Res Arcana | Rahdo's Final Thoughts
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- Опубликовано: 23 дек 2024
- Help Rahdo Run: / rahdo ❤️ Code of conduct: conduct.rahdo.com 🙂 And now...
A video outlining gameplay for the boardgame Res Arcana.
For more game info, boardgamegeek....
Part I: Gameplay Runthrough
• Res Arcana Gameplay Ru...
Part II: Extended Gameplay
• Res Arcana Extended Ga...
Part III: Final Thoughts
• Res Arcana | Rahdo's F...
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
One of the primary reasons I watch your reviews instead of most others is because you're one of the few people who will say this is a great game and I'm not going to play it. Excellent and thoughtful commentary as always
"Not since Agricola have I seen..." this is a phrase that peaks my interest in a game for sure
Hey! I got the game thanks to you and it's already one of my favorites! Played it more than 10 times so far, and I really like the dragons. It's actually not difficult to defend against them, most of the time. Sometime you can just pass... But what's great about it is that it forces you to adapt when you could have instead just build your planned engine without even looking at your opponent cards. So it adds tactic to this very strategic game, and I love that. Dragon ca be very strong only if you play them carefully, if you don't they will cost you more than what you inflict to your opponent.
I don't see that at all. Lose your resources is about as shallow as gaming gets these days. We've come a lot further than that.
I hadn't really paid much attention to this game, but the Dice Tower mentioned it in their top 10 of the year vid, so I came back to my guru Rahdo. Checked the comments as always--Rahdo's comment sections are often helpful; good job, folks--and that sent me to the Lehmann-Rahdo thing that I hadn't heard about, and...wow. It's a real get-your-popcorn train wreck, which I think Rahdo handled gracefully. You win a pissing contest by being the one who doesn't get pissy.
I don't know how designers and high-profile content creators can stand the incredibly poisonous place that BGG is. I gave up on my account there because I couldn't take the flak I would get from making a small negative comment about games I made clear I actually liked. If you mention that you play a house rule of a game--not suggesting it for others, but just mentioning your own house rule--you will be flamed for days, literally. Generally it seems people who love something can't stand hearing any slight hint of criticism about that thing; they take it as an attack on themselves, and they spit venom in response. What Rahdo and others endure in the BGG forums must be an enormous bummer. Much respect for Rahdo's very thick skin.
Rahdo help make the Busby games. He's very experienced. ;)
Finally got around to playing this and I have to say that I really like it. To the point where I've put it on my long-term buy list. It's an excellent zippy engine builder with great components and so much variation with only a handful of cards and tiles.
I get that you don't really like the direct interaction offered by the game, but I think that can be easily houseruled away by simply removing all the attack cards and places of power from the available pool before you deal or draft, just like how you would choose not to play with attack cards in Dominion.
I will most certainly buy this game because of something you said, Rahdo: most deck-building games end up being pure tactical games. Indeed. Strategy is merely a lure. A deck-builder with a real strategic depth? I am sold...
I’d love to see an expansion for this with some additional artifacts allowing you to remove negative player interaction, that’s a pretty sweet idea!
"...inspired by Puerto Rico where the interaction is a positive and affirming one." LOL. Oh, look at all that sugar you have - too bad I'm going to put a single barrel of corn on this very large ship. Go dump your hard work in the ocean.
In all seriousness, great video! I'm loving Res Arcana and am super excited about the Lux & Tenebrae expansion!
Thanks Rahdo! Again the Final thoughts are critical for understanding how my wife and I will enjoy the game. Love Jump Drive, Race and just backed the City. Before your interaction comments it looked like an instant buy. Will have to give it more critical thought before looking to purchase it.
From my experience with it, the interaction feels pretty anemic actually. There are just as many ways to block "attacks" as there are to perform an attack. Most of the dragons have ways printed on them that your opponent can use to cancel their effect; I am not even sure why they bothered with pvp if they were going to make it so ineffectual.
@@EclecticCamel it's because blocking it usually still costs them something, and attacking often costs you something, and by adding that drag into the system you can slow the game down for both of you. sometimes your cards are better suited to a round 5 or even 6 win if you can stop them from winning in round 4. dragons and demons make slower builds viable
Thank you for your opinion. It was very interesting.
