by LinkToDarkness

A Mountaintop to Reach
It's easy to believe that this game has hit #3 overall on BGG.
I will be perfectly honest that I wasn't the biggest fan of the art style of Ark Nova at first glance. I tend towards more artistic stylization in games rather than a photorealistic style in board games, but that generally has to do with the theming that I trend towards with my games. Ark Nova's imagery of actual animals and people on the cards initially was jarring for me and I found myself not really wanting to play the game due to that jarring experience.

However, I chose to swallow my pride and try out what was at that point, the number 4 game on BGG rankings. I was tentative about how much I would enjoy it, but after watching a "How to Play" video on Youtube to school myself in the many ways that this could eventually go wrong, I launched into a play of Ark Nova on BGA and much to my surprise, I found an excellently crafted game that defied my expectations. I lost horribly, which was to be expected, but since then I've logged a whopping 35 games of Ark Nova, both in person and on BGA playing asynchronously.

I had held off on performing a review of the game for this long because it's such a daunting task to attempt to go through everything contained within such a small box. Despite my misgivings however, I feel that I have enough of a handle on how the game plays to give it my two cents and provide a thorough breakdown of the components and rules for the game, along with my opinions on it. I think 35 plays is only beginning to scratch the surface of what is available in this game, but I think that I have enough experience to offer thoughts.

How I rate games/expansions here on my blog: Unlike BGG, I use a 100 point scale for my ratings as I find that more accurately represents the smaller breakdown of numbers as I rate games. With my ratings I use the scoring system that BGG has for the games with a 10 being an outstanding game that I'll want to play over and over again. Most games will fall in the 60-70 point range unless they do anything that stands out greatly to me, pushing them above other games in their genre. Rarely will I award a game lower than a 50, with that being the absolute average of games that I've played. Anything below a 50 will trend to games that I'm not really wanting to play again after one or two plays.

As I am growing and learning as a reviewer, I suspect that my ratings will trend lower along with more games that I play. I do reserve the right to go back to previous reviews and update my rating in the future, but I will ensure that I include a note with that updated rating when that occurs. I will continue to remain as unbiased as possible with my ratings of the games that I have on the blog, but know that personal experience absolutely will have a rating on the games that I rate here on the blog.


Packed to the Gills With Cards
It has hexagons! The bestagons!
Game Name: Ark Nova
Publish Year: 2021
Game Publisher: Feuerland Spiele
Designer: Mathias Wigge
Artist: Steffen Bieker, Loïc Billiau, Dennis Lohausen, Christof Tisch
Mechanisms: Action Queue, End Game Bonuses, Grid Coverage, Hand Management, Hexagon Grid, Income, Increase Value of Unchosen Resources, Open Drafting, Race, Set Collection, Solo / Solitaire Game, Tags, Tile Placement, Variable Player Powers, Variable Set-up
Expansions: Ark Nova: Marine Worlds, Ark Nova: Zoo Map Pack 1, Ark Nova: Zoo Map Pack 2

Initially when getting the box for Ark Nova, I was surprised to see how small it was compared to what I had played on BGA. There seemed to be quite a bit going on, but as I opened the box, I found that there was significantly more contained within the box than I had first thought. In addition to the normal rulebook contained within games, there was also a glossary and icon overview for playing with the game, which I appreciated as it helped explain some of the more obscure cards in the glossary and provided a one-page, double sided overview for the many icons found within the game.

There were four separate colors found within the game (black, blue, red and yellow; no green, much to my disappointment), and each had 25 player cubes in the respective color, three hexagonal cylindrical counters, and four workers in each of the colors. These were nicely packed up in baggies, as well as the wooden break token, solo play card, and the 20 double-sided action cards. The 12 base conservation projects as well as the 11 final scoring cards were packed in a bag together and the differently colored backs of the cards helped with sorting out each of the objective stacks. The remaining 212 zoo cards, which were divvied up into 128 Animal cards, 64 Sponsor cards, and 20 Conservation Project cards were all packed in various baggies which were not well placed and caused a slight bit of lid lift.

Player mat set and prepared for the beginning of the game.
The double-sided game board, association board, and eight game mats (I actually had 12 due to having one of the map packs as well), all sat on top of the remaining storage containers for the various tokens that would sit on the player boards. This lends itself to some fiddly storage and I found myself often having to set and reset the cards and boards when packing up the box to ensure that everything fit well without any lid lift. It was almost impossible to do that once I added in the Marine Worlds expansion, so I ended up getting a third-party organizer to help with storing the items in the box.

The remaining components were stored (before I upgraded my game organizer) in two rectangular trays that held the remaining cardboard pieces from the game. This included all of the various enclosures (from size one to five), the special enclosures (petting zoo, aviary, and reptile house), as well as the special buildings associated with all the sponsor cards. All of the money chits, attack tokens (venom, constriction, etc), universities, partner zoos, and conservation track bonus tokens were also stored in the trays which accounted for about half of the box's height when included in the game box.

