Episode 35 - Ark Nova

In this episode we review the new and popular Euro game, Ark Nova.  We're putting on our zoo uniforms and rolling up our sleeves to get dirty building animal enclosures, partnering with other zoos and universities, and participating in wildlife conservation projects.  Listen to find out who can't stop talking about some other game and who spent DAYS (!?) reading the rule book!

Game Info:
1-4 Players
 90-150Minute Playtime
Ages 14+

Board Game Geek Entry

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Transcript

Rachel: 0:13

Hello and welcome. I'm Rachel.

Jake: 0:16

I'm Jake.

Rachel: 0:17

And we're so bored. The Podcast where each episode we take a close look at a tabletop game and discuss our personal experiences with said game to help answer the question, Will this cure our boredom?

Jake: 0:29

That's right, we look at the mechanics complexity and replayability in a game to determine if it's the perfect alternative to say, I don't know staring at yourself in an empty Zoom meeting, waiting for everyone else to join while simultaneously noticing that your beard is growing longer in just one spot on your face than everywhere else. So you try scrunching it up. So looks like it's the same length and hope nobody else will notice.

Rachel: 0:53

Did that happened to you?

Jake: 0:55

It wasn't my beard. It was my mustache. But yeah, that happened this morning.

Rachel: 0:59

Your mustache is too long in one spot?

Jake: 1:02

Well, it's short in one spot.

Rachel: 1:04

Oh, okay. Anyway, a couple of announcements before we get started on our game for the week. We are streaming pretty regularly, usually on Wednesdays doing board games stuff. So we'll be streaming tomorrow. I'm not sure what we're playing yet. Yeah, it's still up in the air. So come check us out. Come hang out with us. It's always a lot of fun. Sometimes we have like interesting themes going on with like the food and the board game that we're playing. So I don't know. Um, time. There's always some fun stuff going on.

Jake: 1:35

Sometimes we use food as the different game components.

Rachel: 1:38

Yeah. Question. No, no. Although last week, what did I throw into my Thai chicken?

Jake: 1:49

You threw in the bedding stone from Equinox?

Rachel: 1:53

Oh, that's right. We were playing Equinox. Excellent. We spilled some of the little bedding stones into my was it Thai garlic chicken. So yeah, you know, that's always fun. So yeah, come check us out. We're on twitch.tv/SoBoardPodcast. And if you're interested in video games,

Jake: 2:10

I also am streaming on Twitch. I do a lot of retro games. So I just completed Majoris mask on stream a couple weeks ago. We're working on winwaker right now as well as an old turn based Lord of the Rings game called the Third Age which is amazing and incredible. But you can find me on Twitch at NaughtyDoc541 That's twitch.tv/NaughtyDoc541 comm check it out. I usually update my schedule every Sunday so that you'll know when I'll be on that week.

Rachel: 2:41

Yeah. Okay, so which game are we talking about today?

Jake: 2:45

We are talking about tiddlywinks?

Rachel: 2:48

I don't know what that is? I don't know either. That sounds like something from Harry Potter.

Jake: 2:53

No, we're talking about arc Nova today. This is an exciting game because it is a brand new ish game kind of Ark NOVA is a strategy game with elements of hand management, Income Management and open card drafting. I believe it was originally written in German some of the rules may or may not translate well. It was designed by Matthias Wiig with art by Lois bill you I believe that's how that's pronounced. Dennis loh Housen, Stephen Baker and Christoph Tisch, it was published by fairland Spiele. And released in 2021. It was also the winner of the 2021 Golden geek heavy Game of the Year, and it was nominated for the 2022 I'm gonna save this and hope it's right. Kennerspiel des Jahres.

Rachel: 3:41

that looks right. I think that sounds right.

Jake: 3:43

Basically, what I understand is that is like Germany's Game of the Year. Yeah, I think so. I believe it was crowdfunded originally. And it was released in 2021. For those crowd funders, though, it was only just recently made available for commercial purchase this year. Yeah.

Rachel: 4:00

So this has been on our lists of things to do for a while, just because we've been hearing such good things about it. It's been on the top of board game geeks hotness list for many, many weeks with no longer number one, but it was there for quite a while

Jake: 4:15

it was there for like, three or four months.

Rachel: 4:18

Yeah. So you know, I think it's about time we got around to it. So what is Ark Nova? Ark NOVA is a game where you're building a zoo, when you're trying to build the most attractive zoo by gathering diverse animals and participating in conservation efforts. And I did read somewhere I think it's in the rulebook that, like the creators of the game actually worked with people who like our zoo biologists or, you know, participate in conservation and like zoo efforts, and so they did their best to kind of translate what happens in real life into a board game. And now That's what this is supposed to be. So there's a little bit of, you know, a background on it that this goes deeper than just wanting to be a game about making a zoo.

Jake: 5:09

So are you saying that I would be good at running a zoo, then?

Rachel: 5:13

Maybe?

Jake: 5:15

Maybe? We'll talk about that later.

Rachel: 5:18

But yeah, so let's get into it. This is a heavy game, I would agree with that award that I got for a heavy game. Yeah. So the rules are going to be a little long. But I think you're gonna benefit from us explaining them because the rulebook is a little rough. And we'll go into that more later.

