Roux Dat #65: Orbit, Everdell Farshore, and Res Arcana

Summer means lots of gaming with lots of different folks, especially as we prepare for my nephew and frequent Twitch Tuesdays streaming partner, Jerod, to move his family to a different state. In between moving boxes, Jerod was able to play a few games with us recently, and Mitchell is off for the summer, so we got some gaming in with him and Doug, too.

First up, we played ORBIT, the new Reiner Knizia racing game from Bitewing Games. I say new, but I can never tell with Knizia designs. His games are so frequently republished by other companies, that it is hard to say. For sure, ORBIT was new to me. 

Right off the bat, the gorgeous Vincent Dutrait art caught my eye. The game is essentially a race between players to visit a number of planets in the solar system faster and more efficiently than other players. I loved the simple rule set: Play card, move your ship up to that number of spaces, take any special bonus actions the card gives, and move the planets. It’s that easy.

Of course, the fact that the planets move around the solar system on orbits — hence the name of the game — is the trick of the game. Since each player moves at least a planet or two (and sometimes all of them, in the most fun chaos you can imagine), it’s tricky to plan your moves to meet up with the planets, but each player is giving three bonus power tokens to help. For those of you who have only played the base game, I’m probably confusing you a bit, since Mitchell threw in a bunch of modules that came with the game. Honestly, none of them were so complicated as to slog the game, so when I play this again, I will definitely insist on throwing them all in. 

Next, Doug stopped by on our Euro Monday game night to bring his copy of Everdell Farshore. It’s been a few years since Jerod and I played it on stream, so Doug gave a quick refresher. Essentially, it’s Everdell but with a nautical theme and streamlined gameplay. 

Gone are the confusing rules about “opening locations” or “doors to play characters”. Instead, players are given anchors that allow you to play characters from locations that are similar for free. Plus, many of the actions and cards give you a bonus of moving your ship down this track on the bottom of the board, which not only scores you a ton of points, but also gives you some wild resource tokesn. 

Everdell Farshore is the way to play Everdell for me. It’s breezy, and I really love the competition that the ships create. I’m not as big a fan of the “disappearing islands”, strong locations that disappear midway through the game, but I am assuming it is for balancing purposes so it’s not a big deal. 

Finally, back in the Gumbo Pot, we played Res Arcana. I played this on TTS many years ago during the pandemic and never could grok exactly what we were doing. Have I ever mentioned that playing games on TTS is just not as intuitive or interesting to me? (BGA is so much better). I picked up a copy of Res Arcana at BGG CON and it’s been sitting on my Shelf of Opportunity ever since, but Mitchell was kind enough to teach it. 

Res Arcana is a deck management game with an engine building component and a unique drafting mechanic to build your deck. The game is all about quickly putting together the best engine combo that you can, and racing to get a set number of points (the amount depends on whether you are throwing in some expansions). 

Playing it live on the table made so much more sense. I had picked a character card that was a necromancer-type, and once I understood that you have to lean hard into the character and try to put together combinations of cards in your tableau that support the character’s ability to score points, I was off and running. 

I would definitely play this again, and would love to try some more expansion content. This is the kind of game where little tweaks to the rules and additional cards would be intriguing. I used to like playing CCGs a lot but got tired of making decks. Games like Res Arcana scratch that CCG itch for me without the hassle of poring over thousands of cards in a deck list. 

All in all, a solid week of gaming. If I had to rank them in terms of an envie to play them again, I’d have to go Everdell Farshore, Res Arcana, and then ORBIT, although to be honest, I’d play any of the three if offered. 

Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo