Arcs Strategy Guide

If you’re new to the board game Arcs, this is a great starting place to learn some introductory
strategy and how to win the base game. These are the top 10 strategies to give you a little edge
when you play this game. This is Legendary Tactics Board game scholarship, and Arcs promises to
provide a lot of study. The victory condition of Arcs is to win Power. 27 with 4 players, 30 with 3,
and 33 with 2. The one and only way to score points in Arcs is to complete ambitions.

1. Prelude Resourcefulness

Overall, to win at Arcs, you need to adapt to the cards you’re dealt, you need to respond to which of
these 10 strategies the other players are using, and you need to be exible. I love that it’s the players
in the game who decide what ambitions will score points. This means that you’ll need to apply these
ideas situationally. Be sure to add what strategies have worked for you in the comments. Now get
out there, get gaming, and be legendary.

2. Ambition Tyrant

One strategy that can be effective is to set up for a clear ambition victory in an earlier chapter and
then double or triple down by declaring that ambition multiple times. Some players forget that you
can have one ambition winning all three ambition markers. Since it takes longer to collect captives,
the Tyrant ambition can be a great focus. Land your ships on your opponents’ structures, and tax
them regularly. This not only gives you resources, but also captive agents. Using fuel to sneak into
an undefended planet is a great way to tax players when they least expect it. One of the biggest
challenges in the game is to manage when you trigger your actions. Inevitably, you will get cards
that don’t feel ideal, and other players will lead with cards that don’t feel useful. But the Prelude is a
key part of your turn where you can set up powerful combinations by using resource tokens before
you use your action card. This may take a few turns to set up. You could, for instance, use material
to build ships, then use fuel to get them into position, and then ravage an opponent repeatedly with a
strong Aggression card. Planning these combos in advance is crucial, but they can completely
obliterate an opponent before they even see you coming.

3, Suit Awareness

Counting cards, or paying attention to what’s been played, can be very helpful if you have a good
memory. Knowing what suits are left and what numbers are out there can give you a real advantage
when you leap the trump suit. Leading a low number in a suit will generally draw out other cards in
that particular suit. Consider leading a medium-sized card to pull the high-suited cards out early. In
a later turn, you can then lead a lower card of the same suit and you may hold the initiative if the
other players can’t follow suit. Of all of my tips, this one is likely to change the most depending on
the choices that the players at the table make. It will be really dif cult to make predictions on this
behavior, because a player may use a card for its ambition, rather than for its suit. So take this tip
with a grain of salt.
fi
fl
 4. The Courtier

One viable path to victory is to control and dominate the court. The cards that come up will vary
from turn to turn, but some of the best cards are ones that give you an extra card and consequently
an extra turn to seize initiative, declare an ambition, or spam a high number of actions. The guild
card Farseers can be discarded to pick up a card from the discard pile. Likewise, Call to Action lets
you draw an extra action card. Another card that is particularly useful is Lattice Spies, which lets
you steal the initiative and launch a huge powerplay. Be sure that you don’t end up going all in with
your agents into a head-to-head battle with another player. It’s a waste of both of your resources.
Instead, try to in uence and secure a card quickly. Using relics are a great way to set this up without
wasting an action pip on an aggression card. Remember that aggression cards have fewer action
pips on them which makes relics a valuable resource. Let other players compete with each other for
the perceived best cards.

5. The Euro-Gamer

If you love setting up an engine and cranking out resources, the Euro Gamer approach might be the
way to go. Dig in on a few planets with two build spaces that are reasonably close, choose the
resource that you want to focus on, and push the related ambition. If you secure the Fuel Cartel
guild card for instance, you might want to crank out material so that you can declare Tycoon and
dominate both resources. When you attack other players, rather than destroying ships, you should
roll raid dice in spaces that have defending buildings. Use any keys that you roll to steal resources
and cards. The dice can be ckle, so be sure to roll at least 2 dice for every 1 key you want to roll.
In your rst few games, be sure you don’t undervalue the swing that a raid can have once Tycoon
has been declared. Stealing an ambition out from under the person who declared it can be a ton of
fun.

