Board Game Review: Expansions to The LOOP by Pandasaurus Games!

We’ve previously reviewed The LOOP board game by Pandasaurus Games, which is a time-travelling cooperative game where players assume the role of Time Agents hoping to keep the space-time continuum in check and thwart the evil Dr. Faux! It’s a delightful tongue-in-cheek game that offers plenty of high-stakes challenges and close-calls that I love to experience when board gaming.

And if you already really like The LOOP, then you should be aware of the expansions for the game! Currently there are two expansions available for The LOOP – The Revenge of Fauxzilla and The Fur Brigade. Both offer new characters to play with as you protect the Sacred Timeline, to steal the verbiage from Loki.

What are we waiting for? Let’s play some expansions to The LOOP!

The LOOP: The Revenge of Fauxzilla Expansion

Expansion Overview

The Revenge of Fauxzilla unleashes two new game modes to The LOOP: Fauxzillapocalypse and The 7 Kaiju Balls. Both are High complexity scenarios that are better suited towards seasoned players of The LOOP, but if you want to jump right in with these on your first game you will just be challenging yourself!

In the first mode, Fauxzillapocalypse, players will be traversing spacetime to take out the terrible monster known as Fauxzilla! Each time that you damage the creature, you move its health cube down on the track, gaining a reward. Get it all the way to the bottom and you win. But watch out – you can only damage Fauxzilla by charging traps with well-timed Artifact use, and then forcing the monster into the space with the charged trap. Vortexes will thwart your progress as well!

In the 7 Kaiju Balls scenario, players are accomplishing the same Missions as normal but are also collecting the 7 Kaiju Balls scattered across spacetime. These have to be sealed using matching Artifact cards. At the same time, Fauxzilla is wandering the timeline searching for the Balls. Every time they collect a Ball, it goes into their nest for safekeeping.

You also get 2 new Agents: Faux Klein Schlag who is a nod to Mini Me, and The Peak Twins who are inspired by Twin Peaks. The former gives you control over Dr. Faux’s machine every turn, and the latter gives you flexibility in the sense that you have two Agent meeples and can choose which one you want to activate.

What’s in the Box?

4 Big Custom Wooden Pawns (Fauxzilla, Faux Klein Schlag, The Peak Twins)
2 Character Tiles
2 Extra Game Modes (1 Modes tile, 2 Mission tiles)
22 New Artifact Cards
7 Trap Tiles
7 Kaiju Ball tokens
15 plastic cubes

The LOOP: The Revenge of Fauxzilla Thoughts

The Revenge of Fauxzilla expansion to The Loop has just about everything I’d want in an expansion: new modes, cards, and characters. It introduces new mechanics, but only in the sense of having those new scenarios. When an expansion hits, it can sometimes be hard to start integrating everything into the base game, but the Revenge of Fauxzilla really gives you more of what makes The LOOP so fun in the first place!

Both of the new characters give players a breath of flexibility, which I really enjoy, and The Peak Twins are one of my favorites to play with. In fact, I think they’re one of the strongest Agents in the game because you can essentially cover ground across the entire board if you need to. On the other hand, they also work extremely well on the same Era, so it’s a fun balancing act to play with.

Playing Fauxzillapocalypse also gives a different spin to the game. You’re still avoiding getting a second Vortex on each mode, but the attention shifts to the big Fauxzilla meeple rampaging across the board. I prefer this mode to the Kaiju Ball scenario, just because it creates such a different objective than completing Missions. You really get the feeling that this threat is gigantic and it’s certainly a challenge to overcome it.

That being said, I still enjoy the Kaiju Ball scenario because it is so similar to the base game. It can be a bit crowded with all of the tokens, cubes, and meeples all over the game board, which is probably my only knock on it. Despite its busyness, the Dragonball Z-esque mode of passing these Balls around really enhances the cooperative feel, because you need everybody to be…on the ball if you hope to succeed!

All-in-all, if you’re looking for more of The LOOP, The Revenge of Fauxzilla is it! More variety and more challenge will ensure that The LOOP keeps hitting the table for many game nights to come.

The LOOP: The Fur Brigade Expansion

Expansion Overview

The Fur Brigade is a much smaller expansion, and is more like a character pack when it all comes down to brass tacks. They also introduce a new mini mechanic: Charcoal 14. This nifty little cube allows you to spend it to immediately move to that Era as an Action, which turns out to be fairly powerful in a game about managing cardboard real estate.

There’s also a new card ‘suit’: the Voidhole Dimension. The catch with these cards is that they are single-use only; once you’ve activated the card it gets completely removed from the game. Again, these are major game-altering effects that can bring the Timge Agents clawing back from the brink of defeat and back into the jaws of victory.

And then, of course, you have the two new characters in Arsène Lupus and Catruman the Black. The former is a master of Charcoal 14, and allows you to randomly drop Charcoal 14 into the machine when you activate Artifacts with the Black Hole Dimension. On the other paw is Catruman the Black, who gets a hand size of 4 cards instead of 3. Cats hoard things, right?

What’s in the Box?

2 Big Custom Wooden Pawns (Arsène Lupus and Catruman the Black)
2 Character Tiles
19 Cards
10 plastic cubes

The LOOP: The Fur Brigade Thoughts

In games like The LOOP that feature characters with asymmetric powers, I always like having tons of character options at my disposal. For this reason, I love that I can now play with these anthropomorphic cat and dog Agents that are quite unique in their abilities.

The randomness of Arsène Lupus seems like it would be a major drawback, but I found it to be very enticing. After all, it’s just an extra benefit on top of playing your cards. Not only does it give you something to work towards, as far as collecting Black Hole Artifacts, but it also creates more opportunities to throw cubes into the machine. That’s the schtick of The LOOP, so anytime I get to hope for a certain outcome from the machine is a big plus in my book. The downside of this character is that you won’t be doing as many Loops because of your Black Hole love.

Catruman the Black is just a solid character all the way around. Having access to an additional card at all times is an evergreen benefit that any powergamer can appreciate taking advantage of. The flavor of some of the standard cards is also really enjoyable. Like of course a cat would use their paw to push a Clone around!

As with all of the other The LOOP content, this expansion is light-hearted with plenty of references to make you smile. And even after that novelty wears off, the Charcoal mechanic is a worthwhile experiment, and both characters are a blast to play with. Try out combinations of them all to see what works best in each scenario!

The LOOP Board Game Expansions: Closing Thoughts

So far we’ve covered both expansions to The LOOP available in the US market through Pandasaurus Games. If we hear word of more expansions coming out, we will certainly let you know!

On thing to note is that both expansions come in a thin box, and both will fit easily within the base game box with the other content. It’s a nice way to cut costs while also using less materials in the production of the game.

You can pick up a copy of The LOOP or the expansions through Pandasarusu Games directly, or look for it on the shelves of your Friendly Local Game Store (FLGS)!

Disclaimer: Nerds on Earth was provided a copy of these The LOOP expansions from Pandasaurus Games in exchange for an honest review: The Revenge of Fauxzilla and The Fur Brigade.