{"id":244583,"date":"2022-02-19T08:00:51","date_gmt":"2022-02-19T14:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/?post_type=reviews&p=244583"},"modified":"2024-03-20T17:16:26","modified_gmt":"2024-03-20T22:16:26","slug":"ark-nova-first-take","status":"publish","type":"reviews","link":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/ark-nova-first-take\/","title":{"rendered":"Ark Nova: First Take Game Review"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n
\n \n
\n \n <\/div>\n <\/span>\n
\n \n Capstone Games Ark Nova Card Drafting, Hand Management Strategy Board Game, 1-4 Players, 90 to 150 Minute Play<\/span>\n <\/a>\n
\n $54.32<\/span>\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n
\n \n Buy Now\n <\/a>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n

Lots of my peers in the tabletop media and content creation space have had the chance to play Ark Nova<\/i> in recent months. It feels like Ark Nova<\/i>, published in the US by Capstone Games, is almost incessantly compared to Terraforming Mars<\/i><\/a> and has come away from almost all of the reviews I have consumed completely unscathed.<\/p>\n

On BoardGameGeek, Ark Nova<\/i> is already the 133rd-highest ranked game of all time as of the time of this writing\u2014and it only started shipping to Capstone\u2019s US buyers in February. That\u2019s quite an accomplishment!<\/p>\n

I have a healthy sense of \u201ctrust, but verify\u201d here at the Bell gaming compound, so when my boy Fil texted me to see if I wanted to come out to play some games, he couldn\u2019t hide his excitement.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh ****, today might be Ark Nova<\/i> time! The most hyped game of the century!\u201d<\/p>\n

He was right, on both fronts: it was<\/i> time to play Ark Nova<\/i>, and it is the most hyped game I can think of since I joined Meeple Mountain, outpacing games like Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile<\/i> because it\u2019s been #1 on BGG\u2019s \u201cThe Hotness\u201d scale for weeks.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Executive Summary: It\u2019s Really Good<\/h2>\n

Now that I\u2019ve completed my first play, I do agree that Ark Nova<\/i> shares at least some of the DNA of Terraforming Mars<\/i>, itself an all-time classic released in 2016. You\u2019re building out a tableau of cards while working as a business to settle Mars open a new zoo, while playing cards from your hand to set up one-time bonuses, ongoing scoring bonuses when meeting certain conditions on the board, and end-game scoring multipliers.<\/p>\n

Ark Nova<\/i> adds another layer, though: your player board is a zoo, and you\u2019ll be adding hexagonal cardboard pieces to represent enclosures, kiosks, reptile houses, and other locations. In other words, if you thought Terraforming Mars<\/i> was complex, steer clear of Ark Nova<\/i>, because I haven\u2019t even mentioned all the various game mechanics going on yet!<\/p>\n

Remember how Terraforming Mars<\/i> had tracks? The best thing about those tracks was that 3 of them (Temperature, Oxygen, Oceans) were shared by players, dictating the trigger of the end of the game. In Ark Nova<\/i>, you\u2019ve got tracks, you\u2019ve got end-game scoring cards that are public, you\u2019ve got end-game scoring cards that are private, you\u2019ve got cards you can play from your hand to add more mid- and end-game scoring cards, you\u2019ve got bonuses tied to 2 of the 3 tracks on the board, and you\u2019ve got an income track aligned with your score, almost exactly like the Terraform Rating system used in Terraforming Mars<\/i>.<\/p>\n

But wait, there\u2019s more!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Combos live EVERYWHERE in Ark Nova<\/i>, and this is my favorite part of the experience. Each turn, a player has the choice of 5 different actions: drawing cards, building structures in your park, playing Sponsor cards, playing Association actions, and playing cards from your hand.<\/p>\n

Each action is represented by a card that sits below your player board, aligned with a number running from 1-5. That number is the strength of the action when you play that card. So, if your Cards card is below the 4 strength slot, you can draw and potentially discard a certain number of cards. Then, the chosen card moves to the left-hand side of the line and the next player takes their turn. It\u2019s a mechanism lifted wholesale from Civilization: A New Dawn<\/i><\/a>, and one that\u2019s good to see get more use in the hobby.<\/p>\n

But those actions trigger many other things. I had a couple of turns where I played the Association action, then added either a Partner Zoo or a Partner University to my player board. At higher levels, that means you might get more Conservation points, one of those tracks which triggers even more bonuses. So, I played an Association action at 4 strength, then picked up a Partner University, the third of which allowed me to gain 2 Conservation points, which jumped me over another bonus, which I used to play a Sponsor card from my hand.<\/p>\n

Juicy. I love combos; love any game that makes me feel like a boss. Ark Nova<\/i> has plenty of these moments, and I\u2019ve only played it once.<\/p>\n

Over the course of the game, you can upgrade the action cards by earning a bonus to flip them over; each one is a little sexier on the back. You might get more cards. You might be able to build more than one building at a time. You might even be able to play 2 Animal cards while also getting a slight bump on the Reputation track (tracks!!). As your Reputation grows, you can play cards directly from the board into your table, based on your position on that track.<\/p>\n

