Seasons: Enchanted Kingdom

I’ve come across a few expansions in my time that really should have been a part of the base game. Seasons: Enchanted Kingdom takes the biscuit. It has the first player token in it!

Alongside the first player token, there are 20 new power cards (40 if you count both copies of each), 10 optional rule cards, and the special ability tokens that can slot into the circular gaps on the player board.

The new power cards give you more of the same, 5 of the 20 let you draw another power card which is a slightly higher proportion than the 7 in 50 in the base game. The “Jewel of the Ancients” gives you an opportunity to score up to 45 points from a single card at game end. I’m clutching at straws a little here to find any tangible “difference” between the Enchanted Kingdom power cards and those in the base game. Thematically, I wouldn’t be able to differentiate them. They fit “a little too” seamlessly into the existing deck.

The 10 “Enchantment” cards contain a rule change or variant and that you apply to a full game of Seasons. The rule changes such as “Players receive an additional crystal for each energy token they transmute during the game” and “Summoning a power card requires one additional energy token” make me wonder how much faith the designers have in the balance of the original game. These changes will reward strategies of spending more energy in transmuting than card playing – but I find the tableau engine building a lot more fun of the two ways to earn points. That said, 10 is enough different new rules for most players to find one they like. For me it’s the three Enchantments that let you change the mechanism of the initial draft. This is particularly good for two player games as they all increase the amount of cards you see in this phase.

Th Enchanted Kingdom expansion contains 12 Special Ability tokens. Each player is dealt 3 of these at the start of the game, and they choose one to slot into the circular hole in the player board. The abilities aren’t dissimilar to some of the one off actions you find on the cards themselves. E.g. collect two energy tokens from the stockpile and place them in your reserve. When you use these one off powers in a game; you flip the token and gain the number of prestige points indicated at game end. For more powerful special abilities, this may be negative.

In conclusion, if you felt completely lost without a piece of cardboard telling you who started the round, then this is definitely the expansion for you. It’s also worthwhile if you love the base game and you’ve seen a lot of the base game deck. The extra 40 cards will help keep your games feeling fresh, with negligible thematic difference to the base cards.

Could this expansion have been just first player marker, and (if the special abilities were put on cards instead of tokens) 50 new power cards? Yes, the additional features don’t add a huge amount. That said, the up in replayability gained from the extra power cards makes this expansion worth it, and it fits comfortably in the base game box, where it should have been in the first place.