Arcs Third Opinion

The name 'ARCS' comes from the representation of 3D space on a 2D board, with different Arc markers noting inaccessible areas of space (amongst other things ) The game is, in essence, a 4X: Expand, Explore, Exploit, Exterminate. Build Cities (to tax them and gain resources) and Starports (to build ships and fling them between jump gates), travel to other planets that may or may not be occupied, and conquer them by guile or combat. Pretty standard stuff, so far; it all feels very familiar, though not in a bad way. Taxing cities for resources is particularly important, as it provides you with additional action choices (these being rather limited, as I’ll come to), or in the case of Weapons, to battle. Because at its heart this is a Trick-taking game, which for someone raised on Bridge and Whist is simply a delight.

Your cards are divided into thematic suits – Administration, Aggression, Construction, and Mobilization – which have different actions, and the higher the card value, the fewer actions you can take. Follow suit from the first player, and you get to take your listed actions, but you can equally change suit, for a single action from that suit, or play facedown to copy an action from theirs. Or, if you’re feeling wild, play 2 cards, sacrificing an action to take the initiative.

Initiative control is vitally important, as this allows you to determine Ambitions: the game objectives for the coming round. Ambitions are similarly determined by card suit, and the earlier you choose the Ambition, the more it’s worth for the round. Ambitions are about having the most of a given resource(s), most ships destroyed or captives taken.

Combat, incidentally, is both elegant and completely vicious. Only the attacker rolls dice, with the Blue Skirmish dice representing a lightning strike with limited risk reward, the Red Assault dice a much higher chance of damage to both sides, and the Orange Raid dice a chance to nick your opponent’s stuff. #spoileralert : Raids are key to victory. Even, however, at your most desperate, the tide can turn your way, with a little luck. That’s not to say you’re totally dependent on the luck of the draw – far from it, in fact. The game is about making dynamic, tactical decisions in the moment, rather than necessarily being bound to a singular course of action. Compared to other 4Xs, where there can be a lot of downtime, strategizing the minutiae of your turn whilst others drift of, this is a game where even a single card played grips your attention, forces you to adapt, modify and change tack even within a wider game plan. For instance, I might start with planets that give me plenty of Empath resources: do I follow this through for the whole game, or is that too obvious – will there be a target on my back every time I think of gathering that resource? Or should I fake out my opponents, and make them think that’s my objective? Or maybe – just maybe – do both?

Even at its most basic, ARCS is asymmetrical, as you don’t begin with the same resources as one another. However, you can emphasise this through the addition of both Leaders and Lore which give you different starting abilities and objectives.