I like the open-ended nature of the round structure. Certain actions advance a special token on the Break track, its length dependent upon the number of players. In this way, some rounds last for just a few player turns. Sometimes, it could last for 10 turns or more. The end of rounds trigger an income phase and a reset on your hand size, but until that happens you might be holding a whole bunch of great cards, hoping to find the best ways to play as many of them as you can.<\/p>\n

Ark Nova<\/i> doesn\u2019t have a pass action. If you don\u2019t want to do anything, or simply can\u2019t, you take an \u201cX-Token\u201d and move one card back to the end of the line. These tokens allow you to boost the strength of future actions, meaning the card in your 5 strength slot can be boosted to a 6 with a token. Having a few of these on hand all the time just gives you more options. This also means you can set up a killer follow-up turn by moving a card to the top of your strength track to execute something serious on your next action.<\/p>\n

The game end trigger isn\u2019t wonky, but I can\u2019t quite determine yet why the following mechanism was chosen. Your main score is tracked in Appeal; let\u2019s pretend that starts at zero. Your secondary score is tracked in Conservation points; that also starts at zero, but it is tracked by a marker that sits in its own section, starting near the 100 Appeal space. Those two markers spend the game working towards each other. When your Appeal marker and your Conservation marker pass each other in opposite directions, that triggers the final action of the game and all other players get one more turn.<\/p>\n

In this way, you\u2019ll have a good sense of when the end is coming, but not exactly when. Again, I don\u2019t know why this was chosen by first-time designer Mathias Wigge, but I think I like it. I don\u2019t like knowing that if I\u2019m way behind on Appeal, I\u2019m probably out of a game that is going to be a long sit. But that didn\u2019t happen in my first game, so I can\u2019t say for sure yet if the game will have a runaway leader issue in the future or not.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Yeah. Trust me; use poker chips!<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

However, It\u2019s Not Perfect<\/h2>\n

Ark Nova<\/i>, plain and simple, is long. I would argue it is way too long, but lots of friends of mine will happily spend an afternoon building a zoo with friends. Just know, for your first 4-player game, you are gonna spend 4 hours at the table. Easy. That was my experience, and that was the experience for almost every other game of Ark Nova<\/i> I\u2019ve heard about.<\/p>\n

The photography on most of the cards in Ark Nova<\/i> is fantastic, but the iconography is not. Doubling down on this issue, there are no player aids, just a general list of icons on a single sheet to share amongst players. (Go to Capstone\u2019s website and make yourself a few copies of the Icon Overview<\/a>. You will definitely need it.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad we have the Icon Overview versus the symbols being buried in the rulebook, but even the rulebook isn\u2019t what I would call a winner. These things won\u2019t collectively break the game, but for your first play or two, you are going to have lots of questions. Teaching this game will take about an hour; I watched a teaching video which was excellent, and that was 35 minutes long. A professional took 35 minutes, so you will take longer.<\/p>\n

That might mean your first Ark Nova<\/i> experience could take as long as 5 hours. The smart play? Play with 3 players for your first game (my vote would actually be 2), and ideally play it with someone who has played at least once before. I can already tell how balanced Ark Nova<\/i> is, so it\u2019s not a big deal that someone may have played before; the card draw and the starting zoo layout can help mitigate the skill of a more experienced player.<\/p>\n

(One note on production: I recommend replacing the included money in Ark Nova<\/i> with your poker chips. As with another Capstone game I love<\/a>, Iron Clays are the way, my friend.)<\/p>\n

Downtime could be quite low in Ark Nova<\/i>, especially if you are playing with friends who are not prone to analysis paralysis. This could also mean high downtime, if you are like Fil and I, catching up on life as we played. But I appreciate that turns could be lightning quick, and that means that in the right hands, Ark Nova<\/i> could slowly become the kind of game which plays in under 2 hours with 3 players. Just know that this could be a major factor in the overall playtime.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m still not sure if the limited \u201ctake that\u201d cards in Ark Nova<\/i> are a feature or a flaw. I like \u201ctake that” games, but I never loved the \u201ctake that\u201d cards in Terraforming Mars<\/i> because there just aren\u2019t enough of them. In my single play of Ark Nova<\/i>, one player seemed to have all of these cards, and 2 of the 3 he played were on me (these include Venom, Constricting, and my favorite, Hypnosis). This means that if you play this game enough, someone is going to draft a card either from the market or top of the deck and hold it for just the right moment to paralyze an unsuspecting player in the lead in time to win the game.<\/p>\n

That won\u2019t feel great, but it would feel better if there were more of those cards. There are more than 250 cards in Ark Nova<\/i> but I don\u2019t know the distribution, so I can\u2019t comment if I was just unlucky in never seeing those cards all game long or not. But the inevitable expansion content coming for Ark Nova<\/i> (call me crazy) should feature more of these cards, or options to swap them out of the game; currently, it feels like it is completely random when these events hamper players in the lead.<\/p>\n

