Reggie Games, publisher of Primal, has been busy. After successfully funding and delivering their hit game Primal: The Awakening and its five expansions, they began working on multiple new expansions, as well as reprinting the Primal base game and the original expansions. Their new webstore at Reggiegames.com opened on November 17th, 2025. You will be able to preorder all Primal content, including the new expansions, on their site during the Primal Friday 2025 promotion.
Speaking of which, I was lucky enough to receive preproduction copies of ALL the new expansions to review. Honestly, these are some of the best preproduction review copies I have ever received. But regardless of production status, are the new expansions worth your money and time? Mostly yes, depending on what you are looking to add to your Primal experience.
Expansion Overview:
Reggie Games has published nine new expansions in which I will group into four different categories:
- Character – “Heart of the Wild”, includes two new hunters, spear-wielding Zaraya, and wardrum master Drusk.
- Biomes – Five different Biome expansions, each with a double-sided playmat, adding two new biomes. These playmats replace the standard playmat, with the biomes adding arena-based bonuses to take advantage of and/or obstacles to avoid.
- Card organizers – Two new storage solutions for sleeved cards, one for all the tokens and monster cards, and the other for hunter cards.
- Nightmare Expansion – The aptly named “Nightmare Expansion 2” adds cards for all of the monsters that did not receive the nightmare treatment (a.k.a. hard mode) in the first nightmare expansion.
Below are all the new expansions, in order from my most to least favorite.
Game Experience with the Expansion:
My favorite expansion is “Heart of the Wild” because it adds two new hunters, Zaraya (Spear) and Drusk (Wardrum). Of the two, I prefer Drusk. Why? Because he is a bard and supports his fellow hunters. I also love bards. Yes, I also main Hunting Horn in Monster Hunter, so I am a bit biased. But I do love his new Rhythm mechanism, which rewards you for discarding a card that matches the top card of the discard pile. At levels two and three, Rhythm allows you to increase the damage when another hunter plays a red attack card. I also like that I can heal, help my team with movement, and stop monster behaviors as well. Offense may not be his forte, but any group would benefit from including Druck.
Zarya, on the other hand, is pure offense. She has a pierce track that increases when you play two maneuver cards back-to-back. Once it reaches level four, you can trigger piercing damage instead of your normal attack damage (this new damage is included on all spear cards). It feels great dancing around a monster, building up pierce for a HUGE attack! I truly enjoy both new hunters, especially when they are together as a team. Drusk boosting Zarya’s damage can lead to some quick fights. The only thing missing from this expansion is another mini-campaign. I loved the shortened campaign provided in the Mount Havoc expansion and was hoping one would be included in Heart of the Wild.
The five biome expansions are next up in my list of favorites. While not as exciting as new hunters, these add significant replay value to Primal. Each expansion has its own rulebook explaining the two included biomes. Across the five expansions, there is a biome for each of the nine monster elements, as well as a 10th one simply called “Nightmare.” For the campaign, you can replace the “boring” standard playmat with the biome that matches the monster’s element you are confronting. The rules also provide scenarios to use the biomes in Expedition Mode, as well as ways to balance utilizing the two biomes with any of the monsters for custom scenarios you may want to design. The five expansions and their elements are as follows:
- Crystal Caves and Flooded Wilds – crystal and coral
- Endless Swamp and Nightmare – venom and nightmare (non-element)
- Goldarks and Thunder Mountains – metal and thunder
- Niz-Maraga and Sunset Plains – feather and horn
- Woltyar and Frozen Wastes – fire and ice
I enjoyed using the new playmats, especially for fights that I have played several times and mastered… well, as well as you can master Primal. For example, fighting Vyraxen in Woltyar really increases the challenge. Not only do you have to deal with the beast itself, but the increasing temperature of the battlefield (at the start of the round, you are forced to discard X number of cards from the top of your deck, where X is the round number), as well as suffering Burning if you cross the lava rivers on the playmat. And that is just one of the nine new biomes!
Next, there are the two new card organizers. I really liked these. While I do not sleeve my cards, the fact that it fits sleeved cards will be a benefit for many. More importantly, I am also not a painter. Why am I telling you this? I have no problem stacking my non-painted minis on top of one another. What these card organizers allowed me to do was save shelf space. I was able to store all my minis and rulebooks in the base box, and the cards in tokens in the new card organizers. All of my Primal content fits in three boxes. This makes transporting the game so much easier. The only downside was that no instructions or links to a video of how to store the cards were provided in my preproduction copy. Hopefully, this will be rectified by the time these organizers are in your hands.
Finally, there is Nightmare Expansion 2. While it is nice that now every monster has its nightmare variant, those who know me know that this is not an expansion made for me. I prefer having a tough time but then winning the majority of my coop games. I do not want to play a ninety-minute game and only win 25% of the time. This expansion makes the monsters harder. I ALREADY have a hard enough time as it is… I do not need them to be stronger! The only reason I liked the original Nightmare Expansion is that it included three new monsters; unfortunately, this expansion is cards only.
Final Thoughts:
I LOVE Primal and am blessed to have almost everything that has been released thus far. Instead of going on about how much I love the game, I am going to provide my recommendations of what to preorder, from most to least needed, on their website:
- Primal: The Awakening Base Game – duh
- Mount Havoc – while it pains me to say it, Heavy Gun + Dual Blades > Spear + Wardrum. It also includes all the required cards to play with the base game and ALL expansions. Finally, it includes a new mini campaign.
- Heart of the Wild – a close third, but still the 2nd best expansion. It includes all the required cards to play with the base game and ALL expansions. I wish it had a mini campaign.
- Feather – two new monsters, introduces Feather element, feather forge card, feather weapons, as well as new items, helm armor, and reward cards
- Ice – two new monsters, introduces Ice element, ice forge card, ice weapons, as well as new items, helm armor, and reward cards
- Nightmare – includes four new monsters, three new minis (one of the minis uses two of the sets of monster cards), and Nightmare variant cards for six base game monsters and all of the monsters in this expansion
- Venom – two new monsters, introduces Venom element, venom forge card, venom weapons, as well as new items, helm armor, and reward cards
- Biomes – pick the ones that match the monster elements you like fighting, if you do not want to buy all five (see my list above)
- Card organizers – Most people would prefer gameplay over storage solutions, but if you are tight on shelf space, these are worth it
- Nightmare Expansion 2 – the game is already hard enough for me….
Hits:
• Two new hunters
• Biomes add a ton of variety
• Storage solutions can help shrink the games shelf footprint
Misses:
• No new monsters
• No mini campaign included in Heart of the Wild
Source: Board Game Quest