Jake: 5:38

I have not read the rulebook. So I can't speak to that. But yes, that's what I understand.

Rachel: 5:44

I have. Okay, so I'm gonna start out just describing like, what the different boards look like. So your main, a game board is a very, very long and thin rectangle, not a normal board shape. And it has various point trackers, because there are multiple types of points that you get in this game. So basically, going around like starting, let's say, at the top of the board, it goes off to the right, and then it wraps around the side, and then comes back down to all the way to the left side, basically, almost going all the way around, except for that one left side, you've got a confusing looking point tracker. And so you have like different shapes and different colors kind of going on on this point tracker. So there is a like tan looking ticket shape that kind of is in the center of all of this, that is for tracking your appeal points. And that actually, you start tracking that at the bottom of the board, and you will wrap around to try and get up to the top. And then there is like a green oblong shape that connects some of the tickets. And these are your conservation points tracker. So usually, there's multiple tickets associated with a single like conservation point that becomes relevant later when you're scoring. And then like on the other side of the tickets, so if the green part is on the bottom, then on the top of the tickets, you have a dark blue oblong shape that is also attached to multiple tickets, but not in the same way that the green shape is attached to the tickets that are attached in different ways.

Jake: 7:28

So yeah.

Rachel: 7:31

And that describes the income that you gain when you do the take income step. And it's also like determines your scoring area for your final scoring, which we will come back to. And then in the middle of the board, you have just this absolutely giant deck of cards, there's 200 Plus cards in this deck. And that contains mostly animals. And these are, you know, animals that are going to go into your zoo into the enclosures. But there are also sponsors, which are various like research projects, or they provide you with a special kind of enclosure that goes in your zoo, or there's a bunch of different stuff. But it basically adds like new ongoing effects that allow you to score points throughout the game. And then there are conservation cards also in this deck. And those we will talk about a little bit more when we get to the association step. Yes. But they're basically like additional goals that give you additional conservation points in the game. But yeah, well, we'll get more into that. And then so you've got this deck of cards, and then you've got six spots that basically look like manila folders. And each of those is like a slot for a card to go. So you have six cards from that deck that are always face up at a time. And then along those manila folders is a reputation track. So

Jake: 9:00

yeah, another track.

Rachel: 9:03

You are tracking appeal points, conservation points and reputation points in this game.

Jake: 9:09

Yes, there's a lot to manage, and a lot of trackers to keep moving. So the association board is what we're going to talk about next, the Association Board is a very small board, rectangular in nature divided into five sections going from left to right, we have the pink section, which is to donate this allows you to spend the income that you earn in the game to receive conservation points to move that conservation token up on the tracker. This is unfortunately not available to you until you upgrade the association action which we'll talk about actions in a little bit. But keep that in mind. Section two is the blue section gets you to reputation points, which is another way to get that reputation track moving. There's a blue section to partner with zoos one for each To have the five continents available in the game you have the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. Next section is also blue. This is a section to partner with various universities. These will give you different scientific bonuses and an increased hand limit throughout the game, depending on what you choose. And the next blue section is to back a conservation project. Now, the conservation projects is something that Rachel mentioned earlier, under the board. Starting at the beginning of the game, there are three to four depending on the number of players, conservation projects that are permanent, that are available to back conservation efforts are typically cards that will have you meet a specific set of criteria in order to back and then it will grant you conservation points, as well as an either immediate bonus or an ongoing bonus, depending on what you choose above this rectangular board are spaces to play new conservation projects as you receive them throughout the game. Yes, the player mat is the last board. This is an individual map for each player in the center. But there's a map with hexagon tiles with spaces to place animal enclosures. So you're going to need to build the enclosures for your zoo to put animals in them. On the left hand side, that's where those different bonuses are that you can choose when you back those conservation projects that I mentioned. And there's some examples like each time you take a break in the game, you'll be able to take a card, each time you take a break, you'll get a free to space enclosure, or there's some immediate ones that immediately grant you like 15 gold, or immediately gets you a number of X tokens, which we'll talk about all these later. But you are able to choose when you back those conservation projects, which of those bonuses you'd like to receive. Now on the right side of that player, Matt, is your partner zoos and universities. These are, as we talked about earlier from the Association Board, where you indicate what you have already acquired from the universities or the partners use? Yes. As you get more and more of those, they will also provide you bonuses. Yep. There's a lot of

Rachel: 12:09

bonuses, there's a lot, just a lot going on in this game a lot to keep track of. Okay, so let's talk about the actions, you basically have five action cards that you're given, and these kind of shuffle, like right and left under your player mat. And that makes them more or less powerful, like the further to the right they are, the more powerful they are and meaning that they can just do bigger and greater things. So I've heard that this is a lot like Terraforming Mars, I've actually never played that game, which is just a shame, we need to fix that situation. But that's what I've heard it associated to or compared to. So hopefully that makes it a little easier to understand for people who have played Terraforming Mars before. But so these are the different action cards that you have that are moving up and down and what they do for you. So you have the cards action. This lets you draw cards from that giant deck. Or if your power level is high enough, you can draw from the center display where they're face up. And also, depending on the power will determine if you have to discard any cards in replacing that this is also where we're introduced to this term called snapping. So snapping just refers to taking a card from the manila folders that are face up rather than drawing it facedown from the deck. Then you have the build action. So this is where you go and you build most of your animal enclosures. And you place them on your hexagons on the zoo map, your first enclosure can go anywhere. But after that all of your enclosures and everything that you build needs to be adjacent to a previously placed enclosure. So it is important where you start out and I realized that the other day when we were playing this game again was like, Oops, I made myself as far away from water as I possibly could and had to like build my way across the map to be able to get access to anything with water. Your enclosures that you build start out empty, so they will be on the yellow side or would the yellow border and then once you fill them, you flip them over to the green side.

