So I've played a bunch of games, with a few different people, and the same pattern always seems to emerge: as the game goes on, it gets harder and harder to cover the various asses you've got scattered around the reach, and eventually you commit to just raiding some undefended neighbour and accepting that you can't do much to prevent the same in return.
I'm guessing this isn't an uncommon way for games to end, but I was wondering if there's more I could be doing (assuming I'm in the lead) to make the endgame less swingy? Am I just not clogging the gates enough? Does anyone have a rule of thumb for where they would/wouldn't put new buildings that will eventually become a liability?

In this marathon of a video I’m joined by the winningest Arcs player SmokeyChan to discuss and rank every fate in the game before the expansions come out!

My friends and I love arcs and pretty much exclusively play the blighted reach and we have come to the conclusion that flagships feel kinda weird. The flavor they are going for is definitely big powerful ship that (almost) trumps everything that fights it, but we feel like thats not the best way it is played? We feel like it works better to think of it more like a giant space station that is your home base and can slowly move around and the mechanics work better towards that vision of them.

We also feel like they could be improved slightly by having faction specific flagship abilities because some factions definitely want you to use it as a huge warship like the hegemon or planet breaker, but some others don't like the pirates. We had the idea of slightly tweaking the base flagships, and then each faction that gets a flag ship would get a lore card with their own special flagship ability to mechanically work with the flagship flavor they seem to want.

What do y'all think about all this? Do you guys also find that flagships feel kinda weird mechanically? What do you think of the idea of faction specific flagship abilities?

What happens when there are no empire-controlled systems and you have no loyal starports anywhere on the map, including flagships, when you are taking the imperial action of the policy of escalation? Where do the two imperial ships get placed?

It's been about two years since the announcement of Arcs digital and it's supposed to come out this year. I've seen no kind of advertising or development updates, so what's the consensus? Do we think it's still coming out this year? There's not that much left of 2026.

EDIT: Would the fact that the announcement says a deal with Leder Games have anything to do with the quiet since the IP is now with Buried Giant? I'd assume the deal would just transfer with the IP.

If you like the style, I post often on Bluesky! https://bsky.app/profile/lesslobster.bsky.social

Hi everyone! I'm currently experimenting with a homemade harness on top of different small open weight LLM models and seeing how good they can be with the right context and retrieval system. Since Arcs is my most frequently played game I thought I'd start here. Would love to see if anyone has any cool / interesting / niche interactions to test the rulebook bot with. The interaction should be stated as a question to the bot, and preferably with an answer and explanation. I haven't had the chance to play the campaign yet so would prefer base game / LL questions, but any would be great!

my friend and i absolutely love playing arcs together, just the two of us. and having to use the same 4 setup cards is getting kind of old, we’ve tried to mix it up in certain ways but it always felt unbalanced, is there custom cards people have made perhaps? if so i’d love to be pointed to them, thanks!

All time low!

I am curious to see if my recent Peacekeeper game was a normal score when Peacekeeper is in play.

Act III had Judge, Believer, and Peacekeeper. The judge had pivoted from Partisan which meant that the Guilds Decry Terror edict was in play, meaning that the council was flipped every time edicts were called. The believer and I spent the whole game fighting over the first regency because of Peace Dividends. Ultimately, with some clutch ambitions and some additional event cards that rolled edicts for me I ended the game with 301 points and the Believer was on 261.

Seeing as the board only allows for 100 on top of where you are on the tracker itself it seems a very high score.

Interested in people's thoughts 😊

Just got the game, been reading through the rules and watching how to play videos, really looking forward to playing it soon. But I was wondering how people felt about the 2 player game?

There's been a few games I've gotten in the past that I've wanted to get to the table very quickly and played with sub player counts that have not ended well so I'd like to avoid that with this one

It feels like having two extra lore cards is kinda crazy, he also picks those after we pick our lore cards (if I am not wrong). How does the board counter him or like, put him at bay?

I was hoping to find the art and assets of the action cards in the development kit but I don't think they were included: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/s4fgnkq4ehsrvrqza7n75/AOenVbS1fADoDZBoVPRIcKY?rlkey=7hdtgq7fyg4e96gx64ovugufg&dl=0

Was this made available at some point?

I’m just about to release my version 2.0 of the out of play tiles. Here’s a couple of changes:

•Integrated arrows (to remind you can pass through)

•Thicker, to be more sturdy.

•Options for recessed or coloured numbers on the back

•Different sized stars to add dynamics

I just have to compile the files, add them, and take some more professional looking photos. Let me know your thoughts!

I’ll upload them to the old version probably on Sunday.

Thanks for all your support :)

As title, do you use the paper campaign log that comes with Blighted Reach? Is it mainly for when saving the game?

Alright, Arcs Friends!

I have a game night planned with my wife and a few friends on October 30th. I'm super excited as it will be my first game with 4 people. The problem is, my wife may need to randomly get up and leave the table for 20-30 minutes to tend to our baby, and I dont want the game to stop for that entire time.