(Full disclosure: I HATE games that penalize players who take the lead. Although I don\u2019t love the majority of their games, I\u2019m a fan of the Splotter philosophy (Food Chain Magnate<\/i>): \u201cIf you can\u2019t lose the game on turn 1, what\u2019s the point of having a turn 1?\u201d For more serious games, and Ark Nova<\/i> is absolutely a serious game in terms of weight, planning and mechanisms, the best player should be able to plow forward and try to win the game. In Ark Nova<\/i>, I think the best person might still win, but for a heavy Eurogame, it features some elements that will feel random.)<\/p>\n

The final scoring cards are not massive in their scoring significance, but there are only 11 of them in the box. Given that there are 255 cards in the main deck, this is strange. One of these rewards you for having as many as 24 empty hexes in your zoo. To play Animal cards, you have to have enclosures. For this card, that means you are essentially committing to playing Ark Nova<\/i> without playing any Animal cards to the table. On the surface, I\u2019m not even sure you can win that way (this IS a hot take, so I don\u2019t want to speculate!!).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Hype is Real<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s no getting around it: Ark Nova<\/i> is very good. It\u2019s not perfect, and I\u2019m not sure it is the best game to be released in 2021. But if you enjoy your games heavy, featuring lots of meaty decisions, quick turns, a personal zoo, and a buffet of combos available in mid- and late-game turns, you can\u2019t really go wrong with Ark Nova<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Does it replace Terraforming Mars<\/i> for me? A fair question. It\u2019s unquestionably a better production with lots of gameplay similarities; this feels like an indie film script by a first-time writer that a major studio read and threw lots of budget into putting an incredibly polished product on the big screen. My understanding of the Terraforming Mars<\/i> production journey is that the game\u2019s designer worked very hard to raise the funds to get that game into our anxiously waiting hands. Some corners were cut, such as the somewhat clumsy card photography that featured family and friends of the designer, or the poor quality of the player boards which are used to track income.<\/p>\n

I think of them as two very different games; I appreciate Terraforming Mars<\/i> much more thanks to its theme, and the addition of the Prelude<\/i><\/a> expansion makes it an all-timer. It\u2019s a quicker game and the rhythm of the turns just always fits. I now only play it on my iPad when I travel, but each time I play it I fall in love all over again.<\/p>\n

Ark Nova<\/i> hasn\u2019t earned a seat at the table just yet, but let\u2019s say I\u2019m getting an extra table setting ready just in case my gut tells me that I\u2019m right. Ark Nova<\/i> feels like the combination of many games to me, with elements of the spatial puzzle of A Feast for Odin<\/i><\/a> mixed with many of the things I love about core Eurogamer experiences.<\/p>\n

Ark Nova<\/i> shines in both the production and the gameplay departments, and continues the obscene hot streak of Capstone Games. With Imperial Steam, Boonlake<\/i>, the Iron Rail games (such as Irish Gauge<\/i><\/a>), Pipeline<\/i>, Coffee Traders<\/i>, and the new expansion Maracaibo: The Uprising<\/i>, Capstone has already cemented its legacy as the go-to American publisher of medium to heavyweight games for serious gamers. Ark Nova<\/i> adds to that list, and I\u2019m already excited to see what Capstone does next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin had the chance to play Ark Nova. Let\u2019s talk about whether it lives up to the massive hype!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":69,"featured_media":244594,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"MSN_Categories":"Uncategorized","MSN_Publish_Option":false,"MSN_Is_Local_News":false,"MSN_Is_AIAC_Included":"Empty","MSN_Location":"[]","MSN_Add_Feature_Img_On_Top_Of_Post":false,"MSN_Has_Custom_Author":false,"MSN_Custom_Author":"","MSN_Has_Custom_Canonical_Url":false,"MSN_Custom_Canonical_Url":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[],"coauthors":[6089],"class_list":["post-244583","reviews","type-reviews","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animal-board-games","category-economic-board-games","category-environmental-board-games","designers-mathias-wigge","mechanisms-card-drafting","mechanisms-end-game-bonuses","mechanisms-hand-management","mechanisms-hexagon-grid","mechanisms-income","mechanisms-set-collection","mechanisms-solo-solitaire-game","mechanisms-tile-placement","mechanisms-variable-player-powers","mechanisms-variable-set-up","publishers-capstone-games","publishers-cranio-creations","publishers-feuerland-spiele","publishers-game-harbor","publishers-korea-boardgames-co-ltd","publishers-super-meeple","publishers-white-goblin-games","artists-dennis-lohausen","artists-loic-billiau","artists-steffen-bieker","release_year-2622"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nArk Nova: First Take Game Review — Meeple Mountain<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Justin had the chance to play Ark Nova. Let\u2019s talk about whether it lives up to the massive hype!\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/ark-nova-first-take\/\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/ark-nova-first-take\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Board Game Reviews\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":3,\"name\":\"Ark Nova: First Take Game Review\"}]}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Ark Nova: First Take Game Review — Meeple Mountain","description":"Justin had the chance to play Ark Nova. Let\u2019s talk about whether it lives up to the massive hype!","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/ark-nova-first-take\/","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/ark-nova-first-take\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Board Game Reviews","item":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/reviews\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Ark Nova: First Take Game Review"}]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reviews\/244583"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reviews"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/reviews"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/69"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/reviews\/244583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244583"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.meeplemountain.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=244583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}