Arcs Review

Arcs then, the little box making big ripples in the board game world in 2024. Random chaos spawned from an uncontrollable card deal, or fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants tactical skirmishing and area control? Honestly, it’s a bit of both, but heavily weighted towards the latter. I’ll also make it clear from the outset that I really like Arcs, so don’t expect some big switcheroo or controversy during the final thoughts.

Let’s get into the weeds of what Arcs is, what it does, and touch on why it’s dividing opinion so strongly, before telling you whether I think you’ll enjoy it or not. A word of warning: despite trying to stick to my 1000-1500 word self-imposed guidelines, this one will probably top 2000 words.

Blackout impossible

Normally I go into writing a review blind. I have a self-imposed media blackout so as not to be influenced by other outlets’ reviews. This time around that’s been impossible. Arcs has been everywhere for the last month or so, and thanks to people desperately trying to make themselves relevant or ride on the coattails of others’ success, it’s impossible not to know what a lot of people think about it. Regardless, I made sure to approach my plays of the game with an open mind.

You’ll hear Arcs described as a trick-taking space game, and that’s partially correct. The big diversion from trick-taking games, however, is that nobody wins a trick, and there are several different ways to ‘win’ each round (trick, for want of a better word). Each round begins with the player holding the initiative marker playing a card from their hand to the main board. Each card belongs to one of four suits and lets you perform multiple different actions. Low-value cards have more pips on them, with each pip giving you an action if you follow suit.

When it’s your turn to play a card, you can either play a card of the same suit with a higher value and claim all the pips as actions (Surpass), play a completely different suit and take a single action from it (Pivot), or play a card face-down to copy the lead card, but again only for one action (Copy).

I love the closed economy of the game. It’s another thing which keeps the player interaction at a constant high level. There are only five of each resource token, and in a game where three of the five scoring conditions want those tokens (as well as the icons on the cards you’ll collect), competition is fierce. Even when you’ve got them, the temptation to spend them during your prelude phase for additional actions is more tempting than snoozing your alarm on Monday morning.

I’m not going to explain how to play Arcs here, there are plenty of other places you can find that, like the rulebook on Leder’s resources page. Essentially you build cities to gain resources from, starports to make ships, then you move your ships about the board to control areas and engage in planetary pugilism to see who emerges victorious. The difficulty here though, and the key to everything that happens in Arcs, is being at the mercy of the hand you are dealt at the start of each chapter of the game. This is where a lot of people cry foul. For me though, this unpredictable ‘chaos’ (it’s really not that chaotic at all) is what makes Arcs sing like a magnificent space whale.

Tactics vs strategy

There are some core concepts to understand if you want to know if Arcs is for you and your group. Firstly, this is not a space 4X game. Not really. The likes of Twilight Imperium, Eclipse (review here), and Xia: Legends of a Drift System might resolve combat with dice rolls, but they’re strategy games. You set your stall out at the beginning of the game and work to a plan. If anything it’s closer to Voidfall (review here) in the way you play cards for actions. That’s where the similarities end, though.

Scoring points in Arcs is done when Ambitions are declared. There are five different scoring categories and the players choose which are scored in each chapter. Three of them are built on accumulating the most of specific resource types, while the other two rely on having the most trophies from combat, or prisoners claimed from the game’s Court cards. What this means to you, the player, is that going into the start of a chapter the way you score is a blank canvas. There’s no advantage to being a power-hungry warlord, smiting all in their way if all of the VPs are going to come from collecting resources.

Regardless of who declares an ambition, the scoring is open to all. This makes timing your declaration of ambition tricky and a lot of fun. The moment you declare, you paint a huge target on your back. Everyone knows what you’re after, and you’d better believe they’re going to try to stop you. You can always wait for the first ambition marker to go and place a later one, but they’re worth fewer VPs, so what do you do? Drawing a line in the sand and committing to a goal is an awesome moment that never gets old.

This is where the difference between strategy and tactics comes into play. Think of strategy as your long-term plan to get to your goal. Tactics are the smaller steps that’ll help you get there. The way Arcs is built means that any long-term strategy is all but pointless. It’s a game of break-neck adaption and canny tactical play. Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about here, to try to wrap some context around my rambling words.

Picture the scene. You’ve locked down the planets producing fuel and materials. You’ve been taxing them like crazy to fill your player board with them. You’re all set to declare the Tycoon ambition this chapter (VPs for the player with the most fuel and resources), but fate has kicked you squarely in the balls and you don’t have a 2 or 7 in your hand. The very cards you need to declare that ambition are in other players’ hands, and they’re not going to be stupid enough to declare something you’ll win.

Great, the game’s ruined, right?

Wrong! This is where some people struggle to understand Arcs’ design. This is where you pivot like a sofa in a staircase. In this example, resources on your board can be spent for bonus Prelude actions on your turn, before your main action. You can spend that stockpile to build more starports and ships, use the fuel to catapult your newly bolstered fleet across the galaxy, then beat the snot out of some damaged ships in other systems and work towards the Warlord ambition.