I just bought this game and only had time to play once with a friend, but I really liked it.
By the way, he had a dragon, but I do not. The guard dog saved me)
It is interesting that bloggers from my country (and I am from Ukraine) did not complain about conflicts,
which is not surprising in principle. Conflict games are sold here, probably much worse.
Thanks again and good luck!
Love your refreshing authenticity
I would love the care bear expansion🐻
“It’s near perfection” Woah! Insta buy.
Few thoughts: 1) Really didn't appreciate Lehmann's response to this, but also agree that Rahdo can be repetitive in his unscriptedness, and he unintentionally repeated himself for 5 minutes hammering the same simple point. Unintentional.
2) More to the point, though, I have an alternate perspective on the conflict in this game. With the dragons and bow, my games have involved few direct attacks. It's like a cold war, where the threat of attack is so much more potent than the attack itself. Take the bow - it's other ability is to draw a card (for free). This is insanely useful. If you attack, you have to forego that benefit, which costs you more than it costs them. HOWEVER, leaving your bow untapped means that your opponent has to keep an essence behind as insurance, or build a protective artifact. As opposed to "take that", it's more of a Mexican stand-off with everyone staring at each other, wondering who is going to flinch first, and trying not to be the first. Everyone involved is eyeing this elephant in the middle of the room and working around it. It's fascinating.
Dragons are more straightforward as they don't have alternate effects, but the opportunity cost of buying one means you generally won't use one unless the other player has asked for it (built a single-minded, vulnerable engine) or are going for the Dragon Roost. And once you have the dragon roost, you're in the same position as the Bow where you're losing as much as you are gaining.
I absolutely agree with this! In our group, we actually almost consider dragons to not be good enough! There are so many damage prevention options, that more often than not, if someone finally gets their dragon(s) out, you usually have either an artifact that reduces damage, or plenty of essences to lose! I can imagine in certain group with a different meta, dragons becoming more prevalent would make that less true though! Overall, I think dragons are a good addition for people who want more interaction (especially with the cold-war esque elements) and it's not too terribly mean for the people who just want to do their own thing!
I can't seem to find Tom Lehmann's response from your point 1, would you mind sharing a link or reference? I now want to know what he said :D
@@MaruelZain boardgamegeek.com/thread/2225468/love-game-hate-attack-cards/page/2 Lehmann jumps in on page 2, Rahdo shows up on page 3. In their defense, it's hard to have any kind of civilized, organized conversation on boardgamegeek.com
And the reddit thread discussing the geek thread: www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/cdziya/argument_between_tom_lehmann_designer_of_res/
This is a great explanation! Unfortunately I avoided this amazing game due to fears that it had "take that" in it. It does not. The attacks are forecast, highly avoidable, and enhance the game by creating a game of "chicken". Also, all the "attack" cards serve multiple purposes. I absolutely understand Lehman taking issue with the mischaracterization of the game, but having not read his response, I don't know if he went too far and was rude. Still, Rahdo carries a lot of weight in the industry and it must be hard to see someone overemphasize something which is probably being mischaracterized.
@@misterlad by all means, please tell me the specific quotes where i misrepresented the game :)
Fire and Water...absolutely agree.
After seeing the runthrough, I was really surprised that it took 7 minutes before you talked about the attacks.
Definitely adding this high on my wishlist, since I come from the school of thought where nothing you can do to somebody within the rules of a game is "mean". Might not get played as often as I'd like, since I often play games with a care bear... but in other groups, this looks amazing.
I also don't usually really enjoy attacking, but it doesn't bother me too much in this game, since it usually isn't very beneficial to the person attacking either. And I just call them fire and water anyway (in my native language, though). This is possibly my favourite game.
I'm no annoyed that you gave a great fair review, and someone was complaining about it. This review was perfect.
Bow and dragon can be used for pos actions too. It also wastes a turn for aggressor. I have no prob with these cards at all - hugely fun. Fun to combat by managing NOT to have resources they target. Imagine the 'attacks' as bad weather or feeding your civ if so sensitive. It's control freakery to not want winds to blow at your straw house not care bear-y. Amazing, amazing game with amazing expansions now.
