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Things I Like About Res Arcana · Pick Up and Deliver

0:00
(soft music)
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Welcome to Pick Up and Deliver,
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the podcast where I pick up my audio recorder
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as I step off the train and deliver an episode
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to you while I walk home.
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I'm Brendan Riley.
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(upbeat music)
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Well good afternoon listeners, it's a cloudy,
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somewhat gloomy but moderately fun day here in suburban Chicago.
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I'm walking home and the weather is reasonably nice.
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It's not too cold.
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I've got a toque and some gloves on
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but I'm not feeling super cold.
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I probably could survive without the gloves
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but I like to be cozy.
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It is cloudy though, not sunny at all.
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It's plenty bright though.
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So all in all, pretty nice day.
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Well I was looking at some games,
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looking at my games, thinking about what games have I played
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recently and we hung out with some friends
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and they were talking about how they liked Res Arcana
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and I've been playing a little bit of Res Arcana lately
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on board game arena.
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So I was thinking about that.
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A couple different groups were playing Res Arcana
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at my board game club this week.
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So I've got it in my head and I was looking
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and I realized I actually have logged.
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That is the second or third most played game
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that I've logged in my BG stats app.
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My most played game is Netrunner
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with something like 394 plays.
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My second most played game is Through the Ages
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with something like 244 plays
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and my third most played game is Res Arcana
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with I think 98 plays, something like that.
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Maybe it was 120 or something, I'll have to look.
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But it's a lot and it's my third most played.
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So I looked through my I Search Res Arcana
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in my podcast archive or the search function on the website
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and I found only two episodes
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where I mentioned Res Arcana in the title.
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This was Res Arcana and Roam, a board game.
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Well at the time it was shooting from the hip episode
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in which I talked about having played Res Arcana
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for the first time.
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And then I mentioned it again as the subject of an episode,
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maybe 200 episodes ago in a duel with Mottainai.
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So thinking about Res Arcana and Mottainai
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in relationship to one another.
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So having those two things in order,
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yet Rezarkana deserves a little love.
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So I thought I would do a message from the deep
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about Res Arcana.
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The title of the episode is Things I Like
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about Res Arcana.
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To start off, for those of you who are unfamiliar with it,
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Res Arcana is an engine building game
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from Tom Layman, King of the Engine Building Games.
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Tom Layman created Race for the Galaxy,
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role for the Galaxy along with someone else.
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He created Dice Realms, which is not a game I've played,
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but does have an engine building component.
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He created The City, which is a game I enjoy,
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I do it, it's a very fast engine builder.
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He later republished that one as Jump Drive,
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I think it's called, which is a race
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for the Galaxy themed version, very quick.
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Generally he is very good at making games
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where your goal is to find an interesting combo
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and kind of go quickly.
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And that's what Res Arcana is.
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In Res Arcana, you have a mage
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and you have a deck of eight cards.
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You shuffle up those cards and you draw three of them.
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And then on your turn, you have a number
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of different things you can do to play the card,
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to do with the cards.
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And then at the end of the round, when you pass,
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you get to draw one card.
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Now there is an element where there are also
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these magic items, artifacts that are called.
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And you get one artifact to use for the round.
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And then when you pass, you have to put it back
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and take a different one.
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And then the third big thing is there are these tiles
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that go in the middle of the board.
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They're called places of power.
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And these are cards that you could buy
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that can give you special actions.
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The goal of the game is to get 10 points
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or if you're playing with the Pearl expansion, 13 points.
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You get points, oh, there's also these cards called monuments.
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I think that's it.
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So on your turn, you can, oh, there's five different resources.
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They come in sort of the four main elemental colors,
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black, green, blue, and red.
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They have, I don't remember exactly what the names of them are.
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It's death, life, the blue one is elan
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and the red one is fire, I think.
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That's elan: e-l-a-n, not Elon, like Elon Musk.
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And then the yellow one is gold.
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So those four main elements and sometimes gold,
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you can use to pay for cards in your hand
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and put them into your tableau.
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And once a card in your hand has been put into your tableau,
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it is now something that you can use each turn
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to do magical stuff, to do things.
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And essentially, what you're trying to do
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is you're trying to build up an engine
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that will earn you points in some way.
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Some cards come with points.
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There are a bunch of dragons and a bunch of other cards
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that have points.
