Just as we saw in last year’s list (Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Expansions of 2021), the expansions this year seem to come in three varieties:
- Stand-Alone Expansion: Some games you thought might be on the Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2022 might have just ended up on this list because they are stand-alone games that can be played without a base game, but at the end of the day they also expand a base game!
- Makes The Game Cooperative: Some expansions take a competitive base game and make the game fully cooperative with the expansion! We saw a number of these type of expansions on the Top 10 Games That Can Be Played Fully Cooperatively!
- More Content: Some expansions just add more content (more cards, etc.) to the base cooperative game!
Honorable Mention: Grand Hotel Abaddon
Expansion Type? Stand-Alone Expansion
Plays Solo: Yes
Player Count: 1-4 (it’s best at 3 or 4)
Ages: 12+
Length: 90 mins per session (there are exactly 3 sessions)
We have absolutely loved the Kosmos Games Adventure Games series. The Dungeon made our Top 10 Cooperative Games in 2019 and The Volcano made our Top 10 Cooperative Games in 2020. The problem with The Grand Hotel Abaddon is that we aren’t “quite sure” when it was released in the USA! (Darn COVID). It absolutely came out in Europe much earlier than 2022 (according to BoardGameGeek, it was 2020), but I don’t think we got it here in the USA until 2022. That’s why this is an Honorable Mention: although we played it in 2022, it’s unclear when it came out in the USA. (It’s also an Honorable Mention because maybe it should be in our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022 instead of here in the expansions?)
This campaign game spans three 90 minute sessions, as players traverse an adventure together, interacting with objects and rooms like the old point-and-click Adventure video games! Once you have solved the adventure, you are done!
This is a great adventure game experience! Check out our of The Grand Hotel Abaddon review here and see why we love this adventure game so much!
10. Cantaloop 2: A Hack of a Plan
Expansion Type? Stand-Alone Expansion
We absolutely adored the first Cantaloop (Breaking into Prison) (see our review here), and in fact, it made our #1 position in the Top Cooperative Games of 2021! It turns out that Cantaloop is just the first game in a series of three games! The second one, Cantaloop 2 (A Hack of a Plan) (see our review here) came out this year (2022), and a third one is coming soon. This expansion is a stand-alone game that can be played by itself, but you really should play the first Cantaloop first!
Cantaloop 2 is just more of the same! It’s the equivalent of a point-and-click adventure game, but in board game form! You explore a map, find objects, solve puzzles, all while laughing at the silly jokes hidden in the game using red acetate.
This would have been higher on our list, but some of the last few puzzles were a bit too much, and there were some printing problems (the first edition absolutely needs an errata sheet). We still loved this game, but these problems brought the game down: that’s why it’s only #10 on this expansions list. We are still very excited for book 3 in 2023 though!
9. Thunderstone Quest: Enemies Among Us
Expansion Type? More Content
Thunderstone Quest goes back a long way for us: We have been following it on Kickstarter for years! The original Thunderstone Quest was NOT cooperative (see our initial positive but grumpy review here), but then AEG Kickstarted The Barricades mode making it cooperative (see our reviews here and here)! And they keep adding more and more content to the game!
The Enemies Among Us kickstarter gave us a new box, two new quests (Darkness Rising and Miricelle’s Return), more Prestige Class Boards and Guardian boards (for the cooperative mode), more dungeon tiles, and just more stuff! This expansion also gave us plastic dividers, which we completely unnecessary, but very cool.
This is a true expansion: it just adds more content to a great game. I think one of the reasons it’s a little lower on the list is that it’s so hard to get to the table! There are three huge boxes of content to unpack to get a game going: the base Thunderstone Quest game, the Barricades Mode expansion, and the Enemies Among Us expansion!
8. Marvel Dice Throne (+ Dice Throne Adventures)
Expansion Type? More Content (+ Makes The Game Cooperative)
“Wait, wait, wait…” I can hear a bunch of you saying … “Marvel Dice Throne isn’t cooperative!” True: but with the Dice Throne Adventures expansion, players can take the role of Dr. Strange, Loki, Thor, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, or Captain Marvel and travel solo or cooperatively through the adventures of Dice Throne Adventures!
Marvel Dice Throne really re-invigorated Dice Throne Adventures for us! Now, we can play Thor and/or Loki, travelling through dimensions and fighting together! This is the best kind of expansion: one that reminds us how good the base game is!
Granted, the game we are reminding ourselves of is Dice Throne Adventures, an expansion you must buy to make Marvel Dice Throne cooperative! So, Marvel Dice Throne is an expansion to the Dice Throne Adventures which is an expansion to Dice Throne Season 2 which is an expansion to Dice Throne Season 1! Confused? Check out our review of Dice Throne Seasons 1 and 2 and Dice Throne Adventures here for some more clarity!
7. Valeria Card Kingdoms: Darksworn
Expansion Type? Makes The Game Cooperative
This is an interesting choice because the solo game of the base game (Valeria: Card Kingdoms) was worth picking up by itself! The cooperative expansion just took the ideas of the solo game and expanded them into a full cooperative game: Valeria: Card Kingdoms Darksworn. This is a lightweight card game with beautiful art by The Miko.