Jake: 14:26

All right, the next action is probably my favorite action in this game. I'll be honest, the animal's action. This allows you to play animals into an appropriate enclosure in your Zoo. In order to do that they need to read a couple of requirements that has to be the right enclosure size, you have to pay a specific cost associated with the animal and these requirements are listed on the left side of the card. They also might require some animals at the same type or certain amount of research or certain environments. So like Rachel just said some animals need water or some animals need rocks. Some animals like to live with other animals. So once you are able to pay all those costs, and you play the animals action, depending on how powerful you play that you can play between one and two animals, you flip the empty enclosure to the green side to indicate that it's now filled. Or if it's a special enclosure, you'll add cubes to indicate how many spaces are being taken up by animals. For example, there's an enclosure called the reptile house, it has space for five reptiles in it. So instead of building an individual enclosure for each of these reptiles, you can now show five of them into here. Assuming they all take one space, there are reptiles that don't take any space. So you could theoretically continue to put things in there. It's pretty cool.

Rachel: 15:49

There are also some large reptiles that take up two spaces. I don't know if I've seen anything that takes up more than two. But like I saw a crocodile yesterday that takes up two spaces in the reptile enclosure.

Jake: 16:01

Yeah. So on these cards as well, the animals will show the type of animal that it is, some of the examples include a predator or a bird or amphibian or lizard, herbivores, it will also show what continent that is from, there's a nice photograph of the animal in the middle of the card, which is really cool. Like, I think that they did such a good job making these animal cards, because honestly, the reason that this is one of my favorite games that we've been playing lately is you just get to see all these cool animals. And you're just building the zoo. And you're like, I have these tigers in my Zoo. Yeah. Or I have this reindeer in my Zoom now.

Rachel: 16:37

Yeah. And I mean, so the picture is nice, because it is a legit photograph. Somebody went somewhere and got near this animal and took a picture, right? That's pretty cool. It's really cool. So and what came out the other day, when we were playing, it was like this adorable little fox, it didn't matter. Box. Yeah, it didn't matter. Like what the fox did for our zoos, we both wanted it because it was just so cute

Jake: 17:03

wanted the Fennec fox, because it's, it's a cute Fox, it's not worth that much appeal. It's not that expensive. It's really not that great of an animal to have in your Zoo. But it's cute. It's freaking cute. And exactly. So I wanted it. So as well as the picture of the animals. At the bottom of the card, there's a section that shows special effects that are associated with the animal. A lot of them are immediate effects. When you play this, this will happen. So a lot of these cards are just immediate effects. When you play this animal, you get x number of points for each predator in your zoo, right. So it has almost an engine building feel to it as well, because you're building on top of what you've already played. So at the very bottom, it will also show you the appeal points which when you play the animal, you immediately gain those appeal. Sometimes there are conservation or reputation points awarded as well. Those will also be indicated at the very bottom of the card.

Rachel: 18:00

Yes. Okay, so the association action. So this is what takes you over to do the stuff on that association board that we talked about. And depending on what power level you play this at determines what action you can do. So at a power level two, you can gain to reputation, simple power level three, you can choose to partner with one of the zoos from the five continents. But you must already have an animal in your zoo from that continent to have that partnership or to make that partnership. At level four, you can partner with a university. And like Jake already mentioned, like this grants you like scientific research, or sometimes it gives you reputation points or even increases your hand limit size. And then power level five is where you get into backing those conservation projects. So the conservation projects will have conditions on it. Like you have to have so many herbivores in your zoo, or something like that. And it will have three levels of like meeting the requirements. So there's the lowest level that's worth the lowest amount of points, the next level worth slightly more points, and then the highest level worth the most conservation points. And you can do this action once you meet the criteria on there and you will take one of those cubes off of the left side of your player mat and place it on whichever like slot is appropriate for like the conditions that you meet. If you're at the lowest or the middle or the highest, you will immediately gain those conservation points from placing your cube there and you will also immediately gain whatever benefit you unlocked from which cube you chose off of your player mat. So that's the like you might be able to draw a card or you might be able to get a free size two enclosure or there's a bunch of them. So like Jake said there's like pre existing ones, there's three to four, depending on the number of players already at the bottom of the association board. But if you get a conservation card out of the deck, then you can also play that above the association board, and place a cube for however criteria you meet that as more new like conservation cards are played, it will push the existing ones from the left to the right. And eventually, if you get enough of them, it'll fall off. Honestly, that's actually pretty rare, it seems like because compared to the number of cards that you have in the deck, only, like 10% of them or less are actually conservation cards. So that seems like that would be pretty rare. That's everything you can do with the Association board. And then there's, you know, the donating once you upgrade your actual right,

