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Having played a fair amount of the base game, I'm not sure if new monster types would really affect things. Most monsters are just fodder or range blockers standing in my way to grab tokens or gank family members' guilds.

In a perfect world CMON would put together some actual dungeon crawling rules for exploring the city or something, having to fight off wandering monster attacks rather than repeatedly murdering Hobsbawm and Seth as often as I see them reappear on the board, loading them up with death tokens and ending up with nothing worse than a nosebleed.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
In a perfect world CMON would put together some actual dungeon crawling rules for exploring the city or something, having to fight off wandering monster attacks rather than repeatedly murdering Hobsbawm and Seth as often as I see them reappear on the board, loading them up with death tokens and ending up with nothing worse than a nosebleed.

I think the way that AQ does monsters is far better than most dungeon crawlers. One of the major downsides of so many dungeon crawling games is that they require an extra player to control the monsters, which makes two player games a bit dry, and since monsters are often just fodder for the heroes, being the monster bitch isn't a fun job. Even in classic games like Space Hulk, playing the genestealers is quite a dull task. Some games like Super Dungeon Explore introduced AI cards to try and get around this, but it adds a ton of complexity to the game, and frankly doesn't add very much fun, unless you enjoy monotonously hacking away at wave after wave of mindless AI monsters. Arcadia Quest does it so much better IMO. They found a way to include monsters without anyone having to control them, or allowing the game to get bogged down with complicated AI mechanics. It's ridiculously fun, even with just two players.

AQ is really good like that, I think it's a mini-masterpiece of game design. Everything is as complicated as it needs to be, and no more. Traps are a good example: the first time I sprung a trap in AQ, I thought to myself "aww crap, here we go" as I thumbed through the rulebook for the section on traps, expecting some complicated system of dice rolls etc. Like in Super Dungeon Explore, where traps come in all different shapes and sizes and you have to roll to disarm them and such... But no, in AQ you just take a wound and throw the trap away, simple. That's honestly as complicated as traps need to be. They add an element of risk and tension to flipping tokens, without interfering with the flow of the game. Respawing heroes is another good example of something done right. In Super Dungeon Explore, players being killed was a huge issue, as it meant friends had to sit out the game and watch everyone else play. SPM added things like "princess coins" to try an get around it, but it was a fundamental problem with the game, the objective of the monster bitch is to knock out the players, it's the only way to win. In AQ, on the other hand, no one needs to play the monster bitch, and victory is determined by the objectives, so there is no need to knock anyone out of the game, everyone keeps playing and re-spawning until the end. The death tokens provide an incentive to stay alive (nosebleeds and blocked card slots are pretty annoying, as is loosing all your swag), but it isn't critical to the game. Sometimes I even suicide my weak and vulnerable heroes against monsters to prevent other players from scoring the kill objective.

While it is tempting to want to add more and more to games, I think what really makes a great game is when you can't take anything away (that whole "less is more" kind of thing). I really like most of the AQ mechanics the way they are. I think it's a very well designed game. All I really need from it is a change of scenery: a new campaign, some new enemies to clobber... but I wouldn't want big changes in the actual gameplay.

Smacks, that's incredibly kind! I'll be sure to pass it on to the very hard working design team.

Thanks for the patience and help with the updates! Here we are with an end of day recap!

All of this has been unlocked so far:



Gabriel is about $2k from being funded



And thanks to popular demand, a bevy of Acadia Quest Classic options have been unlocked for purchase.

Thornwood just replaced Pigsy as my favorite Arcadia Quest sculpt.

I *LOVE* the KING models. We now have a Human King, A Dwarf King and a Wood Elf King.

I wouldn't mind seeing some queens too. Super great for NPCs for Chibi RPG games.

 Smacks wrote:
[...being the monster bitch isn't a fun job. Even in classic games like Space Hulk, playing the genestealers is quite a dull task. ....

*shrug* I thoroughly enjoy playing the 'stealers in SH I never felt like I was simply running a shooting gallery for the SM player. GW's old Fury of Dracula game made playing Dracula a just as much fun as being one of the hunters, too. So it is possible for a game to allow all sides to have fun.

Oh, and a bit of co-op in the latest update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/coolminiornot/arcadia-quest-inferno/posts/1418862

As a recovering addict of Monster Hunter, the cooperative aspect of taking down a ridiculously powerful monster sounds right up my alley.

