ALL ABOUT ARCS: SU&SD Newsletter #80

Due to a whole cluster of overlapping and unforeseen circumstances, we do not have a regular newsletter for you this month! Only little Thomas was available to contribute - and so, dear reader, it’s time to enter… THE TOMZONE. 

There’s a whole lot of writing in this newsletter! If you’d rather listen to it, then you can find an audio version of the entire article below. Let us know if this is something you’d like us to continue providing! We’ll have a lovely set of features cooked up for you next month.

Tom: I’ve not been doing my job properly.

This is unprofessional of me to admit, but I’ve really dropped the ball in keeping up with new releases. I’m not scouring BGG’s Hotness for gems, I’m not keeping up with my rigorous podcast listening schedule and staying up to date with what folks might want to hear about. I’ve been letting my regular game group slide, and I’ve squandered opportunities to play exciting new games. Being super ill recently has only exacerbated the problem!

And that’s all because of this daft game called Arcs.

In truth, I don’t think this is such a bad thing - I’ve found deep-dive projects the most rewarding and engaging bits of work I’ve done for the site! I think it’s a game that’s worth the time and depth of a potentially two part video! But I do need to give other games the time of day, and keep the site ticking over on a steady diet of the great games that come out most every week in this hobby.

So, in order to put some of that obsession to rest, let me ramble at you in this newsletter about this wonderful box that I can’t stop getting to the table. Then, I can go and take myself away to get writing, and actually spend some time playing other games so my in-tray isn’t quite as heaving.

I think I was a little reserved in my praise for Arcs when I made a first impressions video a few weeks ago; not sure of quite how good the game I was sitting in front of actually was after a small selection of occasionally wonky plays. Having now sat down to base-game Arcs dozens of times, and playing three full campaigns on top of that? I feel exceedingly confident in sharing that this future review is going to be quite breathless in its praise. It is an extraordinary box.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how Oath was very much set up to be ‘Someone’s Favourite Game’. It’s a famously odd beast; analogous to almost no other designs in the space, bravely treading its own winding path. The presiding opinion I’ve seen on Oath is ‘I love the idea, but I didn’t like the game’ or the perhaps more common ‘I wish I had the group for it’. Oath is wonderful, but oftentimes impossible.

The miracle of Arcs, then, is that it truly has ‘something for everyone’ and yet somehow manages to sacrifice absolutely nothing in the process. It has its cake, and it gorges on it.

 Let’s talk about the base game first.

‘Small Arcs’, as it’s referred to by Leder themselves, is nothing of the sort. Temporally? Sure. It takes a svelte 5 hands (~90 minutes) to blast through, and is entirely self-contained. But in experience? It manages to capture a broad swathe of sci-flavour whilst maintaining a brutally sharp and tactical core replete with fascinating decisions. I think that the base game of Arcs is the most competitive, sleek, and clean game that Leder have put out to date.

I’m continually finding new intricacies and interactions with the very basic tenets of the game - the spaces in which the trick taking and area control merge and overlap to develop fascinating board states and opportunities. But I’m also entranced by the surprisingly knowable ‘court cards’ that build the backbone of your personal path through the game, the emergent strategies that bubble up from the resources you have access to, and the unhinged depths presented by the Leaders and Lore expansion; the presence of which spritzes the game with a healthy dose of the asymmetry that’s become Leder’s signature.

I think that folks who are deep into the weeds with campaign Arcs can accidentally be a little dismissive of quite how excellent the foundation of what they are playing actually is! I don’t want to let that work get lost in translation within our coverage: base game Arcs is just as worthy a title on its own, without that absolutely monstrous campaign expansion. I feel very able to oscillate between these two versions (three, if you count Leaders and Lore) of Arcs and find oodles to engage with any which way. Campaign Arcs becomes very busy almost immediately - so much so that I can lose sight of the brass tacks of the trick taking; the clever little manoeuvres you can pull to get yourself out of a scrape. The comparative space given to you in the base game is just an opportunity to appreciate the minutiae of it all the more.

It’s wonderful. It’s a slick, brutal, personality-laden area control game with enough intricacy that the game isn’t even out yet and someone’s made a whole series of Youtube videos on the mechanics and a multi-page strategy primer. Shout out to my boy Snoopymate25.

I also want to briefly mention that there’s something very special going on within the teach of Arcs. Yes, there’s some classically fiddly ‘Wehrle Special’ rules, but broadly the whole thing coheres into an atypically elegant explanation. In his ‘How To Teach Games Like A Pro’ video, Quinns highlighted the importance of the journey present in a good teach - the path you take through the jungle gym of systems you’re about to invest hours of your life into. Not only does Arcs have an apparent and straightforward path through its teach that’s intuitive and satisfying - but it also lends itself well to modularity in how you might tackle it with different groups. I’ve tweaked and adjusted my route through the rules knowing different people will respond to certain elements more than others. It’s so much more robust than the teaches for most any other Leder title - which can (with all the love in the world) be a real task if you’re not quite prepared.

