Strategy for Echoes Expansion

[ZenVee]

Anyone else struggling to get consistent wins with Echoes Expansion this season?

With just the base set, it felt like an all-out drag race to 6 achievements.

For this season, I've adapted my playstyle to try and do more board control & splaying with this expansion. It feels like there is less interaction and more "bingo" moments where one player gets a power card and then does his own thing until he wins.

Am I wrong? What have I missed? Would love to hear what has been working for you.

[ZenVee]

After playing with the expansion more, I'd change slightly what I think about it.

It now feels like a drag race to 7 achievements, not necessarily a slower paced game.

I do still think there's more bingo moments than the base set, triggered by certain bingo cards.

-Clock, the king of bingo. This card is sometimes good, sometimes not good, but always frustrating to 1 of the 2 players in the game
-Steamboat, another frustrating card. Not as egregious, but still unfun
-Elevator, very frustrating card when someone beats you down with it. Not as much random chance, but I guess the bingo part is drawing the card.

-Hot Air Balloon, separate from the rest because it is "fun" but also a total bingo card for whoever draws it. It seems to win most games if you already have more achievements, or if you have more lightbulb icons.

[pv666]

It's hard to tell if the perception of randomness is that the Echoes set is less well known by everyone, or just the fact that only a few echo card are played each game, but yeah I would agree.
I had the impression at first that games were slower, but not really once you can get higher age echo cards.
I still think the base game is fine

[ZenVee]

It's hard to tell if the perception of randomness is that the Echoes set is less well known by everyone, or just the fact that only a few echo card are played each game, but yeah I would agree.
I had the impression at first that games were slower, but not really once you can get higher age echo cards.
I still think the base game is fine

Probably right, a bit of both! Another factor is that there's obviously more cards, so brings more variance. On top of that, there is kind of a divergence that can be created intentionally by getting rid of your echoes card in hand do draw a new echoes card, or purposefully try to limit that and stay in the base set/try to speed through ages.

It kind of feels like echoes went a little overboard on the extra special achievements, which causes less interaction between the players, because they can kind of go for different achievements instead of the base set where you're more incentivized to beat your opponent to the next achievement, whether it be 1,2,3, etc or trying to beat them to wonder for the 5 splays achievement. I don't really like this divergence, and not only the special achievements, but the extra number achievements that are actually pretty common, like soap, chopsticks, hot air balloon, etc.

I know I'm starting to get a little off topic, but I did make a few threads already and I don't want to spam the board too much. Overall, in spite of all my criticism of echoes, I am sad to see it go this new season. Going back to the base set now seems so dull, too easy to pick the best action. Anyone else feel that way?

[pv666]

I know I'm starting to get a little off topic, but I did make a few threads already and I don't want to spam the board too much. Overall, in spite of all my criticism of echoes, I am sad to see it go this new season. Going back to the base set now seems so dull, too easy to pick the best action. Anyone else feel that way?

The base game is almost never dull to me, always a lot of tough strategic and tactical decisions to make. The only thing (but is it different with expansions?) is that quite a few bad early-game situations are very tough to recover from.
Expansions is only when I want some friendly chaotic nonsense.

[NickJim]

Prioritizing splaying as soon as possible and drawing and melding echoes cards seems to pay off the most. That’s because you can chain dogmas and advance in tech much more rapidly than base game.