Review: Arcs

Introduction & Overview

A long time ago, the Reach thrived, our ancestors failed us, and I fear we are no better. As we fight for the edge of the galaxy, can we break the cycle? Can we build something new?

This is how we are introduced to Arcs, a design by Cole Wehrle (Pax Pamir, Root, Oath). First published in 2024 by Leder Games in an English version following a successful crowdfunding campaign. The illustrations are handled by Kyle Ferrin (Fort, Ahoy, Vast).

It is published in Spanish by 2 Tomatoes Games (the game is quite language-dependent on the cards, as well as the rulebook). It allows for games of 2 to 4 players, with a suggested minimum age of 14 and an approximate duration of between 60 and 120 minutes. The MSRP is €59.99. For this review, a copy of the English version from Leder Games was used.

Important: if you already know the game and/or are only interested in my opinion about it, you can go directly to the Opinion section. The Content and Mechanics sections are especially intended for those who do not know the game and prefer to get a general idea of how it works.

Go to Personal Opinion

Components

Inside a two-piece cardboard box (lid and bottom), measuring 29.2×21.3×5.3 cm (a rectangular box similar to Root), we find the following components:

• Main Board (cardboard)
• 4 Player Boards (cardboard)
• 20 Cities (5 of each color) (cardboard)
• 20 Starports (5 of each color) (cardboard)
• 20 Power Cubes (5 of each color) (wood)
• 60 Ships (15 of each color) (wood)
• 40 Agents (10 of each color) (wood)
• 25 Resource Tokens (5 of each type) (cardboard)
• 18 Battle Dice (resin)
• 85 Cards (62.5×87 mm):
  • 6 Vox Cards
  • 25 Guild Cards
  • 28 Action Cards
  • 12 Setup Cards
  • 14 Lore Cards
• 8 Leader Cards (70×120 mm.)
• Initiative Marker (wood)
• Chapter Marker (wood)
• 3 Ambition Tiles (cardboard)
• 4 Route Markers (cardboard)
• 6 Blighted Region Markers (cardboard)
• Declared Ambition Tile (cardboard)
• 4 Player Aids (paper)
• Rulebook

How to Play

Arcs is a space confrontation game in which, over a series of rounds, players alternate turns depending on a hand of cards that have a value, associated actions, and a specific number of actions that can be activated. On each turn of the round, the leading player plays one of their cards, can declare an ambition allowed by the card (which will award points to the players who best fulfill it at the end of the round), and resolves the number of actions the card allows. After this, the rest of the players, in turn order, can play a card of the same suit and of a higher value to resolve the corresponding actions, play a card face down to execute a single action allowed by the card played by the leader, or play a card of a different suit to execute a single action from that card, regardless of how many actions it allows. Before executing the actions from the cards, players can resolve additional actions in the prelude by using resources or effects from cards they have obtained. The actions allowed by the cards are building cities, starports, or ships; influencing by placing agents on cards; securing cards in which the player has more agents than any other player; moving fleets of ships; battling; or taxing to obtain resources in controlled or owned cities. When all players have played a card (if they could), the player who played the highest-valued card of the suit corresponding to the one played by the leader becomes the new leader, although it is possible to seize initiative earlier during the round. At the end of the round, players score points based on their performance in each of the activated ambitions. The end of the game is triggered when a player reaches a certain amount of points depending on the player count, or when the fifth round is completed.

Key Concepts

Let’s start with the Main Board. This shows a map with a central hole around which there are a series of sectors forming a central circle. Around this circle, we have sectors representing planets, which can have one or two triangular spaces to build structures. Each planet is associated with a resource. Some sectors are divided by rifts that prevent movement. On the left side, we have a space to place the cards in play and locate the declared ambition tile. On the right side, we have an area for the ambition tiles and possible ambitions. And on the bottom side, we have the score track with numbered spaces and the progress track.

Resources are an essential part of the game. They are obtained by taxing cities on planets that the player controls. Each planet can provide one resource of its associated type. These resources can be used at the beginning of each turn to resolve additional actions during the prelude phase. They are also used to evaluate several of the ambitions that can be declared. A player cannot hold more resources than their personal board’s storage allows.

