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Things I Like About Ark Nova · Pick Up and Deliver

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Welcome to pick up and deliver the podcast. Where I pick up my audio
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recorders, I step out the door and deliver an episode to you while I
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walk the dog. I'm Brendan Riley. Well, good morning, listeners.
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It's a lovely day here in suburban Chicago. It's quite warm. My phone
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indicated it's already seventy nine degrees and it's barely eight am, so I suspect
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by the afternoon it's going to be roasty toasty late summer or midsummer temperatures.
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I guess that's not surprising and relatively reasonable to expect, given that it's summertime.
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I was thinking about what to talk about today and reflecting on some recent
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fun gameplays I had and one of my favorites. Recently, actually, on
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my birthday, my family and I played ark Nova. Ark Nova is a
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delightful game. It's certainly one I enjoy a lot, and those two things
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together make me say, I realize I should talk to you all a bit
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more about it. I looked through my podcast records, and as far as
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I can find, while I have talked about it a little bit, I
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haven't talked about it in depth. I haven't done a message from the Deep
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about it. I haven't even done a dual episode. I thought about doing
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a duel between ark Nova and Tera Mystica, but I actually feel like that
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isn't a very original thing to say. The early reviews of Arknova all compared
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it to Tera Mystica. Are not Tera Mistica. Excuse me, terraforming you
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Mars. Every time I said Tera mistica in the last minute, I meant
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terraform yours. Ark Nova has been widely compared to that pretty much off the
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start. I think the two things that really connect it are the X shaped
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spaces on the boards and the giant or the three things, the giant pile
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of cards and the tags. But I'm gonna talk about that a little bit
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more so. What I'm gonna do as a deep dive of ark Nova,
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and what I'm gonna talk about are four things I like about ark Nova.
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I know I just did a four Things episode, but actually I'm just calling
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this a message from the deep. There's a message from the deep ark Nova.
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If I through a bad serialized novel, it would say message from the
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Deep ark Nova a four Things podcast, because I've grown to like four things
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as a model for what I might say in the podcast about a thing.
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So anyway, Yeah, so this is a message from the deep about ark
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Nova, just in case anybody out there hasn't played is unaware of ark Nova.
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It's a twenty twenty one game from matthiaswig Wigge. It was published by
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Freyer Lanzpiel and Capstone Games in the United States. It is a game where
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you make a zoo, and it is currently number four overall on board game
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Geek, meaning it's rated by board game geek folks, which is a particular
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tranche of the bord gaming community. But it is rated as the fourth best
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game of all time, and getting to fourth best in a three year period
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is pretty that's pretty fast. They've released one expansion for the game called Marine
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Worlds, which I think is great. Go ahead and look at the Essentials
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Expansion episode Essential Expansions Episode that I made recently to see why I think that.
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But suffice to say, ark Nova with the Marine World's expansion is really
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great. So I don't want to talk. Oh, if you haven't played
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it, It is a game about building a zoo. You have two competing
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score tracks while you're working on building your zoo. On one hand, you
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have the attraction, which is sort of like how popular your zoo is,
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and that's how much money it makes your attraction level. And then you also
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have your conservation level, the idea being that zoos are scientific endeavor aimed at
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working to preserve animal life, and so part of what you're trying to do
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is raise the conservation efforts around the world, and you do that as part
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of your zoo as well. And so those two things combined that make your
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score. Now, the original games scoring mechanism was that the game ends when
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those two scoring tracks meet, and your score is actually how far past each
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other they get. So you take the difference between your score in the your
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score in one and your score in the other, and the distance between them
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after they've passed is your score. Similar to Rajahs of the Ganges scores that
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way as well. Now I don't like that scoring method because then you play
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a long time and you end up with a score like twenty or often ten
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or five, or if you aren't the person who made your things, your
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tokens cross and you didn't have a particularly great game, or you were just
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about to make a big move and you didn't, you could end up with
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a negative score, and a negative score after a three hour game is not
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fun, so I generally don't like to use that scoring method, and said,
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what I've done is I have taken from board game Arena. They've assigned
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values to the green spaces the conservation spaces, and I've written those values on
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my board, and when you play Arknova with me, you add your attraction
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score and your conservation score to get your final score. I think it's a
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much more fun way to play, and I think everybody should do it that
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way. So what I thought I would do today to talk about what I
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like about ark Nova is I am going to compare ark Nova to four different
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games and talk about what I like in those other games and what I see
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in ark Nova that's similar. So it's sort of a here are four games
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that ark Nova is similar to and what I like about them. So to
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start with the first one I want to talk about is Terraforming Mars. As
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I said when Arknova came out, Terraforming Mars was the constant and regular comparison
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point for ark Nova, and with good reason. As I started to say
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earlier, both games have a giant pile of cards, each of which is
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unique, and each of which contributes to your process differently. Both games have
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a tableaux building process where you are playing cards and they're getting laid out in
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a grid in front of you or in a array in front of you,
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and they give you ongoing sometimes ongoing benefits, sometimes they give you one time
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benefits, but either way, they contribute little symbols or tags to your zoo,
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and those tags then influence other things in your zoo. Now, the
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tag feature is something that's existed for a while. I think you could argue
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Race for the Galaxy has some of that. You could argue Seven Wonders has
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some of that, although there's overlap in just the card types as well.
