Ark Nova is a game about building zoos, or is it a race game which includes zoo-building activities? Debates about what exactly Ark Nova is crop up regularly on BoardGameGeek, but whatever it is, no one can deny that gameplay involves placing components on a zoo board: variously sized animal enclosures and other buildings within the map part of the board, or University and Partner Zoo tokens to the right of the map space. The base game comes with 10 map variants printed on 8 double-sided boards, maps numbered 1–8 on one side, and 4 copies each of Map 0 and Map A on the other, and I’ll be taking a look at all of the maps here. (For information on everything other than maps, check out the many Ark Nova articles elsewhere on the blog.)
The most obvious difference between the boards is the layout of the map, which affects how easy it is to spread buildings across the map (e.g., because of the positioning of rock and water spaces, you have to be more careful on some than others so as not to block yourself from being able to place a large enclosure in your zoo), as well as the positions of placement bonuses (whereby you gain something as a result of covering particular spaces). Additionally, those bonuses vary across boards, as do the rewards for completing Conservation Projects, adding Partner Zoos or Universities and unlocking Workers. The ‘easy’ maps in the base game, Map A (recommended for your first play) and Map 0, are particularly generous with rewards and have fairly easy to navigate layouts—see later for details.
Why have so many maps? Once you get beyond the beginner-level maps, you’ll find the rest offer interesting mixtures of rewards and challenges, with the potential for asymmetric play if that rocks your boat. The recommended way to start the game is either each player grabs a pair of maps (excluding A and 0) at random and chooses one, or randomly select one more map than the number of players, and in reverse player order, each person selects the one they’ll play with. In my games, we tend to skip that and either use common maps or deliberately pick ones that look fun and interesting.
Before I discuss any maps in detail, be aware that I’m no Ark Nova expert. I love the game and play it a lot, but that doesn’t mean I’m particularly good at it! Better players than me may have other opinions about the merits of different maps. I’ll also be focussing mainly on map bonuses, since I’ve not got enough experience of playing the different maps to get a particularly good feel for their layout beyond some fairly obvious points.
Map A and Map 0
Both maps have a nice balance of rock and water spaces, such that there are narrow and wide areas (the latter beneficial for placing large buildings); they also offer a generous Conservation Point on each Break on one of the Conservation Project reward spaces, which can help build up a score quickly.
Map A additionally starts players with a couple of buildings already on the board. This helps introduce newcomers to the various actions in the game, though it can also restrict how players develop their initial strategy. Ark Nova’s rules for placing buildings stipulate that your first must be at the border of the map and subsequent ones must touch already placed buildings, which means that on Map A, you have no choice to start at the bottom left corner, where the prebuilt enclosure is sited, even if your initial hand of cards would work better with a different starting location—such as you might get with Map 0.
Map 1: Observation Tower
The first of the specialised maps, this one does away with the Conservation Point on each Break reward, meaning players will have to work a little harder to progress along the Conservation track.
The novel feature of the map is the Observation Tower space, such that placing an animal into an adjacent standard enclosure gains you a couple of extra Appeal Points. This doesn’t feel to me like an amazing benefit, and of more concern is the location of the Level-II Build spaces, which make it tricky to expand out from the Observation Tower, or to reach it from elsewhere, depending where you start building your zoo.
Map 2: Outdoor Areas
The interesting feature here is that enclosures placed adjacent to the gates space are treated as having a capacity 2 points beyond their size (e.g., you could put a ‘size 5’ animal in a 3-space enclosure). This could be helpful if you have a several large animals in your hand, essentially making their enclosures 4 Money cheaper.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t use this map very often, but I keep forgetting that these enclosures are bigger; I’ve taken to popping a player token on top as a reminder.
Map 3: Silver Lake
This is the map I’ll pick if I want to bump my chances of winning! Money is often a struggle early in a game of Ark Nova: you don’t gain a lot on each Break because your Appeal is low to begin with, and animals and enclosures are expensive. Appeal increases once you have a few animals in the zoo, and Money comes in much more rapidly as a result. Silver Lake has a bunch of spaces which more or less reimburse the Money you spend placing enclosures on them, which can be a huge kickstart to your game. The map layout is fairly friendly too, with the Level-II Build spaces all hidden out of the way in a corner, leaving the rest of the zoo easily navigable.
Map 4: Commercial Harbour
The harbour is tucked down in the lower left of the map, and as soon as any building has been placed adjacent to it, you can sell a card from your hand once per turn for 3 Money. Ark Nova (at least the way I play it, which might not be optimal) tends to favour hands with low card counts, and I seldom have enough cards to take advantage of Pouching (an action on certain animal cards such that when you play them, you can tuck other cards from your hand for points) or Sunbathing (similar, but selling cards), so the likelihood of capitalising on the harbour is minimal. Perhaps I need to find time to experiment with a card accumulation strategy, just so that I have spare cards…
Aside from that, water and rock spaces are scattered across the map, which does mean more thought is required to ensure you have sufficient space to slot in larger buildings.
Map 5: Park Restaurant
The restaurant in the middle of the board is kind of like a super-Kiosk, earning money per occupied space (rather than per building) on Breaks. The map also has an interesting Conservation Project reward allowing players to build either a Reptile House or Aviary for free, even if the Build action is still at Level I—however, as the rock and water spaces are scattered across the map, you’ll need to take care that you don’t accidentally box yourself in, unable to place such a large enclosure.
Map 6: Research Institute
Like Commercial Harbour, this has a special feature in the bottom left corner. Once a building has been placed adjacent to it, you can ignore a single requirement when playing an animal, such as not having the relevant Partner Zoo, or another animal of the same type already, or—best of all—having an upgraded Animals action card. Note that you can’t ignore water or rock conditions, nor the size of the animal’s enclosure or cost.
The benefit of this feature depends heavily on what animal cards are drawn, as there are relatively few low-cost animals with pesky conditions; however, being able to play a high-scoring animal later in the game, without Animals on Level-II can be beneficial.
Aside from that, the map layout is quite an easy one to exploit.
Map 7: Ice Cream Parlours
This map encourages the placement of Kiosks, with placement bonuses letting you place one for free. Additionally, when all three bonus spaces are covered, your Break income from Kiosks is doubled.
That’s all; not very interesting—or maybe I’m playing it wrong.
Map 8: Hollywood Hills
I find this a difficult map to get on with. The placement bonuses let you search the deck for Sponsor cards, and when you’ve covered all of them, playing a Sponsor becomes cheaper. That’s all sort of interesting and worthwhile, but the layout of the map is tricky: all the rock spaces are at the bottom and all the water close to the top, making it a struggle to get the right enclosures for some animal types.
Wrap Up
That was a quick run through the 10 maps in Ark Nova.
Note that, apart from when the group is using Map A or Map 0, everyone is playing with a different map, adding a level of asymmetry to the game. It’s not necessarily fair asymmetry, though, but I have no objection to handing a less experienced player Silver Lake, or even Map 0 or Map A, to give them a leg up; that does depend on the person, though, as they might feel like they’re not playing the game ‘properly’ when given such an advantage.
You can find several discussions on BoardGameGeek, such as this tier list, which pays attention to the zoo layout as well as bonuses, or how the different maps work for solo play. While opinions differ among people, some maps do seem to be accepted as much better or worse than others (like Silver Lake—have I mentioned that already?).
Next time I’ll take a look at the additional map board in Map Pack 1 and Map Pack 2.