To control a planet, players will have Ships at their disposal. These can be combined into fleets that can move together using a move action. Ships can withstand two hits before being destroyed (a tipped-over ship is a damaged ship). Damaged ships still function the same as undamaged ones, except when evaluating control of a planet, as a planet is controlled by the player who has the most undamaged ships on it (in case of a tie, nobody controls the planet). When a ship is destroyed in combat, regardless of who the attacker is, it will be captured by the opposing player.

A player with ships present in a region where there are ships belonging to another player can initiate combat against them. When resolving combat, they roll one die for each ship they have in the region, being able to choose which die to roll for each ship. There are three types of Dice: Skirmish (blue, they simply inflict damage on rival ships), Assault (red, they are more aggressive, but also have faces that inflict damage on the player themselves), and Raid (orange, used to steal items, though they can only be used if there are rival buildings in the combat region or if the rival has no buildings on the board). A single roll is made and all effects are applied.

During the game, players can build Cities and Starports in the available spaces on planets. Cities allow players to obtain resources and free up spaces for resources (even increasing rewards when scoring ambitions). Starports allow building ships and executing a catapult movement if these ships depart from a system with a Starport. These tokens have two sides: one with a solid background for an undamaged structure and another with shaded vertices to indicate that the structure is damaged. A damaged structure that takes a hit will be destroyed. If a city is destroyed by a player, they will suffer outrage, which means losing the ability to resolve actions using resources of the type associated with the planet where the city was located.

The goal of the players is to accumulate as many victory points as possible. To track accumulated points, each player will have a pair of Score Cubes that move along the score track, which shows a mark at the target points amount based on the number of players.

Points are obtained mainly by meeting the requirements of ambitions. These establish various criteria, and the number of victory points they provide to the first and second player will depend on the Ambition Tiles. They are double-sided hexagonal tiles that show a certain number of points for the first player (in large print) and the second player (in parentheses). The lead player in each round is the only one capable of declaring an ambition, placing the highest value tile available on the corresponding ambition. It is possible to place multiple tiles on the same ambition. They show two faces and, at the end of each chapter, the lowest-value one is flipped.

In each turn, players will resolve actions using Action Cards. These show an initiative value in their upper right corner followed by a number of action points (from 2 to 4), inversely proportional to the initiative value. In the lower left corner, the symbol of the ambition that the card allows to declare is shown. The rest of the card is an illustration with a color associated with the actions that the card allows. Each player will receive a hand of cards at the beginning of each chapter and, on each turn, can play one of them.

The lead player is indicated by the Initiative Marker. This player is the only one capable of declaring an ambition during the current round. At the end of the round, the marker passes to the player who played the highest value card of the same suit as the lead player, although it is possible to claim it earlier by discarding an additional card alongside the one played on the turn.

When declaring an ambition, the active player places the Declared Ambition Tile over the value of their card, so that their card’s value becomes 0, meaning it will be enough to play a card of the same suit to steal initiative from them.

On the other hand, we have the cards that form the court supply. There are two types of cards. The first are Guild Cards, which provide various effects and are associated with a resource type taken into account for ambitions (indicating a number of keys needed to be obtained via raid dice to steal it).

The second are Vox Cards, which have immediate effects applied when securing the cards, discarding the card afterward.

To secure these cards, players will have Agents that they can place on them through one of the possible actions, being able to secure a card through another type of action as long as the player has more agents on it than any other player. If there are rival agents on a secured card, they are captured (they will be used in one of the possible ambitions). A rival agent is also captured directly if resources are taxed in a controlled rival city by the player securing the card.

Each player will have a Personal Board where they will arrange their pool of cities, located over the resource storage (as they build cities, they will unlock new storage spaces). Every time a player receives a resource, they can rearrange resources in their warehouse, since each space has a number of keys associated with it against rival raids and potential theft. In the lower right area, we have a storage space for trophies (rival ships) and captured agents. And in the lower left corner, we have the prelude area, indicating the actions associated with each type of resource. During the game, if a player destroys a city as a result of combat, they will suffer outrage and the prelude action associated with the planet’s resource type will be blocked (an agent is placed on it).

