Ark Nova First Impressions

hello everyone this is cinema and this is johannes and you are watching board gaming ramblings and today we are giving you our first impressions of arkanova a new game from designer matthias vega and it's published by photo land and capstone games it plays from one to four players in 90 to 150 minutes yeah so these are gonna be some first impressions of games that we played in essen we're gonna try to then play the games because you're gonna see more of these first impressions this is the second one and you're gonna see more coming during the next few weeks and we hope to then be able to do like the biggest games play them more and then do like some final thoughts on them as well yeah so today we're doing the first impressions we have only played one game a by in two players in two players one game for two players it took us about two hours and 40 minutes which is then 150 160 minutes which is more than the maximum time on the box that's probably like because every time we play again the first time it's going to take longer but it felt a bit long yes it felt a bit long we were having some ap and because it felt like rules-wise this game is very straightforward i'm going to do an overview soon oh yeah perfect but like we it was actually more meaty than i thought yeah because so we had some heavy ip moments because the rules are pretty like straight forward like they're pretty simple what you're doing in the game is that you're running as soo you are on it's your turn you choose one of five actions that you have in front of your action cards and depending on where the action cue basically they are laying they're going to be better or worse for that so you're almost like you you want to most of the time you want to do the best actions because those are good but then you need to do the other actions you will either do reverse one or you can spend tokens to make it better and trying to make the cue in a way that works for you timing wise and makes it work in a way that that is the best for you when you play the game so the things you are doing is that you are playing animals into your suit but before you do that you have to build enclosures into your shoe which is a map like a little puzzle game where you try to do it the best way possible to get bonuses and also place uh shasks where you can i don't know what it's called in there in english kiosks you get a kiosk where you basically can get some more income try to do that in a little puzzle you don't have to play the animals and they live in different enclosures you have special enclosures that are better but then you have to be able to advance or upgrade your action card to something you can do to make the action cards better you will also play sponsors which are basically different abilities and end of game scoring you also have some conservatives conservation way like you're building a suit but you also want to conserve the wildlife and sometimes you even know like some of the conservation cars are basically have this have that have three of this symbol two of that symbol and others are release an animal into the free and when you do that you will get them conservation points but you will lose your appeal which is basically tickets how many people want to come and see or sue and the goal of the game is because this is a game where you have two tracks of scoring kind of like rogers or the gang diseases you have played that all those two scorings are moving and you want to make them meet and then you will stop the game and do some final scoring and the winner of the game is going to be the player has the longest way basically between their conservation point and their appeal tracker yes that's basically what you're doing in the game so this is one of the most hyped games for essence spiel and that's why we're choosing to start with that and this feels like for me like a a smurf was born i'll just loving using a swedish word in an english video uh uh of different mechanisms and like it feels like it's a game where it's been taken like a little bit from here a little bit from here like the scoring track i i think i've almost only seen in writers of the ganges it might have been in other games before then but that's like the one that people know it from and i've heard that the action mechanism is kind of the same as in civilization you've done yeah i have not played that um and then like you have the puzzle which is um i can a special apostle that's not taken from somewhere that's just like i don't mean like like i don't mean anything is taken from somewhere but like uh any engine building card play people have been saying it looks kind of like terraforming mars we're gonna talk about if it does it would feel like that so do you agree do you feel like this is kind of like a it's nothing new here no it's a it's a solid blend of already well-tested mechanisms so i feel like uh it's like a nice like melting pot of mechanisms and what you said about like the the card play and the engine building yeah um you basically have these like icons on all the cards which tells you for example that it gets a little cheaper if you have the right icon or you get some points if it has the right icon or its requirements that you can't play this card unless you have the right icons and that is very familiar to terraforming mars yes other than that uh i see very few similarities that are from remarks but but i can see why people are talking about this yeah because it's the same like terrapin marks is a game where you play loads of cards yes and it's another game we're going to play quite a few cards during or during the game but but other than that like the action selection all that is different so but like the last game of people said like this is like terrible and mars was underwater cities which for me feels nothing like terrible rainbows so this is this way more than like teleport mars than that did because you have you're going to play quite a few cards and card play is a huge part of the game yes like two of the five actions you can choose is to play a card yes so that means that it's quite a big part of the game playing that those cards it feels like here at like interviewing mars it feels like more of the cards have actions because here man like most of the cards basically play it it gives you a bonus might like give you some points in different tracks might give us personability and then the card is done yes so most of the time we just want to play a card for his ability and it's done you have a few cards to have end of game scoring which mostly going to give you like one of the conservation points which might be a big factor at the end of the game um so it feels kind of like the card play is not less interesting but it doesn't feel like i'm building an engine mark no it feels like i'm just playing cards because they're good and then sometimes of course you have a special ability or you're trying to do some combos that works out well if you get the cards you need but it doesn't feel like an engine builder for me the first time you played it well it's more of an engine builder in in your income that