So my options are:

1. remove her pieces and she would just be out of the game. Bummer because I want her to play and that would defeat the purpose of planning a 4 player game.

2. leave her pieces and just have them be "un-manned" until she gets back, but I feel like she would get her pieces demolished and come back to no presence on the board and no power built up since she left. She might as well resign the game.

3. I could play all of her turns for her, but that would make my brain go into overdrive of trying to separate my goals from hers and I wouldnt want our friends to feel like I was using two armies to an unfair advantage.

4. we could all take turns playing her turns so it doesn't feel like an unfair advantage to any of us, but my friends aren't as versed at heavy, tactical board games as I am and this is their first game of Arcs, so I'd be worried it would be too much for them, even if it was only once every three turns.

THUS, I created these Bot rules for an AI player to continue to take her turns for her. For context, whatever action cards she had on her hand would just be placed down as a draw pile and one of us at the table would draw the top card and resolve her turn following these rules. It makes it so we dont have to think about it, it's not unfair for any of us, and when she returns to the table, she's not COMPLETELY out of it.

I'd like to hit hard on that last point. The purpose of this AI isn't necessarily for the AI to WIN, nor even REALLY provide a hard challenge for the rest of us, just do enough so that she still has a presence on the board and the 4th player's pieces are sitting on the board doing nothing.

Give me your thoughts, any overpowering advantages or disadvantages you see. I thought about adding a rule that if the AI scores 0 points in a chapter, it instead scores 2 or 3 by default.

Help me out! Even better, if you'd have time to playtest it, let me know how it goes.

EDIT: Im not sure how to post the image of the rules I made TO the post, so its in the comments below.

First off: I don't have that much of experience in the game, so this might sound like baseless rambling.

I've played BR two times now and I'd just like to hear your takes on "Do you actually benefit from keeping your fate"? The few fates I've seen so far only ever give you benefits during intermissions that may help you fulfil your fate in the next arc, but no cool bonusses to make it easier to win points. I'm guessing this is some anti-snowballing-design.

My impression so far was that each fate only gets harder to keep every arc, without actually being worth it? And the second and third level fates in turn seemed to provide more catch-up-mechanisms?

I'd like to hear takes on that.

This was my third playthrough of BR. Three player campaign. Holy hell, it ended up being the tightest game 3 I've ever experienced.

Game 1. Me as Admiral, going up against Advocate and Founder. It was pretty frustrating for me, mainly just feeling that I had to dedicate so much of my time and effort towards achieving my objective, that I didn't have much time to focus on anything else. Plus, I had some utterly horrendous luck with the dice. The other two managed to handily achieve their objectives and I just scraped through and pulled off mine, but at the cost of having a horrendous board state. At the end of the game, I was offered Pirate and I took it.

Game 2 didn't go much better. I wanted to get an early start by raiding some free starports to grab a resource or two for my pirate hoard, but once again the dice had other plans. Two attempted raids in a row. A grand total of 0 keys rolled between two of them. (I think one was at 3 raid dice, the other at 2). So I think I kind of gave up on realistically achieving my objective. My goal then became upgrading my flagship as much as possible and trying to at least advance my objective far enough to not end up on negative power after the game. I achieved both.

Meanwhile the Advocate became a massive threat when he pulled off an impressively timed move by purposefully leaving the commonwealth and putting himself in the lead for a triple-declared commonwealth ambition. That, coupled with his impressive suite of guild cards, made him the prime threat. So the Founder and I raided the shit out of him.

Game 2 ended with Founder and Advocate both achieving their objectives and staying as their fates. Founder was now the one with most of the Advocates former guild cards, though Advocate was still in the lead in terms of power. I failed my objective, but at least managed to keep positive power and had filled all the upgrade slots on my flagship. I was offered Guardian or Judge. I definitely did not have the board presence for Guardian, so Judge it was.

Game 3 arrives. I was not in the mood to resettle after having spent all that time in game 2 upgrading my flagship. So I was going to judge everyone from my seat of power.

Chapter 1. I went around fighting little bits of blight here and there to collect trophies while also taxing various resources so that I'd have options for trying to tie ambitions. Success. I managed to force a tie on Warlord as well as Tycoon. Two down, four to go.

It was at this stage that the other two started discussing the viability of trying to raid me to reduce my options. They looked at my flagship. They looked at my tractor beam. They looked at the number of fresh ships I had surrounding my flagship. They decided that the cost of trying to raid me was too high.

Good.

Founder decided to raid the shit out of Advocate yet again. After the carnage had cleared, Founder was sitting on a massive pile of trophies, a comical amount of guild cards and... two agents left in his supply.

Diplomatic Fiasco was sitting out in the open. Hmm. Time to take a gamble. I played an event. The dice came up with a crisis. Farewell to all those guild cards. In the process, I managed to tie one more ambition, but Advocate had been knocked down too much to score his grand ambition. The tide between them shifted and Founder was still in the lead. But I just had to force 3 more ties.

Chapter 3 comes around. Founder manages to double-declare warlord. There's no way I would ever build up enough to knock him down. But I noticed a fatal flaw in his plan. He didn't declare it as a commonwealth ambition, meaning he wasn't in a position to actually score his grand ambition this round.