And then there’s the campaign. 

Here’s the practicals. Campaign Arcs takes the sharp, single-session base game and extrudes it across an entire day. Instead of 5 rounds of one game, you’ll play 10 rounds across three; carrying the boardstate between each game. It’s not just a longer game, though; it’s almost an entirely different one, grafted atop the base game. On top of this extra-lengthy time frame, Arcs’ campaign mode piles on heaps and heaps of entirely new systems. Players begin as individual regents of a powerful Empire, whose ships exert control and uneasy peace on its potentially unwilling subjects. The ‘Blight’ - a sentient, fungus-like alien species - populates vast sections of the board and takes bites out of ships that lack the Empire’s protection. There’s an entire negotiation phase sandwiched between rounds where players can wheel-and-deal their holdings away, there’s a book of laws that alters the rules of the whole campaign, there’s humongous upgradable flagships and game-defining crises. It’s a true kitchen-sink ethos to design where every idea is crammed into an already beautifully imaginative box.

But none of that, somehow, is the real star of the show. The real star is Arcs’ equal parts unhinged and inspired ‘Fates’ system.

At the start of your first game of the campaign, you are given a fate. Perhaps in this game you’re the Magnate - a giant insect trying to hoard all the wealth of the galaxy and ship it off to an unknown master. You could be the Caretaker - a sheepish little academic who wants to rouse ancient Golems from their slumber, harnessing their unique (and dangerous!) powers. The Admiral seeks to establish the Empire as a presence to be feared on this new frontier, the Founder seeks to create a more equitable political system for everyone, and The Believer is quietly sowing the seeds of a new religion that they insist is nothing like a cult.

Get this, though. Each fate comes with its own legacy-style stack of cards to work through, packed with surprises and allies to help them achieve those lofty ambitions. Some of these cards take the form of extra advisors and powers - characters who sit alongside you all campaign… but other cards might be new rules, new systems, new folds in the very fabric of what you’re playing.

To go back to the Believer, for a second, their little legacy deck has a new suite of specific ‘Believer’ action cards that gradually replace the cards you’re playing the trick-taking part of Arcs with! It’s an entirely new suit that spreads like an infection through a set of cards you used to be so comfortable manipulating and understanding! They gain a prophet they need to protect, alongside an event that gets shuffled into the market which might let others hatch a plot to kidnap the little guy! Each of the fates adds a spritz of their own personality into proceedings; personality that everyone will experience first-hand, not just the player piloting them.

We’re not done, though. I mentioned that each fate has a broad goal - and those goals are represented by concrete objectives that they’re looking to complete alongside the usual gathering of points - points that stack into a grand total that’ll determine your ultimate campaign victor. The absolutely inspired twist here is that if you fail to complete that objective? You don’t get to play as that fate in game two. Oh no! Don’t worry.

You instead reach into an entirely separate set of ‘B’ fates and assume a new role for the next game, adding onto everything you had before. The B fates come with their own personalities, their own set of new cards, their own goals that change the game you’re playing once again. But what happens if you fail your objective in game two? You know where this is going. You pull a C fate, with their own personalities, their own set of cards, their own goals that change the game you’re playing for one final time before the grand finale.

Holy moly.

Not only is this just an unfathomably large amount of game that I’m only scratching the surface of 3 campaigns deep (I’ve only seen 2/8 of the ‘B’ and ‘C’ fates!) but it’s also one of the most emergent and evocative systems I’ve yet seen for creating diverse and tangled narratives. 

To clarify something important and to set expectations here - I don’t necessarily think that Arcs does the micro-scale storytelling quite as effectively as Oath does. As much as Arcs is rammed with fabulous characters, charming allies, and detailed topography… it’s not going to scratch the particular itch for generative small-scale narrative that Oath does. 

Nothing in Arcs’ playful player-driven narrative is on par with the mental image of an “Errand Boy” trepidatiously venturing into an abandoned mine where, supposedly, a mythical beast once “deposited” the key to the city it ate a few days prior. There’s no colossal war tortoise donning wellington boots for a pivotal riverside scuffle, and there’s no desperate heist of a magical pig.

But! Arcs is not trying to do that! Of course, its cards are still evocative and flecked with narrative charm - but Arcs is more interested in the full scope of your three game campaign and the narratives that emerge as your fates shift and change. It’s a box that’s geared towards telling different kinds of sci-fi stories. It’s about using the tools given to you to tell tales of galaxies rammed with clashing characters and ideologies. It’s about conflict not just of rifles and sabres but of beliefs, of purpose! 

In one campaign, a scorned admiral threw off the shackles of their failing empire to become the ‘Planet Breaker’ - roaming the galaxy to destroy the homeworlds of those who spurned him. In another, that same admiral decided that such violence was not the answer, and used their own military might against themselves to ultimately de-escalate conflict and make war a distant memory. In another, they became a despotic and cruel hegemon who exerted barbaric tactics to instill fear amongst the court. 

