Avid readers of this blog will know that I bought Star Trek Frontiers this year as an alternative to the rather expensive Mage Knight. I have managed to learn the rules and even play several games, winning many1. The biggest obstacle to overcome was actually staying up late enough to complete the game. Frequently, that is the main challenge in board gaming; putting your children to bed, tidying up the house, setting up the game, and spending those remaining eight minutes hunting down borg cubes before bed.
I realised shortly after buying the game that there was a popular expansion called The Return of Khan, which is virtually essential as a solo-gamer2. I obviously needed to have this expansion, as I am never going to be playing this game with others, and those that have actually say the game suffers for it. Where to look?
Everywhere, apparently. This thing is out of stock and out of print.
The above image is what I see on every normal online store.
Oh, but what about ebay?
Price Gouger 1
Price Gouger 2
Price Gouger 3
I mean, Noble Knight Games are a massive rip-off store, especially if you have to factor in shipping, but ~£240 for some goddamn cards is on another level.
There was a lower priced one on ebay for £195 which I did not pay, but some idiot did, and that is why these prices remain so high. People like to be fleeced.
These listings aren’t even for a new game, they’re all in a used condition.
Crazy. So anyway I’ve decided that maybe I should have to bought Mage Knight in the first place to avoid this ridiculous situation where only half the game exists. This is all WizKids fault, of course. Surely if they can see that idiots are paying upwards of £200 per expansion, there must be enough demand for this game to justify another print?
I’ve acquired the base game of Mage Knight now, and am looking at getting hold of the Lost Legion expansion, which I think is the equivalent of the Return of Khan3 expansion from Star Trek, but for a far more reasonable, though still far too expensive, price4.
Update 16th September: Quite miraculously I was checking eBay for Return of Khan auctions just in case, and saw one being sold for an unbelievably cheap £65 (or thereabouts) and managed to win it for the only-slightly-rip-off price of £74.00. I consider this a win, and am lucky that the seller either didn’t know what others were selling the game for (as I reckon they could have put the starting bid at more like £120 and someone would have still paid it) or they were just a decent individual who priced their in-demand product for a sensible price5. Either way, I now own the Star Trek Frontiers Return of Khan expansions and I can still afford to buy groceries.
Wish I didn’t bother with Mage Knight and The Lost Legion now!
29th August 2024
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On easy mode ↩︎
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According to those wise in the way of making YouTube videos on this kind of thing ↩︎
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Or vice-versa, really ↩︎
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After having written this I had put a bid on an ebay auction for The Lost Legion, only for a slightly cheaper version to appear on Amazon a few days later. That will teach me to bid on an auction any later than the last 15 seconds, as it tradition ↩︎
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Or they were hoping for a bidding war and didn’t realise that so few people would be interested in an over-priced six-year-old expansion to an eight-year-old game which is, basically, a re-skinning of Mage Knight ↩︎
