Episode 270: Arcs

Arcs conflict and collapse in the reach is published by Leder Games and designed by Cole Wehrle. In Arcs you lead a spacefaring society through an epic saga as you try to survive in the harsh and dangerous Reach at the galaxy’s edge. Now this rules gist is just going to focus on the base game, no additional expansion content will be added, but know there is a ton of it that add all kinds of rules, mechanisms, and variability. The goal in Arcs (base game) is to be the first person to X amount of point depending on player count or have the most points at the end of chapter 5. The game board represents the part of Space (The Reach) that you are playing with various planets and gates. On those planets you can build space ports (where you can build ships) and cities {where you can get resources}. Each player also has ships and agents at there disposal. The main mechanic in the game is card play with a trick taking aspect. At the start of the turn, each play is dealt 6 cards. The cards have 4 suits and can be played in different ways to get different results. The cards themselves have a number, an amount of pips (we’ll call activation points), various actions, and an icon that you use to declare an ambition. The actions on the cards let you tax (to claim resources) influence (placing your agents on a different set cards found in the court), build ships, repair ships, secure a card in the court that you have the most influence on, move, and battle. When the lead player plays their card, they have the option to declare an ambition base on the icon on the card. Ambitions are essentially end of the chapter scoring and you can only have up to three score at the end of each chapter. When you declare ambition it turns the number on the card to a zero. Once you play a card you use the actions points to do the actions on the card. The players following the lead player can do several different things.

They can surpass which is playing the same suit at a higher value. They get all the actions points on the card. You can copy, which is playing a card face down. You get to do the actions on the lead card, but one at one pip. AND you can pivot, play a different suit (which has different actions) and do any of those actions at one pip. Who ever played the high card in the lead suit gets the initiative for the next round. Going first is a big deal. When you play a card you can play an additional card face down to steal the initiative.

Now I mentioned the court. The court is full of cards that you put in your tableau and give you additional actions, ongoing abilities, resources or way to break the rules in game. If you take a card from the court that had other player’s agents on them you hold them as captives.

There is a lot battling in the game. In battling the attacker is rolling dice to damage or destroy ships or buildings. In the process they might steal resources or court cards from your tableau.

At the end of the chapter, you score those ambitions that were selected. These scoring ambitions revolve around battling, various resource collection, and captives you have obtained.

Now there are a bunch of other rules and interactions I did not touch on in the rules gist, but you get the basics. Now lets get back to the table and see what the pegs thought of Arcs conflict and collapse in the reach.