Ark Nova | Rahdo's Final Thoughts 

I love how one of the best games of the last year is: 1. From a first time designer, 2. Retail and not from crowdfunding, 3. Crunchy but so easy to teach. Cheers for the great video as always!

Is anyone else like me in that they appreciate good euro games that have that epic length feel to them? Terraforming Mars and Underwater Cities being two that come instantly to mind. My wife and I play mostly 2p together and games like these seem to be exactly "our thing" ...

As a long-time fan of your show, I'd like to thank You and Jen for your kind words, attention and care about the situation in Ukraine. That was REALLY touching when Jen came in and gave you the WITWITs. When we win the war, I promise I'll order some of the Jens works of Art for myself as well (here it's not the best time now for shopping accessories really). Greetings and please make sure to say hello and thank Jen for her work! We appreciate your support!

I'm glad you mentioned Corrosion. That game was long, and I came up with a great variant to speed up the middle to late game. It's on BGG. There hasn't been too much traction on it because a lot of folks believe it's the early game that requires speeding up. This is definitely not the case. Those early turns are crucial, and giving someone extra parts at the beginning weaken the take cards early strategy. Anyway, my variant got it down to 1.5 hours for a 2p game which is perfect for me.

This game is amazing! I understand your point on the river - though this is one of those games that even when I lose I feel like I have built something unique. I find the mechanism and building very rewarding.

Can’t wait for the game since Tom reviewed it. Glad you like it as well. 😊 Love your support for Ukraine. Greetings from Poland.

I lo-lo-looove the energy Rahdo!

I'm never the guy who says "but I can play it in half that time!". My group is regularly no less than 1.5x the upper bounds on a box. But after 5 games our 4 player times are down to 2 to 2.5 hours every time. We're not usually "that group". As you found, the solo game teaches you to race to the end.

We can do a 1 hour 15 minute game for 2 with mostly ease after our many plays. I have spoken with Matthias and we arent playing wrong. I am cool with that time for a game of this weight and size.

Props to you and Jen for the charity work!

That luck of the draw critique you were talking about reminds me of wingspan and all of its unique bird cards. Some player could draw a raven and have the easiest most exciting game, but their opponent has dead weight in the hand. I've seen that happen many times playing wingspan and it's not fun. I hope that that issue isn't too disheartening in this game. Watching you play it in your run through made me very excited to get it to the table.

It is a very long game (and you completely lose track of time because you are so engaged) but the game is a-ma-zing! I have played it 7 times at all player counts and I am in love with it! This is my favorite game of all time now despite its length! I really hope they are already thinkibg about expansions

Always appreciate your enthusiasm and animation in your videos. They are an absolute joy to watch.

Wouldn't say clean and elegant design. So many things get overlooked and forgotten about.

I am glad you pointed out the random luck of the draw factor. Great review!

I am going through an up and down relationship with this game, just as I did with Terraforming Mars. Super excited before first play, slightly underwhelmed after the first play, growing to appreciate it over a few plays before having a bad play (this was a game hurt by AP), but then as I continue to play I grow in appreciation of it even more. There was a TM game I played where I declared I would never play again, and now it is my 3rd favourite game despite not owning. Such an emotional roller-coaster.

The length comment is interesting. I heard 4+ hours stories at DTW. I played it also at DTW with a teacher/expert and three newbies, including me. It took us 2 hours, 45 including teaching. So I had a much shorter experience. The only reason I can think of is that our teacher was able to run tru scoring pretty fast and beat us pretty bad :)

There is not a lot of shifting in Rahdos top-10. You could almost call it nostalgia. :-)

Great review, but four hour games? Even with new players we have it down to 90 minutes, two hours tops.

Always love your videos! Just paused to go to Jen's page and order a set. Huge fan of Everdell, what a lovely little bonus!