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In Seven Wonders you don't have multiple tags on the same card. But this
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is a feature that's been around for a while in a variety of different games,
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most significantly Terrorforming Mars in ark Nova, you use the tags in your
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tableau to set up a variety of different things. Often there's scoring conditions where
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you have a certain number of tags, let you trigger one of the scoring
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cards. It could also be a thing where every time you play or one
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of your opponents plays a particular tag, you get some money. It could
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be bonuses that you get based on tags you have or tags you're going to
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get, and often it's a limitation that you can't play certain cards until you've
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got a certain number of tags. So, for example, you can't get
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one of the bears until you've already got a couple other bears at your zoo,
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because these bears are rare and you have to show you know how to
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take care of them or whatever. The game doesn't really provide that narrative explanation
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for why you would need a particular tag, but generally you can find an
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implication of one pretty easily. Both Terraforming Mars and ark Nova also have a
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little bit of take that Terriforing Mars has these red cards that take away people's
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stuff just a little. It's not a brutal change, but it can really
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affect you if you just played at the right time. Ark Nova has a
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similar thing. One of things I like about ark Nova is that it's built
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with a solo mode in mind, so it's designed to be able to play
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by yourself, and those competitor cards don't really work if you're playing a solo
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game, because you don't have anyone to screw with. So in ark Nova,
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each competitive card like that that has a direct conflict element also has at
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the bottom a shared like a solo mode option. It's a positive benefit that
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you get for when you're playing a game where you don't have opponents. And
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in the rule book it says there's a variant if you want to play a
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cooperative game or a less directly competitive game, you can use the solo mode
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variance instead of the competitive elements whenever you play a card like that, And
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we always play that way because I don't really want to mess with other players.
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Zoos Terrifory Mars also has a shared board with X spaces that you're building
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on, and I wonder if some of the overlap that people see is that
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you're also building in X spaces in Arknova. Now, I think this part
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of the overlap is relatively minor. I think the main thing is huge pile
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of cards and an array of tags that slowly gain you bigger benefits over time.
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So that's where I see similarities that I like between ark Nova and Tara
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Mystica and Terra Terraforming Mars next up. I also like Arknova a lot because
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of the theme. We really like animals, we pay attention to them,
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we go to zoos pretty regularly, we are interested in wildlife, and I
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am becoming an avid burger. All of these things really connect to the idea
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of games that have to do with wildlife. I have two, actually have
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three games in my collection that have to do with wildlife right now, or
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with sort of zoo type zoos particularly. I have other games that have to
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do with wildlife, like Cascadia and Wild Serengetti, but the two that I
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have to do with zoos are New York Zoo and Barn Park, and then
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of course Ark Nova. So what does this game have? What I like
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about this game that both New York Zoo and Barren Park have is the element
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of planning out your zoo. That both of those games have different shaped pieces
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that you're putting into array or a display where you're building your zoo elements.
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Now in Barren Park it feels much more like you are sort of putting out
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bear animal pieces and in whereas by contrast, in New York Zoo it really
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feels like a math puzzle that you're doing. But generally, the overall effect
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is that you get to play around and plan stuff with zoos animals, and
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that's really fun. I like the theme of animal stuff and when you're playing
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a game like that, and then it's really fun to try to get the
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animals that you like. Now New York Zoo there's only five kinds of animals,
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so getting the animal you like isn't really much as much a big deal.
