Ark Nova Marine Worlds - The expansion that fixes, refreshes and more.

the wonderful Marine World in arnova Marine World expansion we are going to show you what's in the expansion and then what we think of the expansion AR NOA is probably up there almost like terraforming M I think for us almost no depends on the day I'm still I'm still in terraforming M's camp but I do enjoy this game yeah I mean a lot of people compare those two which has got sort of similar feeling different theme but I can see anyways that's for another discussion we have reviewed AR NOA and we actually started playing AR NOA a little bit later than most people indeed I think I think it had been out a year and a half before you ever had the chance to play it I got I got one game in a bit earlier than you did but yes it took its time that's true now we've been playing this over and over again including in board game arena at least I am and hello by the way I am Stella from mle University and this is ter also from ail University so let us know if you picked this up at Essen I picked this up at Essen the queue was really long and people has started to line up from day one but seems like they have a lot in stock so actually you know I think everyone's got it I'm pretty sure and I'm pretty sure they were probably slightly some left over I might be wrong but they're just very prepared so what does this bring what sort of expansion is Marine worlds T yeah we'll just say up front this is a you know there's a couple of little modules it's not a huge expansion you'll find there's not big Earth shattering mechanisms that get brought which I like I that's a spoiler I mean I love the mechanics so I don't want things to change for me anyway so I'm glad that this doesn't change a lot of things yeah so let's go from smallest change to biggest change I suppose okay we've got uh new tokens that's very simple uh there's new wooden tokens representing your different uh different player pieces so your uh knowledge track your ticket track your conservation points track and these little uh animal ones they represent the tokens on the right hand on the left hand side of your board of Cubes faite my favorite is the penguin look how cute it is like seriously whe and the second favorite is probably the fish I think you play I've seen you play the fish before yep and Tada they don't stand up as well as they don't stand up they do uh well they're like what do you expect they're like joink and there a yellow one which is what is is is a cat uh monkey monkey sorry monkey and that is a cat cat thank you so yes come on you have to do it like this because it's like look the tax heater you have to show the tax heater oh I didn't realize it wasn't printed by we go there you go yes okay um this adds nothing to gameplay this is just a pretty component I'm more than happy with a little hexagonal cylinder okay fine I'm happy although the little hexagonal cylinder it's kind of like it doesn't fit this anymore I mean you have to stand it up and that's okay except this one no it's fine it's fine but it's fine they're cute it's uh it's the sort of upgrade that you like out of a game that gets big and gets play a lot yes all right uh let's move on to the the two things that I guess are little fixes these are probably the only things that are fixers to the base game I would say and I I like them I think they're both good fixes yep uh one is it's probably the best fix on the bonus tokens uh these there's some new bonus tokens and a number of the bonus tokens from the original game are replaced with these gray versions or maybe there only one that's replaced but there's a few more that come in which are great and when you take this bonus token from the board uh instead of having to resolve the immediate effect immediately you hold the token and you can flip it over and use it at a later time so that is you know this one here was the pay the strength to play a sponsor card thing and if you got that when you didn't have the sponsor card that's okay I love it yeah you would lost that opportunity earlier on so now you get to uh get the full reward from that benefit so that's pretty good H for sure uh the other thing that is a it's a little ad and I think it is a little fix as well I I consider it a little fix is there's a fourth University now and with that University you can get one microscope point and one icon of an animal of your choice so there's six uh universities over on the side no Bears still so bears are still difficult but if you're trying to build up icons of a certain type uh when you get this University you then choose one of these and you get the icon you get to search for an animal of that type so yeah magnif glass yes so you start flipping through the deck until you find an animal that has that so it's a good way to combo up that icon and what do you do with the rest of the deck just discard it it's either discard or it goes back on the bottom I can't remember which but the deck is like that tall now so uh I don't I don't think maybe it's not that it's like it's this doll this this doll literally we haven't sleeved ours yet though oh yeah but then if it's sleeve it's that tall it won't stay that much so you need a 3D printer insert so otherwise it's got ghost everywhere this is first world problem and this is board g board gamers problem yes yeah it's like oh no I've put a slippery nonflat thing on my cards and now they're not stacking oh no what's you gonna do you're just gonna how how could I have foreseen this yes yes so this is this is a great Edition because then we'll probably it's a good segue to talk about the Marine Marine World where these icon will combo each other yeah so this is the new cards element of the game it has got this symbol y as means that is the expansion Marine wall expansion yep and this is really the Nam sake so this is adding Marine creatures there's a new type of creature which has this octopus icon here these are the Marine creatures and most of them can only live in aquariums yay so these work much like the reptile houses or the aviaries in terms of filling up spots unlike your other animals most of them cannot go in a normal enclosure you can't stick a clown fish on the ground because that won't uh that won't work and that's indicated by this red hex here that means you can't put it in a normal enclosure it only goes in an aquarium and you don't flip it yes aquarium has to go next to water but then it itself counts as water which I think is a nice little different puzzle that you can play on your zoo board and so that's that's really what it brings these new cards they have some different keywords they have some different types of abilities and these ones are have Reef dwellers which is nice uh when you get these ones with coral they're smaller effects but if you get several of them uh every new reef dweller you get triggers all of your previous Reef dwellers as well yeah and this is little fixes as well I guess or balancing mechanic which is the waves yeah I think this balances itself so when a wave card comes out it basically just gets rid of the last card in the display so it sweeps the cards through the the six card display a little bit more quickly uh that is because the deck is this much no way this much I'm not going to call that a fix I'm going to I'm going to call that a self a self fix because you a bunch more cards to the deck and now to see the percentage of the deck you need to you need these in there to to move them through a little faster I'll