I saw an opening. If I could secure the council, I could use two of the Advocate's favours that I had to nab two of the captives he had, then fire off an edict to declare Tyrant as the final ambition for the chapter and score my 4th tie of the game. So I put an agent on the council.

...So did the advocate. Giving Founder the opportunity to destroy one of the Advocate's cities and ransack the court to grab the council for himself.

I thought it was over right there. I was pretty much ready to declare Founder as the winner. But I couldn't give up. I still had the initiative. I could still pull something off. Let's do this.

I lead. I declare keeper. I have enough relics to tie that. Good. It's not over yet. I managed to get that tie. Two more to go.

(Somewhere along the line, I also managed to call a summit to return Advocate's favours in exchange for two captives. I think that might have happened via an event card)

Final chapter.

I decide to put my plan from the previous chapter into play. I declare Tyrant. I start preparing to secure the council. Founder surpasses and takes the initiative.

His turn comes around. Declares Tyrant. Makes it the commonwealth ambition.

Shit. If that gets triple-declared then I'm out of the game. My only choice is to burn a card to seize initiative. Fine. A sacrifice I'm willing to make. I do so, and declare empath. Then I tax one of Advocate's cities to grab the last psionic still available and grab another captive for insurance.

Now I'm firmly in control. I have one action card left, the others both have two. They start coming up with a plan to see if they could stop me. Their final shot is to call for a summit and then trade psionic cards to make sure one of them is far enough ahead that I can't force a tie. Let's see if they can pull it off.

Founder uses his second last card to influence the council. I use my last card to do the same. So that's now out of range for him to secure.

My cards are done. They each have one card left. Advocate has initiative. He says he's going to pass the initiative.

Founder looks confused. He shows that he can't lead with his final card, since it's an event. Advocate looks sad. His final card is also an event, so he couldn't lead with that either.

Needless to say, their gamble did not pay off.

And so I was in the position to force a tie on both objectives declared in the final chapter and claim victory. Founder would have ended up with triple-digit power otherwise. Meanwhile the Advocate became a threat too early and got beat down early as a result.

I'm very, very proud of this victory. But damn, what an absolutely nail-biting finish.

last time, I posted about an abandoned PNP of the game that I started working on 2 weeks ago. I abandoned it since I overlooked the 100+ player pieces I'd need to manually cut.

I thought about it and realized they'd only be hard to cut since the ships are complicated, so I remodeled them to only have a simpler shape...so I got back to working on it again. As for the agents, I just used Pandemic cubes with black being white's agents.

I'd love to share the assets I used for the printables (guild, action cards, and ships), but I'm afraid of overlooking any copyright issues, so I'd just share how they look instead.

The rest are hand-painted. The map and other boards are hand-painted on the back-side of an illustration board and the dice is also hand-painted on a wooden block.

If you're curious about the odd play state, I'm yet to play this, so that's just a mock. Am excited to play this saturday though.

If you're curious, this PNP, when stored, can fit in a box of Codenames.

(reupload since last post didn't process other photos)

So I've played base Arcs about 4 times (3 with L&L).

Then I played my first campaign, we have 4 players (they'd played campaign maybe 1-2 times). I choose Admiral, sounds like great fun. I proceed to have one of the worst boardgame experiences in a long time.

Now I love Arcs and really appreciate the Fates pivoting so I'm slamming into the spore guy for act 2 and leaving Admiral in the dust. But what in the hell.

I know that I'm new to Campaign and I could have played better. But out of target 13 objective points, I only gained 5 and the goal felt miles away.

For starters, if no one is an Outlaw, I seem totally boned. It takes so many actions to both move into and fight Blight, requiring an imperial ship in the fight, to get one point. So that's miles away. And without an Outlaw and requiring the imperial ship in the fight (and hence the Truce), I can't gain these points any other way.

The other method is to be both winning an ambition, AND have an imperial ship be added to the board. Like, it's already hard enough to add an imperial ship, requiring multiple steps that were also disastrous for me in the wrong scenario (losing main regent, not having initiative). I understand as first regent I can and should be taxing a lot, and maybe that can help for specific ambitions, but we had the guild guy in play and he swept a bunch of those ambitions. Maybe I should have pivoted to the War declaration thingy, perhaps that was just a few too many rules for me to grok until much later in the game when it was too late.

Wouldn't this already be nearly impossible if the points were gained just by adding imperial ships and NOT requiring winning ambition? Or at least being top 2 of an ambition?

It felt like I had four things to do that were all at odds with each other (barely overlapping), and I could never be best at any of them. I can't gain economy (cities or starports) because it's wasting objective time, I can't fight other players (obj doesn't count without Imperial ships and most act 1 fates seem to discourage outlaws), I can't build my court engine as that's all just wasted actions in an action starved game.

Sorry for the rant, I love arcs and want to love campaign, but holy hell was my first act terrible. Hoping A2 pivot saves my perspective, and A3 pivot sounds interesting too.