Jake: 20:53

so the next action is sponsors. This is to add a new special ongoing effects to your Zoo. These are cards that you will also get from the deck. But in order to play them, you need to instead of play an animal or build an enclosure, this is its own separate action sponsors, the cost of the actual sponsor card to play it is actually paid in power level. So you have to meet a specific power level with this action to play that sponsor card. And that's actually shown up in the top left corner. Normally, where the Animal Enclosure size requirement is, that is where that is shown, the ongoing effect is described in symbols at the top middle, it's very, it's confusing a little bit because honestly, there are so many symbols in this game, it is hard to keep track of what they all do

Rachel: 21:43

too many. And even, even though they give you like a sheet, like a cheat sheet for all the symbols, I still have a hard time like reading off what the sheet says. And then looking at what this card says in symbols and like interpreting that into meaning. Like, I still can't make that mean something sometimes in my head,

Jake: 22:07

there's usually a text that is associated with it as well. But that's not often as clear as it could be. So some of these ongoing effects include every time a predator is played into any zoo, you accumulate money, or for each herbivore that is placed in the zoo, you'll accumulate conservation. So they can be extremely beneficial. But once again, it is a little confusing to see what these things are doing when it's written purely in symbol form. Now, sometimes these will add things to your zoo, scientific research,

Rachel: 22:40

it can add a continent symbol, like if you get a European specialist, they will add like a European continent symbol to your zoo, right. So

Jake: 22:48

you can add these things to your Zoo. That symbol is also shown up at the top right of the card. There's a picture in the middle of the card just like all the others, depicting a rough idea of what this is supposed to be. So if it's the European specialist, like you just mentioned, it might just be a picture of a person doing something with a European animal. There is the text description of the effect of the bottom half of the car. But once again, sometimes it's worded a little bit confusing. And I think that may be due to translation, I'm not entirely sure. But at the very bottom, there can often be seen more symbols describing immediate and some end game effects. So some of these cards will have both immediate and end game scoring effects. So it's a little overwhelming to look at.

Rachel: 23:32

Yeah, and so I just wanted to provide an example of like, what the meerkat then looks like, and this is the example of like, the card anatomy that they give in the rulebook. So I guess it's a standard card, but it has like it describes in text that this is what happens now. And this is what happens at the end of the game. But then it also adds that in like colored symbols down at the very bottom. And so you've got just this card that is describing that you need to have space for an enclosure that needs to be near rocks. And you know, it's going to give you this size enclosure or like this shape. And so all of this is in the symbols in the pictures. And then at the very bottom, it's got like a little yellow lightning symbol describing again, that enclosure and then like a brown symbol describing whatever happens at the end of the game with the MIRAT done. There's just a lot going on and it can definitely be overwhelming to look at. I do appreciate when they put the like they write it all out in the text. But there are definitely cards that are purely described in symbols and the text does not help you interpret that. Yeah, that's one of my gripes with this game. Yes. Okay. So those are the actions that you take during the game. So you basically just go around the table with everybody taking their Turn doing one action at a time. And for each person and each action you do, you are going to progress this like little coffee cup meeple looking thing down a brake track, yay, more tracks,

Jake: 25:13

another tracker. So I think we're at like five right now,

Rachel: 25:16

we're at least at four. But so once that coffee cup reaches the end of the brake track, that is like the signaling of the end of a round. So it's not based on everybody having so many turns or anything like that, it's just the progression of this coffee cup. So once you get to a break, what you're going to do is these steps in this order, first, you're going to discard down to your hand limit, your hand limit is three, until you get the university that upgrades it to five, that's pretty low. So I would definitely recommend getting that university like pretty early on. And then you're going to clear any tokens that you have on your action cards. So we didn't really talk about this. But you can get things like a times two token on your action card, which just doubles the power level that it's currently at. Or you can get like negative effects as a result of other people playing certain animals into their zoos. So like a lot of snakes. If you play a snake into your zoo, it will put a venom token on your opponent's action cards. And what does it do?

Jake: 26:22

If you don't take those actions each turn that you take without taking those actions, you pay cash?

Rachel: 26:27

Oh, that's right. That's right. So okay, there's just like a monetary drain on doing that

Jake: 26:32

I was gonna say, which seems pretty ineffectual because it only happens on that player's turn. And depending on how many players are playing, and when the breaks happen, the break could happen very quickly, and have those things cleared before that player even gets to go.