In fact, it would be kind of neat to see more scenarios fighting big monsters like this actually built into the campaign. Sort of a sidequest that you could unlock or something if you fulfill certain quests.

Naturally we'd need some more big monsters to fight...

Am I the only one that doesn't find the style/aesthetic of the miniatures apealing at all in this game IP? I get that they are going for the cute chibi look without completely ripping off SDE....but it just doesn't work for me at all. To each their own I suppose...as they say, "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder".

Yeah SDE minis look way better IMO, although this seems like a much better game.

@ Fango: I don't think you are. I'm torn between the models of SDE and AQ.

I find the monsters of SDE adorable; the AQ models have a strong aesthetic which, again, has kind of grown on me. But I find the range of creatures (and that apparently, they are little more than chaff) a bit off putting.

OTOH I used to much prefer the heroes from SDE. Really didn't like the AQ heroes at all. Now I find myself preferring the AQ heroes!

I'm pleased that although both are chibi styled they have a distinct take.

and if the AQ models are the production plastic then they look to have improved in sculpt quality since the original AQ!

With the SDE monsters, there's a lot more variety available, they're a lot more active, and some of them pack a serious punch, which makes them a lot more memorable to me.

AQ's baddies tend to go down in a flurry of CRIT rolls before they get a chance to do a whole lot, at least when we play.

Maybe it's just having an actual player controlling them (for most of the games we played) that makes the bad guys stand out more in SDE?

 Fango wrote:
Am I the only one that doesn't find the style/aesthetic of the miniatures apealing at all in this game IP? I get that they are going for the cute chibi look without completely ripping off SDE....but it just doesn't work for me at all. To each their own I suppose...as they say, "Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder".

Feeling the same way - also hah on your expression because I think a lot of it has to do with the eyes.

All the figs have this crazy wide-eyed lunatic stare and demonic grin. Looks ok on the demonic monster - looks creepy af on the "cute" heroes.

I kind of like the crazed AQ heroes. If you haven't gotten around to painting them (a problem many of us may have) the SDE heroes are just so plain, particularly the original ones. Having actual noses means it's possible to give the AQ heroes some personality (maybe too much, in some cases).

A co-op mode might see me joining in here!

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
With the SDE monsters, there's a lot more variety available, they're a lot more active, and some of them pack a serious punch, which makes them a lot more memorable to me.

AQ's baddies tend to go down in a flurry of CRIT rolls before they get a chance to do a whole lot, at least when we play.

Maybe it's just having an actual player controlling them (for most of the games we played) that makes the bad guys stand out more in SDE?

It's more the fact that in AQ, monsters are pretty much just ...ornamental for the most part. Unless you need them for a quest, there's almost no reason a player will end up engaging them at all.

Sining wrote:

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
With the SDE monsters, there's a lot more variety available, they're a lot more active, and some of them pack a serious punch, which makes them a lot more memorable to me.

AQ's baddies tend to go down in a flurry of CRIT rolls before they get a chance to do a whole lot, at least when we play.

Maybe it's just having an actual player controlling them (for most of the games we played) that makes the bad guys stand out more in SDE?

It's more the fact that in AQ, monsters are pretty much just ...ornamental for the most part. Unless you need them for a quest, there's almost no reason a player will end up engaging them at all.

Well that doesn't sound like fun :/

How do monster work here? Why don't you need to fight them, won't they attack you on their own? How do they spawn? With cards? There's the new digital campaign, can you play that with e.g. SDE minis as stand-ins for the original monsters? That might tempt me to jump in. Sigh, my monies...but I could use a squirrel as Cerberus.

PS: My internet is broken, so I can onlybe onlineduring lectures, so DLing and reading the rules is not the best way to answer my questions right now. Even if everything ismore interesting than pharmacoligical anticoagulationtherapy :lol

I love my arcadia quest minis. Super dungeon explore minis are extreme Anima style. Arcadia quest minis are more realistic but still chiba sculpts. They are far more detailed (cloaks, fabric, hair, teeth, eyes, etc). Oh and most of AQ minis are parody characters. I loved that about zombicide and I love that about this game.

I like sde, but I really like AQ and I am really liking this campaign. Yea for Eomer and Atreyu!!!! ( our son is named Lucas but was almost named atreyu, talk about a coincidence there!)

Sining wrote:
It's more the fact that in AQ, monsters are pretty much just ...ornamental for the most part. Unless you need them for a quest, there's almost no reason a player will end up engaging them at all.

