Publish or Perish Expansions Review – More Academic Mayhem

Disclaimer: Publish or Perish and its expansions were provided for free by Publish or Perish, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Alongside Publish or Perish came two miniature expansions: The Revenge of the Reviewer 2, which adds a new deck of Action cards, and Academic Sh*tpost, which adds 12 new Manuscript cards. Both can be mixed straight into the base game without any additional rules.

Neither expansion is particularly substantial, but both bring something new to the table. One adds more ways to mess with your fellow academics, while the other gives you some new manuscripts with abilities of their own. Let’s take a closer look.

The Revenge of the Reviewer 2

The Revenge of the Reviewer 2 adds 38 new Action cards to the game, giving you more cards to play with, particularly when playing with a larger group. It also introduces a number of new abilities and a new type of resource card: the almighty Research Grants. These can be substituted for any resource card.

As with the original, the smarmy writing and tongue-in-cheek take on academic life are back in full force. Almost every new card has another clever in-joke for researchers to enjoy, with the exception of the Mishap cards. So if you enjoyed the humour of the base game, there’s plenty more where that came from.

But the real value of this expansion is how the new cards shake things up.

Research Grants give you a lot more flexibility when collecting the resources needed to publish a manuscript. Meanwhile, Citation Error cards let you make opponents lose citations, and the Budget Cut card forces a player to discard half their hand. Because apparently academic life wasn’t cruel enough already.

It’s not all bad news, though. The Perseverance card protects you from negative effects, while Budget Increase cards let everyone take a card from the discard pile. So there’s a little something for the more helpful academics among us, too.

Most importantly, there are the new Wrath of the Reviewer 2 cards, which provide more opportunities to trigger trivia challenges. I think this is one of Publish or Perish’s biggest selling points, and something that makes it stand out from other games. I was disappointed that the original didn’t lean into it more, especially given how much work has gone into creating the questions. They’re genuinely interesting, so I’m glad this expansion gives them a little more love.

Overall, The Revenge of the Reviewer 2 is a neat little expansion. If you enjoy the base game, it’s well worth picking up. It adds more interaction, gives you new ways to get involved and, best of all, brings along more of the writing and humour that made the original so enjoyable.

Academic Sh*tpost

While The Revenge of the Reviewer 2 focuses on Action cards, the Academic Sh*tpost expansion adds 12 new Manuscript cards. But these aren’t just more of the same. Each comes with its own unique ability, whether that’s allowing you to publish the manuscript using any resource cards, letting you draw extra cards when you publish specific manuscripts, or protecting you from Mishap cards for the rest of the game.

These are welcome additions, particularly because one of my criticisms of the base game was that some turns could feel a little uneventful. Sometimes you’re simply collecting resources and playing them to publish a manuscript, without much else going on. These new abilities give you a few more interesting things to consider when choosing which manuscripts to pursue.

Unfortunately, this expansion also highlights one of the base game’s presentation problems. With so much text on the cards, they can feel extremely busy and overwhelming. This wasn’t much of a problem when the text was purely for flavour or prompting a tough defence. Now, however, there’s important information you actually need to be able to see, but it gets lost among all the other text. As a result, these new abilities can be difficult to make out when you’re squinting at them from the other side of the table.

Are They Worth Picking Up?

Both expansions fall into the same category of being more of what you already enjoy, rather than anything that fundamentally changes the game. They don’t fix the basic gameplay or suddenly make Publish or Perish appeal to people who weren’t sold on the original.

That said, they do improve the experience. The Revenge of the Reviewer 2 adds more interaction and makes better use of the trivia, while Academic Sh*tpost gives you some new manuscript abilities to play around with.

If you’re already a fan of Publish or Perish, I’d happily recommend picking up both. They’re small additions, but they give you a little more of the good stuff without messing with what makes the original tick.