Original storage trays contained within the game.
All components featured fantastic quality and the trays, while slightly awkward to fit all of the components in simply, did offer a basic storage option for the components to be stored easily and easily placed out on the table during the game for ease of play and token storage. Each enclosure was double sided to show an unoccupied side as well as an occupied side during the game. Each special building associated with sponsor cards also featured the specific iconography found on the sponsor card to allow for easy matching.

The cards themselves are where much of the game resides in and the decision was made to have each of the animals and various concepts on the cards done with actual real-world photos. It lends the animals a sense of realism and it's always interesting to see the various types of creatures that might be featured in the game. While each card often has a significant level of iconography and information contained on it, the included player aide does help with understanding the various icons contained on the cards. Minimal wording can be found on the cards unless it is used to provide the action name or name of the card itself, which helps to reduce the overall business contained on the cards.

Two of the game mats contained within the game along with varying bonuses for supporting conservation projects.
The player mats are double sided with one side featuring one of two basic parks to start with and eight separate maps on the reverse side which offer varying abilities to players based on the map chosen. Again, the iconography on the mats are kept to a minimum, with the iconography guide doing much of the heavy lifting explaining what each one meant. The various options of boards also allows for different layouts of zoos when playing games, giving diversity to how players are able to build out their zoos.

The double-sided main board has two tracks running around the outside of the board: one for player's zoo appeal and one for player's conservation points. These are clearly marked, but rule verification was needed to confirm how pieces moved along the tracks during the game. Clearly marked numbers on each of the spaces make it easy to track how far along each player pawn is. The center of the board is occupied by spaces for six cards, plus a counter for player's reputation level, along with spaces for both the draw and discard pile. Functionally, both sides of the board are the same, but one features the spaces for the cards in a horizontal setup to allow more easy reading by all players while the other side features the more traditional card setup with the tops of the cards facing the long side of the board.

Standard enclosures in each size along with the kiosk and pavilion tiles on a game board.
The association board sits separately from the main board and features spaces for the main base conservation projects, player conservation projects above and below the board as well as spaces for each of the partner zoos and universities on the board. These have colorful iconography that shows the various cardboard items that are refilled after each break (more on that in the rules), and also provide spaces for each player to put association workers on beneath each of the four player actions on the association board. As with the rest of the boards, much of the iconography contained on the association board is referenced on the icon guide to reduce overall clutter on the boards.

It Is Not Just the Animals Who Have Weight
Rules, Icon Overview, and Glossary contained within the game that feature everything needed to play it.
I will state initially that Ark Nova has quite a bit going on with it's large rulebook that might make it difficult for newer players to understand and learn how to play the game. There are quite a few rules contained within Ark Nova that lend themselves to a strategically deep game and even 35 games in, I still find myself having to reference certain icons in order to remember what they do. Even with that amount of experience with the game, I have found myself learning new ways to grow and improve my game, especially with how much variety that the cards offer.

As there are so many potential icons and items that I could go through with Ark Nova, I'll resolve to just do an overview of the game itself, the round actions that players can take, the "Break", and the endgame triggers and scoring. Doing a deep dive into all of the minutiae of the various cards, effects and iconography in this incredible game would lend itself to a significantly longer post than I'm willing to write and I'm sure that only the most dedicated of board game fans would enjoy that. So I'll be doing my best to remain brief with these explanations of the various actions and as always, if there's something I missed, please let me know or consult the rulebook for further clarification.

Association board set up for a two-player game with starting conservation projects.
To set up, players set up the main board on the preferred side of card orientation, set the break token at the space matching the number of players, shuffle and place one of the bonus tiles (the pentagon tiles) on each of the four blank spaces on the conservation track and return the rest to the game box, and deal one card from the zoo deck (after shuffling) face down on one of each of the six spaces on the main board. The association board is placed near the main board and all partner zoo and university tokens are placed on the board, with the base conservation projects being shuffled and a number of cards are placed below the board based on player count. There are special rules for two players, but I'll not be going through them here.

The start player is randomly determined and all players are given two zoo maps to choose between with the one not chosen being returned to the game box. Maps are numbered 1-8 and the reverse side, A and O, are for first time players to use. Each player is dealt a set of action cards with the blue side face up and places them below their map, with the animal card in the number 1 slot and the remaining four being shuffled and placed randomly. Players choose one color and then place all of their components in the respective locations on their board, with the three hexagonal cylinders being placed on the appeal, conservation and reputation tracks on the main board. Players begin with 25 money and an association worker which is placed in the notepad portion of their zoo board. The brown final scoring cards are shuffled and two are dealt face-down to each player, with players being able to look at the cards but keeping them hidden from other players. 8 cards are dealt to each player and players choose four to keep, with the four discarded cards going to the discard pile. Once all setup has been completed, the six face down cards on the board are flipped over to be revealed.

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