A slam-bang dungeon crawl where the heroes aren’t always on the same side, Arcadia Quest (Thiago Aranha, Guilherme Goulart, Eric M. Lang, Fred Perret) gives you and your pals competing guilds, heroes, and a unified goal to destroy a vampire lord (naturally) to take back Arcadia for yourselves over a branching, right-sized campaign,
Dice, levels, and mechanics made to minimize downtime mix a dungeon dive’s best elements while neutralizing downtime and boring enemy AI. It’s a spicy mix, so read on to see if Arcadia Quest’s unique blend is a good fit for your table.
The Guild Code
Arcadia Quest gets its adventure going with your chosen guild, and with it, three unique heroes that you’ll be leveling up over the course of the branching campaign (more on that later). Each of these heroes gets their own equipment, gains their own levels, and lets you tweak to get a unique build that suits your playstyle and, hopefully, obliterates your opponents.
See, Arcadia Quest isn’t a traditional Player vs. Monsters dungeon crawler. You’ll start every scenario with the map laid out and the quests everyone’s aiming for all out on display. From the get go, you’ll be making plans for where to move, who to strike, and what objectives are the best fits for your chosen squad.
Those quests cover a variety of typical goals—kill monsters or find items—and more fiendish trophies, like killing your pals’ heroes or delivering a relic across the map, making your transporter a target. Complete enough quests, 3 at four players, and you’ll win the round, giving you added bonuses and the control of choosing the next scenario.
That might sound perfunctory, but picture this: your greedy monk is about to grab an enchanted goblet, completing a quest, only for your buddy to sneak past a nearby monster and backstab your monk. Dice fly across the table, criticals are rolled. Your monk’s measly armor fails and the poor fist flinger bites it. You’ll be able to respawn him by resting your guild, but in the meantime, your killer has a free run at the item.
Or does he?
Monsters in Arcadia Quest are purely reactive, attacking when heroes strike them, enter their space, or leave it, but control of those monsters goes to the player to the right of their target, ensuring every interest in wholesale slaughter. The thief who took out your monk might find himself pursued by the nearby monster and punched into an early grave, leaving that goblet to tantalize another foolish hero.
This all plays out fast, keeping downtime to a minimum and promoting player interaction. Turns zip as heroes wander across the map, whacking each other and more malevolent foes. The dice are wildly random, but match the theme, giving rise to howls of victory or mocking jeers as rolls warrant. Arcadia Quest isn’t meant to be a hard-boiled math fest, but the decisions leading to those chucking dice aren’t moronic: crafting the right team, aiming for the proper quests, and preventing your opponents from success all reward skill rather than just luck.
Arcadia Quest doesn’t bury all this beneath a keyword mountain, either. It’s easy to grasp, and the clean, well-done art, cards, and figures make this a great game for families. Arcadia Quest isn’t a kids game per se, but this is a much faster onboarding than something like Sword and Sorcery or Gloomhaven. A typical round, once rules are known, lasts about an hour, though avoiding quests for repeating hero slaughter can stretch things out.
If there’s a warning with Arcadia Quest, it’s that setup time and placing all those tiles to build the dungeon map before play can take some effort. Because everything’s set out in advance, giving yourself fifteen minutes or more to put it all together is key.
You’ll also want to be sure you’ll be able to get a consistent group of three or four together. Those players need to be fine with PVP combat, and while this isn’t punitive—there’s no player elimination, for example—it’s crucial to engage with your opponents to have a chance at winning. Pacifists need not apply.
That said, once your group is assembled, get set for a fantastic adventure.
A Campaign You’ll Actually Finish
Campaigns are everywhere in board gaming, but PVP campaigns with branching scenarios are rare, especially outside of wargames like Undaunted: Stalingrad. Arcadia Quest offers up something a bit more bite-sized. In the base game you’ll find 11 possible scenarios, though you’ll only play up to six in a single campaign. Something you and your family or friends could knock out over winter break, or even a weekend in a cabin, squirreled away with your ale, dice, and victory’s fresh pine scent.
Scenario winners will drive the campaign, though between maps everyone can spend gold gained on new items in a mini card-passing draft, which is frankly an awesome way to drive a dynamic market. Three times you’ll pick and pass cards, then have the chance to buy from what you’ve chosen and assign those
items to your heroes.
Any heroes that bit the dust in the last mission will also draw curses, which have a variety of negative effects, making it doubly important to incapacitate your pals along the way to victory. Maybe you’ll lock them out of an ability, or keep them from equipping an item. Then you’ll dive into your next mission, adjusting your tactics to take advantage of new abilities and which opponent might be leading.
What’s perhaps most important here is that the campaign’s overall winner can be how you like it. The rules give the victory to whomever lands the final blow on the big bad, letting underdogs claim victory, but it’s easy to hand accolades to whomever has the most medals earned from completing quests, or who won the most individual scenarios. The key is that you’re never ‘out’ of the running in Arcadia Quest, and if you can keep players engaged until a campaign’s end, that’s a major win.
Expansions, Editions, and All The Extras
So this might all sound wonderful, but a quick search for Arcadia Quest on Noble Knight (and elsewhere) will turn up all manner of options. Initially crowdfunded by CMON, Arcadia Quest has seen numerous reprints and additional campaigns throughout its decade-long life. Here’s a quick guide to giving this adventure a shot:
- Arcadia Quest Base Game – all you need to get into this adventure. Heroes, missions, monsters, and the campaign for up to four players. Start here.
- Arcadia Quest: Inferno – a standalone expansion that adds in new mechanisms. A good choice if you want to start your Arcadia Quest adventure with an angels and demons theme.
- Collections – When you’re looking at a crowdfunded game by CMON, you’re going to get mountains of expansions, promos, and other goodies. Arcadia Quest is much the same, and these bundles give you everything (or most everything) at a discount, perfect for holidays or special birthdays for someone who’ll love it.
And, last but not least, I’ll call out Starcadia Quest, a science fiction version. With similar player vs player action, but with a unique campaign, this is one to grab if you like the gameplay described above but want lasers instead of magic. Which, who can blame you?
All in all, there’s a lot of Arcadia Quest out there, but the base game or Inferno offer meaty beginnings at a great cost for the content. Once you’ve given them a shot and want to try more, looking at the many smaller expansions and extra heroes can bring fresh fun to a beloved game.
A Dungeon Delved
Engaging, interactive, player-vs-player campaigns are hard to find, and Arcadia Quest is one of the best, whether you’re jumping in with the base game or a bundle. Suitable for just about everyone, with sessions playable on any weeknight, this is a campaign you’ll actually finish and replay time and time again with family, friends, and the strangers crashing on your couch.
Which is, really, what board gaming is all about.