Lastly, the game includes two elements to add asymmetry and variability. On one hand, Leader Cards, which, in addition to applying unique effects, determine the starting resources and the components deployed in the player’s starting regions on the main board.

On the other hand, Lore Cards, which also offer a unique effect in a similar way to leader cards. Players will conduct a draft at the beginning of the game, choosing from a subset of leader and lore cards.

That is enough to get started.

Setup

1. The Rim Map is placed in the center of the table, with all clusters visible.
2. The 18 Battle Dice and 25 Resource Tokens are gathered, placing them in a common pool within reach of all players.
3. The starting player is chosen randomly, and handed the Initiative Marker.
4. The Action Cards numbered 2 through 6 are shuffled to form the starting deck (in 4-player games, cards numbered 1 and 7 are also added before shuffling).
5. The 3 Ambition Markers are placed on their blue side, with the lowest value, in the Available Markers area of the map.
6. The Chapter Marker is placed on the “1” space of the Chapters track.
7. The Declared Ambition Marker is placed in the reserved space on the main board.
8. All Vox and Guild Cards are shuffled to form the Court deck, revealing 4 cards (or 3 in 2-player games) in a row next to the map.
9. The Setup Cards corresponding to the player count are shuffled, and 1 card is revealed to determine the starting zones and out-of-play clusters.
10. In the clusters indicated as out of play, a Route Marker is placed over their gate and 3 Blighted Region Markers over adjacent planets (in 2-player games, 6 specific resources are also placed in the ambition slots indicated by the rules).
11. Each player chooses a color and receives:
    • Player Board (placed in their play area).
    • 5 Cities (placed in the triangular slots of their board).
    • 5 Starports (set aside).
    • 15 Ships (left in a personal supply).
    • 10 Agents (left in a personal supply).
    • 1 Power Marker (placed on the 0 value space of the map’s Power track).
12. The leader and lore decks are mixed, revealing as many cards as players plus one in each row. In reverse turn order (starting with the player to the right of the one with initiative and going counter-clockwise), each player chooses 1 Leader or Lore card. The process is repeated until each player has 1 Leader card and 1 Lore card. Each player places their Leader card and Lore card in front of them, which will grant them unique abilities and starting placement conditions.
13. Following the indications on their Leader card and the revealed Setup card, each player places their starting pieces:
    • Ships, Cities, and Starports in systems A, B, and C indicated on their Leader card.
    • The starting resources shown on their Leader card, placed in the two leftmost slots of their player board, in the indicated order.
14. Each player draws 6 Action Cards to form their starting hand. (In 2-player games, the player without initiative can discard their starting hand and draw 6 new cards).

We are ready to begin!

Game Flow

A game of Arcs plays out over a maximum of five chapters. Each chapter is composed of several phases.

Phase I: Actions

This action phase takes place over an undetermined number of rounds. In each round, starting with the player with initiative and continuing clockwise, each player enjoys a turn. The turn of the starting player is different from that of the rest of the players.

The player with initiative, if they have at least one card in hand (otherwise, this first turn is resolved by the first player with cards following clockwise order from the player with initiative), must play a card and proceeds as follows:

• Declare Ambition (optional). If the card shows an ambition symbol, the indicated ambition can be declared, placing the highest value ambition marker available in the corresponding slot on the map and covering the card’s number with the Declared Ambition Marker.
• Prelude. The player can expend resources to resolve prelude actions that are not blocked by outrage.
• Execute Actions. The player resolves up to as many actions as the action points shown on the played card, choosing between standard actions or those granted by their Guild cards or Leader/Lore abilities.

After this, the player places the initiative marker in the center of the board and it becomes the next player’s turn.

The rest of the players resolve their turn as follows, provided they have at least one card in hand. They will have three options depending on the card type:

• Surpass. The card played is of the same suit as the starting player’s and its value is higher (keeping in mind that if the leader declared an ambition, their card value is 0). The player can resolve up to as many actions as the action points on the card they played.
• Copy. The card is played face down and the player can resolve a single action associated with the card played by the starting player.
• Pivot. A face-up card of a different suit is played and the player can resolve a single action associated with the card they just played.

Before resolving the action(s), just like the starting player, the player can expend resources to resolve prelude actions that are not blocked by outrage.

