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Ark Nova Card Game: Marine Worlds Expansion
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2279 Victory Points
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Description
Ark Nova: Marine Worlds, an expansion for Ark Nova, introduces multiple new elements to the game, such as sea animals that each have to be played in new special enclosures that must be built adjacent to water.
Roughly half the sea animals are reef dwellers, and whenever you add a reef dweller to your zoo, you trigger the ability of all reef dwellers in your zoo. To deal with the dilution of the deck, naturally caused by adding more cards, all sea cards feature a wave icon, and whenever it is revealed in the display, you discard the first card in the row, then replenish.
A new fourth university is available on the association board, and if you take it, you claim one of six special universities from the reserve that feature one research icon and one of six animal icons. When you take this registry, you reveal cards from the top of the deck and keep the first revealed card with an animal icon that matches your chosen university.
For each of the five action cards, four alternate versions with a little twist will be available. Players draft action cards at the start of play, replacing two of their standard action cards with these new ones, increasing the asymmetry in the game.
New bonus tiles and final scoring cards will also be included.
Summary
Ark Nova always hits me with a nostalgia of the video game “Zoo Tycoon” that I played as a kid, and this Marine Worlds expansion gives me “Zoo Tycoon: Marine Mania” vibes! The expansion is a fantastic addition to what is already a superb game, especially for marine animal enthusiasts. The new mechanics add a level of complexity, to what is arguably already a complex game, but the added bonuses can be a game-changer!
Game Set Up
The expansion builds on the existing Ark Nova set up (which you can find details of in Stefano Paravisi’s blog here, with the addition of multiple new cards and tokens. There are 54 new Zoo Cards (Animal, Sponsor and Conservation Project cards), 6 new Final Scoring cards and 1 new Base Conservation Project card. These simply get shuffled into the original Ark Nova decks and can easily be removed again if you want to revert to the base game by locating the seahorse icon present on the cards. Additionally, there are some duplicates of cards already in the base Ark Nova game, that have been modified to accommodate the new animal types of the Marine Worlds expansion, and these should be swapped in for the original base game versions.
There are new enclosures for your marine animal friends: the Large and Small Aquariums. These function in the same way as the Reptile House and Large Bird Aviary from the original game, with specific animals able to be played into these locations as tokens rather than by flipping over an unoccupied standard enclosure. To go with the new Sponsor cards, there are also 4 new unique buildings that can be played onto the map, including an Underwater Tunnel that provides an additional two animal spaces and can be played over Water spaces on the map.
A new Association Board allows for the accommodation of a new University type, which allows you to gain a Research Icon and an Animal Icon of your choice. This can be useful for completing Conservation Projects, Sponsor card or Final Scoring card requirements geared towards animal types. Additional Bonus Tiles also allow you to gain delayed rewards in some instances: specific gray tiles can be obtained at the usual bonus points on the Conservation Track and these can be retained to use later in the game for a bonus (e.g., ignoring up to 3 conditions on an Animal card when playing it). Finally, there are alternate counters and player token types, my favorite of which are the little penguins!
The final addition to the game are the 20 alternative Action cards. These provide added benefits on two different Action types and are advised to be drawn at random to use alongside 3 standard Action cards. Some of these cards have more significant benefits than the others, so it can make a big difference to the game. My personal favorite here is the alternative Build card number 4, which allows you to pay to play over Rock and Water spaces on Side 1 and gains you money when you play over Rock and Water spaces on Side 2!
Playing the Game
As before, I’ll focus on the new gameplay elements added by the Marine Worlds expansion (refer to Stefano’s blog again for the original game overview). The new marine animals added to the game require Aquariums in order to accommodate them in your zoo (with a few exceptions, like the Green Sea Turtle which can double as a reptile!) and these can be built without upgrading your Build card to Side 2. Aquariums must be built next to at least one Water space, but the Large and Small Aquariums don’t have to be built next to each other. An important note: the larger 5-space Aquarium can be particularly tricky to accommodate on some of the more advanced maps, so make sure you don’t get caught out on this when planning your zoo layout. You can only have 1 Large (5 spaces) and 1 Small (2 spaces) Aquariums in your zoo, so make sure that your total animal count doesn’t exceed 7 animal tokens, or you’ll be left with some washed up fishes! Pay attention to the animal requirements as well, as if there is a specification for the enclosure being next to Water and Rock, this must be taken into consideration when placing the Aquarium. The only way to expand on you Aquarium capacity is with the Underwater Tunnel Sponsor card (+2 spaces), which can be tricky to get when you’re dealing with a deck of >150 cards.
In a similar fashion to the Reptile House and Large Bird Aviary, you can move animals that can be accommodated in the Aquarium from Standard Enclosures on the turn that you build your first Aquarium. Additionally, if you have reptile/marine animal hybrids (like the Green Sea Turtle I mentioned earlier), you can move tokens from the Reptile House to the Aquarium to free up space.
The main benefit of marine Animal cards comes from their unique Reef Dweller abilities. These bonuses are present on about half of the new Animal cards and go over and above the standard Animal abilities in some cases. Let’s take the Devil Firefish (or Common Lionfish, as I recognized it!) as an example. As any nature documentary aficionados will know, these fish are venomous and this is reflected in the Venom ability of the lionfish. But, in addition to this ability, the little lionfish also has a Reef Dweller ability that allows you to gain a Break Token whenever the Reef Dweller ability is activated. This occurs both when the animal is played and when any subsequent animal with a Reef Dweller ability is played. The combination of these additional bonuses on play and the fact that they are recurring if you play multiple Reef Dwellers can be a great boost to your game!