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Most of them don't though.
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And then there are cards that will generate points.
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Usually, that's what the places of power are.
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The places of power can generate points usually
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by converting a certain number of resources into points.
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And so your goal is to build an engine
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with the combination of cards that you have
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to create, to get a bunch of resources, which you can then
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convert into points.
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Now, aside from the places of power
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converting resources directly to points,
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another way you can get points is to end playing cards
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that have points on them.
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The third way is there are these monument cards
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and each monument costs four gold resources to buy.
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And the monuments have between one and three points on them.
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The monuments that only have one point generally will have
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a really good power as well.
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The monuments that cost two points, the power is a little less.
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The monuments that cost three points,
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I think there's only one actually, the cost three points.
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And it does not have power at all.
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It's just where three points.
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So you play your cards and those cards
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then have powers on them that can give you resources.
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And often it's convert resources from one type into another.
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And the combination of these conversion powers
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gives you your engine.
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You can also discard cards for--
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if you discard a card, you can get one gold or two
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resources of your choice for discarding your card.
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And then, like I said, all the cards have different powers
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on them.
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So what do I like about this game?
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That was a very tortured explanation
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that I don't think did justice to what the game is,
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but hopefully gives you some idea about how it works.
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So the first thing I liked about this game is the drafting.
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Res Arcana, once you've played a couple times
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or even they recommend your second play,
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you start doing this.
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On your first play, there are generic sets that everybody gets.
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You have four cards that you get automatically.
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And then you get four dealt to you.
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And that's your deck.
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There is no trading cards or whatever.
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In the full game, instead, what you do is you play a draft.
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Everybody's dealt four cards.
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You pick one, add it to your deck, pass the three
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to the next player, pick one from the new group, pass it,
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pick one, pass it, take one.
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So at the end of the first draft, you have four cards.
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Then everybody gets four new cards,
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and you do the same thing again.
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The idea is that you now have seen most of the cards
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that have come into play, and you have had a chance
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to try to build a set of cards that are going to work
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well together.
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I like this because it rewards thoughtful play.
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It reduces the chance that somebody is going to win
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because they got dealt a couple good cards that combo together.
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They have to chose and to take those.
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Now you still could have that situation, right?
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If you get dealt a hand of four cards,
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and there's two equally good cards in it,
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you could take one and pass the hand to the next player
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who maybe just took a card that combos well
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with the other good card, and now you hand them a good card.
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That's the way it is.
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Drafting games are always a little uneven that way.
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But I really like the opportunity to try to build
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towards something.
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When you're doing this building, you can see the places of power
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that are in play in the game.
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So being able to tell what's coming up, really,
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I think makes a difference in terms of trying to anticipate
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and plan, and then you also get two mages
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and you can pick which of the mages you want to play with.
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So the mix of different options in the game
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I think really creates a nice possibility for complex play.
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In that regard, it reminds you a little bit of something
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like 7 Wonders, which also makes great use of drafting
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and It's a Wonderful World, which I think it's a wonderful world.
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It shares a lot of DNA with Res Arcana
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because of the idea that you discard cards to get resources
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or you build them and that helps your engine.
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Next up, we have the emergent complexity.
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One of the things I really like about Res Arcana is
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almost every given card is relatively simple.
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When you look at a card, you can usually tell what it's supposed
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to do.
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There's maybe a dozen different icon types
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that you might encounter.
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So once you've learned those icons,
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then it's pretty easy to figure out what a card is supposed
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to do and the way that you use any individual card.
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The implications of it might not always be strong,
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but you can understand how it works most of the time.
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When you combine that with the fact that all of the cards
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have interesting things on them,
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and they often interact in interesting ways,
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what you can end up with is a really satisfying set of cards
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and powers that when they interact,
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result in very robust complex actions.
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If I watch the high level Res Arcana players
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on recorded streams or whatever,
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some of the things they can do with these cards is just wild.
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And so far exceeds what I'm able to do
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that it's really very remarkable.
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This is one of the things I like best about interesting games
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is the way that you can master the rules relatively quickly,
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but the depth at which complexity emerges
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or the possibility of complexity that emerges
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from the interaction of these relatively simple rules
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is really amazing.
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As I said, Res Arcana is the top,
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is among the top options for me in terms of emergent complexity.
