Unfair is an amusement park simulator in board game form; complete with restaurants, overpriced concessions, and “just barely safe” rides of all types. This review covers the first expansion for Unfair, so you might want to read our review of Unfair before reading on.
But Wait There’s More!
If the core 6 sets in Unfair were not enough carnival high jinx, then you’re in luck! Good Games has just started shipping a new expansion to Unfair that is exactly what the game needs! More themes! This expansion adds four new expansions (Aliens, B-Movie, Western and Dinosaur.) Each of these themes brings new mechanics and scoring that are a bit more involved than their original cousins., But never fear, these new expansions are very accessible and fill a lot of gaps in the base game. If you want a game that now has almost unlimited replayability Unfair then the expansion is right up your alley!
Take Us to Your Leader!
Zap! The alien theme deck brings with it a whole galaxy of exciting content for you to explore. This deck introduces a new currency called alien influence. These arguably egg looking icons are used to build certain alien attractions and upgrades, activate certain staff and events and are worth two points at the end of the game for each one in your possession. Where most rides in Unfair grant you stars and therefore coins for being in your park, the alien theme often grants you influence, a whole fun new currency to balance. Since it does not cap out your income it can be a great building option, but it can also cause your actual coin currency to dip which can inhibit your spending. This is a very fun new tightrope to traverse and creates all kinds of fun options for your fair build.
Howdy Partner!
YEEHAW! The western theme deck opens up your park to “big sky land” where you can expand for miles and miles. This deck offers extra lots that allow you to build more attractions and even a second super amusement. This can allow for some especially nasty ability combos for your park. The other benefit of the western theme deck is that it allows you to build panoramas in any order. That may not seem like much until it is paired with our next new addition to the team. While it’s not quite WestWorld, the western theme deck offers some fun staff shuffling options and some flexibility that you come to appreciate in Unfair.
Not the A-listers
Insert black and white footage of a zombie and a werewolf and the blob! That’s right folks! It’s the B-Movie theme deck. This theatre heavy deck has some really fun opponent duplication abilities as well as many “wild” attractions that can move and adjust panorama locations. That meshes nicely with the fact that the B-movie deck allows you to SCORE your panoramas that you build in your park. Up until this point, there was little to no reason to ever pay attention to panoramas, but now, these location-based beauties can be worth a heaping helping of delicious brains errr I mean points! This is such a fun addition I would almost be tempted to say that the B-Movie deck is the most impactful deck in the whole game. The introduction of a new scoring mechanic is huge and really opens up more options for strategic placement and pre-planning. While this is great, our last contender is not about to be outdone!
Welcome to (redacted) Park!
Introducing our visually similar to but legally distinct from Jurassic park, park. The dinosaur theme deck is a real beauty and adds two very fun features to Unfair. The first is, well, dinos! You can now place dinosaurs as attractions in your park. People love these little buggers and of course, the more dangerous they are, the better. This means that some big dinos can score you a lot of stars really quickly. This is all well and good but without proper security and a bit of luck, your dinos may run bust lose and start wreaking havoc on your park or even worse…escaping. This can be a costly gamble and adds a fun bit of a push your luck element to it. The other wonderful piece to the dinosaur theme deck is that the super attractions actually change your main gate. You now have the ability to create a custom main gate with some awesome new effects. I won’t spoil them for you but they really allow you to open up your income options or really lean into that not quite Jurassic park feel.
The Big 10
The Unfair Expansion brings the total themes in Unfair up to a whopping 10. This means your replayability has grown significantly since the base game. On top of this, the new mechanics introduced offer even more depth and options for players to choose from. I love the base game of Unfair and as I played more with the expansion, I realized that it added to it in all the right ways. The new currency, added scoring option and push your luck mechanics all meshed really well with the base and elevated it from what it was before. If you like Unfair, you will love the Alien, B-movie, Dinosaur, Western expansion. While Unfair is a game that stands alone very well, it really shines with this new addition.
Alien, B-movie, Dinosaur, Western Unfair Expansion
Genre: Expansion
Pros: Added replayability, New mechanics
Cons: None beyond the basic cons that were expressed in my base review of Unfair
Rating: 9/10 An excellent expansion that does what an expansion should…make a great game better.
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