Rachel: 26:46

Yeah, even in a two player game. I mean, we probably get to take like three turns each maybe before a break. Yeah, sometimes less. I think. So it's not that much. I don't know, I have found that money is not a problem in this game. No, I was overflowing with money the other day I was, but we'll talk about it later. So anyway, on your break, you can clear those tokens off of your action cards. And then you're going to take your workers back from the Association Board, the association board is where the game becomes like a worker placement game for a second. So your workers stay out there until you take a break, you will discard the bottom two cards that are on like the bottom two folders in the center display and slide everything down and then replenish those two. And then everyone does their take income step. And so this is the point where you calculate your income based on where your tracker is for appeal points, based on the number of kiosks that you have in your Zoo, and like how many different enclosures they're touching. And then other various things such as the cubes that you take off of the left side of your player mat, and that get put on to conservation efforts. Those may also give you additional benefits that you gain on the break. And during that take income step. And then you reset the track and then you just go back to going around the table until it happens again,

Jake: 28:11

one thing we didn't mention, we mentioned earlier, when we when we said we would talk about are the x tokens. The player that triggers the brake, so moves the coffee cup to the final end on the brake track, they will get an x token that x token can be played during their turn to increase the power of a card or an action by one one per token. So if you really want to do something at the maximum level, but it's only three, you could spend 2x tokens and actually use it at level five. Yeah, yep. So the end of the game is actually triggered when someone's appealed tracker, and conservation points tracker are either within the same scoring area or have past each other, which is the appeal tickets and the green conservation points tracker section. So as those trackers move around towards each other one clockwise one counterclockwise. Once they touch or pass that is triggered the end of the game, you adjust your appeal and conservation points. According to the end the game effects on your cards and your secret objectives. Yes, this game does have secret objectives. We did not mention that earlier. But each player gets to at the beginning of the game and at some point will have to choose one and discard another your score is basically your appeal points minus your conservations points, kind of there in bracketed sections. So that section minus that section is what your points are.

Rachel: 29:41

Yeah, I still can't quite wrap my head around this one. I mean, I guess I get it, but it's usually the person that triggers the end of the game that wins unless it's really close. Yeah, I mean, unless it's really, really close. Yeah, but in our experience, it's the person who triggers the end of the game. And if you move your conservation points up to the, like appeal number, because remember, the conservation points is like a green thing that's attaching multiple tickets. So if you move that up to like, the highest appeal number and you subtract your appeal points from your conservation points, that's a pretty good rough estimate. I would say only if you're within like one or two or three points from somebody then actually get out the rulebook and figure out the appropriate way to properly calculate. But I would say that's a pretty good, like rule of law to try and make your life a little easier in terms of calculating your final score.

Jake: 30:42

Yeah, so that's basically the game. I know, that was a long rule section.

Rachel: 30:46

Yeah. Like we said, it's a heavy game. So hopefully, our explanation makes it a little bit easier for you to get through.

Jake: 30:54

Because this is one of the heaviest games if not the heaviest game we've covered on the podcast.

Rachel: 30:59

I think it is the heaviest game we've covered on the podcast. It's over a four, isn't it?

Jake: 31:03

No, it's 3.72

Rachel: 31:05

3.72. Oh Wow. Okay.

Jake: 31:07

It's not quite crisis. Yeah. But I don't think we've covered that yet.

Rachel: 31:12

No, we haven't.

Jake: 31:14

This is gonna go into our experience. I like the games that make you think and consider and weigh options. And also consider and weigh the options of your opponents as well. Crisis does that more so than this game, but in this game, you are very much in control of what you are doing. And when it happens, it is entirely up to you to do well in this game. And I think that's one of the reasons I love it so much.

Rachel: 31:36

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. There's no point. And I mean, we're getting a little bit into a rating section here. But there's nothing that's left up to chance. Really, right. It's this is about you doing a good job and executing properly. Yep. So yeah. Why don't you tell us about your experiences? You love this game? So so much.

Jake: 31:56

I do love this game. Apparently, I'd be very good at running a zoom. Because I am undefeated in this game. I have only played it twice. But I am undefeated.

Rachel: 32:05

Granted, those two times were both just the two of us playing.

Jake: 32:09

Yes. There was kind of a large point difference both times yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's wrong with my brain. But it just does things.

Rachel: 32:18

I don't know. It just works. You're good at board games,

Jake: 32:21

I guess. So. So the very first time we played this game, I was just focused on big animals, big animals with big appeal. And that's pretty much it. And it paid off. But in the second game we played, I decided to kind of diversify a little bit. So in the first game, Rachel actually focused on petting zoo animals for a little bit, because they're cute. They are, they're adorable. And I was like, you know, they're not worth anything. There were three appeal. And that's it. But you can cram as many as you want into into that single enclosure. So that's good. So that's what I decided to do on this last game, get as many of those as would pop up that I could, while also getting some larger animals. I had a ton of money at one point, I had more than you when this happened. You walked away. And I said, Okay, I'm gonna play these animals. This is what I'm doing. And then you came back and I had$1 left to my name. But I played the animals action at the highest level I was able to play to one of them was the elephant which was very expensive. And then the other one was, I think, another herbivore that or it was the dingo. The Dingo HL baby. Yep, one of those two. But I don't know, I really liked this game, because I like to just collect the animals and see all the pictures.

