Primal: The Awakening Expansion Sets | Designers: Tommaso Mondadori, Alberto Parisi | Publisher: Reggie Games | Year: 2024

Disclosure: The author of this review backed Primal: The Awakening on Kickstarter.

This post is a companion piece to CelJaded’s detailed review of Primal: The Awakening. Here I’ll be sharing some additional thoughts and musings on the various expansions and add-ons already available for the game, with suggestions on which sets to prioritise if you’re buying on a budget.

 

Ice Expansion

Box cover of Primal: the Awakening Expansion Ice

Primal: the Awakening – Ice Expansion

This is the first of Primal’s three expansions themed around a brand new element. Inside these boxes are two new monsters, a new type of terrain token, and a new set of equipment cards plus themed weapons for each hunter (including the two expansion hunters covered later in this review).

The Ice Expansion presents an interesting campaign mechanic which punishes parties who ignore the new ice-themed quests for a sustained number of chapters, with the idea being Thyria starts to freeze as the monsters from the cold zones wreak havoc. This mechanic is barely present for the most part though and aside from adding an ice terrain to a couple of other quests, it doesn’t really matter much. Actually finding the second monster in the campaign is also tricky due to the somewhat rigorous requirements, which makes me think Reggie Games should produce an official flowchart.

The monsters here are both well-designed beasties and are curiously easy to kill if you’ve crafted their excellent new equipment beforehand. The Frozen Armor is probably the single best piece of equipment in the game because of the incredible card advantage it can generate in some loadouts. The new Slow mechanic which prevents the monster from instantly refilling its behaviour cards can also be impactful when used at the right time (especially against the final boss). And finally, the Frost Helm’s passive effect is extremely useful in 2-player games, which is nice considering how hard things are at that player count normally.

Overall, the Ice Expansion gets a strong recommendation to buy.

 

Feather Expansion

Box cover of Primal: the Awakening Expansion Feather

Primal: the Awakening – Feather Expansion

The second of Primal’s element expansions has arguably the best monsters thanks to their well-designed campaign quests which are available as early as Chapter 1. The new feather equipment boosts the effectiveness of green action cards and also has a “rainbow” subtheme for certain weapons. While these mechanics are fun, beware they can be difficult to take advantage of in most builds.

The Feather Expansion is recommended to buy.

 

Poison Expansion

Box cover of Primal: the Awakening Expansion Poison

Primal: the Awakening – Poison Expansion

The last of Primal’s premier element expansions takes players to the dark swamps of Thyria where they must contend with negative poison cards entering their decks. These cards feature in both monster battles including one against a giant snake (Reikal) who has the ability to swallow hunters whole — a very annoying mechanic you absolutely want to avoid if possible!

The Poison Expansion has the hardest quests out of the three element sets, but their availability is intuitive and the equipment is very good as well. Heleren’s Reptile gunbow and the Ironleaf Helm are just of the two standouts worth crafting. One interesting note here is how ice equipment can exile poison cards from your deck. That’s a nice combo to be aware of if you own both sets and are planning your next campaign roadmap.

Like all the element sets, the Poison Expansion is another easy recommendation to buy.

 

Mount Havoc Expansion

Box cover of Primal: the Awakening's Mount Havoc Expansion

Primal: the Awakening – Mount Havoc Expansion

Mount Havoc features two brand new hunters who are both great fun to build. Karah is capable of wildly entertaining turns of balletic violence while Heleren contributes effective battlefield control abilities alongside a unique ammunition requirement. The only consideration to be aware of with these two is their slightly higher complexity level compared to the base game hunters, so do consider that if you have newbies choosing.

This expansion also lets you run 5-player games of Primal: The Awakening, which is a nice option to have, even if it does make the game go very long. The mini campaign in here is junk though, so this set only gets a recommendation to buy for its hunters. If you’re happy enough playing with the four in the core box, you can safely skip buying this one.

 

Nightmare Expansion

Box cover of Primal: the Awakening's Nightmare Expansion

Primal: the Awakening – Nightmare Expansion

This expansion introduces three new monsters who are all difficult to find in the campaign because of their strict questing requirements. Nevertheless, said monsters all feel different from each other and add nice variety in terms of enemy design.

The expansion takes its name from the Nightmare variant cards which allow players to fight against stronger versions of select monsters. Sadly, this effort feels wasted because the game is already difficult enough with the standard behaviours. These harder variants may suit hardcore players in multiplayer sessions where things are easier, but I’d avoid these in 2-player games.

Overall, I’d say this expansion has the least value from a gameplay perspective and I would hesitate to recommend it for most groups.

 

Add-ons

Primal: the Awakening add-ons

Primal: the Awakening – Premier add-ons

And we’ll finish here with a few thoughts on the add-ons.

The Terrain Expansion features miniature renditions of the core game’s terrain tokens. Painters will like these, but I don’t actually use mine because the new terrain types from the element expansions aren’t included. I don’t see the point in mixing the two and I’d rather not contribute more plastic to the table anyway.

The illustrious sleeve box is a beautifully robust storage solution for a sleeved card collection, but please note that it won’t fit everything if you also have the 5-player cards from Mount Havoc. The art book is your standard thing for showcasing Primal: The Awkening’s gorgeous artwork from its talented visual design team — I only wish Reggie Games had taken my suggestion here of including the correct pronunciation of the monster names. Oh, well! Finally, there’s not much to say about the neoprene combat mat, other than it looks nice and stores very well in the sleeve box.

And that’s it for the Primal: The Awakening expansion sets, other than to say the future looks bright because new hunters and cosmetic add-ons are already being teased by Reggie Games.

Watch this space for more thoughts as they become available!

Primal: The Awakening at Reggie Games »