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You know, something like chess, of course, has a lot of that,
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but thinking about games in the modern sphere
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that have that kind of interplay,
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I have trouble thinking of another one as robust as Res Arcana
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that also has as light a rule set,
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'cause it's certainly not light,
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but the rule set is very approachable,
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as opposed to even something like Race for the Galaxy,
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the rule set gets pretty complicated pretty quick.
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You have to understand all these symbols.
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Symbols are much more obtuse.
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I guess probably The City would be one example.
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I'm not super keen to set that up
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with another Tom Lehmann game,
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but I am, you know, here's another one.
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You can think of Fantasy Realms or Forest Shuffle,
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but forest shuffle particularly is a game where I think
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the rule set is relatively light.
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Fantasy realms, I think the rules you use
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to get your cards are relatively light,
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but the scoring rules are very complicated.
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And so that is one of the challenges of that game,
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is I think the complexity with which you have to wrestle
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in order to figure out your score is very high.
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Now that's true in Res Arcana too,
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in terms of you have to struggle with how are you gonna make
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your engine get you the 10 points before anybody else does.
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And then just, I don't think I shared the end game.
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Like I said, you're going for 10 points or 13 if the pearls
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are in the game.
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And the way that you assess that is at the end of each round
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after everyone has passed,
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then you check to see does anybody have 10 points.
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If anyone has 10 points, the end of the game is triggered,
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and you check how many people have,
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like who's got the most points?
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So somebody having 10 points can trigger the end,
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but they might not win.
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And indeed, it's not uncommon if people have there
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are a couple cards that you can play
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where after the end game is triggered,
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then they do one more thing.
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And sometimes they'll give somebody two or three extra points.
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So, yeah, so emergent complexity is crucial there.
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The third thing that I like about Res Arcana that I want to mention
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is small but critical interaction,
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or minimal but critical interaction.
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Unlike a Carl Chudyk game like Innovation or Mottainai.
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Res Arcana is not full of brutal backstabbing
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social interaction mechanisms,
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but it does have a couple really strong ones
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that are very compelling.
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The dragon cards are often able to attack the other players
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and often it's a matter of everybody has to discard
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one resource of a certain type,
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and the rule is if you don't have the one of the type
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you have to do, then you have to do two.
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And having to deal with that can be a real bummer.
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If your engine is wound really tight,
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if the things you have to do to win points
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are very narrowly confined or very tightly tuned,
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having somebody take a resource or even two resources from you
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can be brutal in terms of the rhythm you've set up,
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especially if you're sprinting for an early finish.
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That said, it's not a huge part of the game.
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You have to be aware of it and you have to be ready for it,
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but I've often gone whole plays of the game where nobody
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put into play cards that take other people's resources.
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I like that it's there and the danger of it to be wary of,
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but it's not so intense that that's the flavor of the game.
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That's some minimal but critical interaction.
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And finally, the last thing I want to mention is skill growth.
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This is one of those games where over time I have gotten better at it.
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I don't think I've gotten as good at it as I should
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for the number of plays that I have,
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but that's always been a problem for me.
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I think I am a moderately good player of games,
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but I'm not great.
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And so it takes me a long time to get really good at a game.
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I don't know that there are very many games I would claim I'm really good at.
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Not many for certain.
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That said, Res Arcana is a lot of fun.
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And as you play it, you come to recognize some valuable combos.
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You come to see some over the ways that you can be a more successful player.
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And I really like the possibility of finding myself gaining skill
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as I go along while I play these games.
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So I don't have a lot of other games to point to.
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I think a lot of the really complex games that I enjoy developing your skill
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is a key part of playing and playing a game lots of times is how you do that.
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But I think Res Arcana is one of the best to enable that possibility.
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So, dear listener, what do you think of Res Arcana?
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When have you played it?
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How have you enjoyed it?
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Head over to boardgamegeek guild 3269 and share your thoughts on playing Res Arcana.
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You could also head over to board game arena.
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Look for Wombat99 and start up a game of Res Arcana.
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I'm always happy to play one.
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We have several other guild members who like playing as well.
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So we could get some larger group games going rather than just two players.
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And I think that would be fun.
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With that, I'll say thank you for joining me in my walk today.
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I hope your next walk as this pleasant as mine was.
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Bye bye.
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[music]
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Brought to you by Rattlebox Games
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[Music]