Welcome to our first strategy guide video on Cole Wehrle's new game: ARCS! Look forward to more videos on Arcs in the upcoming weeks! Contact 115 Gaming Here: thecrobros@gmail.com Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio
This is SUCH a helpful practical video. Having played Arcs three times so far, I can see exactly what you're saying about these tips. Some of them I already gathered and others I hadn't even considered. So thank you!
Honestly I could've made the video twice the length but I had to stop somewhere! I might revisit this in the future with a Part 2 or something to cover the things I left out here, we'll see!
Did my first game ever a few days ago. Really interesting. Very simple and hands down the most straightforward rule book Leder Games has put out. I really like how simple it is and yet the figuring out how to strategize your way through the mechanics is complex. The trick taking makes it harder to simply just do what you need to do. By the end of the game I realized I probably should just use my resources and copy more. Hoping to play it again soon.
Resources & Guild Cards are key to giving you flexibility. My first few games I kinda just ignored the guild cards and was always shocked at how the other players were able to do these crazy things with them while I was stuck trying to work around my bad hands.
I like and agree with your take on raiding. There was a discussion in the Woodland Warriors where someone was arguing that games would necessarily devolve into just raiding back and forth and they were trying to say that raiding was op. And I really think it's far more situational than that. Like everything in this crazy weird awesome game.
I've found raids have become less frequent in my group as we've played more, so I'm curious to see how different tables will react to the Raiding. It seems to be the most "controversial" design choice currently
19:47 Something else related to this that took me a few plays to internalize: you also don't need control to Build. You just need a Loyal piece already present in the system. So you have a city all by itself on a planet with another building slot, you can Build a second city there, or a starport there, no ships needed. (Of course, it's gonna be built in a damaged state if a Rival has control.)
Obviously it can sometimes depend on your hand. But there's always seizing as an option. Or, if an ambition was declared by someone else in a previous turn, it doesn't take a much effort to declare it again yourself. And of course, careful card counting will help you get initiative back consistently!
I have only played once, but I think I want to start counting total pips in a chapter for both me and everyone together and see what the average is. In the game I played I did better in chapters where I seized even though I was doing nothing last round. If I knew those averages I could have a sense of the tempo and how I was doing relative to the other players. I could also make a better calculation on when to seize
That would be an interesting exercise. I wonder if the amount of pips vary too much due to the way the cards are played that it would be hard to get an average.
I’ve played 6 games now, 4 with three people and 2 with 5. I would say 7 actions are pretty average with 3 people and 5 actions are the low end. With four it would span up a single action. That hasn’t really informed me when to seize. It has more to do with my hand at the beginning of the chapter. If I have a lot of high cards I don’t need to seize. If I have a bunch of low cards, I should seize early and throw a spanner in whatever the others want to do. Like if someone is clearly going to win warlord I would seize and declare empath just to deny them points. Or if I could snag a choice card I would seize and do that. You aren’t going to get a lot of actions with a low value hand so missing an action at the end of the round isn’t much of a loss, you mostly want to sabotage and set up for the next chapter. Hopefully you have some resource tokens to shore up a bad hand.
I do not have this game, and will not have it until at least next year ( waiting for my language translation to be able to play with friends) but I love your video. It really help me understand the depth of this game.
Thank you for making this guide! Now I just have to convince my group to get it haha. We have one player that I swear prefers no player interaction AT ALL so it will be a hard sell.
Is it generally worth it to influence cards someone else has started to influence before you? Like if someone has placed two agents on a card, is it efficient, power point wise, to place three agents on that card to possibly capture the opponent's agents?
@@Uberskull I would say yes, if and only if you know you will be able to immediately secure before that person can respond. Otherwise that other player will respond by putting agents back on it and then one of y’all is gonna get screwed over trying to secure it first.
When you say 3+ do you mean "three or more" or "more than three"? It should mean "three or more" but from the way you were talking about it I got confused on which you meant.
