Ark Nova

Honestly, when Ark Nova was first being talked about as an upcoming release I had little to no interest based on the cover and premise. Something about it just initially had me offput for whatever reason. But as I gradually saw more and more of the game, it started to garner my interest. Once the rave reviews came out for it, and with it a better understanding of the game, that's when I felt more confident in adding it to my collection.

There were comparisons to Terraforming Mars, in that it has a huge library of cards with tags, costs, and effects - that you won't see all the cards in one playthrough. But really, that's where the comaprison stops. In Ark Nova, you're managing a zoo by building enclosures in a hexagonal tile grid and placing animals into these enclosures as attractions. And in a positive light you're also trying to increase your zoo's reputation though conservation efforts, sometimes even releasing the animals you add to the zoo.

It's a huge Euro-style game that incorperates a lot of various elements seen in other games, but the one standout feature that I think really makes the game is its action card system. Each player has the same 5 action cards available to them, and they're in an ordered queue. When you take an action, the strength of the action is based on its position in the queue, after which it goes back to the lowest position and pushing all other actions up. This means there's a lot of intentional sequencing when you're puzzling out what action to use and when, which gives a very engaging decision space.

And similar to Wingspan, all the actions kind of lend to each other in some way. You need to acquire cards to play, you need to build out your zoo to house the animal cards, you need to take a separate action to play said animals, and there are sponsor cards and association workers to utilize as additional actions as well. Players will want to making each turn meaningful while setting up for the next turn due to the action queue.

Like other "huge number of cards" games, you definitely need to be flexible in your strategy based on what cards become available or that you draw. Somehow it straddles the line between luck of the draw and still feeling strategic and opportunistic. What's interesting here is that hand management is entirely related to intermittent Break phases that players can trigger. During normal rounds, players don't have a hand limit, but when a break is triggered then the hand limit is checked - which can cause some forced lost opportunities if players aren't ready for it. So keeping an eye on the Break track is important, not to mention sometimes its very much desired since a Break is what causes players to gain income as the rounds of the game aren't rigidly structured.

Taught a game with Xereden over Tabletop Simulator and we had an enjoyable time. Quite often I felt a little "behind" as Xereden would take certain goals as I was still trying to make moves for them, but that's just due to my focus being in trying other directions and trying to find my own path to victory. He just found his faster, and it worked well for him.

Captured and summarized some of his thoughts after our play:

A lot stuff going on on the board. Rotating around the actions is really interesting. Fun action economy, keeping things in order, you can strategize by looking at other players. However, never really felt like we really interacted with each other, which is fine because its a Euro game. Still has some stuff where it feels like solitare, doing things on your own.

Overall really enjoyed it. Different ways between focusing on conservation versus appeal. This game is hard to put into a specific genre of board game - it's European style for sure. Not super confrontational.

Definitely not a beginner's board game. Enjoyed this because, there's some engine building - not really an engine builder but rather little bits and pieces that add up over time. Really enjoyed the break and income.

I think the best indicator was this:

It's already in my cart right now, there's something about it - it's good.

I think the vast amount of awards and critical acclaim the game has speaks to how enjoyable it is. I was super surprised how a recent release launched so high on people's top games, even Tom Vasel made it his #1 game of all time. But I can concede that it really is a solid game. I enjoyed playing it solo and the "crunchyness" of the game is really delightful. I recall when I showed it to Scott, he immediately wanted to play again, and just like Xereden he also got his copy soon after playing.