Expeditions: Gears of Corruption

The Gears of Corruption expansion has sold out faster than expected on our US and Canada webstores, along with the Ironclad version in Europe. If you were hoping to get a first printing copy of either from us today, I’m really sorry that we weren’t able to serve you directly–this is my responsibility (Jamey), and I failed. Based on back-in-stock requests so far, we underestimated how many people were interested in continuing their Expedition adventure by around 1,000 units.

The size of the Ironclad expansion printing was 8x larger than the number of Expeditions newsletter subscribers who told us in advance that they wanted the Ironclad Edition of the expansion (other data points we use for forecasting include past expansion sales for other products, FB group size, brand-specific subscriber totals, the game’s sell-through rate, how many people are actively playing the game, etc). We really thought that would be more than enough based on the data we had, and clearly we were short.

If you were hoping to get the Ironclad expansion and it’s sold out in our webstore in your region, I appreciate you, and I have a few options for you:

1. Sign up for a back-in-stock notification on our webstore. This (a) tells us how many more expansions and/or metal mechs to make for Q4 and (b) it enables us to get in touch with you right away in case we find more copies at the warehouse (which already happened once today).
2. Buy a standard version of the expansion now and get the metal mechs later. If you’re eager to play Expeditions with the expansion, you can buy it now (if available) and still make a back-in-stock request for the Ironclad version. We’ll use that data to make a small printing of the metal mechs and base snaps by themselves for Q4.
3. Check with your preferred retailer to see if you can get the expansion from them. We presold some units to distributors and sold other units to retailers on our wholesale store, so there are retailers who will have Ironclad expansions on the retail release date (July 26).
4. Play the game on Tabletopia: Expeditions is available with the expansion online here.

Limited copies of the standard version are also reserved for Gen Con.

The Story

Following a series of expeditions—some successful, others not—into the frigid Siberian tundra, corruption has spread from animals and people to a much larger threat. New heroes, better prepared than their predecessors, gather to face the prospect of a mechanical monster, but the changing landscape brings greater uncertainty as they explore Tunguska with fresh eyes.

The Gears of Corruption expansion to Expeditions adds elements of risk and danger in the form of secret bonuses on map tokens and a corrupted mech that roams the land. To counter these threats, the expansion offers 2 new mechs and 4 new character/companion pairs, as well as components for a 6th player. Gears of Corruption also accelerates early gameplay by giving players starting resources and a hero worker that can act as any type of worker.

Components

The Gears of Corruption expansion is available in a standard version (plastic mechs and 1 plastic base snap) and an Ironclad Edition (metal mechs, 6 rubber base snaps to update the originals, and foil on the box). The expansion’s contents are all designed to fit into the original box insert.

• 1 rulebook
• 2 large mech miniatures and base snaps (the mech bases are 50mm wide and the snaps are 51mm wide; mechs are plastic in the standard version and metal in the Ironclad version)
• 7 mech mats (2 new mats and 5 dual-layered mats to replace the originals)
• 16 new map tokens (each with a secret bonus on the face-down side)
• 6 hero workers
• 8 starting cards (63x88mm)
• 6 discovery cards (63x88mm)
• 7 mech cards (63x88mm)
• 12 corruption cards and 1 corrupted mech reference card (63x88mm)
• components for a 6th player: power, guile, glory, and action tokens
• 6 silkscreen printed corruption tokens
• a robust Automa solo mode (5 progress cards, 1 corrupted mech reference card, 1 rulebook)

For those who want a special base snap for the corrupted mech, ClayRade and SaltyScarab created a free 3D printable base.

Media

• BoardGameGeek
• May 22 reveal livecast
• Highlights Video (Stonemaier)
• The Mill (and solo playthrough and favorite mechanisms)
• TerreDice Games (“Gears of Corruption amps up the interaction with this mysterious world and the other players in it, immersing you in the theme and creating a more competitive experience.”)
• Tantrum House
• Rahdo (runthrough and extended gameplay)
• Man vs Meeple (and livestream)
• BoardGameCo
• Rob’s Tabletop World
• The Dice Tower (The DiLisio Factor)
• Games Over Board (and podcast)
• What Board Game
• Whitespider1066
• Space-Biff
• Nersi Games
• Rubber Chicken Games (Portuguese)
• Foster the Meeple
• Board Game Ramblings