You always get coins for killing them, which are important for buying upgrades at the end of the game. I will often try to pick off weaker monsters for some extra cash, and the stronger monsters are usually placed in the way of other objectives. If I can tell that I'm not going to complete my objectives then killing as many monsters as I can before the game ends is usually my B-plan. AQ is primarily a quest based PvP game, if you can complete a quest easily without having to take wounds from a monster then you probably should. But it's also a campaign, so you don't want to be short of cash during the upgrade phase.

Also I wouldn't say the monsters are "ornamental". They are almost always guarding important squares, and with the AQ dice mechanics anything can happen. I've seen heroes with 8+ defense dice roll nothing, and get killed OHKOed by an orc, and there is nothing ornamental about the hammer beastmen leaving you dazed for other teams to pick off, or the sister of pain exhausting all your equipment after you've just rested your guild. I find the monsters in AQ offer more of a strategic challenge. You have to think about turn order, and what spells you want to use so you can move past them quickly and reach objectives first. For example Wind Blast is always a great spell because even if you don't kill the monster, you can often move it out of the way, and hopefully block someone else with it. They can also be used for blocking portal tiles and LoS, which adds to the whole puzzle/strategy side of the game. They don't need to be super tough or killy, because killing you isn't their only purpose. I think that's much more interesting than games which are primarily just hack and slash.

Binabik15 wrote:
How do monster work here? Why don't you need to fight them, won't they attack you on their own? How do they spawn? With cards? There's the new digital campaign, can you play that with e.g. SDE minis as stand-ins for the original monsters? That might tempt me to jump in. Sigh, my monies...but I could use a squirrel as Cerberus.

Mostly they stand guard in key positions and attack you if you try to sneak past them. You generally DO need to fight them because they are in the way of where you need to go. If you attack one then he will come and attack you back (in which case he is controlled by one of the other players that turn). They start the game already spawned. Each mission has a map which shows where the monsters start and what tiles they are guarding. When they die they go to the graveyard, and when the graveyard is full then all the monsters in it respawn at spawn points. Sometimes players pick up abilities that allow them to respawn monsters to annoy other players with.

I'm not certain what you mean about playing the original campaign with SDE stand-ins? Cerberus is from the new Inferno game. The game uses lots of other components like tiles, cards, dice, coins tokens etc... Assuming you could create the original maps using the Inferno tiles, then you still wouldn't have the original monster cards, or objectives. Though the monster cards are only ever used for reference, there isn't any shuffling or drawing or anything, so you don't necessarily need to have the cards, providing you can remember the monster's stats. Noting them down on a piece of paper would be just as good, and probably take up less table space.

I imagine that you could create a variation of the original campaign using the Inferno monsters and objectives (which will probably be equivalent). However, the original missions are typical things like "rescue the hostage", "kill the big monster", "collect X of something" so there will probably be an Inferno version of that in the Inferno campaign anyway.

 Kriswall wrote:
Fast forward to a couple of months ago and a friend mentioned that he like Super Dungeon Explorer, but didn't like some of the mechanics. I told him we could try Arcadia Quest since it looked sort of similar. Four of us gathered together around noon to play the first game in a 6 game campaign series. At around 2 in the morning, we finished the campaign.

I also find that it's so easy to just keep playing. I think it's partly because you get all your new equipment at the end of the game, so you end up really psyched to play the next game and test it out. Even my most difficult non-gamer friends have ended up really enjoying it and wanting to play again right after the game ends.

Binabik15 wrote:
How do monster work here? Why don't you need to fight them, won't they attack you on their own? How do they spawn? With cards? There's the new digital campaign, can you play that with e.g. SDE minis as stand-ins for the original monsters? That might tempt me to jump in. Sigh, my monies...but I could use a squirrel as Cerberus.

PS: My internet is broken, so I can onlybe onlineduring lectures, so DLing and reading the rules is not the best way to answer my questions right now. Even if everything ismore interesting than pharmacoligical anticoagulationtherapy :lol

Monsters don't move on their own IIRC. They will only move if you attack them, otherwise they're perfectly content to stand on the spot and do nothing; even if they see you, unless you move into an adjacent square next to them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Smacks wrote:

Sining wrote:
It's more the fact that in AQ, monsters are pretty much just ...ornamental for the most part. Unless you need them for a quest, there's almost no reason a player will end up engaging them at all.

