Designed by: Rüdiger Dorn
In Arkadia each player helps build a castle in the centre of the board, and as they do so, bring more workers to the area who pitch their tents in the surrounding landscape, attracting more workers.
The foundations of the castle are placed in the centre of the board and each player is given a player screen (in the form of a marquee tent) and some building cards to hide behind it. They are also given some workers of their own colour.
On your turn you can either play a card and place a building on the board – adding a seal of a particular colour – or place workers. Both buildings and workers must go adjacent to the castle, or to previously-placed buildings and workers. As soon as a building is surrounded, the player whose turn it is collects the seal on the building, and adds a tower to the castle in the centre of the board – so your principle aim is to collect seals. Four times during the game you can cash your seals in, and generate some extra workers into the bargain.
But wait – each tower added to the castle also shows a seal colour, and the value of the seals depends on how many seals are visible in the castle when you choose to cash in. So both the timing of cashing in your seals and the placement of towers in the castle is crucial, both in terms of increasing your own seal value and hampering your opponents’.
So the *** complexity rating of Arkadia comes not from its rules, which are fairly simple, but the depth of strategy the game offers.
No direct combat, but players are trying to reduce the value of seals their opponent has.
As long as nobody treats it like Grandmaster-level chess, Arkadia plays quite quickly.
Again it depends on the players - Arkadia is deeper than the rules suggest, but not so deep that it should eat up a whole evening.
Building cards come out randomly and these dictate a lot of the game, so along with the reasonably short play-time this Arkadia justifies multiple plays.
2-4
Players
10+
Years
90-120
Mins
Sam says
Arkadia inhabits a dusty corner of boardgame land, which itself is not always that accessible. But for me it's a really nice puzzle-style game, where you're trying to make the best moves with the Tetris-like pieces on the board and trying to sabotage your opponents plans with the castle-building.