I played 30+ games, and really like it so far. I didn't have that problem with the Elvish bow. In 2p game it actually means opponent loose 1 Life or i Draw a card, which I can discard for 2 Essences, plus the card could be the one I was looking for. So in Practice the attack is rather circumstancial whereas the raw one card is always good. in 4 pl game it attack 3 opponents which is better but I would be surprised if none of them had any defense. Same for the Dragons not such a problem IMO, if a player have several dragons this could be a problem then you have that protective magic item. overall there are 7 attack cards and 11 defensive means and the Hound can be untaped. The really painful dragon are the two that have card as an alternate to the 2 Life, in that case you really need a defense.
Where's the top 10 (non-destructive) player interaction video mentioned near the end?
ruclips.net/video/sceNBp3yYsw/видео.html :)
@@rahdo Thanks 👍😀
Res Arcana: Care Bear expansion!
#bringit !!
It just needs more cards so we can pull the banal dragons out of the game without altering the balance too much.
6:24 Whoa, I was not expecting this part. I almost stopped watching right before I got to this. Fortunately, I didn't because I feel the same way about the dragons. I just need to discern if the game can work without them.
The violence in this game to me: "Feels like a slap on the wrist, if that, seldomly."
To Rahdo: "I barely recovered and I'm surprised I made it back to tell you about my hardships!"
All kidding aside, I have to agree, this is some of Lehman's best work, and is probably tied with Roll for the Galaxy IMO. I need to try it with the latest expansion, Perlae Imperii.
I enjoyed the Conan the Barbarian quote!
Thanks for a very good review and playthrough.
looks interesting. Didn't like race but loved roll. Will keep this in my wishlist.
You should check out New Frontiers. I love Roll, but NF might just replace it for me. The one downside is that it does take longer than Roll, of course that may change as more of my play groups become familiar with NF.
You totally confirmed what I suspected about this game... player interaction of the kind I really hate, the "you didn't know it was coming and now I'm gonna ruin your life" kind.
Not that bad. Played some times and dragons never destroyed my engines. Can happen, but there's is a lot of ways to protect yourself.
Unfortunately Rhado greatly overstates the "take that" in the game. I avoided this game due to this concern, but it's not an issue at all. You always know if an opponent has the ability to attack, and how to counter it. There are a myriad of ways to counter attacks. And honestly, the "attack" cards are most often not used to attack, but are used as other parts of your engine. Frankly, I can see why Tom Lehman had some issues with the characterization. I've heard account by several veteran players that they rarely, if ever, attack others, especially in 2-player games where the damage done to your opponent rarely outweighs the opportunity cost to yourself.
@@misterlad by all means, please point out specific quotes of where i misrepresented the game
You mention that 40 cards is enough for excellent variety... I'm wondering how much you think that might change based on player count. With two players, you're only using 16 of the 40 cards in each game, but with four you'd have 32 of the 40 in play. Countering that some, I suspect, is that fewer cards in the pool increases the chances that a random selection of 8 will have good combo potential. In any case, who gets what is going to change drastically... but you're still very likely to (for example) see all of the dragons available in a four player game.
How much of an issue do you think that would be?
player count doesn't change the fact that you get 8 cards, dealt randomly, and that's it for the whole game. so you're just as likely to get dragons in your hand in a 2p game dealt to as a 4p game, so nothing changes there. one can make the argument that defense cards become more valuable with more players than normal because in theory everyone could be dragoning it up, but still that's very unlikely, because dragons aren't really very good for engine building, and this is an engine builder at heart. and only one player can get the dragon location to make dragons afordable (if that's even in the game at all), so i think in practice you're not more likely to see dragon attacks at higher player counts than you are at 2p.
but that said, i've only played 2p, so i'm just hypothesizing.
also, one big thing I forgot to reinterate in my final thoughts (i did mention it in the runthrough, but only briefly): once you pass, you can't be attacked. so in the case where there are a lot of dragon players flying about, if you can't defend yourself or afford to jettison resources or build a defense (including the free magic item you can draft at the start of the round) you can always pass sooner in the round :)
It's not so much that cards are in play at all, but how they combo. Further, many artifacts don't get built during a game, so while more dragons may be in all players' hands, many of them will get spent for essences and not played.