You always get coins for killing them, which are important for buying upgrades at the end of the game. I will often try to pick off weaker monsters for some extra cash, and the stronger monsters are usually placed in the way of other objectives. If I can tell that I'm not going to complete my objectives then killing as many monsters as I can before the game ends is usually my B-plan. AQ is primarily a quest based PvP game, if you can complete a quest easily without having to take wounds from a monster then you probably should. But it's also a campaign, so you don't want to be short of cash during the upgrade phase.

Also I wouldn't say the monsters are "ornamental". They are almost always guarding important squares, and with the AQ dice mechanics anything can happen. I've seen heroes with 8+ defense dice roll nothing, and get killed OHKOed by an orc, and there is nothing ornamental about the hammer beastmen leaving you dazed for other teams to pick off, or the sister of pain exhausting all your equipment after you've just rested your guild. I find the monsters in AQ offer more of a strategic challenge. You have to think about turn order, and what spells you want to use so you can move past them quickly and reach objectives first. For example Wind Blast is always a great spell because even if you don't kill the monster, you can often move it out of the way, and hopefully block someone else with it. They can also be used for blacking portal tiles and LoS, which adds to the whole puzzle/strategy side of the game. They don't need to be super tough or killy, because killing you isn't their only purpose. I think that's much more interesting than games which are primarily just hack and slash.

IIRC, scenarios end once a person finishes the required number of objectives. Unless one of those objectives is killing monsters, it's almost ALWAYS better to ignore them and spend your time either killing players, which I think gives more loot and is also a quest objective all the time, OR completing the main objective which is usually go here, do this and then do that. Why bother killing monsters? It may give you 1 coin but as you said, sometimes the monsters will just roll better than you and kill your char for no reason. Strategically, there's very little reason to bother. And they're not always guarding important squares. Sometimes they're just...there for some reason.

And considering your own description of how you can just use monsters to block the way and LOS and everything, how does that not make them sound ornamental?

I like the PVP aspect of AQ but the PVE side seriously needs better AI.

Really close to backing this. I just know the GF wants a more co-op focused game to play together, so that's leading me down the SDE route.

Love the AQ minis though, and backed both Rum and Bones and Blood Rage, so know the quality is there. Especially Blood Rage, good god!

Sining wrote:
IIRC, scenarios end once a person finishes the required number of objectives. Unless one of those objectives is killing monsters, it's almost ALWAYS better to ignore them and spend your time either killing players, which I think gives more loot and is also a quest objective all the time, OR completing the main objective which is usually go here, do this and then do that. Why bother killing monsters? It may give you 1 coin but as you said, sometimes the monsters will just roll better than you and kill your char for no reason. Strategically, there's very little reason to bother. And they're not always guarding important squares. Sometimes they're just...there for some reason.

I've never played a game where I didn't need to fight monsters. Unless you're playing someone like Wisp, you're not going to be able to move very far without taking a guard reaction. It's usually better to attack and try to overkill them than let them have 2 free hits as you walk past. It's fairly rare that they aren't doing anything, most of them start the game at least covering an exploration token. Perhaps it also depends on the number of players, in two player games there is only one PvP objective to be had, and usually quite a lot of easy goblin kills.

Sining wrote:
And considering your own description of how you can just use monsters to block the way and LOS and everything, how does that not make them sound ornamental?

Ornamental is, by definition, something which is just there for show. If you are interacting with something and using it strategically to block other players, and win the game, then it isn't ornamental. It's a strategic element of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Thebiggesthat wrote:
Really close to backing this. I just know the GF wants a more co-op focused game to play together, so that's leading me down the SDE route.

I don't want to sound like I'm down on SDE. I've literally bought everything that's ever come out for SDE. But I honestly wouldn't recommend SDE if you just want it for the co-op. The models are cute, the tiles are beautiful etc... But the new game (the forgotten king) isn't IMO much to shout about, and arcade mode (the co-op mode) is probably the weakest part. A lot of the discussion on the Soda Pop forums since its release has been quite negative.

