Arcs Board Game Review

Written by Dan York

Read our full interview feature on Arcs with designer Cole Wehrle here

What is Arcs?

There’s a lot of space in this small box. Arcs is the latest offering from esteemed publisher Leder Games whose previous offerings, Root and Oath, became cult favourites for their quirky takes on classic genre tropes. On paper, at least, Arcs appears to be more regulated. A space combat game with resource management and expansionism. The goal in a game of Arcs is to reach a victory point threshold before your opponents and this is achieved through a series of straightforward actions: building and moving ships, dice-based combat, constructing settlements, acquiring upgrades, and taxing cities for resources. The secret sauce is that this is wrapped up in a trick-taking style action selection system, on any given round of turns, your choice of actions will be heavily dictated by the lead suit of card played by that round’s first player. 

Playing Arcs

Cards have four main features: a suit, a value, a number of action icons and an ambition icon. Each suit corresponds to a limited number of action types, governing what most players can do during this round. The action icons represent action points that can be spent to carry out your turn, the more icons, the more things you’re allowed to do.

The value on the card plays into the trick-taking element, potentially setting up for another player to win the trick and take the lead role next round, and the ambition icon is for one of Arcs’ most exciting rules, how scoring works. 

During a round, the lead player can “declare an ambition”, based on the card they lead with, this assigns some victory points to one of five scoring objectives for this chapter (set of 4-6 rounds), this can only be done three times per chapter, and these are the only things will be worth points in the chapter.

Ambitions include points for having the most of specific resources, most enemy ships destroyed or most captives taken and will likely change from chapter to chapter. Non-leading players then have a choice of what card they wish to play, following suit with a higher card to claim the lead next round is a common choice, but if you don’t or can’t follow suit then you have the opportunity to “pivot”, playing any card from your hand for its actions, but with only a single action point or to just use any card facedown as a single-value copy of the lead.

This is the core of Arcs on later playthroughs, it is recommended to use the asymmetric setup cards (a teaser for one of the expansions) to give players unique powers and skills.

Starting with the obvious, the presentation in this game is second-to-none. Leder Games continue to impress me with their production and artistic direction, the illustrations from the backs of the cards to the board and components, adorned with the fantastic artwork of Kyle Ferrin is a joy. The cartoony style strikes the right balance between being broadly appealing and fun while not detracting from the grim and dark undertones of the setting.

The overall product quality is fantastic, every piece is easy to see, the board is always easy to parse despite often being busy, and the box is appealingly compact. Not an inch of space has been wasted on the package, and it makes for a “big game, small box” experience that I’ve not seen since The White Castle.

On the whole the moment-to-moment gameplay is great, the actions are simple, and their purpose is clear. No single turn is ever hugely complicated, but the action selection always makes them interesting. Due to the nature of the ambitions system, the flow of a chapter is necessarily dynamic. Players who are currently in a winning position for an ambition will want to pursue that, which means they may find themselves dragging others into a war they did not want to face or have to spend their time inefficiently using cards to guarantee that they can be the lead for a couple of rounds, always an engaging set of decisions to make.

A chapter tends to have a tempo, set by the players and the configuration of their hands. Getting established into this chapter’s vibe and riding that wave is pivotal to success, which can mean making some sacrifices or negotiating some temporary treaties with your enemies. The unfortunate flipside is that a player who falls behind or picks up a particularly unproductive hand can find themselves locked out of any scoring contention, which, considering most games only see three or four scoring phases, could be game over. There are some great ways to mitigate card luck, between the pivot/copy system and the ability to spend an extra card (essentially losing a turn) to force-claim the lead, but sometimes it isn’t enough.

Another concern I have is with the guild cards, these are obtained through some non-combat majority control actions and unlock a suite of interesting bonus abilities, but they can be very centralising if a good one appears in the trade row. I sigh every time I see one of the “cartels” because they all but guarantee the entire chapter will become about securing control of it, usually to score considerable points in the tycoon’s ambition.

On the other hand, the combat system is super fun. Attacking other players comes with a range of cool decisions to make. Choosing where you want to attack, what combination of dice to roll, and how many dice are fun things to have to weigh up. Dice-based combat runs the risk of being too swingy, but in Arcs there’s a lot of agency. Will you choose high-risk red dice that deal more damage but open you up to retaliation, low risk (low damage) blue dice, or the third quirky orange ones to swoop in close and steal their resources instead of looking for trophies. Combat is snappy and simple and super satisfying, even when it goes wrong.

Arcs Verdict: 

I’ve been on a rollercoaster with Arcs. It’s so interesting and unique, yet I’m just not in love with it. Every game has been enjoyable and usually rather close and tense, but there’s something about the game flow and direction of play that doesn’t sing to me. Let me be clear, I think Arcs is a wonderful piece of design and an inarguably brilliant production, there’s nothing terribly wrong with it, but it feels lacking in a magic that is hard to put my finger on. I think everyone should try it, it’s unique and accessible, games are done in a perfect amount of time and the box is an ideal size for such an expansive and replayable game. The in-box condensed version of the Leaders and Lore expansion does add a lot of spice to proceedings, and I am excited to play more with the full expansion, and the bigger Blighted Reach campaign box too. If you can, you should play this game, it has its quirks and games can sometimes be swingy, but this is clearly something that the right group will love. 

You should play it. This board game won’t be for everyone, but everyone should play it.

You should definitely try it if you liked Dune. While not as monstrously complicated, Arcs and Dune are both doing something interesting and novel with map-based combat which is worth exploring for any fans of the genre.

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About Arcs

Designer: Cole Wehrle

Publisher: Leder Games

Players: 2-4

Ages: 14+

Time: 60m-120m

Price: £50

What’s in the box?

• 4 Player boards
• 20 Starport tokens
• 20 City tokens
• 40 Agent meeples
• 60 Ship meeples
• 28 Action cards
• 12 Setup cards
• 31 Court cards
• 8 Leader cards
• 14 Lore cards
• 25 Resource tokens
• 18 Battle dice
• Chapter Marker
• 4 Path markers
• 6 Out of play markers
• 4 Aid sheets
• Initiative Marker
• Board