We don’t really like writing negative stuff about board games. Most of what makes it onto this site is stuff we’d actually recommend, and even when a game isn’t for us, we try to say who it is for instead of just trashing it.
Expansions are a little different, though. A base game usually has years of playtesting and a design team trying to nail one specific experience. An expansion is often a follow-up built to a deadline, riding the goodwill of a game that already sold well — and sometimes that shows. Not because anyone was lazy, but because “add more” and “add better” aren’t automatically the same thing.
So this list isn’t really about bad games. It’s about good games that got an expansion that missed — a mechanic that fought the base game’s whole identity, a box that felt like padding, or an idea that sounded good on paper and turned out clunky at the table. If you own the base game and are wondering whether to pick one of these up too, this should save you some money.
Carcassonne: The Tower
Carcassonne works because nobody’s really attacking anybody. You’re placing tiles, claiming features, quietly out-scoring the table — it’s one of the most non-confrontational games in the hobby, and that’s a feature, not a gap.
The Tower expansion adds towers you can build and use to “capture” opposing meeples within a certain range, locking them up until the owner pays to free them. On paper it’s a small addition. At the table, it’s the one expansion that consistently gets singled out by long-time fans as the odd one out — a take-that mechanic dropped into a game that was never built for take-that. Suddenly you’re not just building the best map, you’re keeping an eye on who’s in tower range and holding a grudge from three turns ago.
If you and your group like a little more conflict in your tile-layers, it’s not unplayable. But compared to expansions like Inns & Cathedrals or Traders & Builders — which add depth without changing what kind of game Carcassonne is — The Tower changes the game’s temperament. That’s a much bigger ask than most expansions make of you.
King of Tokyo: Power Up!
King of Tokyo is a dice-chucking monster brawl that’s meant to move fast — roll, reroll, smash, repeat. Power Up! adds Evolution cards that let your monster permanently upgrade over the course of a game, which sounds like exactly the kind of thing this genre loves.
In practice, a chunk of the complaints about this one come down to pacing and balance. Evolutions are priced and powered unevenly, so some monsters end up snowballing in a way the base game’s energy-and-dice economy was never tuned for, and the extra layer of card management slows down a game whose entire appeal is “we can play this in twenty minutes and immediately want to go again.”
The idea itself isn’t bad — permanent monster upgrades is a fun hook. It just works against the specific thing King of Tokyo is good at. If your group’s complaint about the base game is “I wish there was more strategy,” this might scratch that itch. If your group loves it because it’s fast and chaotic, this one adds friction you didn’t ask for.
7 Wonders: Leaders
7 Wonders is a tight, elegant drafting game — three ages, pass the hand, build your civilization, done in half an hour. Part of why it holds up is how little rules overhead it needs once you know it.
Leaders adds a pre-game draft of leader cards that get built into your civilization alongside everything else, and the honest read on it is mixed. It does add real strategic texture for players who’ve logged a lot of games and want another layer to plan around. But it also adds a genuine complexity spike for what’s supposed to be one of the more approachable strategy games out there, and the power level between leader cards isn’t perfectly even — pull a strong one early and you can feel like the game handed you an advantage before a single card got drafted.
This is the one on this list we’d call “good for the wrong audience” rather than “just not good.” If your table is already deep into 7 Wonders and wants more, it delivers. If you’re still introducing new players to the base game, adding Leaders on top is more likely to overwhelm than enhance.
Dominion: Alchemy
Dominion invented deck-building as a genre, and the expansions that followed mostly did what good expansions should — new card pools that combine with the base set in fresh ways, without changing how a turn actually works.
Alchemy is the exception the community keeps coming back to. Two cards in particular get named constantly: Philosopher’s Stone, which requires you to physically count both your deck and discard pile to figure out its value every time you play it, and Possession, a strange card that lets you take over an opponent’s entire turn — clever in theory, confusing and a little mean in practice. Both cards are known for grinding a normally brisk game to a crawl while someone recounts a deck or works out exactly what Possession does this time.
Dominion has released a lot of expansions since, and most of them (Prosperity, Seaside) are considered easy additions to your card pool. Alchemy is the one longtime players tend to describe as skippable — worth owning eventually if you’re a completionist, but not the second box you should buy.
Ticket to Ride: Alvin & Dexter
Ticket to Ride sells itself on a simple, evocative theme — you’re laying real train routes across a map, and that grounded, almost nostalgic feel is a big part of the appeal.
Alvin & Dexter throws that out entirely. It’s a dice-and-figurine expansion where two monster pieces move around the board disrupting routes, and reviewers noticed the theme whiplash immediately — turn-of-the-century train building doesn’t really have room for a couple of rubber monsters knocking your track over. It reads less like an expansion and more like a mini-game bolted onto the side of a completely different one.
The twist is that most of the same reviews who mocked it on arrival admit it’s actually kind of fun once it’s on the table — it’s just fun as its own thing, not as an extension of what makes Ticket to Ride work. If you’re buying an expansion because you love the core train-building loop, this isn’t it. If you just want a goofy variant night with a group that already owns the base game, it’s harmless.
The takeaway
None of these are “avoid this game” situations. They’re “know what you’re buying” situations. A few threads run through all five: a mechanic that fights the base game’s pace (King of Tokyo, Carcassonne), complexity added for players who didn’t ask for it (7 Wonders, Dominion), and a theme that just doesn’t fit (Ticket to Ride). Worth remembering next time a Kickstarter update promises “even more content” — more isn’t automatically better, even from designers who got the original exactly right.
Got a different pick you think earns a spot on this list — or think we were too harsh on one of these? Tell us in the comments, and let us know why. That’s the part that actually helps other readers decide.
Thumbnail image artificially generated for illustrative purposes.