Although I think the solo game of base box is better then the solo mode of the Darksworn expansion, the cooperative mode of the Darksworn is pretty fun, especially if you are looking for a campaign game! It does make the game a little heavier, partly because of complexity introduced by the campaign.
Take a look at our review of Valeria: Card Kingdoms and Darksworn to see if they are something you might be interested in!
6. Sentinels of Earth Prime
Expansion Type? Stand-Alone Expansion
Although the timing of this expansion was very off (it took 5 years from Kickstarting to delivery: 5 years!), it delivered a very thematic and colorful expansion to the Second Edition of Sentinels of The Multiverse! It’s luckily a stand-alone version, because the art really makes it its own thing: it has new heroes, new tokens, new villains, new environments: it’s basically is a stand-alone version of Sentinels of the Multiverse in the Mutants and Masterminds universe (an RPG universe by Green Ronin games).
The art just wowed us: this is the art and graphic design that I wish the original Sentinels of the Multiverse had!
Overall, the is a fantastic expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse (Second Edition). The unfortunate timing of this (the 5 years to production) meant that Greater Than Games has, in the meantime, released a newer version of Sentinels of the Multiverse called the Definitive Edition (see our review of Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition here), and it’s still not clear if Sentinels of Earth Prime works with the Definitive edition! Which is why this isn’t higher on this list …
Take a look at our review of Sentinels of Earth-Prime to see if this is something you’d be interested in!
5. Horizons of Spirit Island
Expansion Type? Stand-Alone Expansion
The Horizons of Spirit Island was an unexpected surprise for Spirit Island fans! Although the main purpose of this game is to lower the entry barrier into Spirit Island (by making an inexpensive version with great components available at Target), it also happens to be an expansion to the original game! And it’s also stand-alone!
The game has some great new spirits that expand the original game: my favorite new spirit was Eyes from the Trees, who scare the pants off the settlers like in a Horror Movie!
This was a great expansion, and also an easier way to introduce people to the wonderful world of Spirit Island! See our review of the Horizons of Spirit Island here!
4. Marvel United: Fantastic Four
Expansion Type? More Content
As part of the X-Men: Marvel United Kickstarter, there were a lot of Expansions for Marvel United and X-Men: Marvel United: From that Kickstarter, The Fantastic Four Expansion was one of our favorite expansions from last year! The miniatures were really unique and different, with the transparent, fire, and silver parts!
But what really made this expansion was the Teamwork card in the game: it created a very simple mechanism to encourage cooperation (well, more cooperation, in an already cooperative game).
The Fantastic Four expansion really makes Marvel United a better game: more minis, more heroes, more villains, more teamwork! See our review here to see if you might like it!
3. Marvel United X-Men Expansion: New Mutants, Excalibur, Mojoverse, and more!
Expansion Type? More Content
This expansion is a little bit of a cheat, because you could “mostly” only get it if you backed the X-Men: Marvel United Kickstarter! To be clear: this is NOT the X-Men: Marvel United expansion (which we reviewed here), this is an expansion to that expansion! That may be a first for us: an expansion to an expansion … but they all collapse down the being expansions to Marvel United.
There were so many new heroes and villains in this expansion! This is really what you want in a Marvel game: access to all your favorite characters. There were so many characters, mostly from mutant-adjacent comic titles, that this expansion really makes it easier to play whomever you want from the Mutant Marvel Universe.
We were really excited to see the New Mutants (above), as well as characters (both heroes and villains) from Alpha Flight, MojoVerse, Excalibur, as well as some “lesser known” X-Men!
We talked about how much we loved this X-Men expansion in our post of Expansion Absorption here!
2. The Reckoners: Steelslayer
Expansion Type? More Content
In any other year, this expansion would have been our #1 Expansion. This was a fantastic expansion! It took a great game, The Reckoners, and added more content! The one place that The Reckoners needed a little more variety was in the final battle, so this expansion added two new Boss Epics to the game: Regalia and Limelight!
What really made this expansion stand out was how modular it was! There were essentially 4 new things you could optional add in to your game: new Reckoners, and/or new equipment, and/or new Epics, and/or new Boss Epics!
This is the best kind of expansion: one that reminds you how great the original game is. See our original review of The Reckoners here, and the review of the Steelslayer expansion here!
1. X-Men Marvel United: Days of Future Past
Expansion Type? More Content
If Days of Future Past this were judged solely by the miniatures in the box, this expansion would probably still make the Top 10 Expansions this year!
But this expansion took the core Marvel United game and made it more strategic! It made the gameplay more interesting and different! X-Men Marvel United: Days of Future Past could have easily been my #1 game of 2021, regardless of it being an expansion! The game plays great, it has great twists and turns, it encourages so much cooperation, and it looks fantastic on the table.
This expansion is top-shelf, turning a great game (Marvel United) into a fantastic game! See our review here for more thoughts on why we enjoyed this so much!
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