Additionally, if the initiative marker has not been claimed, the active player can discard a card face down to claim it, placing it in their play area.

Once all players have enjoyed a turn, if no player has claimed the initiative marker, it will be delivered to whoever played the highest value card of the suit played by the starting player.

At the end of the round, proceed as follows:

• The declared ambition marker is placed in the box on the main board.
• All played cards are discarded.

After this, a new round would begin. If a player runs out of cards, they will no longer take turns in this phase.

The phase ends when no player has cards left in their hand.

The actions allowed by the cards are:

• Tax. The player chooses a city (owned or controlled from a rival) to obtain a resource of the associated type, provided it remains in the general supply. If the city belongs to a rival, an agent is also captured from their personal supply (even when no resources of the corresponding type remain). Each city can only be taxed once during the entire turn (if three action points are available, taxes can be collected in up to three different cities).
• Build. The player builds a city or a starport on a planet with free space where they have a presence (at least one ship or structure) or builds a ship in a system where they have a starport. If built in a system controlled by a rival, the piece is built already damaged.
• Move. The player chooses a location where they have one or more ships and can move any number of them to an adjacent location. If the movement is initiated from a location with a player’s starport, a catapult movement can be executed, allowing movement to any location reached without crossing locations controlled by a rival or other planets.
• Repair. The player readies a damaged ship of their color or flips a damaged building to its undamaged side.
• Influence. The player places an agent on one of the court cards.
• Secure. The player claims a court card on which they have more agents than any other player. If there are rival agents on the card, they are captured.
• Battle. The player chooses a rival who has ships in a location where the active player has ships (if there are multiple rivals in the same system, they must choose one). The active player will roll as many dice as ships they have, choosing a die type for each ship. They will make a roll and apply the results. Each destroyed ship is taken as a trophy by the opposing player, regardless of who initiated the combat. If a player destroys a city, they suffer outrage. This allows them to take a card from the market with at least one agent from the defending player (capturing all agents on it), but it will block the prelude action associated with the resource of the planet where the building was destroyed. The attacking player takes the destroyed token as a trophy (which will be returned to the corresponding player when the corresponding ambition is scored).

Prelude Actions:

• Materials: the player can resolve a build or repair action.
• Fuel: the player can resolve a move action.
• Weapons: during this turn, the card they played is considered to also allow resolving combat actions.
• Relic: the player can resolve a secure action.
• Psionic: the player can resolve an action included in the card played by the leader.

Phase II: Resolution

Proceed as follows:

1. Score Ambitions. Only ambitions that have been declared are scored.
   • Each ambition is evaluated based on who has the most of the following:
     • Tycoon. The player with Material and Fuel icons on resources and guild cards.
     • Tyrant. The player with the most captured Agents.
     • Warlord. The player with the most trophies.
     • Keeper. The player with the most Relic icons on resources and guild cards.
     • Empath. The player with the most psionic icons on resources and guild cards.
   • The player with the most wins the high value from the markers; second place wins the low value. In case of a tie for first place, both win the lower value and there is no second place. In case of a tie for second place, neither player wins points. If nobody has what is evaluated, nobody wins points. If a player has cities that unlock “+2” or “+3” to gained ambitions, they add those extra points if they achieve first position.
2. Clean-up:
   • Return all trophies if Warlord was scored.
   • Return all captured agents if Tyrant was scored.
   • Return all ambition markers to the available area.
   • Flip the lowest value ambition marker that has not yet been flipped.
   • If the game does not end, the action card deck is shuffled and all players draw 6 action cards.

After this, a new chapter would begin.

Game End

The game ends if, after scoring ambitions, at least one player has reached the amount of victory points indicated according to the number of players (27 with 4 players, 30 with 3, 33 with 2), with whoever accumulated the most points being proclaimed the winner.

Alternatively, the game ends at the end of the fifth chapter, with whoever obtained the most points winning. In case of a tie, the player who would play first in a hypothetical new round wins.

Variants

Without Leaders or Lore. These cards are not used and players begin on the planets indicated on the setup card and receive one resource of each type associated with the starting planets.

