Arcs

Gary Sax wrote: But fuck man SUSD and Thurot talking about the approachability of this game it is like a different PLANET from our experiences.

You don't think it seems likely that the obvious big difference, that they have physical copies and y'all don't, is what changes everything? I say this as someone who finds playing board games online, even on rules-enforcing websites like Rally the Troops, excruciatingly more difficult and unpleasant than playing in person.

It could be! I think I'd never forget my own tableau powers in person, but I think forgetting what other people have would be way worse in person.

Beyond that, I don't know how the trick taking and sequencing moves would move faster or be less frustrating but I guess it could, I don't know.

I'm experienced enough in TTS these days that my move back and forth between other games in person/online has been pretty seamless, with time increasing in some areas but decreasing in others (Imperium, Voidfall, Arkham Horror, Earthborne Rangers). But I do try to mention the TTS thing every time I talk about the game for this reason.

I’m fairly confident that the feeling of having no options to get back in the game will remain the same with card stock in hand!

My breathtakingly beautiful and well produced copy of this showed up.

I must admit I have never been more curious to hear other people's experiences with a game, since atm I feel quite out of step with the specifics people cite about the game they are loving. Love to hear the thoughts of anyone playing their new copies when they do.

If you've missed the memo sweeping BGG/the Internet everyone (else) loves Arcs with SUSD declaring it the best thing since sliced bread Oath. I haven't made any progress in my campaigns and want to see them out but I think my opinions on the game are more or less firmed up. It's okay.

It's well designed, beautifully produced and has lots to offer for groups that want to dedicate themselves to it. I feel like comparisons to Oath are misguided (warning: only 2 first thirds of a campaign are informing this opinion but I'm confident enough in knowing roughly where the campaign will take things after exploring the content) whereas Root feels like a much more natural comparison point.

More broadly, I much prefer a much more balanced profile of strategy and tactics. Arcs is heavily skewed towards tactics but with an almost distracting number of strategic levers dangled in front of you. Half of the chrome doesn't matter until it really does and you need to develop an intuition for when you need to play a fast and loose game of wacky cards or when you need to pivot into studying the court to see what your opponents can really do like it's a Pax game. A recent conversation on Discord said something to the effect of "either the strategic levers matter and should be considered seriously or they don't in which case they're a pointless distraction and shouldn't be in the game". If you embrace the strategic levers you're still subject to the whims of fate while the game slows to a turgid pace. If you play purely tactically then what's the point of half of these rules?

To be clear, it's still a high skill game. I'm confident a competitive tournament scene will emerge demonstrating that good players can navigate this successfully and consistently, I'm just not interested enough in the game to develop that mastery. As a narrative generator, I find the abstraction too high level for any emergent narrative to come through. I could make some stories and they're certainly stronger in the campaign, but I don't think they're even close to being as evocative as what was accomplished in Oath.

This BGG review more or less covers my thoughts on the game perfectly: boardgamegeek.com/thread/3327357/a-count...owing-reviews/page/1 , particularly this comment: boardgamegeek.com/thread/3327357/article/44515026#44515026

No need to read all 8 pages of comments, it quickly descends into typical BGG nonsense, but the first few pages, particularly the follow up posts from the OP, really hone in on my feelings towards the game.

With me never liking Root much, growing incredibly cold on Pax Pamir 2e (Porfiariana is better for lighter games and Renaissance better for heavier ones while both are much more evocative) and now not liking Arcs, Cole Wehrle officially has more <BGG7 games under his belt than he does hits for me.

John Company 2e and Oath are truly masterpieces but I'll need to turn in my cultists robes at the next meeting. I'll be much more wary of his output going forward! To his credit, all of his games have been interesting and I've admired the design of all of them; I'm just not sure I'm enamoured with the actual playing of most of those intriguing designs.