6. The Warlord

The Warlord strategy is one that newer players and aggressive players will generally lean towards
because it’s not too technical, and it’s a lot of fun. It’s also great that you can build this one up from
chapter to chapter. It essentially requires that you have a combination of lots of Construction and
Aggression cards. Spam units onto the board and then destroy the other players. When it comes to
choosing attack dice, I would suggest damaging their ships with the blue skirmish dice rst. Then
hit them with a second attack using the red assault dice. This will minimize the intercept hits that
re ect back on your ships and it will maximize damage on theirs. Don’t forget that you can destroy
a city, provoke outrage, and ransack the Court. When you do this, you can secure any card that has
ANY number of the defender’s agents and take them as trophies. So if a card is looking particularly
rich, this might be a good time to pillage.

7. The Builder

In our group, one lore card that has consistently done well is Cloud Cities. This allows a player to
build cities on planets outside their building slots (1 per planet). It allows you to keep your forces
more concentrated, having up to 3 cities on a single planet, and to open up the +2 and +3 to won
ambitions slots on your player board. The earlier you do this, the more points you will compound. If
you build cities in systems that offer relics or psionics, then you can also get a lock on the Keeper
fl
fi
fl
fi
fi
 and Empath ambitions. On a sidenote, if you’re building starports, building two of them in one
space can be unnecessary, and they can be inviting targets since they don’t provoke outrage when
they’re destroyed. They will make a juicy place to raid, so you really don’t need more than 2 on the
board.

8. Hand Management

At times it may feel that your cards are poor. However, every card has a use and should be played or
sacri ced accordingly. Some suits are stronger than others. Recognizing which cards have the most
value is vital to winning this game. a) I’ve found that the weakest cards are Construction cards
because they are only useful at certain times. If you have limited starports, your card is also limited.
If your ships or structures aren’t damaged, they are again a weak suit. So don’t be afraid to burn an
extra construction card to steal initiative if you can set up a strong late-round power play with a
better suit. b) The next worst suit are mobilization cards. The in uence action is also part of the
Administration suit, and the move action is on Aggression cards. Most points won’t be scored by
moving or in uencing - rather, this is more of a setup suit. It will get you into position, or compete
on the court cards. c) Administration are the 2nd best cards because of their exibility with 3
actions, and because taxing lets you win many different ambitions - tycoon, keeper, and empath. d)
Being an attacker in battle is one of the most distinct advantages in the game. If you roll only blue
dice, you can beat up on your opponents without any risk. So Aggression cards help you get into
position, wipe out your opponents for the warlord ambition, or collect court cards. These are all
incredibly strong options.

9. Piggy-Backing

Having initiative is not the only way to score ambitions though. While some players will want to
control the game by choosing the ambitions, another approach is to spend turns developing
infrastructure, building ships, positioning units, and in uencing the Court cards. By balancing out
the ambitions that you’re competing for, you can discourage other players from declaring them until
you have amassed enough of an advantage to declare it yourself, or you can focus on the ambition
that gets declared and go for the steal. This works best if someone declares early. If they declare
late, you may need to predict, based on what you see them preparing for, and challenge them with a
late-round surge. This is more complicated at higher player counts. One of the best ways to
piggyback is to secure some strong court cards to pull off some sneaky late-chapter plays. In Arcs,
you need to know the value of suits.

10. Winning Initiative

This is the most self-evident strategy in the game. In order to score an ambition of your choosing,
you need to have the initiative and you must play a card with a symbol matching the ambition that
you want to declare and score at the end of that round. Whoever declares their ambition rst gets
the highest scoring marker. So you’ll be rewarded for declaring early. However, by declaring early,
you also tip your hand so other players will know what they should compete for. Controlling
initiative is generally desirable if you want to maximize your action pips and control the ow of the
game. However, holding initiative later in a chapter is preferable because you’ll have a better sense
of where players are strong. If your strategy is to be

the player to control the declarations, you should rst set yourself up to win that particular
ambition. Players are less likely to challenge you for rst place if they can see that you’ve got it
fi
fl
fi
fi
fl
fl
fl
fi
fl
well in hand. For example, if you declare Warlord, be sure that you either have a high number of
trophies in advance, or that you have the capacity to win more trophies than any other player.