimmicks at home. The reason why the expansion’s medals aren’t simply a punch out sheet of cardboard, is probably as obvious as it is sobering. Because then it would become apparent just how little gaming content there is in this expansion.

Medals is a small expansion, that barely qualifies as such. Even its production values can’t hide that. You do not get a lot. But what you do get works and doesn’t break anything.

Challengers! Beach Cup
Designers: Johannes Krenner & Markus Slawitscheck
Publisher: 1 More Time Games / Pretzel Games

An entirely different approach is taken by this expansion to 2023’s Kennerspiel des Jahres-Winner. Challengers! Beach Cup follows its predecessor Challengers! and seeks to improve on it.

Veteran gamers’ response to Challengers! was fairly split. Some praised its ease of play and approachability. Others mocked the lack of decisions, it offered. Allegedly, Challengers! was more random luck than game. Calling it a Kennerspiel (roughly “connoisseur’s game”) did not makesense to these critics. This strong difference in opinion wasn’t entirely unreasonable. Because simply by reading the rulebook, you could tell that there were two distinct approaches to the design here. The rules were apparently written with a much more demanding, competitive and rules-lawyery player group in mind. Beach Cup then tries to take a step towards that group. The new cards offer more decisions during duels. There are more ways to combine card effects and as “trainer” players pick up individual characteristics to secure another advantage during the game.

The result is an experience that is more unpredictable, yet thinkier and coupled with more rules overhead than its predecessor. Formally the core principles of the game have remained unchanged. Shuffle your deck of cards. Reveal cards individually. Resolve any effects and add the card values. Whoever is in the lead (or catches up to them), has the flag token and the other person becomes the active player. Challengers! played effortlessly, created surprises and evoked emotions.

Unfortunately, it’s these features that have taken a backseat in Beach Cup, replaced by other facets of the game. Fans of the original game aren’t really courted here. But even critics of Challengers! won’t find enough in this game to drop their accusation of shallowness. This turns Challengers! Beach Cup into an unwanted compromise, which nobody is really happy with.

The playful energy of surprising reveals of the original game has been lost. But Challengers! Beach Cup also didn’t succeed in transforming itself into a tactically layered and strategically rewarding dueling game. Even trying to shuffle individual card stacks into the original game – as you would expect from an expansion – doesn’t quite gel. You often feel that the otherwise smoothly running game of Challengers! has been filled with sand, slowing the game down needlessly.

The promise of a stand-alone expansion is that it will offer an experience on the same level as the base game, simply with a slightly different flavor. An alternative to the base game, which is more appealing to other player types than the original had been. If you felt the original Dominion was too solitary, you could pick up Dominion: Intrigue to really mess with other people’s plans. Despite its difference in emphasis, the experience was essentially the same. Challengers! Beach Cup by comparison adds numerous card effects to the game, at the expense of the experience that was awarded in 2023. Instead of a step forward (or even to the side) Beach Cup feels like it falls back into all too familiar forms of play. Most importantly, a type of play that wouldn’t have won a prize in 2023.