Personal Opinion

When I do interviews for other media outlets, one of the recurring questions I get asked is who my favorite designer is. And, unlike games, where Agricola (here is its tocho-review) will forever and ever be the best game in history (for me), when it comes to designers I am more fickle.

And that is because, even if there are established designers who have published masterpieces, like Uwe Rosenberg himself, the perception one has of them depends a lot on the moment. To make a comparison with music, Michael Jackson was the king of pop, but he reached his peak with Thriller, which was his second album. What came after was still spectacular, but not *as* spectacular. And that was with him changing his style, his performances, even his appearance. Every artist has their moment and nothing lasts forever.

Returning to the recurring question I mentioned at the beginning of this section, the answer I give right now is Cole Wehrle. He strikes me as the designer currently seeking different approaches and innovating, at least in regards to dynamics. And, usually, without reaching the mechanical baroque style that is predominant on the scene.

Sometimes it turns out better for him, with masterpieces like Root (here is its tocho-review) or Pax Pamir in its second edition (here is its tocho-review), while in others, despite proposing interesting things that are highly recommended to try, it doesn’t quite gel enough, as with Oath (here is its tocho-review).

All this rambling simply serves as an introduction to a new proposal from this peculiar designer. And that means it is time to talk about Arcs. A priori, we would seem to be in front of a title from the group of good designs, because the feeling is that, in general, people are liking it a lot, bringing together very different player profiles. Let us proceed, then, to analyze it and offer our point of view, to see if it fits with that of the generality or if we are a discordant note.

In Arcs we will put ourselves at the head of a faction in a fantastic-futuristic universe that will enter into conflict with the rest of the factions in a struggle of ambitions. As leaders, we forge fragile alliances, command star fleets, and manipulate the fate of worlds. Every decision will resonate throughout the course of the game.

The goal is to try to achieve victory by being the first faction to accumulate a specific amount of victory points depending on the player count, in a very similar way to Root. These points will be accumulated, as a general rule, at the end of each of up to five chapters of which a game will consist.

Victory points that will depend on ambitions, which are five possible scoring criteria that will reward the first and second player who best meet those criteria. The beauty of the matter is that at the beginning of the round players do not know which criteria are going to be scored, since up to three ambitions can be declared, and the same ambition can be declared multiple times, therefore reducing the number of active ambitions and raising the amount of points that one of them provides, since these activations are marked with the tiles that indicate how many victory points the first and second player who best meet them obtain.

Let’s put ambitions aside for a moment and talk about the options factions have at their disposal when resolving the respective turns they will enjoy throughout each chapter. Arcs is a space conflict game where each faction will have a fleet of ships that it can deploy on a board consisting of a series of sectors that are connected around a core, like a cake cut into slices, but with a large hole made in its interior so that each slice is only adjacent to two others (although there will be borders that prevent transit between some of them). In this large hole we will have zones that allow a more direct transit between two points.

In each sector we will find a planet associated with one of the five types of resources available in the game and which are of capital importance in the development of turns. Each planet, in turn, will show one or two spaces in which players can build cities or starports. Cities will allow collecting taxes and getting resources, while starports will allow deploying fleets and boosting their movement capacity if the fleets depart from a planet with a starport.

So, in the beginning, players must expand across this board, deploying ships to elevate their control capacity over the different planets and building cities and starports to get resources and deploy the aforementioned ships.

In parallel, there will be a market of cards in which players can try to influence cards to be able to secure them when they have more influence over them than any other player. Cards that can provide immediate and devastating effects, or passive effects that will allow activating specific actions or enjoying bonuses in certain situations. Cards that, in general, will also be associated with a resource type.

Influence on these cards is represented by agent pawns that, when claiming the card, we will recover back to our personal supply, with the quirk that rival pawns that were on that same card (and in lesser quantity than ours, since we must have a majority to be able to secure a card) will remain under our custody as prisoners.

As you can already guess when talking about fleets of ships and controlling planets, players will be able to enter combat, challenging rival fleets that find themselves in the same system as one of our fleets. Each ship will be able to withstand up to two hits (the first hit will tip it over and it will only cease to be taken into account when evaluating control of a planet) and the second hit will eliminate it from the board. But, instead of returning to the corresponding player’s personal supply, it will be captured as a war trophy by the player against whom they are fighting.