The other new mechanic in this Marine Worlds expansion is the Wave Icon, which I personally don’t think adds a great deal to the game but is important to pay attention to when resetting the Display during Breaks. When resetting the Display, if you turn over a card with a Wave Icon it “washes away” the card in Folder 1 and causes all cards to move up one space. This can happen repeatedly, as you can draw multiple Wave Icons in the process of replacing cards, so be sure to pay attention to each card you refresh.
The last addition, the new University, allows you to gain an Animal Icon of your choice. In the games that my husband and I have played with the expansion, this can prove useful in a handful of circumstances. First, is when you have a Conservation Project that involves animal types, as it can make a difference to the tier of Conservation you can support. Second, is when you have a Final
Scoring Card that involves animal types, as it can be a get-out-of-jail if you’re one icon short. And finally, if you have a Sponsor card that provides a bonus for having certain animal types (either end game bonuses or recurring payments). I found this University type particularly useful in the latter circumstance, specifically with cards that give you increased payments based on the occurrences of a an Animal Icon type (e.g., Sponsorship: Primates card, that allows you to gain 3 monies for 1 to 2 primate icons, 6 monies for 3 to 4 primate icons or 9 monies for 5 or more Primate Icons).
Final Verdict
Overall, the Ark Nova Marine Worlds expansion is a nice add to the overall game, and improves on what it already a well thought-out board game. I would highly recommend for Ark Nova players that are already familiar with the mechanics of the base game and are looking for a way to shake things up a bit. So, what are you waiting for: be like the sturgeon and the ray, “get the urge ‘n’ start to play”!
Do you know how to play Ark Nova and are you excited to add some sharks to your zoo? Great you’re in the right place but maybe you want to know how to incorporate this box of underwater (and a few land) treasures into your Ark Nova game. If you don’t know how to play Ark Nova, this guide is not for you and you should learn the base game first. So let’s learn how to play the expansion, Marine Worlds.
Replacing The Old With The New
So the simple things first, we have some new nice and shiny wooden tokens which can replace the old wooden tokens. Also included are some updated conservation, action and final scoring cards, which have updated iconography or slightly easier scoring objectives so those are straightforward and can replace the old ones. Again there are some new animal cards, sponsorship cards, conservation and final scoring cards and these can all be added to their respective decks.
Board Setup
As part of the setup, there is a new association board to replace the old with a new type of university. This new university adds a chosen animal symbol to your zoo and allows you to discard cards from the deck until you find a card with that symbol on indicated by a magnifying glass. You start by placing the generic new university symbol on its demarcated spot and then if you take that tile you choose one of the specific animal related universities to take. This is then refreshed at the end of the round and each player is only allowed one of the new universities.
Action Card Drafting
Now onto the new. There are new upgraded action selection cards and these are drafted. Firstly deal three cards to each player, draft one and pass the other two on, and repeat until the draft is complete. From the three new cards, choose two to keep and replace the corresponding action cards in your setup with the new ones which will have a range of upgraded actions from drawing additional cards to the first animal you play being cheaper. Here I recommend looking at both the base and upgraded side of these cards before deciding as the upgraded side can offer a different bonus again. If you end up drafting three of the same type, randomly draw one of the non drafted cards until you have two that are not the same.
New Enclosure
There are two new enclosures you can build, a two size and a five size aquarium to hold your new aquatic animals and you are allowed to build one of each size. These must be placed adjacent to water and the aquarium symbol is indicated on the enclosure type requirement for those animals. When you place an animal into an aquarium, place the required number of cubes as you would have with a petting zoo, reptile house or aviary but be aware that you can split the cube requirements for an animal across the two enclosures, an odd rule but one worth remembering.
New Cards
On the new cards in Marine Worlds, there are a couple of symbols to be aware of, firstly there is a red bordered enclosure on the new aquatic animals which is to indicate animal size for any end game, sponsor or conservation cards.
There is a new reef symbol on some aquatic cards, this means you gain that bonus when you first play a reef dweller card into your zoo but then you repeat that ability each subsequent time you play a reef dweller card into your zoo, meaning it can stack if you have multiple reef symbols.
The wave action is a new icon which only applies when refilling the reputation row of animals, if you draw a card with a wave symbol, remove the first card from the row and slide the others down and draw a new card. This can stack if multiple wave icons are drawn from the deck this way.
This should be all you need to know to play Marine Worlds, fortunately there is a handy glossary included in the box for the new symbols should you need to reference anything.
Zatu Score
You might like
- Good variety of new Animal Cards that marine animal lovers will enjoy.
- Reef Dweller abilities give great recurring bonuses.
- New University type can be a game changer in completing Conservation Projects, Final Scoring Cards and Sponsor Card requirements.
- Doesnt increase the setup time of the game overall, just a few initial replacements of cards when youre adding the expansion. Cards are helpfully labelled with a seahorse icon to help you remove them if you want to revert to the base game too.
- New rules are easy to pick up if youre already used to playing the base Ark Nova game.
Might not like
- Wave Icon mechanic is a bit of a frustrating add, as it can increase Break reset time and can bump cards that you want off the Display.
- Large Aquarium can be difficult to place on the more advanced maps.