Rachel: 33:38

Yeah, I like the game too. And my feedback is going to sound like I'm complaining about it. But I think I'm harsh on games that are good. Like, I hold them to a higher standard level, you know, and so I'm kind of critically analyzing every little aspect of it. Whereas, like, something that is not so highly acclaimed, and whatever, I'm more willing to be like, Yeah, you know, it's a good game, whatever. Like, I'm not gonna pick at it too much, you know. But anyway, so I guess first of all, let's talk about this last game that we played, I thought that I was doing better. And I mean, I guess I did technically do better because in the first game, I had negative points. And I actually had positive points in the last game that we played, although granted, it was only two I ended the game with two points, but I spent the game like trying to specialize in certain types of animals, and really just kind of focus on a couple of different areas. And so what I did was I had a European specialist, and he made it so that every time I played an animal from Europe or I played something with a European symbol, I would automatically gain a size one enclosure or size one Building when I was using that to make kiosks for the most part, and that actually worked out really well for me because kiosks were worth an extra money. Once I had like certain symbols on my map covered up, and so that I felt like was all kind of jiving and playing together really well. But I got to the point where I just I had too much money, I had so much, I didn't know what to do with it all. And it doesn't really convert very well into anything. So obviously, you need the money to play animals and to build things. But I had more than I could ever possibly need. And so I started doing the association action where I could go and donate and earn conservation points. But that was still something that was pretty limited, because you only have so many workers that can go there. And like I had a nice little engine that was making me lots of money, but then I didn't properly convert that money into points. And I made a misstep. Yep. In my little engine. There was a cog that wasn't working as well as the

Jake: 36:09

others. Yeah. Unfortunately, this game doesn't do much with money, because it's not worth anything at the end either.

Rachel: 36:16

Yeah, I think it might be worth something if it's a tiebreaker. But yeah, this was not a tiebreaker. Definitely wasn't a tiebreaker. Jake won by a lot.

Jake: 36:25

I filled my whole zoo that gets you seven extra appeal. Every single hexagon slot was full.

Rachel: 36:32

I also did that, which, okay,

Jake: 36:34

I don't think we talked about really, that's another thing I like about this game is the enclosures have different shapes for the different sizes, obviously, because they're hexagon, all in nature, each tile, but then you're connecting, here's a two size enclosure, a three or four or five, and then you've got some of the special ones, which are oddly shaped. So to make everything work, and fit is impressive in itself, but also fun.

Rachel: 36:58

Yeah. So that's where the game decides to become patchwork for a little while.

Jake: 37:02

Yeah. And also there are spots that you can't place anything on, because there's either mountains or water terrain. Yeah. And animals need to touch those depending on what they are. There's a whole lot going on in this game a lot to juggle a lot to balance. But that's one of the reasons I like it is because knowing that I did it means that I don't know that's prideful. I'm sure we know. We know. So prideful. I'm so arrogant.

Rachel: 37:27

All right, let me move on to something like complaints about the game. All right, complaint away the final scoring. It does not need to be this complicated. I'm sorry. It just doesn't. Like there's no reason. And Jake was telling me Yeah, but we want to make sure like if you've got the conservation points, and you've got the appeal points, like you want both of them to count for something, right? But like it just why it doesn't need to be.

Jake: 37:55

Yeah, my logic was, if one is not worth anything, and it's just the single track that matters, then nobody will care. So breaking it down, you want the difference they have past each other between your appeal and your conservation points to be as large as possible. The larger that differences once they've passed, the more points you have. But if that wasn't the case, and it was just as total number, then you would just crank and crank and crank on appeal and get it as high as you can. Because that appeal number is so much higher. Yeah. Then it goes up to the 100 and 20s, I think, and the conservation only goes up the 30s.

Rachel: 38:35

Yeah, I get that. And I don't know, like, I don't know if I want to suggest that like the conservation points shouldn't be in the game. Yeah, I don't know if I want to suggest that because there are some cool things that you're doing with those conservation points. And it would change the game quite significantly if you got rid of that. But I feel like it should be like add both numbers together or something like that. That's not quite so complicated to calculate what your score is. Like, there shouldn't be a question at the end of the game. I think my score is this. Right. But the way that it's explained and written in the rulebook, not superduper. Clear, and like, it's just a confusing concept. I've never come across a game that has you score this way.

Jake: 39:22

Yeah, I don't think I have either. It's very different. But I mean, I understand why they've done it the way they've done it. So I have a little bit less to say about that.

Rachel: 39:32

Yeah, okay. All right. My one other complaint is there's just too many symbols, too many symbols that I agree with completely. And like they give you a whole sheet of paper front and back that covers the symbol cheat sheet. So that should tell you something like I was saying earlier, even when reading like what that means trying to then go back to a card and interpret how these symbols like add up together next to each other, what that whole thing is supposed to mean can be very confusing. Because like, let's say you've got, you'll have like a symbol for the European continent, right? So that's another little circle, and then you'll have a colon, and then you'll have like, a one underneath it a two underneath it a three, and then like a slash, and a three, and then underneath it a five underneath it a seven. And what that's supposed to describe as like for each European symbol, like if you have one, then you get three points. If you have two, you get five points. If you have three, you get seven points. Like that's what that terminology would be describing. Like, there has to be that way. Just I'm sorry, no, it's tough. It's confusing.

Jake: 40:54

Yeah, there's a lot to it. The symbols are overwhelming. But now that you've heard about our experience with the game, we're going to talk about the add ons and expansions for this game. And this is a great section because there are none. This game was released, like I said earlier for crowdfunders last year, just barely made available for public purchase in 2022. So there's nothing yet that being said, my personal stance on this game as it stands right now, as we said, it's weighted at a 3.72 out of five on difficulty on BoardGameGeek. I don't think it needs much more. I don't think they need to add much more.