With this I think you have a more or less broad context of what can be done on the board, so it is time to talk about ambitions again. These are relatively simple, since three of them simply consist of being whoever accumulated the most symbols of certain resource types in their play area, whether with resource tokens or with guild cards. And the other two are even simpler, because they reward being whoever has the most captured agents or the most trophies accumulated on their personal board.

Now, how are the different actions resolved that allow building structures, deploying ships, influencing and securing cards, repairing damaged components, or combating? Well, here we find one of the most striking mechanical elements of the game. And that is that when determining what actions each player can resolve, one of the main features of trick-taking games is used, that is, following the suit that the starting player fixed at the beginning of the trick.

Each player will receive at the beginning of each chapter a hand of cards that belong to different suits, have a certain initiative value, and show an amount of action points inversely proportional to the initiative value (the more initiative, the fewer action points).

The starting player will put one of their cards into play and resolve up to as many actions as the action points it shows. Now, the rest of the rivals will have three choices. The first is to surpass, consisting of playing a card of the same suit as the leader’s card and which, moreover, is of a higher value, which will allow the following player to also resolve as many actions as the action points shown on the card. The second is to copy, being able to play any card face down (without revealing its value) to resolve exactly one action from those allowed by the leader’s card, and the third is to pivot, which allows playing a card of any other type to also resolve exactly one action allowed by that other card, ignoring the number of action points it shows.

But watch out! This does not mean that Arcs is a trick-taking game. It uses a common feature of trick-taking games to restrict the action selection system, but nothing more. Normally, in trick-taking games, the tricks are the very end of the game, while here they only serve to determine what each player can do and, very importantly, to fight for initiative.

And that is because being the first player in a round not only allows you to choose any card from your hand to be able to resolve all the action points shown on it, but it also allows you to declare an ambition as long as the maximum allowed has not yet been declared (remember, three ambitions per chapter). An ambition that will depend on the card played, since these also show which ambition they allow to declare.

Thus, Arcs is a game in which players compete to accumulate certain components and declare ambitions compatible with them to get victory points at the end of each chapter. Something that sounds relatively simple, but requires weaving quite a few elements together to reach a successful conclusion.

I have to admit that with Arcs the same thing happened to me as happened with Root and, especially, Pax Pamir. I think Cole Wehrle has managed to synthesize a space conflict game by reducing its conceptual load to the minimum, being a relatively accessible game that is enjoyable right from a first playthrough.

First, because the available actions are very atomic. Influencing is placing pawns on a card, securing is claiming a card with a majority of pawns, building is placing ships or structures, repairing is flipping/uprighting components, moving is shifting to an adjacent region (or further if starting from a planet with a controlled starport), taxing is taking a resource of the corresponding type from a planet. In this way, turns are, generally speaking, tremendously brisk.

The only action that has an extra touch of fuss is combat. But even in this, good old Cole has taken the shears trying to prune everything superfluous, arriving at a combat system that, in its simplicity, turns out to be original. And that is because the defender has no say and plays no part during combat, limiting themselves to eating popcorn while the attacker resolves everything. Because it will be the attacker who decides the level of risk they are willing to assume based on their goals.

For each ship they have in combat they can roll a die, with three types of dice available. The first, the blue ones, simply inflict damage on rival ships (ideal if what we are looking for is trying to capture trophies). The second, red, is more aggressive, in search of those trophies, but can backfire, since there are faces on which own ships receive hits, even depending on the number of rival ships. And the third, orange, seeks to plunder the rival, although it has as a risk, besides receiving damage to own ships, hitting structures deployed on the planet.

Destroying a city will have serious consequences, though also certain benefits. On one hand, it will allow taking control of a card with agents from the attacked player, even being able to hold agents from other players (even without having any own agents on it), but, on the other hand, it will force us to give up one of the options available in the prelude.

A prelude I haven’t spoken to you about yet and is another stroke of genius at the design level. And that is because one of the biggest criticisms Arcs receives is the “high” impact of luck by depending on the cards one receives to be able to resolve actions. I understand that many players experience this sensation, especially in first games, since the striking nature of the action selection system makes one think that the use of cards is fundamental.

