broom's blog

Since we got Ark Nova two months ago, we have played over 30 games, including some 2-player games. That’s 1 game every other day on average. Considering each game takes 2+ hours, this clearly shows how popular this game has been in our household.

With 30+ games under the belt, I think I can write an in-depth review of Ark Nova with more strategy thoughts.

It’s All About Timing

Ark Nova is a racing game. One player can abruptly end the game and all other players only have one more action. It means you may not be able to spend all your resources or play all the power moves you planned. It sometimes feels cruel. But it’s a great design. It makes each game 2+ instead of 3+ hours. It also makes each game heated from the midpoint. Everyone needs to pay attention to the progress, as any player may start dashing to the finish line at any time, and everyone else has no other options but to follow.

The peculiar condition that triggers ending (Appeal and Conservation markers cross) also means even as the leading player, you’d want to calculate when exactly to end the game. If you have three power moves planned, e.g. play two strong animals and support two conservation projects, you want to end the game right on the 3rd move. Not before, not after. And you want to make sure these three moves are tight, without too many low-return moves in between. It almost feels like 收官 (“play the endgame”) in Go. You can absolutely lose a game with a great start because you mess up the endgame.

At its core, a racing game is about the efficiency of each move. Every player has the same amount of actions so “action” is the most precious resource. The “Coffee Break” mechanism in this game is a great way to disrupt other players’ plans to make their moves less efficient than yours. This gets us to the next point…

Interaction Under the Hood

An early impression of Ark Nova is usually “lack of interaction”. Everyone is building their own zoo happily. Someone got lucky and won. Is that so?

After playing ~10 games, I realized this game has plenty of interaction. It’s just at a deeper level. Taking the Coffee Break as an example, when you find your opponents are low on cash and you have more cash to spend, you may want to stretch this turn so they have to do a few wasted moves to wait for income. When you have sent your associate and your opponents haven’t, you may want to enter break so they waste the opportunity to use associate for this turn. We found ourselves watching the coffee break token much closer when we get familiar with Ark Nova.

The card display and conservation projects are also huge interaction points. Pay attention to other players’ strategies and snap/draw/dig cards they want. Counting other players’ icons and competing for conservation projects. It’s much less likely to win if you ignore other players after everyone knows how to play.

Luck And Balance

As a card-driven game, Ark Nova inevitably has some luck factor. Several new players scored wins at our place. While considering Gaia Project, which has a very low luck factor and is one of our favorites, it’s nearly impossible to win for new players when playing against experienced players. A few strong cards that combo nicely from the beginning can really boost a player’s chance to win the whole game.

But this game’s luck factor can be mitigated by the 6-card display. Experienced players tend to favor getting known cards instead of getting unknown cards from the deck. And we often say you have to find the strategy based on your cards, not find cards based on your strategy. Overall I think Ark Nova has the right amount of luck to give people hope and excitement, without breaking the game.

So what about balance? Are there game-breaking combos? I think there might be, but not too many. Any two cards are fair combos from what I see. And if someone gets three or four cards that exactly combo together… it can be a bit game-breaking but they’d also be really lucky to get the exact three or four from 200+ cards.

I do feel different strategies have some balance issues. For example, I think focusing on small animals generally pays off better than on large animals, because small animals grant you many more icons so you have an advantage in conservation project competitions, and large animals’ benefits are often highly situational and rely more on getting the right cards at the right time. But it could also be me over-indexing conservation projects. Research icon also feels a rather strong strategy as the combo can get pretty wild.

In summary, Ark Nova is a solid game and worth the hype in my opinion. Get one while you can. And play!

上周末开了今年很热门的一个新桌游Ark Nova，动物园主题的卡牌游戏。一盘下来几个人的感受反差有点大。xw作为赢家很喜欢玩，我作为垫底则是觉得运气成分有点过大。。之后一周里我们两个人又玩了四盘，xw连战连捷直到最后我才赢了一次。对这个游戏了解有一点深度了，可以写一写。

Ark Nova初看起来会觉得跟几年前的大热游戏TM(Terraforming Mars)有些相似，事实也确实是吸取了TM的不少要素：没有固定回合数而是靠游戏进程触发结束条件，三类卡牌里的animal牌和sponsor牌很像火星里面的绿牌和蓝牌，也是拼六角格地图只是变成了各自拼自己的，Conservation Project也有一点像火星里面的milestone。相似的点是相当的多。

但Ark Nova比TM要复杂很多。从讲规则就能很直接的感受到，东拉西扯要讲好几种机制。比如五张action牌轮替，最右侧的action效果最强，每个action用过就会落到最弱的位置。Association这个机制又有一点迷你工人放置游戏的性质。每个人自己拼图不需要跟其他玩家抢地盘了，然而每个建筑大小形状各异，于是又有一个小拼图游戏在这里，要规划布局。可以摸的卡有六张顺序流动的明牌，于是摸牌的时候就有一些互相之间的博弈。最后的算分也是一个奇怪的“两个分数相减”的算法，于是打得快结束游戏的人可能只有十几二十分，落后的人甚至会是负分。。

好在熟悉规则之后并不会觉得复杂的机制使得游戏缓慢，大部分时候还是相当流畅的。虽然偶尔也会有长考或者多次combo导致很长的回合，但大部分回合的动作都是比较直接。

前几次玩的时候感觉这游戏的互动太少，每个人都在闷头打自己的牌和修自己的动物园。会打一些之后会体会到一些互动的点，比如抢牌和break，还有根据对方的action牌位置来预测对方下一步可能的行动。但即使如此我还是觉得这个游戏的互动有点偏少，尤其是新手局基本不会有互动可言。

作为一个类似TM的卡牌游戏，Ark Nova在combo方面更进了一步，五花八门的能力combo可以各种叠加打得很爽。但这也带来了一些平衡性问题。有些牌和combo我个人感觉过强了。xw开始赢的几盘有一大半都在走小动物路线，我觉得对应的几张能力卡过强，即使对手在摸牌阶段着力抑制也很难见效。还有就是卡牌游戏常见的运气问题，后期的conservation project拿到一张对口的可以差出十几分，作为这个复杂度的游戏来说我觉得运气成分太重。

游戏自带的收纳盒好评，虽然是个重度游戏，收纳和铺开倒都很简单快捷。版图很大，需要很大的桌子才能玩。第一次玩的体验不会太好因为规则繁复加上需要会玩之后才能有互动，玩个两三次以后可能会渐入佳境。

总的来说Ark Nova还是很好玩的，不然我们也不会一周玩五局。卡牌都是各种动物画得很好看。探索各种能力combo和排布自己的动物园也很有趣。由于互动偏少偶尔又会有长回合，其实很适合两三个人玩，四个人可能会嫌多。可以说如果不讨厌强运气成分，又能接受BGG 3.5+复杂度的桌游的话，应该会喜欢Ark Nova。