Rachel: 41:32

I wouldn't want them to add anything more mechanics wise. The only thing I could does maybe new card. Yeah, if they added new cards, they could have a cards expansion. Yes. Give me new animal cards. And that's pretty much even at the same time, like it feels significant. The number of cards that you have to start with anyway. Yeah, like I said, there's 200 Plus that are in this deck that you're drawing from. It's a huge stack. Yeah, like to the point that it is inconvenient to shuffle, you know?

Jake: 42:00

Yeah. So when we were last playing, I shuffled the stack shuffle the shuffle them like okay, it's all set. Like that wasn't as bad as I remember. And then I look over, that was only half of the deck.

Rachel: 42:11

Yeah, we get so many cards, they're in two different bags.

Jake: 42:16

Oh, I need to continue shuffling I guess.

Rachel: 42:19

Okay, so this game has a rating on BoardGameGeek of 8.68 with like, 10 and a half thousand reviews. So yeah, that's pretty good. It's currently ranked at number nine. We've said like previously, it was number one for quite a while. And I think that's probably because there was a lot of interest in it before it was actually publicly available. So there were, you know, the crowd funder people who had it, and telling everyone how good it was. And then there's all these other people like, oh, I can't wait to get it. And like, you know, constantly searching for it and looking it up and trying to find more information on it. So I'm not trying to argue that it's not a good game. I'm just saying like, what it sounds like, to me, that kind of explains why it's been so high on their hotness list for so long. But I don't know, it's not surprising. I mean, it won an award. Jake loves it to do so must be great.

Jake: 43:13

I think I might love it almost as much as crisis.

Rachel: 43:19

Almost crisis should be this game that we just always talk about. Like it's always like your favorite game, but we'd never do an episode,

Jake: 43:27

or we're going to do an episode on it. Okay,

Rachel: 43:30

so let's get into our rating section. Easy versus difficult. This is talking about how easy or difficult is it to understand the rules and the mechanics. How difficult was it to read the rulebook? So it took me three days to read this rule book. Oh, my gosh, that sounds crazy, right? Obviously, I wasn't sitting there for three days straight trying to read this rulebook. But

Jake: 43:57

it didn't take me 72 continuous hours to read the rulebook. Okay?

Rachel: 44:04

No, but it's so text heavy. And I mean, I understand why because it was written in another language. And so they want to make sure that they really clearly describe what the mechanics and the rules are, I get it, but it's so text heavy, I would read three or four pages and be like, I need to take a break. So it took me three days of going like back and reading a couple pages at a time to get through the whole rulebook. So I'm gonna put it a little bit more on the difficult side, you know, for that reason, and also just kind of all the mechanics, which starts to get into simple versus complex, but all the rules that it's describing all the symbols that we are having to look up all of this stuff, like makes it a little bit more difficult. So I'm gonna give it like a seven, I think,

Jake: 44:55

yeah, I was thinking about a seven for the difficulty. I mean, there's a lot to juggle and manage as far as like what you're doing when you're doing it. Order of operations, especially with the different levels of the actions that you're taking. lot going on. Also, the symbols, the symbols in themselves, make it difficult to play, because there's just so many Yeah. Now, our next rating section is simple versus complex. If you're not familiar with how we do things here, or if you're confused as to why that's different from easy versus difficult, easy versus difficult is how hard is it to play and understand simple versus complex is how to use the mechanics to win. What kind of viable strategies are there understanding how to make the game work cohesively? Personally, like I said earlier, this is one of the most complicated games we've played, I think, on this the show so far. I want to give this an eight, eight and a half on complexity, because you can focus on so many different things to get your trackers moving. And there's so many different trackers to keep moving. It's very complicated.

Rachel: 46:01

Yeah, I definitely agree. highly complex game. I'm actually really surprised that Board Game Geek has only rated it at a 3.72. Yeah, it feels like it should be in the fours. Yeah. Because crisis is over for right. No. Sure. Yes.

Jake: 46:18

I'm gonna keep talking about crisis until I know.

Rachel: 46:22

It's a no thing. All right. We're gonna look this up right now. Board Game Geek comm crisis is 3.05. What? Yeah, this is more complicated than crisis. But I feel like it's more complicated than dominant species. But dominant species is weighted in the forests. Yeah. So maybe I'm, like, misremembering that game, because it's been a while since we've played it. It's been like two and a half years since we played it. Yeah. But I mean, this feels more complex.

Jake: 46:55

Fun fact, I'm also undefeated, a dominant species, but I've only played it the ones that really matter. It's nothing to boast about. Luck. That was all.

Rachel: 47:08

But I definitely agree. I'm gonna rate this as an eight. For complexity.

Jake: 47:13

Yeah, I'm gonna call this eight, eight and a half. Like, this is a complicated game. This is, this is something to chew on. And it can last a while, too.

Rachel: 47:21

Yeah. Um, how long did it take us to play the other day? Like three hours? Three and a half hours? Yeah, just for the two of us. Yeah. Someone actually told me that they were playing Organovo over their lunch. And I was like, what? Like, this is not a game that you play over a lunch break? No. She's like, No, no, no, I think I come back to it like throughout the day. But like, I like to do that over my lunch break. Like, okay, this is not a lunch.