But of course, when you realize that resources allow you to resolve practically all the actions on the cards, you realize that it is more powerful to secure a good supply of resources to be able to resolve actions at your pleasure at the beginning of each turn and not depend on Lady Luck when receiving cards at the beginning of each chapter.

Only the action of influencing is the one that cannot be resolved directly, although it can be indirectly, since one of the resources allows resolving an action from those included in the leader’s card. Thus, if on a turn the leader plays a card that allows influencing, a player acting later will be able to spend a unit of this resource to resolve an influence action and, if they have the right resource, immediately secure said card. A wonderful move!

The game hides many subtleties, such as, for example, giving up a card from your hand (which means enjoying one turn fewer in the chapter), but allows you to secure initiative for the next round, something vital if we want to declare an ambition but do not have high-value cards that allow us to “win the trick.”

Or, for example, the issue of taxing a rival city that we control by having more undamaged ships than any other player, which, besides allowing us to get the corresponding resource, captures a rival agent directly, without going through the card market.

All this with an enviable speed and fluidity that you will hardly find in games of this type. And that is because a game of Arcs at four players will hardly exceed an hour and a half of play. An hour and a half full of tension, attacks, arguments… fun around the table.

For me, the only defect I find in the game, which very slightly breaks the dynamism of the sessions, are the cards that appear in the supply. These show text that is not trivial and forces players to read them at the beginning of each chapter and, above all, to keep them continuously in mind. Being a game in which turns fly by, it is very easy to forget what the cards allow and have to backtrack on some occasion to apply an effect that corresponded at that moment.

But well, this is something mitigable if, by default, every time the card supply is replenished it is read aloud what that new card allows, so that it remains in the minds of the players. Some may quickly forget that information, but, at least, the game will not be slowed down.

Another point in favor of the game is that, surprisingly, it scales very well. I think it works best at three players, since it is easy for a player to manage to take advantage of some situation and the two rivals ally to stall their progress. At four, obviously, there is a touch more chaos and emerging victorious from each chapter requires greater skill. But at two players it becomes almost a game of chess where it is possible to perform calculations when resolving actions. And at two, the game flies in terms of duration.

And it goes above and beyond in replayability. Because, to the extremely high level of interaction (it is a game that incites aggression on the board toward others), we add a huge variability thanks not only to the significant deck of guild and effect cards, but to the leaders and lore cards that provide asymmetry, allowing players to enjoy very diverse games exploring many strategies. Not to mention the expansion, which, according to rumors, raises the game to another level, refining the concept on which Oath was based by chaining games and having some impact over others, but with the difference that with the expansion the campaigns are limited to a specific number of games, which makes it easier to exploit this system and not depend on the regular commitment of the group.

Let’s move on to production. Arcs shows us a more than decent and very functional finish. Cards of very good thickness, linen texture, and magnificent snap (although, as always, sleeving is highly recommended to avoid marks and facilitate the shuffling process), cardboard components of an acceptable thickness and proper punch, and wooden components with original shapes (much more functional than the miniatures sold in an additional pack, which is not recommended at all). The rulebook is well structured and, while it is true that on a first reading it can leave some doubt, internally it is very well cross-referenced and allows consulting specific details with quite a bit of agility.

And at the visual level we once again have the always original Kyle Ferrin. It is true that, in this case, having greater freedom when thinking about characters (the possibilities are endless when imagining aliens), it has a very particular visual impact that will depend on each person feeling attracted or repelled by it. To me, it generates a certain uneasiness, but just as any alien would generate it for me.

And let’s wrap this up. Arcs is a vibrant design that masterfully combines an action selection system inspired by trick-taking games with a brisk and thrilling space conflict. Resource management to alleviate the impact of luck, hand management in search of declaring ambitions that fit our development, and the high level of interaction allow for tremendously tense and fun games, with high replayability thanks to lore cards and leaders. Although the text on the cards can initially slow down the rhythm, its accessibility, tactical depth, and contained duration make it a gem for conflict game lovers. Moreover, it scales surprisingly well. A game full of subtleties with a much lower conceptual load than one would expect. For all this I give it a…