This is why I should leave criticism to the pros: playerelimination.com/2024/07/22/est-quod-est-arcs-part-one/

Despite Charlie liking it more than me, this is a great lay of the land for base Arcs; I don’t disagree with any of it.

Gary posted a picture of a game in progress on page one of this thread. Aside from that, I haven't seen a single reference in this three-page thread to either theme or setting. That tells me that this game is primarily a mechanical exercise in following procedures that isn't going to offer much semblance of a story.

Charlie talks about the setting in his review, and does a nice job of highlighting what makes the base game distinctive and interesting. I look forward to his comments about the campaign expansion, though I still doubt that this is a game I will be playing.

I continue to see local people re-selling barely-touched or never-opened copies of Oath, because apparently more people bought Oath than actually want to play it. And they all want full retail price for it. Seems like a stark warning that I will have trouble getting Oath or other non-Root Wehrle games on the table.

I also find it quite mechanical, yes, except for the campaign fates which can be interestingly thematic in the tensions they create. A board with admiral and steward, for example, is going to have two factions fighting for control of the empire while simultaneously trying to strengthen it which is very thematic. But the action system has no thematic leverage at all, so it disconnects me from any thematic meaning of a particular chapter. I still think it's more interesting to play than Root with its "engines of different speeds going at different rates" VP gameplay, but Arcs is also a lot heavier and grittier a lift.

Some is taste, but there are also just some bad mechanical choices in this game that to me are Leder and Wehrle being sloppy. The card tableau slop is a fucking nightmare with any players playing to win and not hanging out; someone during development needed to sit down with everyone and be like what the fuck are we doing here, this is objectively bad.

They're going to get lumped together like Shellhead does, I see why, but by contrast, Oath is still in my best games of all time pile. I find it 1000x more thematic than Arcs despite being slightly more abstract---you don't take the role as a particular fate or leader at the beginning with defined powers or something like that. I get people not digging it, but I think Oath does almost everything Arcs does better, sometimes much better esp thematically. It's much shorter with players who are playing to win and not dressing up in cosplay to talk, more decisive, creates fewer but more consequential "big plays" which are often *super* thematic, and its narrative is open ended but still pretty guided by the actual cards, illustrations, and thematic meanings of the cards. The way the Oath expansion is leaning is providing even more mechanical framework for all that theme so I'm excited to see where that goes.

The most interesting ideas of Arcs are in the campaign, but like no one will ever see them since the campaign is like a midweight wargame in complexity. People will say they played it but I doubt many will give it a try more than once in reality. The way the empire works is very clever once you grok it (which takes a couple games), the truce system creates less boring zero sum push/pull VP chase and the way the fates create a unique game shape with every combination of the fates and the table along with the current board state are interesting directions. You're still talking about two 3 hour games and one 4 hour game, though, so like a TI:4 game cut into nice pieces.

If you want to see how exhausting this game is, check out Heavy Cardboard's play the whole campaign day and see how exhausted they are by the end of even game 1. Then look at game 3 and see how flippantly they treat their decisions due to fatigue and slop fo the board state. I've never considered myself like a real "play to win" player but I can't see how anyone obeying Knizia's axiom can play this in less than 2 1/2 hours unless it ends in chapter 3 of 5 or something because someone let one player put all their cities on the board and didn't police them.

I'm glad people are liking it, but people were saying things I found objectively untrue about the game until some recent comments and analysis like Charlie's excellent first piece on the game. I like the game more than sornars and less than charlie, but Charlie is at least talking about the same game I am!

sornars wrote: This is why I should leave criticism to the pros: playerelimination.com/2024/07/22/est-quod-est-arcs-part-one/

Despite Charlie liking it more than me, this is a great lay of the land for base Arcs; I don’t disagree with any of it.

playerelimination.com/2024/07/29/arcs-part-two-epic/

I don't see what Charlie does with regards to narrative in campaign Arcs but this has still given me much food for thought. Kudos to Charlie for doing some of the best commentary on the game I've seen so far.