Look, I haven't played the game yet. But simply contradicting peoples oponions as 'that's just wrong' doesn't exactly feel nuanced...

I admit I did not like the map until the final proofing, but I could see the difference right away compared to the early in-studio game streams. The early game was plodding but I do love the snappy, reactive map we got. The tiles to cover parts of the map are also great to make board set up so much more entangled and interesting.

I don't know, man. I have seen people AP things that they have no business APing. There are just some games that aren't for some people, and this is just the way it is. You can tell them the right way to approach a game, and they'll still AP the shit out of the game. There are some games I don't intoduce to some people cause they literally can't seem to not be an AP monster about that game. I think that it can be true that you love Arcs and for you ita a fast and snappy game. It can also be true that the design of Arcs encourages AP in some people, and for some its gunna be a nightmare slog. You have to accept that

I love your content - keep it coming. Regarding your rebuttal to people complaining about the changes to the Arcs board design, I think you missed their point. Personally, I find that a lot of the negative feedback from the game stems from peoples comparisons to previous games, and what they don't get is that Arcs is genre bending/breaking. I think the people who were complaining about the changes in the board design thought Arcs was going to be a 4x space game. That's it. When it moved away from being a 4x (not sure if it ever was, but that apparently was their expectation / hope), they lost interest.

This might be the source of the 4X confusion: ARCS ~ 4x Trick-Taking in Space ♣🌌 | Kickstarter Board Game Preview - video by ThinkerThemer

One comment on the "childish art": I thought the background on the art style originating from Root was Kyle Ferrin making these animal characters for his children, and that style has carried forward to the other games. I know the reviewer meant it as an insult, but I can acknowledge that the art is "child-like" but I enjoy it.

In this day and age, I think most reviews are misleading. Most often then not, it's a first impression as it seems many people play a game once and move on. It's not bad in itself, there's plenty of games out there, it can be justified to focus on only those that would blow you away on the first play. But I feel being overly critical of a game on a first play is a bit unfair. This is one of the reasons I take BGG rating with a grain of salt.

Hmm.. the comment I would add about unlucky card draws is this. I caveat by saying I hope this is a niche experience where the odds just aren't high it'll happen again. We just played a game, where I drew a hand with no tax cards and no aggression cards. The only ambition options I had were for resources or tyrant. I had no way to get resources because nobody played a tax card that round, and even if they did I can only get one (since it's one action that i'm copying). Tyrant was useless to me because I had no way to secure cards - IE influence enough to then secure. So I think you can get stuck with cards where you cannot claim an ambition you can actually do, AND have no control if other players choose an ambition that doesn't work for you. In this case the three resource ambitions were chosen.. I'm not sure how this can be mitigated.

... Ok I'll subscribe.... How much social tabletop fun/banter is there? You should consider writing the sales copy for this game and pitch it to Leder Games... Seems like lot of these comments had different expectations.

Every time I have played, my wife has won. This suggests that it’s not just a luck fest. Granted there is a lot of randomness but I don’t think the winner is determined by luck, it’s more like a fighting arcade game in that a lot of things you try get blocked and when your good you learn to chain together combos and if you play against someone who understands the combos better than you you lose.

"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."

Good video. I am in agreement on basically everything. I think the problem is just people have an expectation of a game that "let's you do whatever you want to do" and then are frustrated because Arcs isn't meant for that. It's not a power fantasy; it doesn't hand you a trophy every time you make a choice. It's war. Every hand says "I'm sorry Mr. president, but your generals failed, the troops are freezing, and the people are nearly in revolt. What would you like to do?"

Listen, I came to this video expecting a reaction to negative reviews. And I got something totally different! This was a review of the negative reviews, not at all what I paid for.

LET'S GO MA BOII.

"It is not a 4X game, it shouldn't be compared to a 4X game like TI4"

enjoyed the video!

It seems like most push back for Arcs comes from a place of misplaced expectations.

I like most of your responses, but I think the game does (by design) have a lot of potential feel bad moments. It's great that Cole designs these brittle games in which the experience is very driven by players, and lets so many different types of narratives emerge. But not every game is for every player, and I think it's fine if some players want to play games in which most of the potential feel bad moments are designed around, whether that be a low interaction euro, or a co-op.

Really like your videos! Leder games is my favorite publisher currently, I love almost all of their games

I like how the map looks now but the ones between ks and the final one still looked gross 😂