Tabletop_Gaming__Issue_27__February_2019

20 February 2019

RES ARCANA

personal deck into a slick points-churning machine

• but with more than enough variety to keep them
  coming back game after game.
  “Each artefact is unique and 40 choose eight is a
  huge number – more than 75 million – so each deck
  will be dierent,” he assures. “By concentrating on just
  a few cards and their synergies, players have to really
  consider which artefacts to build and which to discard
  for essences.
  “An eight-card personal deck, with a few powers that
  let you draw extra cards – if your deck runs out, you
  reshue – is just the right size.”

BEST OF THE RES

So, you have your cards: all eight of them. But what

do you actually do with them in Res Arcana? Like in

Lehmann’s beloved Race, it’s a contest to use your

cards to rake in as many victory points as possible.

More specically, cards allow you to gather resources

• the essences – which can then be spent on playing
  more cards or acquiring cards from the middle of the
  table called monuments and places of power, which
  grant extra points and abilities.
  “With Race for the Galaxy, Res Arcana shares the fact
  that it is a race; to have the most victory points above
  10 when victory is checked – normally, at the end of
  each round, but two places of power enable a player
  to check victory in the middle of a round,” Lehmann