Doomlings is a clearly a fun game. But you know what makes it even more fun? Expansions! Below, I’ll be talking about two different expansions I’ve been playing for several weeks now over dinner tables and at coffee shops all around my town: The Legends of Enderas and Castle Glass.

First, let’s talk about Legends of Enderas which feels like a pretty massive expansion for the game.

Legends of Enderas Review

Trait cards are fleshed out characters in their own right

I’ve written at length about how good of a game I think the base set Doomlings is. However, in Enderas Doomlings feels like it comes even more into its own. Each and every trait feels like a unique creature joining your side. Gone are the somewhat amorphous traits present in the base set (many of which are essentially colorful blobs with unique visual characteristics) and instead are entire, flushed out creatures to enjoy.

You can see an example of a Dinoling from Enderas versus a more generic card you’ll get in the base set.

While this adds plenty of flavor to the game for us more seasoned adults, it’s a game changer for the kiddos who will love these fully fleshed out creatures, making it all the more reason to pick this expansion up for family night.

Legends of Enderas adds a world of complexity and excitement to the game

While the base set game is fantastic for its simplistic entry-point to play combined with its high skill ceiling, Enderas adds incredible new mechanics and combos to the game that feel very rewarding for a Doomlings player looking for a little more.

Take for example this Dino Wrangler card.

Dinowrangler lets you play a Dinoling from the discard pile and activate its action – enabling you the opportunity to extend your turn while also giving you the option to build your traits around a specific tribe (Dinolings).

Meanwhile, Mythlings and Techlings come complete with their own bag of tricks, such as the attachment ability that lets you attach traits to other traits, unlocking additional benefits to help you win at the end of the world.

Treasures further extend the fun

As if all of that weren’t enough (and indeed it’s plenty to keep you busy exploring cards and combinations for many games), Legends of Enderas also comes with a new card type entirely: Treasures. Unlike the rest of the expansion, Treasure cards come with a handy little rulebook that does lend some advice about how to use them: either make them part of the game dolling them out as you play, or each player strats with three treasures that are all they get for the whole game.

We went with the three treasures to start with for simplicity and it added plenty more to think about to our game.

How should you incorporate Legends of Enderas to your Doomlings play?

Right away the only thing that struck me as a negative mark for Enderas is the lack of information on how you’re supposed to incorporate the expansion into your base game. Unless I missed something amongst the many explainer cards included in the game to help players understand new card types and mechanics, there’s nothing that tells you how you are supposed to actually incorproate a massive expansion like Legends of Enderas into the base set.

So, let me offer you a few pointers.

Start small

I wouldn’t try to incorporate every new card into the game. Instead, what we did was to incorporate different types of cards based on their themes into our base game. Not only does this make learning the new cards easier, it creates a lot of unique flavor around each game you play.

For example, we ran a game first using the Dinolings, then incorporated Mythlings etc. Only after doing this for a few games did we give Treasures a go.

The main benefit of going with a smaller subset of cards in your deck by focusing on different elements of Enderas is that it makes it more likely for you to build around distinct strategies. This adds variety to the game play which is one of the most exciting things about Doomlings, and with so many card combos to choose from you essentially have endless different games to enjoy!

Legends of Enderas Verdict – 10/10

Legends of Enderas is the perfect expansion for adding layers of flavor, complexity, and fun to your Doomlings base set game. Whatever was missing in the base set is more than made up for in this truly epic expansion. Again, the only thing I would like to see included in future expansions are some suggestions on game formats like I highlight above included within the box itself. This would help players get going more quickly and have more successful and fun starting points to then customize future games to their liking.

But who knows? Maybe the ambiguity is just par for the course when prepping for the end of the world!

Castle Glass expansion review – a bite sized expansion with exceptional combos

Castle Glass is a much smaller expansion than Enderas, but that doesn’t take away from its fun. Indeed, whereas Legends of Enderas almost feels like three different expansions packed into one, Castle Glass offers one cohesive theme that makes it feel almost like it could be its own side quest to Doomlings.

I know that the instructions explicitly state that you need the Doomlings base game in order to play, but our first experience playing Castle Glass was at a coffee shop playing the game entirely on its own. And honestly this may be the best way to experience Castle Glass for the first time, offering a fun mini-game to explore its unique, combo-centric mechanics before incorporating it into your broader gameplay.

Castle Glass is all about fish

The really fun mechanic found in Castle Glass is that it incorporates specific rules that see players gain a ton of points for having two of the same kind of fish class – more for special classes like Exotic Shell and Exotic Fish.

While the rest of the Doomlings gameplay works similarly, having this added insentive to bolster your points immensely by havings these otherwise lower point cards opens up some very interesting routes to take. For example, many of your Fish cards (like Opulent pictured above) let you play another card from your hand. The tradeoff here is that these cards are often low points, but of course combine them and you get additional points for every type in your pile.

Is the tradeoff worth it? That’s the question you’ll have to ask yourself as you build your traits towards the end of the world.

Catle Glass does present a challenge

The funny thing is that despite loving Castle Glass for its cohesiveness, it also makes me scratch my head a little bit about how best to incorporate it into your broader Doomlings game. Indeed, some of these combos could get a bit wattered down compared to some of the other stuff going on in Doomlings if (for example) your trait pile is too big.

To help work with this a bit, we tried doing a lower card count of trait cards and building a game that primarily focused on Castle Glass combos and Dinolings. The end result was a pretty fun game, but I do think given the more closed garden nature of Castle Glass it works best in a more limited format versus the massive Enderas which feels like it can easily fit into any game mode.

Regardless, Castle Glass is a solid 9/10 expansion and certainly worth giving a try!

And don’t forget the shiny cards!

Last but not least, part of the fun of Doomlings is collecting the shiny cards that come with the game. I’m a little add odds about how to inocorpate these shiny cards into my game because part of me wants to use them while part of me can’t stomach putting cards that look this good into a pile of other cards. So my son simply has started putting his foil cards aside in his card binder, which I think is a solid choice.

Here’s a special limited edition Headless Horseman card that Doomlings sent me during their Halloween promotion. You can get similar foil cards like this in your expansions. And while they won’t be the headless horseman I thought I’d share a picture of that card because the foil cards certainly add a layer of fun and collectibility to playing this game!

Enhance Your Doomlings Play with These Two Expansions