Days of Wonder Asmodee Age of Towers Game

I've only played around with the pieces so far and read through the directions, but I love the concept of the game. I originally bought this to use the pieces for something else, but now I kind of down want to cause the game looks like fun.

After reading and watching multiple reviews, I decided to pick this up, since it is only $15 right now, has a solitaire option (great for quarantine), and has a great toy factor with the little towers (my kids love to stack them). So far, I've played it several times and enjoy it. It really feels like a tower defense successfully brought to the table. And, I have only a few quibbles, though these may be deal-breakers for others. First, because the game was initially a Kickstarter, you are essentially getting less than half of a game, with only one boss and the same enemies cycled every time you play. All the other bosses and monsters have to be purchased as expansions. This still wouldn't bother me with the low cost, but these added bosses and monsters have mostly faded into obscurity, with only one of the 4 or so available for purchase and the others probably never receiving an English print run. Fortunately, the base game includes several tokens and action cards that vary in appearance and order each game, helping with replayability. Unfortunately, and this is my second negative, a vast majority of these cards and tokens should probably be removed immediately if you want to have any kind of coherent strategy and sense of engine building, as most tower defenses do. With many of the cards, you essentially have the power to decimate another player's engine and pull out a win with a lucky single card draw. Other cards are so weak, that you will constantly be waiting for someone else to draw from the available cards, so you don't waste a turn on them or draw blind, especially since only 1 or 2 actions are available to you each round. This is the strongest setback of the game, as it eliminates any sense of progress or meaningful choice for a player, when a random card can pretty much destroy another player's best laid plans. To mitigate this, you can remove all of the cards with negative effects for the other players, but again you are removing some of the randomness, which makes each game feel unique. This all sounds pretty negative, but I enjoyed the game quite a bit, especially after removing the aforementioned cards. I've just found myself getting bored of the game already, and I know this would be largely mitigated if the current Kickstarter model hadn't stripped out a bulk of the content, all for the sake of microtransactions (AKA expansions). It's ironic, because the microtransactions may be the closest thing to a modern tower defense.