I rarely chase the latest ‘hotness’ in the tabletop gaming world. When I got a taste of Arcs at UK Games Expo, I could feel it was something special. The fact that it is from Leder Games, one of my favourite publishers, and the dream team of Cole Wherle and Kyle Ferrin was just the icing on the cake.
My first experience of teaching and playing a full game was without the Leaders and Lore cards. These give an asymmetric setup to the sides. The rulebook advises that you get a feel for the core of the game first. Leder have a great track record with helping folk learn their games, so when they tell you to do something you should.
First Thoughts pieces represent my impressions after an initial play of the game. I will highlight what I enjoyed and any pitfalls to be avoided. It is not to be take as a full review. I believe this perspective is useful as many of us encounter many games only once.
There is nothing overly complex in Arcs for sure, so maybe you could just dive straight into the full core experience. However I found the game to be a very unusual combination of familiar mechanisms that take a bit of getting used to.
The core is the much talked about ‘trick-taking’ action selection. Although this part of the game does wear the clothes of trick taking, it doesn’t belong in that category.
The player with the initiative gets to play a ‘lead’ card. Every card lets you take a certain number of actions and has a value. The higher the value, the fewer the actions. Each one also belongs to a suit; Administration, Aggression, Construction, and Mobilisation. Each suit restricts the actions you can take. For instance Aggression only lets you Move, Battle, or Secure (grab a special card).
The lead gets to take all the actions of their card. They set the tone for the round through their choices. Everyone else follows by playing a card. They can Surpass, playing a higher value card of the same suit and taking all the actions of that card. They can Pivot, playing a card of a different suit and taking only one action of that card’s suit. Finally they can copy, playing any card facedown and taking one action of the lead suit.
At the end of the round initiative might pass to a new player who surpassed, or have been seized during the turn. The benefits to having initiative are two fold. You get to take all the actions of the card you play as mentioned, but you also get to declare ambitions.
Ambitions get you points. If you are the lead, you can declare the ambition on the card you play. Ambitions are things like having the most of a particular resource, or having the most defeated ships in battle. With only 3 declarations allowed, and 5 different ambitions, this is a scramble to figure out what you can get, and how to get it. At the end of each chapter, multiple rounds, you give out points to first and second place in each ambition declared. Escalation is baked in as the rewards increase each round. The twist here is that in declaring an ambition, you secede the initiative in the next round.
Arcs feels like a tuned piece of clockwork counting down to chaos. At the centre of this timepiece are the two cogs of Ambitions and Action Selection. Every action has a response. Each choice has a counter. You’ll feel powerless to carry out plans at times, but then swing round to being in control. When, and how, you take advantage of this is a matter I am not yet familiar with.
I do know that if you go into Arcs expecting a pure strategy game you will bounce off hard. This is a game that asks you to pivot, improvise, and adapt. It’s a wild ride, and I am looking forward to giving it the full review treatment soon.
I bought Arcs with my own money from Ancient Robot Games.
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