let you do that yeah it was always something that I'll let you do that it was always it was always the biggest difference I found between two-player arova and four player arnova was that you see a lot more of the deck and you've got a higher chance the card you want disappearing if you're playing a four player game found you never saw that much and it was a bit static at two players y I love this game but it can be a bit like that it's like oh no it's hot but so this is good this is to search at least one in the deck because sometimes all you need is one you're probably going to start collecting this particular animal is because a because of the objective or B it's because you already have several and you need to complete something for another objective so probably that just last one that you need which is really nice who plays that on B Mara let me know in the comments it's not as good as the physical one of course and there's no expansion of marine worlds in borim Marina I don't know how they're going to do that I don't think they I'm sure ever been expansion in borim Marina it's only the best game so far that I've seen but yeah this is a good it's nice that they've added this to balance out the expansion's own thing you know it was something that uh everel uh idel Miss on its original expansions it added all these extra cards and then your combinations between Critter and um construction you just hardly ever saw them so then when they when they eventually recognized that and they came back with new Leaf as the fifth expansion they added a bunch of like wild combo you had the opportunity to do some wild Combos and it balanced out how hard it was to make those combinations so I think this is the equivalent they've sort of recognized it uh added cards but then made them go through a little more quickly yeah which is great I I don't mind that at all um all of that is like little tiny tweaks probably the biggest thing this game adds is the special action cards and even then it's not it's really nice it's not earth shatteringly big but it's a really nice uh I think it's really nice it's the bit I find most interesting all right and that brings us to the last thing that comes with this expansion and this is probably the biggest change to the game it's still not an earth shattering change I don't think but it's I think it's the biggest change and that is the special action cards I think it's really lovely so what you do is you draft it at the start of the game you will have three of these which you take one and then pass into the next opponent and you ended up with three and you choose one to discard and keep two and the rest the the rest three would be just a standard card yes and each of these gives you a little bonus exactly and slightly different look this actually if you play only one animal at five you may ignore one condition for example the building is Squad if yeah that's a good way of getting your doing something if you don't have the partnership or yeah playing Things Early yeah cards here you can see this one uh doesn't have the discards you just draw yes um this is actually a good shortcut icon on the side yeah and the building is really nice if you're into building I usually I tend to gravitate it towards building although at the end I might abandon my strategy anyways the buildings uh this one here you may pay three to build one additional kiosk so and then if you flip it you may pay two to build one additional kiosk this one here plus one strength on a build action and it's plus one strength for upgraded and then you may build more than one of the same standard enclosure the original rule is that you can only you can't do double of the same one and this one might be my favorite maybe not it's just like it's kind of like double hedge sword I can I can tell you why as well so the standard one you and the special one is you may pay two to cover one rock or water space so that this is really good this gives you a lot of flexibility special rotation especially for me that can't really rotate things very well uh when you upgrade it you may C for one rock or water space gain two if you do so this kind of encourage you to cover it to give you money once you upgrade it the card but if you fill up your whole board not the Rock and water space then you get some benefit like seven income I think seven seven tickets seven tickets and that means that if you keep covering that that means you cover less of the space that you actually want to cover that's what I say you know and then less bonus on that so um I think we use it moderately is it's what I have been doing I've enjoyed this one uh this lets you unlock as a five strength Association task you can unlock a new worker yeah that's really good easy good way to get some early worker and then later on uh placing extra workers reduces the strength required for so I I've quite enjoyed that one and this one's also really good one of the ah this one tan so the animals so if you have no animal card in hand after finishing this action you hunt four or six give you like different strategy different flexibility it's really good yeah I like that it gives you it gives you a different thing to think about and a different uh thing that you can try to optimize on without again changing the whole core mechanics of the game if you are let's say if you haven't played Arn NOA at all and turn this expansion I don't think it's going to be overwhelming no more so than the original game yeah but if you have been playing a lot this feels like oh there's new things that you can combo you the things that you can go after so I think it's good for either beginner or vet veteran of arnova yeah and I come I come back to the I guess the starting point around you know we compare arkov and terraforming LS get compared so much because they're both games where you're building up hands and trying to combo them into a big Tableau of useful stuff and you all the terraforming m expansions they added whole new boards new mechanics a whole government in one case um you know I think in many ways what we get out of this expansion is much less but very much what we're after just a bit of extra variety a couple of extra mechanics um and this one here you know again it's not gamebreaking these are not the sorts of powers that are going to drive your entire strategy they're just just going to shuffle things shift things around just a little bit and make for a different different way of thinking so yeah I like it yeah so do I let us know if you have been playing AR NOA or even in board game arena did you get a copy of marine worlds let us know as well cuz I really need to know maybe I'll play with you I don't know maybe maybe not I've got a few games going in Bame Marina um too many maybe um it's good to play it with a turn base but like one day per one turn per day or something like that so I'm like oh no I have to do this and every time like you when you do your turn I'll be like oh no now I have to do it now it's on me uh I was like half hoping that you don't do your turn too quick anyways there's a lot of thinking in this one I wouldn't want to have more than onega open at once oh actually that's true for for this and then you get confused oh I have this strategy was it for this game or this other game anyways and that is arnova Marine World please hit the like button if you find this useful somehow And subscribe to see what's more coming and hopefully you enjoy your day have a great great great day see you next time bye