If you want pure co-op I would suggest Zombicide. Gears of War from Fantasy Flight is also a good co-op game (though it might not be your gf's thing). Arcadia Quest is a pretty good game. My gf bought the kickstarter just to sell, but she ended up keeping it because she liked the game, and I think we ended up playing it every night for about a week, which is pretty good going considering most of my games only see daylight once or twice a year if they're lucky. Even though Arcadia Quest is PvP, I don't think it's too confrontational. It's not like Game of Thrones where you can make the other person cry. Mostly you're just racing for objectives, if you get killed then you come straight back, and winning/losing each game isn't too important since they are quite fast and there is a whole campaign. Everyone gets to upgrade at the end which is one of the fun parts.

It is virtually impossible to play AQ and 'ignore' the monsters. To walk past one you would trigger no less than 3 guard reactions.

If you make any movements anywhere close to them, they attack you.

If you plan to actually move anywhere or do anything, unless you are WISP, you pretty much have to bash some monster heads in to do it.

Also, Monsters are controlled by the player to your right, which means your opponents get to decide what a monster does in reaction to a payback which adds a whole layer of what you can do. (Like teleporting Spear Beastman through a portal to a full spot to deny them the quest objective. or repositoning to splash damage a bunch of heroes)

The game has some abstractions to it. It is not intended or designed to be a Dungeon Crawl. Most of the missions are covert spy missions, not a war battle or dungeon cleanse. You are trying to disable or harm key parts of a monster-occupied city to gain access to the center palace. You are James bond killing minions in a missile silo with as little commotion as possible, not a murder hobo killing a bunch of goblins in their lair because you want their gold like dungeon crawls.

If you focus on killing people in Arcadia quest, you will lose the game because you waste turns. I find I don't end up directly killing opponents unless I need the quest, I am in imminent risk of them killing me or to slow them down from an objective. Most times it is better to focus on quests because every attack on an opposing player which doesn't complete a quest puts you one more turn away from completing your objectives.

Not to mention give someone 7 deaths and they end up with a nosebleed shows all that wasted effort.

Overall it is a well designed game which is easy to play but hard to master and has some pretty deep tactical play which can be done. As long as you are not trying to shoehorn it into another pre-conceived expectation of what you want the game to be, like a co-op or a dungeon crawl you will have a good time.

I'll add my voice to the monster discussion. I've played ~18 scenarios at this point and in each, the monsters have played a role.

Monsters are reactive. If you avoid them, they avoid you. Unfortunately, avoiding monsters is almost impossible.

To define a term, "close" is considered to be the same square, or an adjacent square. Each square can accommodate two models. If my hero moves into, through, or out of a square that is "close" to a monster, the monster gets to take a guard reaction. The reaction is performed by the player to the active player's right and consists of a move and/or and attack. As has been said, this move/attack can serve to simply reposition the monster to block an objective or to try and damage the hero. It's pretty easy for your heroes to die in this game, but they come back to life every time you rest. Resting involves "passing" on your turn and refreshing all your gear and hero uses.

It's almost impossible to get to your required objectives without moving "close" to a monster. In addition to moving close, attacking a monster can garner a guard reaction. If I shoot a monster, he can move and shoot me back.

The monsters also constantly respawn. Every 5th kill triggers a respawn event, where each monster has a 2/3 chance to respawn somewhere on the board. In my experience, the spawn points are always placed to either block objectives or block the players' home bases.

In other words... anyone who says the monsters are ornamental and can be safely ignored probably hasn't played much.

All other comments and interests have been set aside because reptile heroes.



With the comment about the new Skeletor looking guy being able to be played as a hero or minor villain, i think it would be cool to see some of the new heroes (especially the more "wild" looking ones) include a monster/ villain card and let them muck about on the board if you've got them.

Make the guilds work that much harder to accomplish their tasks when you've got mini-bosses rolling through Arcadia...

PETS!!! Oh. My. GOD so adoooorable!

This one is closing up today if anyone was waiting to see just how much plastic they could get for their $100 (answer: a lot).

OK, that's is looking really nice.

Is this another CMON KS where I can throw in a $1 now and get an invite to the PM later?

I think my daughter would really like this one!

The usual dollar in for the PM still stands.

If you daughter doesn't mind a bit of cutthroat gameplay (most likely directed towards the parents, if my kids are any indication), then I say go for it. You're certainly going to get quite a quantity of extra players and missions with all the stretch goals they've piled in.

 Alpharius wrote:
OK, that's is looking really nice.

Is this another CMON KS where I can throw in a $1 now and get an invite to the PM later?

I think my daughter would really like this one!

You'll get in on the PM, but you'll have to get the main game if you want to add on any extras,

no cherry picking addons only