Ark Nova Card Game: Marine Worlds Expansion

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.