Endless replayability

Blighted Reach changes Arcs 🛸 into a 3-game mini campaign, but that's not all. What you do in each game is vastly changed by what Fate you have - your asymmetrical faction with unique mechanics and goals. 😉

The core game is the same: Of course you use the trick-taking inspired 🃏 action selection and try to declare ambitions to score points at the end of the round. And while getting points is good, you do lose half your points after each game as a kind of catch-up mechanic, and if you don't do your personal objective you are further penalized. ☝️ Thus your focus is more on your Fate than just your victory points.

The board itself also has some surprises. 👉There are purple ships 🚀 belonging to the neutral Empire and there are free cities too. Then there is the Blight 🧟, an ever-present danger to fight against. Even if you just play 2p, no regions of the map are blocked - this is important for some of the faction goals/mechanics, but as the map is filled up with so many tokens it works well.

Players start out as Regents in a kind of semi-alliance - at least you cannot harm each other if the neutral Empire is present as peace keeper. You can also become an Outlaw, completely turning against the Empire. ⚔️

A very important addition are Event cards that are part of the action card deck. 🧐 If you play one of these, you copy the lead card and trigger an event at the same time: this could cause Edicts 📜 to be resolved, which can have all kinds of effects depending on the Fates in play; Or Crises 💥 can happen, making Blight attack and activating special card effects.

💬Arcs is definitely not a game you can explain in 2000 characters, and Blighted Reach is even more complicated. It’s a difficult game with somewhat convoluted rules and many unexplained interactions and edge-cases - but even with all the hassle, the experience the game provides is really worth it in the end. Even our 2p games (which is obviously not the ideal player count) are memorable and epic. So if you enjoy Arcs at all, you need to check out Blighted Reach! It even provides a unified storage solution for everything, with card dividers and extra trays. 👍