GMT Game is a war-game publisher known for its crunchy, strategic games… usually about war. However, they have also branched off into other areas, such as racing with Grand Prix and Thunder Alley. But my favorite offering of theirs is The Plumb Island Horror. This cooperative game was a surprise hit for me in 2024, and I’ve eagerly awaited an expansion to give me more factions to play with and hopefully shore up a few quibbles I had with the core game.

Aptly titled The Plum Island Horror: More of a Bad Thing, this expansion adds new content and some errata components for the base game.

Expansion Overview:

More of a Bad Thing introduces:

• Three new playable Factions: The Oceanside Construction Co, ZZ’s Big Top Circus, and the Monkey Island Cultists. It also includes a revised Island Athletic Club faction from the core game.
• New Scenarios, including a Nightmare Mode that significantly ratchets up the difficulty. The scenarios also differ in length; there are even some short ones that only last one day (3 rounds), meaning you can zip through a game a lot quicker with those.
• New Mutations, Search cards, Fate Cards, and Events. Ie: More stuff!

The cultist are certainly a unique faction.

Game Experience with the Expansion:

When it comes to expansions, I’m on record with I want it to enhance the base game, without adding so much complexity that I feel like I’m learning a whole new game. When expansions rise to that level, I tend to just not use them. Thankfully, More of a Bad Thing falls into the former category. It ups the variety with the game, and the new content is very easy to integrate into the core game.

If you are looking for a highly mobile faction, check out the circus.

For the new stuff, the star of the show is going to be the 3 new factions. As usual, they are all creatively named (loved the Seinfeld references). I think the builder faction was my favorite. They have a lot of unique powers and their faction in general feels pretty flexible for being able to do what you need. The Circus performers are a mobile faction, so this is a good one to reach for if you need to move quickly around the board or move civilians. The Cultists are a bit random, in that half of them have you drawing a fate number to see if their power works as intended… or backfires in some way. That one is not for the faint of heart. I tend to play the game more conservatively, so The Cultists aren’t the faction for me (their names are great though).

There are now some scenarios to shake things up.

For those of you who thought that The Plum Island Horror was too easy (those people exist?), this expansion also adds in options to spice things up. Both Alarming mode and Nightmare mode kick things up a notch on the difficulty scale. The nice thing is that both of these modes are modular, and you can mix and match the rules they introduce to your heart’s content. Some are a little rough (skip the replenish action during the night phase), while others are super interesting: You lose evacuation points when a civilian dies, but if you ever get to 46 EP, you win instantly.

Finally, the new scenarios are great. There are 5 in total, two of which last the full game length, but the other 3 make for a shorter game, lasting only 3 game rounds. This injects some nice variety in the game as each has special setups and win conditions. If you’ve played the core game a lot and are looking for a dash of variety, these are an excellent way to get that.

Finally, there are more search cards, event cards, and even some unique monsters to make your life miserable. Such as a reanimate grizzly bear with armor-piercing claws! Or an undead accountant. No ,seriously, that guy sucked.

New tracks to use that help make things a little harder, but a bit different as well.

Final Thoughts:

The Plum Island Horror: More of a Bad Thing expansion is pretty great. It adds in a pile of variety to the core game in the form of new factions, scenarios, monsters, events, and search cards. It also cleans up some cards from the core game. In general, this is one of those expansions you can just mix in with the core game and use alongside it. The scenarios and alarming/nightmare mode you can freely ignore if you just like the core game as it is and take the variety. In either case, this is a solid expansion, and I hope more are in the works.

Hits:
• More factions, and they are all just as memorable
• The new scenarios were a great idea
• Alarming and nightmare mode for people that like to lose

Misses:
• How about some ways to make the game a bit easier