Gosh, Me and my wife have played about 20 times. She hates "take that" probably as much as you and Jen but we both really don't think dragon attacks are that big a deal. It's a minor inconvenience but hasn't really impacted the game that much
i agree it's a pretty light weight, but still a bit much for us
“Great game! His best game ever! I love it....”
Also- “ I’m getting rid of it...”
Lol....
I like watching his reviews, but any kind of aggression or take that incorporated into the game and Forget it lol. Its a bit annoying and I usually wouldn't watch this knowing the mechanics already but wanted Rahdo's take on the engine building aspect. Sounds great
hi, big fan. PLEASE make another review on this game again with its expansion 1+2! and go as indepth as possible! i love your review of my favorite game
Rhado, you are a great person and you just made me feel bad about how much I like violence in my games. Thank you! (I am not being sarcastic; I mean it.)
Try combination Dragons with the Dragon's Lair. Should help.
Regarding the Dragons... yeah, the "take that" aspect is a matter of player preference (and I appreciate Rahdo has always been open about his care bear nature) and you may not find it so annoying. What bugs us the most about the Dragons (and Serpent and Bow) is the damage they do is to drain you of resources you would otherwise use to move forward and these slow the game down. We played a 4p online where we had all five Dragons, the Serpent, and the Bow out and the game dragged to a halt. Protecting against a couple of attacks in a round is feasible but we were draining all our resources and just passing as fast as we could to hold some for the next round - so boring. We just quit. That was an extreme instance, I know, but the fact the game can result in such a quagmire is disappointing. We don't mind a bit of "take that" but man, resorting to tripping your opponents rather than trying ways to race past them is annoying to everyone in our group. If we play in person, we'll probably mitigate by limiting the number of those cards in the draft or something.
Conan the Barbarian apparently disliked this video four times. He does not fear dragons and is not a Care Bear. Valor pleases you, Crom! ;-)
This game would look great with some glass potions/elements instead of flat, bright colors.. *cough *Jen *cough
You don't need Mr Lehman's permission to remove the dragons and the bow, you can do it all by yourself. Just leave them in the box!
the reason i'm not inclined to do that is spelled out at faq.rahdo.com entry #24 :)
ty@@rahdo
Rahdo, would the game fall apart if you just removed the dragons and bow from the game entirely?
if you take out the threatening cards, suddenly there's a lot of defense cards that don't make sense to have. if you take those out, and now you've taken out a LOT of the game...
Okay, good know now. Thanks for quick reply, rahdo!
I bought the game for my wife and I to play. I removed about 30% of the cards and tiles (attacking and defensive), and it was still a great game. I think in a 2 player game it could happen naturally that no one gets dealt a dragon or creature. I'm guessing the game still has lots of replay value with only 70% of the game. It would definitely have more replay value than Splendor and Century, and they are best selling games. To play without the attack and defensive cards Res Arcana feels like a deeper Century Spice Road with more to think about, and more variation from game to game. It's a fantastic game. If we ever get bored of it we might try it with the attack cards or I might see if it's possible to make a viable friendly variant for the attack and defensive icons. I thought of a few. One seems like it could work, but I won't test it until more familiar with the game. If you want to know, it's to interpret the attack icon to mean that you can discard 1 life for 2 fire. An attack icon with the number 2 would mean you could convert up to 2 life for 4 fire. Rivals MAY copy/follow this action if they pay the cost on your card, and they pay it to you. Defensive cards would mean they don't need to pay the extra cost to copy/follow. It could be a good alternative or it could cause some unforeseen problem worse than attacking :) It needs playtesting. But I'm sure some good variant could be created given enough time and testing.
We just use those cards to burn for resources.
Just a counter thought on your last nitpick -- the name of the game is res ARCANA -- I think that the use of arcane words is perfectly thematic!
yup i'm cool with that terms. but it's hard to talk about gaining or spending elan when it's a fire icon! :)
@@rahdo , I do admit having a hard time imagining what elan looks like!
Ok it must be good if you say so, I alas fail to see it, based on your videos. Will watch some others.