Jake: 47:51

No, this is not a Lunch Game. This is like a Saturday morning game that goes until evening.

Rachel: 47:57

Yeah, not that long. But

Jake: 47:59

where you start? And then you got to stop and have lunch, and then you got to finish and you know, okay, because you can't eat around the board games, because then you end up throwing your components into your Thai chicken. So

Rachel: 48:10

yep. It's our last reading section is wrote versus random. This is describing, you know, what components of the game make it a unique experience? Is there any dice rolling randomized cards, any of that? So the card randomization is really the only thing there is to it, that

Jake: 48:30

kind of there are randomized boards that have its true, different maps, and then different perks on those maps as well. So there is a little bit of randomness. And honestly, I know that you don't want to say that shuffling of cards is randomized. But given the number of cards, the sheer number of cards in this deck, I do feel like that has some weight to it. I've never

Rachel: 48:53

said that. Yeah, whoever said that shuffling cards is not randomized.

Jake: 48:57

I'm feel like you have what you've tried

Rachel: 49:01

to argue with me in the past. Is that like, what a player chooses to do on their turn is random. And that's not true. I disagree with that.

Jake: 49:10

wholeheartedly. Have you played with edge?

Rachel: 49:14

But for the most part, like that's not a random thing. That doesn't add randomization to the game.

Jake: 49:21

Okay. Okay. But you're right about the maps. The maps are definitely randomized. Yeah. Which is

Rachel: 49:27

nice. I mean, so I feel like it's definitely a Euro game. Yes. But there's enough to it that makes it a unique play experience every time you play. Yes. So I'm going to read it at like a three on randomization.

Jake: 49:40

Yeah, that's what I was thinking to two or three. But I don't know. I can't really praise this game enough. Especially just all the animals give me the animals.

Rachel: 49:50

Okay. Yeah, it's a good game. I mean, I'm not like falling head over heels for it, but it's plenty fun to build and there's a high C Feeling for mastery, which is something that I really like. I like knowing Oh, you know what, like, I did this well last time, but I could really improve this. And like, I have the opportunity to come back next time and make that improvement and really see how I progress and how my score improves every time I come back and play it.

Jake: 50:19

Okay. Well, I mean, that's it. I think that we are all finished with our ANOVA. Yeah, so

Rachel: 50:25

I mean, it's time to answer the question, Jake, would you rather play this game than staring at yourself in an empty Zoom meeting while waiting for everyone or anyone else to join us what it says while simultaneously noticing that part of your moustache is shorter than the other? And so I don't know you're trying to scrunch up the long part to make it look like it's even and you're just really, really hoping that nobody will notice.

Jake: 50:53

I mean, I'm doing that right now. But I'd rather be playing och Nova. Hmm.

Rachel: 50:57

So yes, the answer is yes. We'd rather play this game. Yes.

Jake: 51:01

Much, much rather. Well, that's good. Yes. And there you have it. That is arc Nova.

Rachel: 51:06

Thank you guys for listening. As always, you can hit us up on all the social medias, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. I guess we're not on tick tock, no, sorry. Maybe that'll be a thing someday. But we are at so bored podcast. That's S O B O A R D podcast. We love hearing from you guys. hearing your experiences playing this game, any fun house rules that you have, or just anything else fun that you've got going on. You'll also find pictures and short stories of games that we've been playing recently. And you can interact with us all things tabletop. If you don't feel like doing it on social media. You can also just email us we are at we are so bored@gmail.com That's W E ar e s o b o ard@gmail.com. And lastly, make sure that you subscribe. It helps you get notified when new episodes are out. And it helps us like know what our audience is doing and interested in. And also, it would be super cool if you left a rating or if you shared this with a friend. All of that helps us grow. We're trying really hard to extend our audience so that we can do more fun things like giveaways and I don't know other cool stuff. I've got some cool ideas for the streaming channel. So we need more people. So help us spread the word and give us a rating to help other people find us.

Jake: 52:40

We also want to give shout outs to the people who knew we were reviewing arc Nova based on the picture we posted last week. So congrats to Hayes's Dominguez, Jeff Knapp, Jessica waters, Dustin Davis, Zhao pimento. And at BMB rammer. On Twitter.

Rachel: 52:58

I think it's BM Brammer.

Jake: 53:00

No. BMB rammer spelled phonetically Awesome job, everybody. We also want to thank Mitchell Mims, the designer of our art, he is currently accepting commissions. So go check him out at mi m s. C. O SAR, a on Instagram, or on his website, Mitchell Mims. That's mi ch e l m i m s dot c ar d.co. Once again, we are streaming it looks like every Wednesday occasionally we'll change that on twitch@twitch.tv slash so bored Podcast. I'm not sure what we're going to be playing tomorrow we will be playing something. I am also streaming on Twitch, you can find me if you want to watch old retro video games. And when I say old I mean like 20 years old. Some of them in the late 20s years old. I can be found at twitch.tv/nau gh t YDOC 541. That's naughty Doc 541. And I update my schedule weekly. So come check it out. Come hang out with me. Let me know that you found me from our podcast. I'd appreciate it. Yeah. And that's it. Thank you all so much for listening.

Rachel: 54:06

We will see you next time. Bye.