increases when you go up on the appeal track yeah you get a more income when when you take like a break uh that happens from time to time that the game the game triggers a break and then you get income and it's also feels like a little engine builder in the way that you like upgrade your action cartridges right so you're going to be able to do more powerful things later and i think it's really interesting that that aspect is the most interesting part of the game for me that that queue system the cards and you're trying to do things in the right order and like okay so i have to plan for example uh three turns ahead like i'm going to then take some cards and then i'm going to build some enclosures just because then i know what enclosures actually need yeah because it's hard to know what enclosures my animal wants before i actually see them in the animals the magic and then i'm going to oh then the animal card is on 5 which is the best and then i can maybe if i can afford it because um animals are expensive things then i can maybe play two animals if i'm lucky so you're all the time you're trying to like see okay where will this card be in two hours and does that fit my plan there was many times where i was just like oh now it would be a really good time to build some buildings and there's like but if i can do this one first then that one i will be able to do again the best next time and then i'll like switch around the order um so that was a thing yeah i enjoyed that puzzle yeah i enjoyed the timing of it basically and we're using this word a lot like an optimization puzzle yes which basically all board games are but more some feel more like this yeah feels like it because you have a timing mechanism and you're trying to to do things obviously in the best way possible like it's the best critique of any game ever like in this game you're trying to do things in the best way possible to score the most points yeah but the all the parts works very well like all the parts everything is makes sense like the first time you play you're gonna have problems probably or you you will have some trouble remembering the icons because there's a lot of icons but if you just like sit down with a with an animal card and just see okay this is this this this is this is that it's not but it's not that much like it looks kind of busy when you look at it but it's not actually that much if this is the price it's the it's the size of the enclosure they want to be in it's the the symbols that will get you there might be some simple requirements on the left there's going to be a special ability and the appeal and bonuses you get to play the card yeah and that is basically the car so they look very busy uh i let's talk a bit like about the artwork of it like it's uh it looks like it's kind of kind of like trevor moore's head like clip art of things yeah especially one of them we we found out because we there was this animal i had not heard of and i searched it on google and the first picture that came out was the picture that they had used in the game so basically it looks like they were taking pictures actual pictures and then they had like put this like artwork filter on it yeah it looks um much more beautiful than terraforming mars because it looks like uh in terms of mars it looks like they've like clipped out pieces from different magazines like in different settings some things are very um cartoony some things are really realistic like it doesn't yeah it's like a scrapbook but in this game it's like the same art style all over but it's it's very simple i am wondering who the people are because there are people in the game i hope those are actual people they know and i just like find random people on the internet it's like hey there might be stock photos if you like like if you bought it and it's like hey that's me why am i in this game that would be really really weird it's probably like they bought a bunch of stock photos and then they put that filter on i think it looks fine so is there anything you do not like in the game like we there's many like solid mechanisms is there something you don't like i dislike well it's not nothing that i dislike i kind of think like it's cool because they try to make all the things work together so so for example i use my like my dude tokens i don't know like do tokens yeah to to go and unlock like um kind of connections with uh different countries yes and also to do some like what do you call it the resource stations and the conservation points yeah and also if you like you need those guys to do that and then like if you reach a certain level on the reputation track or when you do like have enough connections you get another of those guys and you kind of like and so all the things you're just like but i need that guy to do that but to do that i actually need the but there's lots of tracks like there's tracks with bonuses and the map has bonuses the track set bonuses everything else won't say so there's if you if you count your map as kind of a track then it's going to be there's six tracks yeah there's five tracks and a map where you replace things or move on the tracks to get bonuses that you can use to get more movements on tracks and the bonuses on those tracks yes and i didn't dislike it but i wasn't like a huge fan of that i was just like that didn't make me excited no it was just like ah a little hassle to like with all those tracks maybe that will be easier the next time we play it though yeah the thing is like i um there's five cards you can upgrade four of them uh throughout the game if you're like there's four different ways now it's going oh it's gonna be hard to unlock all of those it wasn't but it kind of wasn't because you you will be able to do a lot of things in the game we did spend a lot of time and probably like if you played differently it will be shorter because we played the way we did with a lot of the appeal the tickets and then like in the end of the game we started to move more on the green track at the conservation track and i i feel like like i got to do most of what i wanted to do like there was the game did not for me feel super tight yes i think you're like trying to say that we could have gone more on the green track like the conservation track but to do those like conservation uh missions kind of private yeah you have to have some animals in their cultures because that is what is like and then you automatically automatically would have gotten those tickets first oh yeah yeah yeah that's not bad and also because of that queue system with the cards i think it's very hard in this game to do like a very like one street thing way of doing things that's my first impression it feels like you gotta balance all the way maybe like you can weigh some things heavier than others that i think you can do but like oh i'm not going to go because you can do that kaina and rajasthan the ganges because i'm going to compare them just for 10 seconds now you can just like oh i don't i don't care about points i'm going to go like money or the opposite but here i think it's will be very often that the tracks meet kind of like on the middle