None of this is to say that keeping the same fate isn’t also satisfying and worthwhile! That Caretaker, with their golems? Their three-part-arc has them first rousing said golems from their slumber and using their strange powers to usher in new prosperity, before realising they might not actually be a pure force for good after all - gradually warping themselves into the hunter of this entity they were previously so fond of.

I think Arcs sort of knows that there might end up being too many factors to consider in any given game. It knows that this overlapping of player intention combined with the dozens of new systems that coat the base game is, frankly, ‘too much all round’. It knows that you’re going to get rules wrong, it knows that it’s going to get very wonky very fast. But, likely by your second campaign, it stops feeling overwhelming. Once you’re a little more comfortable with the new systems, you realise that Arcs doesn’t want you to keep track of everything and meticulously, perfectly plan out your grand strategy. It wants you to play in the space.

On every fate there’s a miniature serving of hyper-evocative flavour text, the inclusion of which might be the single design decision that gets Arcs’ Campaign to hold together as well as it does:  

“Division breeds chaos. Order demands that we follow one banner, think with one mind.” “Corner the market and dominate the Reach with your commercial prowess”. “Yes, it was all me! I was pulling the strings from the start!”

I think that these cut through the noise of the cards and chaos. Those single lines give you a job. They give you a focus. They give you a lens through which to view the game you’re playing. 

The beauty, though, is that playing your character does more than just give you access to points and prizes - you become part of a legitimate ecosystem where your relationships with the other players are determined by your goals and motives. Rarely in Arcs are you fighting for its own sake - you may well exist in complete harmony with some players around the table! It’s only when your visions of what the galaxy should be start to clash that the battle lines get drawn, when ambition needs to be policed and order restored. Conflict and co-operation both feel organic whenever they arise, and the shape of your space may well be completely different from game-to-game, different base game systems brought to the fore or tucked away depending on their relevance to the players’ goals in that particular setup. It just feels so alive.

All of this is bedecked in some of the finest art Kyle Ferrin has done to date. It’s more severe and grungy across the board, but still finds plenty of space for whimsy and charm where it counts. There’s quite literally hundreds of bespoke illustrations that depict such a diverse and imaginative galaxy in evocative and open-ended ways. There’s detail and character in even the cards that initially appear the most tropey or typical - eliciting gasps of joy and surprise from everyone around the table. You knew this would be the case, though, right? He just never misses.

Honestly? I feel quite emotional about this game. In the same way one might have an album connect with them on a personal level at a particular place and time, Arcs feels so cumulative and triumphant that it’s hit me right in the heart.

It’s legitimately a little embarrassing to admit this, but at this stage I’m fairly certain that I’m going to be writing a review in which I sheepishly replace my current, canon, ‘Favourite Game’ with another big-box-leder-game-with-legacy-elements. I wrote all of this newsletter in one clear sitting, and only now am I realising… I might have actually written a huge swathe of my actual, finished review? It had to come out! It’s too much excitement to bear! I’m completely besotted with this game, as you might be able to tell. I can’t wait for people to get their hands on it.

Here’s the plan for our coverage. I think you can expect a typical, two-person podcast on Arcs shortly - a big bumper special - and then I’ll quietly squirrel away on the video until it’s done, thanks. I mean, that might actually be sooner than expected, to be honest. Now that I’ve written basically the whole thing in distressingly breathless fashion.  

What a game.

What are we video games!  🎮

Circuit Superstars has been a delightful little morsel to pick up and play in the evenings after work. Just a really tight, simple racing game where glacial changes to the vehicles you’re driving incrementally ratchet up the complexity and stakes of each race. It’s neat! Big fan. 

Helldivers 2 is, obviously, absolutely excellent. I’m so glad that Arrowhead got to make a sequel, and even more glad that it has found such huge success. I adored the original despite none of my friends really clicking with it - and it’s so lovely to see the sequel more rigorously explore the exciting ideas that were mostly just potential in the original. All the live-service stuff appears to have really landed, and I’m loving the experience of seeing new enemies and weapons being chatted about on Twitter before hopping on myself to blast some bots and bugs.

What are we music!  🎵

Frog! Frog! Frog! Frog! I was hooked upon hearing the very first line of ‘Yes by God I’m American / God is Great, he’s hilarious”. ‘Jesus Song’ imagines the immaculate child grappling with the confusing feelings of being a teenager, creating a pillow barricade with John the Baptist whilst watching raunchy scenes from Animal House. The deeply alternative approach to stayed and traditional rock and country genre conventions gives the whole thing a subversive and snickering tone that just hits. Start with ‘Kind of Blah’ and then shop around, I reckon.

What are we watching? 📺

Zone of Interest is truly excellent and I would recommend anyone watch it. A timely and deeply troubling depiction of those who enable and perpetuate horror. I feel I cannot say any more here without diminishing what is a palpably felt piece of media: Go And Watch It.