PL AYED

Conflicting feelings in The Reach

Designer: Cole Wehrle | Publisher: Leder Games 60-120m 2-414+ £50

There’s a lot of space in this small box. Arcs is the latest offering from esteemed publisher Leder Games whose previous offerings, Root and Oath, became cult favourites for their quirky takes on classic genre tropes. On paper, at least, Arcs appears to be more regulated. A space combat game with resource management and expansionism. The goal in a game of Arcs is to reach a victory point threshold before your opponents and this is achieved through a series of straightforward actions: building and moving ships, dice-based combat, constructing settlements, acquiring upgrades, and taxing cities for resources. The secret sauce is that this is wrapped up in a trick-taking style action selection system, on any given round of turns your choice of actions will be heavily dictated by the lead suit of card played by that round’s first player.

Cards have four main features: a suit, a value, a number of action icons and an ambition icon. Each suit corresponds to a limited number of action types, governing what most players can do during this round. The action icons represent action points that can be spent to carry out your turn, the more icons, the more things you’re allowed to do. The value on the card plays into the trick-taking element, potentially setting up for another player to win the trick and take the lead role next round, and the ambition icon is for one ofArcs’most exciting rules, how scoring works.