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In Baron Park, of course, it's all bears. So the thing
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that Arkanova really has going for it is it's a delightful display of different animal
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types. And it certainly is a thing where as you're playing, you might
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get an appetite for a certain kind of animal, and sometimes that benefits you
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from the game perspective. You know, if there's cards that reward predators,
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you might be trying to get predators, but you might also just have a
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thing you like, Like I got a lot of birds the last time I
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played. It did fit what I was going for, but it was also
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fun just to try to get a zoo that was sort of coherent and a
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collection of animals. Now it is very much a tactical game in terms of
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building the zoo that fits the cards you have, but overall it is really
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fun to collect the animals that you want, and I think Baron Park works
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that way a little bit, but is the least effective in terms of getting
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a reward for the kind of animals you want. New York Zoo has five
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different kinds of animals, and there are different types of they're not all you
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know er sign and so you have a better selection, But nothing really compares
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to Arknova that I've played in terms of variety of animals that you could try
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to collect. I know there is a Zoo Tycoon game that came out now.
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It did come out after ark Nova, so I'm surprised it did really
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well. But maybe people who you know, I don't know. There's lots
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of people who Arknova wouldn't be for them. It's too complicated, and so
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those people maybe really got a lot out of something like Zoo Tycoon. Either
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way, part of what I like about this game that overlaps with Baron Park
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and with New York Zoo is the planning of the zoo space and more importantly,
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the acquiring of animals, the theme of taking care of animals in a
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zoo. The next game that I wanted to draw attention to as interestingly related
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would be the Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Now Mad King Ludwig is a
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delightful game if you haven't played it. You are architect building a castle for
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the famous Austrian king or Prussian king. I'm not sure exactly which, but
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so famous king. You're building castles for him. He famously built these weird
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castles with also the unusual things in it. Some stuff I've seen suggests that
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the idea that he was crazy was spread by his detractors in the royal courts
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who didn't like that he was spending his money on weird houses. I've read
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some interesting stuff trying to recoup his image, which suggests that he was actually
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a very good employer to the poor. And also one of the things I
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read was that maybe he was gay and that the detractors calling him mad were
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doing it because of that. So I don't know how true all of that
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is, but it's interesting to think about in the context anyway. And Mad
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King Ludwig, you are building these weird castles, and you're trying to get
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different rooms, and the different rooms have different scoring conditions that come up as
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they appear. This overlaps a lot with ark Nova in a couple of ways.
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One, there are a number of different sizes and shapes of habitats that
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you can build in your zoo. When you put animals in, you have
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to have an available habitat of the size and shape that you want to add
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to your zoo, And the game has lots of different nuances about that.
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This animal might require a certain size habitat, but to put it in there,
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you have to also have it has to be built next to a rock,
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or built next to a rock and water, or next to two rocks,
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and so on and so on. So it's interesting to have to kind
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of plan ahead and really think about which habitat you're going to use. One
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of the innovations of the game that I really like is that the habitats are
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not assigned to specific animals, but instead The way it works is when you
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build an animal and you add it to your zoo, you then flip over
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a habitat for that animal, and that's it. You don't mark which habitat
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that animal is supposedly in. You just say, yep, we had room,
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now, we don't have room. Now. If that animal leaves your
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zoo, you flip it back. I haven't really looked at the rules regarding
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herbivores, because there's a whole thing in herbivores where you can play an Earth
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herbivore and it will get to share a habitat with other herbivores as long as
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it's the right size. And as far as I know, I have to
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look at what the rules say about if you flip. If you get rid
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of an herbivore, do you flip that thing available, even if you have
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other herbivores that are we're kind of sharing that facility. I don't know.