This is a quick and simple example, for sure, but it’s wholly representative of the constant pivoting and adaptation that Arcs is propped up by. If you come to the game expecting Eclipse and try to plan in the same manner, this is where you’ll come unstuck. This is where I hear a lot of the complaints about Arcs. “I’ve been dealt these cards, I can’t do the thing I wanted to, boo hoo it’s not fair”. Mitigation and planning are your friends. If you really want to attack in the next chapter, make sure you secure and tax weapon planets so you can spend pips for combat. Copying a lead card, even for a single action, can be hugely powerful. Invest in court cards. Is it perfect? No, it’s not. Are you truly hamstrung? No, there are always options.

Training wheels not included

Arcs is from the brain of Cole Wehrle. I’ll happily admit up-front that I’m a big fan of Cole and his games. Oath (review here), Root (review here), Pax Pamir, John Company – all of these are games from his brain and imagination. If you’ve never played one of his games and were brought up on a diet of Euro games, it can be a jarring experience. The importance of player interaction is present in all of his games, and the way they can swing and change (all of the above do this) are hallmarks of his design. They’re not for everyone, and that’s fine, but understanding how his games work will largely dictate whether you’ll enjoy Arcs or not.

There are similarities in Wehrle games to those published by Splotter. Neither of them holds you by the hand as you walk through the nursery doors, and both give you enough rope to hang yourself with in the early game (note to self: don’t combine those metaphors again). This is another point which can be a real turn-off for lots of people. It’s a far cry from the modern Euro game that lets you push buttons and pull levers just to see what happens, knowing that you may well still be in contention at the end of the game. A prime example was my second game of Arcs. On the very first turn of the game, I declared an ambition for a particular resource, only to find out I’d misread the board and where I could build and tax, essentially handing the Chapter to my opponent.

If you don’t pay attention you can really scupper yourself. This isn’t fate kicking you in the balls. This is you curling up a fist and punching yourself squarely in the gonads.

Arcs is a game designed to be learned by repetition. To be played multiple times until you understand what makes it tick and how to play it properly. With this in mind, please listen to the designer when it comes to the asymmetric module you can add. I’ve seen and read multiple accounts from people where they’ve thrown in the asymmetric module of Leaders and Lore from the very first game. This is despite this is the back of the rulebook:

Cole’s games are tuned and balanced, but often hard to get to grips with. Throwing in asymmetry while you’re trying to learn the game is a bad move. There is no other game like Arcs, and the first games have a sharp, steep learning curve. If there were the equivalent of Root’s Walking Through Root playthrough book to explain how to use the asymmetry, it might be different, but it doesn’t. The last thing you want is for players to have a miserable experience because someone else’s leader and lore cards were stroked into activation through your inexperience as much as their clever play. Play the base game first, please.

Final thoughts

Is Arcs the best game ever? No. Not yet at least. Is it a chaotic, unbalanced mess? No, it’s not that either. Arcs is a superb game which comes with a few caveats to get the most from it. You’ve got to understand that the first couple of games will be rocky and unpredictable. You’ll mess up, but you’ll learn from it. Ideally, you’ll have a regular group who have the appetite to play it repeatedly, or access to other people who play it regularly. In this aspect, it’s just like Root and Pax Pamir.

I’ve seen the videos bemoaning the swingy scoring and contrived, ridiculous scenarios that could lead to a game-winning score in one turn. Ignore them. You’ll get some big-scoring rounds, but that’s because someone has played superbly, not because the stars happened to align in a particular way. Ambitions and resources are open information and easily readable, and killing the king is inherent in every part of the game. If someone looks like they’re racing away to a big chapter score, everyone else will do all they can to pull them back, because that’s the game. This is a game of extreme interaction, not a solitaire Euro game.

Just because Arcs is riding a huge wave of hype right now, and is surely going to end up in the BGG top 100 (it’s sitting at 509 at the time of writing), doesn’t mean it’s for everyone. Twilight Struggle and Mage Knight are both in the top 50, does that mean they’re games everyone will enjoy? Absolutely not. I want this review to act as much as a public service announcement as anything else.

Arcs is a Cole Wehrle game. It has Kyle Ferrin’s amazing artwork which makes it look cute, just like Root did, but in both cases, the game underneath the pretty wrapping can be unforgiving and difficult to get to grips with. If you like Cole’s games, I think you’ll absolutely love Arcs. If you’ve given his other games plenty of chances but still don’t enjoy them, then try Arcs, but be aware it might not do much for you. If, however, you found your way here and have no idea who Cole Wehrle is, or what the hell a Pax Pamir is, then this last bit is for you:

Arcs is brilliant. It will be noticeably different every time you play, and with the right group, you’ll have an awesome time. You have to be prepared to fight your friends every step of the way and get in each others’ faces, and you have to accept that the first couple of games might end up with a runaway leader while you all find your feet. Get past that though, and for the £45-50 you’ll spend you’ll end up with a game with enormous replayability, a very short setup and teardown time, and a box no bigger than Root’s. An amazing game that represents great value for money.

Review copy kindly provided by Leder Games. Thoughts and opinions are my own.

---

---