Hey rahdo
How about a top 10 asymmetrical board games
I just cant find a nice top 10 about it
well, i could try, but i don't think we've got 10 truly asym games that we enjoy. we love the idea of asym, but they're just much harder to develop and balance. res arcana isn't really an asym game, because each player is playing by the same set of rules, just with different starting resources. most asym games are direct conflict ones, which means we don't tend to enjoy them. only exception i can think of is claustrophobia.
@@rahdo true
I wanted to post it on the hunt for the ring and got comfused: )
Thank you for answering and hope you make it
Love your content
rahdo Another asymmetrical game which I can think of is Gaia Project, where each of the races/species have different powers.
I know where at least one dislike has come from...
as much as i hate to say it......... its very likely. Maybe he has 6 other family members that feel the same :)
So, I know you don't want people buying games based on your final thoughts, but I kinda bought this one based on "Tom Lehmann's best game ever!" because I greatly respect your opinion, particularly on mechanisms and such. (And maybe chickens.) Take this strictly as a counter point rather than a criticism, which you can ignore, discard, etc. I don't see this as being better than the Race family really at all. It is certainly more strategic in that you know going in what is available to you, but that didn't really make it exciting. A fair comparison to this, I think, is Seasons and that game is waaaaaaaay better. You start with 9 cards at the beginning of the game (similar to the 8 in RA), you know when they will become available and how to strategize. The passing of the seasons adds the needed pressure to the tempo (rather than relying on players to create that tension) and the resource manipulation makes for some interesting point scoring along the way. We didn't hate this, but after a couple plays, we agreed we'd rather just play Seasons or really any of Tom Lehmann's other games, up to and including Roll through the Ages: Iron Age. I don't think you misrepresented the game in your gameplay video, but I respectfully have to disagree with the Tom Lehmann's best game assertion. Regardless, thanks for the effort, thanks for helping us get into this game (and many many others) and actually playing much quicker than we might have otherwise.
yup, to me, the genius of this game is how much it does with so little. it's a masterclass of emergent design. but that's probably just my former game designer mentality coming out, being blown away by what tom was able to do in such a tight package :)
@@rahdo I still say Seasons did it already and, for my money, better. Granted that game doesn't have the monuments or places of power, but I would gladly trade them for a tighter game tempo and gameplay options.
I agree Seasons is a very similar game.
I will disagree it is better.
Season is a lot more convoluted. Res Arcana achieves the same depth of gameplay without requiring tons of rules. It makes it instantly the better game as far as i'm concerned.
The dice in Seasons serves actually not a lot of purpose. They are just a more complex way to gain a few resources. Res Arcana does similar by just providing you with cards that give them to you and others to change them.
Seasons require you to advance an arbitrary marker to be able to play more cards. It's not depth of gameplay imo. It's just an extra thing you have to do before being able to play your cards. The mechanic is really there just to slow the game down, so you can't have too many cards before the required 12 seasons pass.
Res Arcana does not care about needing to make the game artificially longer. As soon as someone has succeeded in building an efficent engine, after a single turn of it, the game will end. No need to make it continue while other players have no chance of catching up. Almost all games of Seasons i've played had one or two players virtually eliminated half-way through the game. They are still in the game, but have no hope of winning. To me, virtual elimination in a game is even worse than actually being eliminated.
Res Arcana will end soon after you are virtually eliminated and not in another hour from then.
Seasons also has that "cards in hands are worth negative points at the end" which i hate. If my engine is sound, i still need to play pointless cards that i don't care about, just to get rid of them (and to pass the time before the end of the game which requires a set number of Seasons).
Seasons would've been a much better game if:
- you got rid of the requirement to play useless cards to avoid negative points.
- you got rid of the required 3 years and just made the game end when a player achieves a certain amount of points instead.
- you got rid of the power meter required to raise before you can play cards.
The game would've been much faster and much more concise.
... and then you realize you just mostly turned Seasons into Res Arcana.
Having played the game quite a bit now, I can say that the dragons bring absolutely nothing to the game. It's just a really cheap mechanism.
“Whaaaa the mean dragons made me lose, the bow is sooooo mean... whaaaaa It shot down my genius win......”