Image taken from https://boardgamegeek.com/image/8107991/beacon-patrol-ships-and-shores

Designer: Torben Ratzlaff
Publisher: Pandasaurus Games
Artist: Torben Ratzlaff

Since you can read my previous review on the base game of Beacon Patrol, I won’t cover anything except what’s new and exciting in this expansion, and how it works as a solo player.

So, what’s new?

This expansion adds a plethora of new, unique ships and associated tiles. There are seven different ships, and each varies in complexity and has specific movement capabilities and/or other special rules, including variations in scoring. I really enjoy this variety of abilities, small mechanical changes, and difficulty levels, as each ship feels slightly different without being too complicated in terms of additional rules overhead. Each also has their own player aid card that’s really helpful. The new tiles and special scoring rules add some increased puzzliness in comparison to the original game.

In my opinion, the base game isn’t very replayable, but I think this expansion fixes that some. Each added ship really makes a game feel different, and with seven included, there’s a lot to experiment with and discover in terms of abilities, combinations of ships in the same game, new tiles, etc. As I only played solo, I can definitely see this expansion being even more relevant at higher player counts. Using multiple special ships would be fun, and it would be interesting to see the different interactions and how well certain ships complement one another.

My last highlight is that all the expansion material fits inside the original game box. Honestly, the expansion box is way larger than it needs to be, but regardless, once it’s punched, the additional tiles and ships fit into the base game box easily, which I really appreciate.

If you like the base game, I would highly recommend this expansion. If you didn’t enjoy the original, this may not change your mind as the game is mechanically mostly the same, but if your major issue was with replayability, this may be worth checking out.