8:31 Yes, I am completely with you! I like games which “hold your hand” a little (lol) by guiding you in a direction. Otherwise, there are a bajillion different things I could do, so how do I know what is worth going about doing? Because otherwise I would not feel like I have a chance to win - and then the game isn’t fun, since part of playing games is all about being on the “edge of your seat” knowing that you are competitive and have a chance. That is why over time I have become less and less intrigued by heavy games. I actually want to understand the strategy - a reason to go about doing X, Y, Z action(s) when I am playing games!

honestly the length was not an issue, it's such a good game.

I came back to this now after playing the game 5 times, it's very interesting to see the final thoughts now. We've ended quicker than 1 hour per player every time we have played I believe. I think the second issue you had probably goes a ways to explaining why. I've not seen it as a card driven game. Every time I've played I've focused on other things a lot more. The cards are the least of my concern. I go heavy on associations to race to flipping cards as much as possible, and building for good bonuses at the start and I tend to play sponsors a lot, which is card dependent but I haven't much cared about specific sponsors, they're generally good for game building. With all this set up, the animal cards I play generally just fall into plan where there's always a good number of at least decent options.

Great video Rahdo! It was wonderful to meet you at DTW. Our four player games are getting down to 3 hours now. And two player games to an hour and a half. You make a great point about building vs moving the game forward and we may try the game with only 27 rounds as we get more players comfortable with the game. We've been enjoying the game as well, noting I'm terrible at it, I don't seem to get the 'moving forward' part :(. While I greatly enjoy the game, it's not my number one game of 2021 either, that'd be Imperial Steam which is not in your wheelhouse. Again thanks for the video I really enjoyed watching it.

Great to see you support Ukraine!

No reason to implement the solo time limit, you just have to play at that pace regardless of player count. If you play to trigger the end game in less than 30 turns and no one else notices that they're playing a race game... the other players will notice the difference when the game ends and they all have -40+ points 🤣

After a couple plays we have the playtime down to a constant 90min with two players 😊

It’s funny how you were considering using the solo mode rules to speed up Ark Nova two player because that’s exactly what I do with Terraforming Mara which suffers from similar issues. I’ve found it’s pretty effective, obviously I can’t speak to how well it will work in Ark Nova.

I can't wait until April 19th!! (expected release date)

5:22 Yep… It was in Sid Meier’s Civilization: A New Dawn.

review starts at 3:25

This is fun to me...Rahdo and all the people from the comments saying that they would use the solo rules for limiting rounds for this and for Terraforming Mars to shorten the game. I actually dislike the solo play in Terraforming Mars specifically because it uses round limits, and speeds up the game. For me and most of the people I play TM with, the game is an engine building card game, and the terraforming part is kind of just the secondary game timer. It feels like adding the round limit in solo play "rushes" the end for me, and takes away the fun part of the game by making you focus too much on the actual terraforming part. That's also the reason I hate the Steam App version. The AI opponent uses too many Standard Projects and rushes to the end before I have the chance to play all the cool cards I'm getting. All the people I play TM with love the fact that it's a 4 hour engine builder with a slight terraforming board game added on. :D I'm absolutely positive Ark Nova would be the same, and if the round limit were part of the rules, I'd probably house rule it OUT to allow the game to take as long as we want and get all that engine building goodness and all the awesome card play going. lol. Great review, and I look forward to picking this up for the loooooong game it is!

Played a 4 player game (all 4 have played the game at least 4 times) in 2.5 hours. We definitely pushed to finish quick though.

Thank You! Long time watching your reviews^ good help in my purchases, especially old. Good luck.

It gets shorter Rahdo, I play 2p with my wife and after a couple of games we gotten down to 80-90mins a game (without setup). Our first games were 2.5h +

Thanks from Ukraine.

when I heard you say you wanted to speed up the game, I thought the same thing (that the developers told you) about Terraforming Mars.... start your production higher. It's not in any rulebook, but if everyone starts the same, it's fair.

Ark Nova looks awesome but that is a super longgg playtime.