right this is not truth because this is my first impression yes yeah i think you could especially for for the appeal because you don't have to go for conservation i think like that is but the track is way longer than it was like 150 points i think on that people try to get to the to the end yeah and but do you agree with me like the last one i made was i i felt like the game was not very tight oh yeah i felt like it was oh sometimes oh i don't have money now then i'll do the action that gives me money and when i truly actually give some money i'm going to go closer to the break and when the break comes i'm going to get my income so then i have money again uh so it felt kind of like in i'm going to compare it because it feels kind of like like in terms of mars when everybody pulses like when everyone's done stuff and kind of that action of taking money here is kind of a pass action or to just move things up like you don't have anything to do and and that's kind of like when you get to the break to get the the income and refresh things get the conservation like the people who can do conservation actions with back and it didn't like it if the game was one and a half hours like and and probably we can get it down but now two hours 40 minutes i don't think we can get it down 70 minutes no i don't think so but i think like as you said that might be us like you might be playing super super duper i don't think it was a super tight game it doesn't have to be but the tightness of it came from the racing aspect because it hasn't got an end i'm trying to keep up with you yeah i'm trying to be the one that actually ends the game that means that i've got to be more efficient so yeah i could do like a little like inefficient stuff because i'm gonna get that money and i'm gonna take those break and get that income anyways but if you don't like if you have this super efficient strategy i'm gonna like that's the tightness for me like and to also get like the most out of that that the q system also like gives another like all this crunchy bits like i i need to like oh okay if if i could do this now but i'm one coin short and then i didn't have to do this sub-optimal action um yeah so it didn't feel super tight but like if everyone is racing towards that like meeting those two tracks it feels kind of stressful in the end yeah so is there anything more uh before like wrap it up uh no i think we could wrap it up we should talk about like the special player powers oh yeah because yeah because like that is the one thing that i we have not experienced basically or there's probably more things we have experienced but because we were like talking about how how different it would be to play like uh the next time we play it because we may play it with like the basic maps now yeah but basically you can have like it will little different maps yeah we play with different ones as well yes and also you have some special abilities which i am looking forward to play with because they will make the game more interesting and they look very different like for example this has a outdoor arena area and it says it all adjacent uh standard enclosures uh adjacent to this then has plus two capacities you can put like three bonds and they're going to be threes or you can put a tree of two and it's gonna be five so four it's gonna be so it it is i think it's gonna be different enough to play with it and make it more interesting yes like in for example cousins of burgundy where you have quite different boards and it changes up how you play the game so so yeah and also these are different bonuses you get into the conversation and the conservation projects so there is like there is some variability in that yeah so yeah should i start about like my my final first impressions final first impressions so as we had said and you might have like seen like there's many things to like here but i'm not in love like it's nothing here the first time i picked it was long it felt kind of i probably as i said like these first impressions we will play more uh but it's might like get it down like 30 min or something that will help but still then that's a two hour plus game with two players and i don't felt like there was some cards where you will interact with other players but other than that it's mostly about you not taking the cards i want from the deck oh yeah one thing less luck here than entire remarks because we have displayable cards that you can take from uh harder in the beginning but if you upgrade your cards action it will be easier to take from those which is something i really enjoy and taking away him most of the things i don't like about the luck of the drawing time for mars even when drafting you don't have to comment about that uh but yeah so there's many things to like and i did like the game but there's nothing to like i'm not sitting here now being like oh i cannot wait to play it again yeah i'm looking forward to play it again because it was a solid fun game but it was nothing that blew my mind nothing that made me giggly and warm inside yes but it was a fun one so uh i just now made up my new first impression rating system yeah it's one to five party poppers and if it's even more it's gonna be a cannon of fun so this was probably like two and a half party poppers yeah i don't know how you get the uh half and i don't even know what the rating means but that's the rating for a first impressions of arc nova two and a half party poppers yeah i basically agree with everything this is even a party popper yeah like even a party popper uh because it's a fine game it's solid and but i didn't it it's not a cannon of fun i hope this will be a game that will grow on me yeah with the special powers and maybe next time around see a little more like um yeah efficient play like um absolutely yeah because i think if you can get these to 90 minutes i think that would help a lot so i'm looking forward to play it again but so far like two and a half party powers and you know there's just a random rating system because we do not rate things and also this is going to look backwards because we're probably going to use that on the first impression you saw yesterday because we're filming it after this that's how filming works so that is the end of the video if you are still here and you have not subscribed you can do so now by clicking the subscribe button it's free and it's fun it makes us happy if you want to do something that's not free but still fun you can join our patreon at patreon.comboardgamingramblings that helps us out a lot helps us get these games go to cons and you'll get the discord channel we try to make some photos on there and some behind the scenes videos and stuff like that so that's the end of the video thank you so much for watching i'm johannes and you've been watching board gaming ramblings and bye you

Channel: Board Gaming Ramblings

Views: 3,828

Rating: 4.9550562 out of 5

Keywords: allthegames, bgg, board games, boardgamegeek, capstone games, essen, feuerland, mathias wigge, review, spiel 21

Id: Sa4o6_Z2Sag

Length: 20min 35sec (1235 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 20 2021