Thanks for asking, Eric. I can’t say that I am surprised by the answer…

MY question would have been, “Where’s the furshluginer gameplay?”, but I promised myself I wouldn’t be bitter.

Next question: What’s “furshluginer”?  Some new foreign-sounding slang word in the U.S.?

Sorry, Jeff, the word should be spelled “furshlugginer”—does that help? If not, then I know which magazine you didn’t read as a child. This Wikipedia entry will clear up your confusion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furshlugginer

How can 80 wooden houses force a price increase of in excess of 11 Euros (the MSRP difference between the base game and expansion according to HiG’s website)?

I like my theory better:  You can’t charge full price for an expansion, nor can the expansion be standalone.  Therefore, some common components have to be omitted and the price has to be dropped - do it any other way and either a) nobody’d buy the expansion because it’s overpriced or b) nobody’d buy the base game because it’s overpriced in comparison to the expansion.  So the pricing is what it is, we get a weak response from HiG and the consumer still ends up feeling shafted.

I realize HiG almost had to release an expansion to try and franchise their latest SdJ winner (just like every other publisher does), but I think in this case they’d have been better served by holding G&G for Essen and releasing it as a standalone game that shared only theme with the original.  The current situation just ends up in a loss of credibility and, in my case at least, a firmer resolve to try before I buy any future HiG releases.

pk

I wish Days of Wonder had done this for their “expansions” to Ticket to Ride. They made three games and the only differences is a gameboard, a deck of cards, and a few extra tokens.

I don’t know, Ed--a board, cards, and tokens, that’s pretty much a game, isn’t it?  I think if DoW had done the same thing for TtR and forced the buyers to share the trains between the three games, there would have been many justified complaints.  Particularly since the expansions couldn’t have been produced cheaply, not with the size and quality of the boards.

I’m glad Days of Wonder took the road they did.  I would have liked HiG to have included the houses and upped the price to match that of TuT.

When I first read reports of the “controversy” around this bitless expansion, the first thing I thought of was the controversy around DoW’s decision to ship all the versions of TtR as stand-alones.  The hue and cry back then was, “Why, oh why, couldn’t this have been released an expansion so I wouldn’t have to buy another whole game?” Now I hear, “Why, oh why, couldn’t this have been released as a whole game so I don’t have to use the bits from [read: buy] the original?” Clearly, this is a tough crowd to please.

"a board, cards, and tokens, that’s pretty much a game, isn’t it?”

Well, not really in the case of Ticket to Ride. If you have TTR and you want to play TTR: Europe, why pay over 40 bucks ($41 at Funagain, $45-ish at your FLGS) for a game board, fifteen game tokens (the stations), and about thirty destination cards?

Heck, they do it for Age of Steam and Power Grid and everyone is happy about it. I wish more games did this. I’d buy every TTR expansion and throw them all in one box. Same with Thurn and Taxis—this actually makes me more excited about getting the game.

OK, so “furshlugginerâ€? is and OLD foreign-sounding slang word used in the US.  I guess MAD Magazine stole it from Yiddish.  Yeah, that was a little before my time (I think I was more interested in X-Men comic books and memorizing the dialog in the Star Wars movies back then)

Brett,
That is what I thought.  We (including me) first complained about Days of Wonder issuing different games instead of expansions.  Now we (including me) are saying I’d rather pay $8 more for the houses to have a full TuT game.

I say DoW made the right choice.

I am more than happy to save a little dough and have a game use less wood.  I have enough wooden cubes, houses, towers, discs, meeples… My collection is a termite’s dream!  Actually, I wouldn’t mind game companies going a little ‘greener’ in regards to the materials used.

After all this complaining, I bet this is the first and last time they do a expansion like this.

I’m a bit confused, as I was always under the impression that an expansion used bits from the previous game as much as possible… that’s what an expansion is supposed to do.

Put me down in the pro-saving money camp.