Was wondering when you'd mention Ukraine cause we know you are that type of people. Good on you both! You could also set up a new RU-vid fundraiser. Great review. My neighbour got it so it will be fun to try. Zoos are not my theme at all, but it also does Conservancy so I can't pass up the gameplay. Seems like it will burn our brains though lol

We played our first 4 player game i 3h. we also played a 3 Playergame in 2.5h with one new player. I honestly don´t know what ppl are doing to take 5-6h for this game.. maybe if they count lunchgames into the game time.... (We are not particular faster then avarage in most other games)

Time to do a Top 20 of all time again!!

Can’t wait to pick this game up!

I've played this 3 times so far. First learning game for all, 4 players, took us 3 hours. Second game at 3p, one new player took us 2.5hrs. Third game, 4p but with 2 new players, took 3hrs. I just don't get how it's taking people 4 hours.

In my ideal parallel universe it is impossible, by some type of magic, to make a comment on how short your plays of game X are unless you also state how many plays you have under your belt. "The playtime will go down with more plays" is true, but it's true for every game, so it sort of disqualifies as an argument. When someone asks "How long does the game take to play?", for some reason what the most vocal people hear is "How quick are your fastest plays of the game?". Since it has become a prestige thing (regardless of which game, btw), you'll hear an unproportional amount from those who have 20, 30, 40, 50 plays under their belt even though those numbers are FAR from what the average player will ever reach.

One of the first videos I've seen where somebody has Roll Camera on their shelf! How do you like it? I was a little more disappointed in it than I originally thought I would be, but I still thoroughly enjoy it every time it gets to the table.

What's your current number 1 of the year?

I might hold off and just hope that it gets the condensed treatment similar to gloomhaven with jaws and terraforming mars with the card game etc. It’s very tempting though as it looks so good! With my wife my daughter and myself it would be cool to play half one night and half the next night.

Thanks a lot for good words about Ukraine!

How about if the discarded cards would form a new type of draw deck?

So, does anyone know what was the game of the year according to Rahdo ? He points to a box behind him, I'm not sure if he is referring to Pessoa ?

Ark Nova :) After tom said it was his number one i started to panic. I had already made up my mind i wanted the game lol (i got a preorder maybe coming around the 15th) like your videos.. thank you we thought you didn't actually have a wife named jen after watching abunch of your vids and never seeing her Then finally..lol seen her playing with ya the other day and... hehehe wish you both the best Game on

Such a great game.

Rahdo you are my best but you should play INIS

Dunno...the criticisms of the game this time feel like a little overly weighted. Luck swings happen in every game, and a blind draw magic occurs in almost everything with a deck of cards involved, or a lucky roll with dice. Game length is not a criticism if it's worth the journey...I'll take a 2 hour game of meaning over a 15 minute game of emptiness. Glad you love it, i know it's destined for a residence near the top of my list when I can finally get to play it. I haven't gotten to play Roll camera but kickstarted the expansion to get the base game...I'm hopeful I'll get that one some time in the next 5 years lol...

thx from Ukraine!!!

My group and I play games double the time mentioned on the box. So this will take 8 hours with 4 players. :( I agree with having a "Prelude" implemented into the game.

How do you feel about the negative player interaction on some cards (e.g. poison)? I was sure you would comment on that ;)

Thanks for the video, Rahdo. Anybody could tell me if it feels similar to Dinogenics. I want to buy Dinogenics, but wondering if this one is a better one? thanks

whelp this game won't ever be in stock again lol

Do the donations and proceeds gathered include the women and children of the Donbas who have been devastated by the Ukrainian military for almost 9 years? Just want to make sure that's what you mean by helping Ukranians before I buy these cool add ons. All Ukranians, right?

3 player (first) game, 7 hours long... But I had to translate to our language (2 and 3 times) every single card that made an appearance, because the other two players don't speak english, at all.

Good game but he is way overselling it imo

🤡