Res Arcana is a game of doing the best you can do with a tiny little deck.
But is it fun to play?
In it, Life, Death, Elan, Calm, and Gold are the essences that fuel the art of magic. Choose your mage, gather essences, craft unique artifacts, and use them to summon dragons, conquer places of power, and achieve victory!
Res Arcana Game Play
Here you are playing as Alchemical Mages crafting artefacts and trying to control Monuments and places of Power. All of these are worth points, get 10 points to win.
To set up, layout the 8 Magic Items in the middle of the table, face-up as well as the 5 Places of Power. Shuffle the 10 monuments and place 2 of them out face up.
Give a random first player the first player token.
The standard way to set up a player is to shuffle the 10 Mage Cards and deal 2 to each player. Then shuffle the 40 Artefact Cards and deal 8 Artefacts to each player, all of there are face down. Then players shuffle the 8 artefacts into a deck, draw 3 into their hand then choose 1 mage as their character, to play as discarding the other card.
There is a beginner version with pre-built decks to help you out and an advanced version that involves drafting for when you know what you’re doing.
Once you have a deck, in reverse turn order players take turns to choose 1 magic item which is theirs for the round.
Gameplay is over 3 phases.
Phase 1: Collect
Players cards and tiles in play will show how many resources the players will collect so players do this in a free-for-all. BTW, resources are called essences in-game but I’m going with resources.
Sometimes you’ll need to pay for effects in this phase but you can collect stuff first before paying for anything.
Phase 2: Actions
Starting with the start player and going clockwise, each player performs 1 action until everyone has passed.
The actions are:
Play an Artefact card from hand, paying the cost in resources.
Claim a Monument or Place of Power from the centre of the table, paying the cost in resources. If a monument is taken, replace it with another from the deck.
Discard an Artefact card from hand and take 1 Gold or any 2 resources from the supply.
Use a Power on one of your untapped cards in your play area, then tap it after resolving if required.
Pass and you’re done for the round. If you’re the first to pass take the First Player token. Return your magic item to the supply and take a different one, flip it to the “I’ve Passed” side.
Once everyone passed, this phase ends.
Phase 3: Victory
Check to see if any player has 10 or more points from the artefacts, monuments and places of power in play. The controller of the first player token is also worth 1 point.
Of course, if no one wins you go back to phase 1 with a potential new start player and crack on.
Theme
You pick a character but they have no story and their motivation is not known.
I’m not sure there is a theme other than “Magic and/or Alchemy”.
Setup
Setup is easy and varies depending on the player count.
I do like the beginner, intermediate and advanced ways of setting up a player deck. With so few cards, drafting probably won’t take that long either.
Components & Artwork
The different wooden pieces for the ‘essences’ are nice as is the tray everything is stashed in but the rest of the components are standard.
The artwork is good, but not my style.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
There is a tonne of symbology on the card so once everyone understands this the game is pretty smooth to play.
This symbology and a players ability to understand it is the only restriction to the accessibility of the game. Sadly, because these cards are technically hidden information this is quite the barrier.
Res Arcana Summary
At this point, I would usually compare similar games to Res Arcana that I’ve played but this one stands alone as something fairly unique.
Playing what you have and trying to play it as well as you can is pretty fun. I played this as a demo game at UKGE so we played with pre-built decks (which helped) and didn’t look at our deck before playing.
Even though I was playing blind, I knew my character specialised in making Gold so I went with that. This helped me pick up those all-important Monuments and Places of Power which led to me winning the game.
Although there is a lot of replayability due to you using so few cards out of those available, I just don’t want to play it. One thing I didn’t talk about in the summary is that some cards attack the other players which I really don’t like. It’s also a race to the target point style game which I’m not a big fan of.
So while it is a pretty decent game, I’m not that keen on giving it another go.
Jesta ThaRogue