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It feels like you shouldn't flip it because there's other animals still in there,
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but the game again doesn't track where animals are the other thing. So the
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variety of different sizes and shapes and the need to attend to what's around them
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is one of the things that reminds me of Mad King Ludwig. The other
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thing that reminds me Mad King Ludwig is that there are a bunch of different
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sponsors that are corporate entities or it's just an umbrella term for these different groups
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that will build specialized features in your zoo, and those specialized features will all
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have these weird shapes and you're not allowed to flip them around. You can
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rotate them, but you can't flip them over, so they have to lie
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in one PARTICU orientation. And it's pretty cool, but it also gives your
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zoo a little bit of a kooky feeling. If you're doing very many of
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those, then you start having this weird zoo that's full of all these odd
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shaped pens because you're buying a lot of the wacky stuff. So from that
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perspective, I think the Mad King Ludwig is a pretty entertaining connection there.
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One of the big differences, though, is that Arknova does not have auctions,
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and it has every player gets one end of game goal, whereas in
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Mad King Ludwig you could get a bunch if you wanted. So all right,
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the last game I want to mention This one is not quite as elaborate,
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but I think is interesting there is Through the Ages. Through the Ages
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is a very competitive civilization building game where you are arranging cards and you are
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building up this tableau of different technologies and elements, and you're trying to get
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up your score as much as you can. The places. There are a
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couple of places where it reminds me of Arknova or Arknova reminds me of Through
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the Ages. One is the card River now and Through the Ages of the
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Card River is segmented by time period, so the cards are divided into three
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ages, and each age is slightly more complex and more expensive and so on,
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Whereas in ark Nova all the cards are just mixed together. But you
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still have this row of cards that's constantly cascading down, and when a card
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comes out, you have to think very carefully about am I willing to put
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some resources into getting that card early or can I wait a bit and maybe
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someone else will snap it up in front of me. Also, over time
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you get the ability to grab more cards more quickly, and that part feels
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a little bit like Through the Ages as well. The other thing about Through
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the Ages that feels like Arknova to me are these endgame scoring conditions that I
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mentioned while I was talking about Castles of Mad King Ludwig. Now, in
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Mad King Ludwig, the endgame scoring conditions are things that you acquire as the
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game goes along. In ark Nova, you just get a couple of them.
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You get one, you actually get two at the me of the game,
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and you ditch one part way through so you only get to score one.
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There are a couple ways to acquire another one, like if you I
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think the elephants, if you play the elephant, you get to draw one
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more endgame scoring condition. There are also a couple ways to draw new ones
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and discard, so you draw up and discard back down, so you have
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the same number you had before, but you could cycle out which ones you
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keep. There are also a number of different ways that you could put into
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place some endgames scoring, and because the endgame scoring is almost always the conservation
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rather than the tickets, not entirely, but almost always, you have this
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situation where your conservation score can jump up ten to fifteen to twenty points at
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the end of the game, and that effect reminds me a little bit of
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through the Ages, and through the Ages you're constantly playing these culture cards.
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Each round. You can play a culture card into the deck, and some
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of them will come up during the game, but some of them won't come
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up till the end. And if you know there's a culture card there and
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you make sure to keep it on pace, then you can end up coming
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out getting a big boost to your score at the end that the other player
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didn't know. I know regular listener Chris hand Gi Hi Chris. When he
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and I play Through the Ages online, he regularly wins because I always go
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for points early and my late game is not good and his leg game is
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really good. And so we'll get to the end and I'll be twenty thirty
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forty points ahead at the end of a game of Through the Ages and then
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the final point tally will come in and he'll rocket thirty forty to fifty ahead
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of me. At least that's what it feels like. I'd have to go
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back and check how close that is, but he almost always makes up ground
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in the endgame, and Through the Ages definitely has that effect, or Arkanova
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definitely has that effect. In fact, my wife when we play, has
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come to think of it as like, oh, it'll feel close, and
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then we'll get to the end and Fred and they'll get a bunch of more
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points and that's part of the experience. But it's part of what I like
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about the game, and it reminds me of with regard to Through the Ages.
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So what games do you like in context of Arknova? Do you like
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Arkanova? Do not like it? If you don't like it, tell me
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why if you do like it, tell me why. You can do all
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that at board game Geek and guild three two sixty nine, or you can
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send me a message. Wombat nineteen nine is my user name on board game
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Arena or game Geek. Thanks for joining me on my walk today. I
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hope your next walk because this is pleasant is mind one. Oh and if
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you'd like to play a game of ark Nova, you can join me on
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Board Game Arena. My name is bombat ninet June nine over there and we
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can play ark Nova. Thanks for joining me. Good bye. Brought to
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you by rattle Box