As I described in the previous article about Ark Nova’s maps, you have a choice of 8 different maps to play with, as well as a couple of ‘beginner’ level options. However, it might not take too many plays before you crave something new… That’s where Map Pack 1 and Map Pack 2 come in. The first contains only 2 sheets, each with maps 9 and 10 on either side; the second has 4 map sheets, maps 11–14 on one side, with the same fifth map on the reverse (for more details on Map Pack 2’s maps, see the review article elsewhere on the blog). Each pack does come with a rather terse rulesheet, which will need close attention to get the best out of the maps.
Map 9: Geographical Zoo (Pack 1)
In this map, the zoo is divided into 5 segments, one for each continent in the game, and coloured to match that continent. The first time you place an animal in its continent, you gain a reward, and doing this for all 5 continents gains an additional Conservation Point. One of the Conservation Project awards is the ability to claim one a continent completion award, which can be the clincher that gets you all 5. The map is an interesting puzzle to play as the individual segments don’t give you much room to manoeuvre, especially where the Level-II Build spots are. However playing a continent-straddling Aquarium (from the Marine Worlds expansion) or Reptile House can really pay off, letting you use the same enclosure for a pair of continents.
Map 10: Rescue Station (Pack 1)
This is my current favourite map. 3 of the placement bonuses let you perform Digging, i.e., discard a card from your hand or from the display before replenishing from the deck, with the added twist that if the discarded card is an animal (excluding Petting Zoo animals), you can tuck the card under the map. This tucked card behaves as if it’s in your zoo, contributing all of the icons on the top. This is great if an expensive, multi-icon animal turns up early in the game, especially if it has a heap of difficult to meet requirements. You don’t get any of the rewards at the bottom of the card, nor can you release than animal, but the additional icons can be very useful in meeting Conservation Project goals.
I like the layout of this one, too, with its mix of open space and clustered rock and water spaces.
Map 11: Caves (Pack 2)
The special placement bonus here provides the ability to tuck a card from your hand under the map for safe keeping. The card behaves as if it’s in your hand, but doesn’t count towards your hand limit, so can be a way to avoid losing a useful late game card; additionally, you gain 2 Money for each tucked card on Breaks. The distribution of rock, water and Level-II spaces is similar to Rescue Station, making this one relatively easy to build on flexibly.
The other intriguing feature of this map (and some of the others in Map Pack 2) is that, unlike earlier maps where you gain a reward on the second University or Partner Zoo acquisition, the equivalent rewards in this case occur when you acquire your first University and first Partner Zoo and then on acquiring the second of both. I find that more often than not, I concentrate on Partner Zoos and ignore Universities or vice versa—this map makes me think more about balancing them.
Finally, most maps let you gain extra Workers fairly quickly; this one is less generous with Workers, but does include a couple of Extra Shift bonuses, letting you pull a deployed Worker back in order to play again. Not as useful as an actual extra Worker, but will allow for an additional Association action if you’re clever with your timing.
Map 12: Artificial Intelligence (Pack 2)
In this map, the novel bonuses essentially let you boost the strength of action slots. On each relevant bonus, you cover the leftmost uncovered action slot strength, skipping over 3, and then, when it comes time to play an action, you treat its strength as that of the next uncovered spot. I.e., if you collected all 4 bonuses, action slots 1 and 2 behave as if they were strength 3, and 4 and 5 behave as if they have strength 6. This almost eliminates the need to accumulate X-Tokens. The positions of those bonuses is interesting: 2 are diagonally opposite on the map, which makes them a bit of a struggle to reach, whereas the others are granted on acquisition of the second University or third Worker.
One of the Conservation Project bonuses is to grab all animal cards from the display, which could be beneficial in the right situation.
Map 13: Drawing Board (Pack 2)
Somewhat akin to the Geographical Zoo, the map is split into segments, 4 this time which meet only in the middle. You start with an enclosure right in the centre (and thus you have to build out from there), gaining rewards when you fill a complete segment. These rewards are received immediately on completion as well as on every Break.
I’m not overly keen on this map—space is very tight, and some of the segment rewards aren’t particularly outstanding. Squeezing in large enclosures can be a struggle, and conversely, I find I’m spamming small enclosures, Kiosks and Pavilions to completely fill a segment, so this is one map where flipping the Build action to Level II early can help.
Map 14: Lagoon (Pack 2)
Like Hollywood Hills, this focusses on Sponsors. The bonuses let you search the deck for Sponsor cards, and one of the Conservation Project bonuses lets you play a Sponsor immediately and without cost. The positioning of the rock and water spaces makes this map feel quite open.
Um, that’s it. I can’t really get very excited about this map.
Tournament Map 1: (Pack 2)
The Tournament Map exists really to give all players the same map to work with, which is more difficult than the ‘beginner level’ Map A and Map 0. Its special power is, once you’ve grabbed the topmost Conservation Project reward, the ability to boost the strength of an action by discarding a card (similar to boosting using X-Tokens).
Final Words
I acquired the map packs only recently and haven’t played with them very many times yet. Still, there are some I like (especially Rescue Station and Artificial Intelligence) and some I’m less keen on (Lagoon). As I said last time, if I want to increase my chances of winning, I’d pick Silver Lake, for the sake of getting that money boost early in the game, but if I want to stretch my brain and explore, the maps in these packs are more intriguing than most in the base game.
On the downside, the lack of balance across the maps does bias the game, so I prefer to use common maps for fair(er) games: Tournament 1 Map is nice for 3–4-player games and more challenging than Map 0 from the base game; and the Geographical Zoo and Rescue Station mechanics make for fun 2-player games. I tend reserve the other maps for solo games, though it’s possible to have interesting games where everyone picks their favourite maps. Of course, you can increase the number of common maps by buying more copies of the map packs, though I’m not sure the Map Pack 2 maps are interesting to warrant that.
The big question is: do you need these map packs to enjoy Ark Nova? No, but do you want them… Probably, though only after you’ve added Marine Worlds to your collection—that brings a lot more novelty to the game.
Before leaving, I should also note a couple of other sources of maps.
Map variants originating on BoardGameArena are available as part of the Ark Nova 3Dition crowdfunding project. These, as this BoardGameGeek thread explains, involve layout adjustments to maps 1–8 derived from analysing a large number of plays, ‘so that each map plays a little differently and has something new to explore.’ There’s no word yet that these will be hitting retail, but I have my fingers crossed.
And finally, if all these maps aren’t enough for you, folk on BGG have been creating their own maps, and you can even make one yourself.
