Complete Map of Arcadia

Below you will find a complete map of Arcadia. I took Moxtaveto's Maps and combined them into one giant map. If you play both sets, this is how all the Leagues would look laid out. At the very bottom you will see Irondew Ruins sitting by itself; this League actually occupies the same spot the Irondew Keep does. Between the time of TWH and KIM stories, Irondew Keep has fallen to the Cog Army, so Irondew Ruins replaces Irondew Keep on the map.

Also, when combining these two maps, Road to Middlemarch from TWH and Irondew Junction from KIM lose their Border attribute. This is the only way to pass from Ardenmore to Middlemarch.

This was kind of a rush job in Photoshop, so it's not as pretty and lined up as it could be, but it still is usable. Thanks again to Moxtaveto for all the hard work!

Modification of solo rules

Sometimes it can become more of a challenge to find other players than it can to find cards. It would be a shame to let your cards to go to waste, wouldn't it? There's a solo variant in TWH rules (the booklet rules) near the very end. They go something like this:

"Play 10 Leagues per Quest attempted instead of the normal five.  Additionally, select the least convenient Base Camp, Treasure Leagues and objective Leagues for the Quest. Although you select your own Waylays, you must select a minimum number in points equal to your Quest's Waylay Rating.  If you can't evenly match the Waylay Rating with the ratings of cards available, you must exceed the Waylay Rating if possible.  Once selected, your Waylays are shuffled and placed face down in a pile.  Each time you move into a new League, draw the top Waylay Card from the pile.  If the Waylay can be played on the League's Terrain, you automatically encounter it there.  If the Waylay cannot be played, it goes to the bottom of the Waylay deck.  Of course, in Tests you must roll for both your character and the Waylay encountered."

There's a couple of problems with this version:

• Some cards require that your opponent make a choice...for instance, the Waylay Assjack, if failed, allows your opponent to choose which League to move you in. There are several other cards like this that require a decision to be made.
• The "Day" unit of measure becomes irrelevant. A Day signifies a player's turn ends and passes to the next player, so if there is no other player, it doesn't really matter whether you measure your actions in Days.
• Since you pick the Waylays you face, you know what's coming and can choose cards in your favor.
• Winning the game is based on one character completing their Quest before the other. If you're playing solo, how exactly do you win when your character is the only one? You basically "win" every time because there's nobody else who can!

How do we solve these problems?

• The first is most easily solved - whenever a card requires your opponent to make a choice, you analyze the possible choices, assign a number to each, and roll dice, accepting the outcome. 
• The irrelevance of the "day" can also be easily solved by imposing a time limit. You could use, say, 30 days as a maximum...if you have not completed your quest by the end of the 30th day, you lose!
• And thus we have solved the winning and losing problem as well. By making your victory dependent on days, you're basically in a race against time. You could also add another condition: if you ever exhaust all your Merits and then lose a Test, instead of discarding Merits, you lose the game. 
• The last problem unsolved is choosing your own Waylays. A better way would be to gather up the Waylays you possess and sort them into piles by cost...all the Waylays with a cost of 1 in the first pile, those with a cost of two in the second pile, etc (keep them face down). Shuffle each pile separately. Now pick out your Waylay points however you see fit. For instance, the Quest Prove Yourself has 14 points of Waylays, so you might select the top 2 cards of Deck 4 (cost of 8), the top card of Deck 3 (cost of 3), the top card of Deck 2 (cost of 2), and the top card of Deck 1 (cost of 1). You now hold 14 points of Waylays to match the Quest. These 5 cards are now shuffled, and Waylays are played as described in the solo rules above. 

I hope you find these modified rules more challenging and enjoyable. Feel free to tinker with the win conditions until they feel right. In my next post, we'll look at a very specific solo variant.

Proxy Cards

For some of the game variants I'll be posting, you may need to create a proxy card. What exactly is a proxy card? It's a card that you substitute for a card you don't have.

The proxy card concept is actually built into Arcadia from the start. Due to the fact that there are no "starter decks" in Arcadia, buying one Story Pack and a Character Pack to play can lead to a problem...the Quest card in the Story Pack might require you to travel to specific League that was not provided. In that case you pick another one of your Leagues to represent the missing one. In essence, you create a proxy card for the missing League.

In the game you only need to substitute one League for another. But what if game variants require you to make multiple proxies? There are a couple of ways to create proxy cards:

1. Remember which card is the proxy card in your head. This is ok for 1 or 2 cards; any more than that can become a problem.
2. Write out on paper which League represents another. You can make a list or actually map out your Leagues.
3. Write on the card itself. Let's say you don't have that copy of Sibylline Swamp needed to complete Seek the Oracle's Advice, but you have 5 copies of Fields of Rust. You can take one of the Fields of Rust and write "Sibylline Swamp" on it with a marker. Keep a cardlist or my database handy for cross-reference.
4. Photocopy/print. If you have a friend that has the card, you can scan it and print, or make a photocopy on to cardstock. Unlike other card games, since Arcadia cards have square corners, you don't have to try to round them.

You can do the same thing with other cards to create proxies, not just with Leagues. In my next post, I'll present a solo variant that may require several proxies, especially if you don't have very many cards...

Card Checklist Now Online

Well, it's complete - a card checklist, in Excel, listing every card available in TWH & KIM, searchable and with filters that allow you to sort on multiple fields.

There are a few things absent - no artist listing, and no flavor text for Leagues and Characters, but it shouldn't affect the usefulness much. And I may add that stuff in at some point.

The link is over in the sidebar, it's a shared xls file in Google Docs, created under Excel 2003, so if you've got that version or later you'll have no problems. Older versions of Excel - come on now, join the 21st century! You should be able to download an add-on to read Excel 2003 files if you haven't done so already.

Now that the card list is complete, we'll move on to my next 2 topics: proxy cards and solo play.

Many thanks to Richard Uyeyama for his fantastic card lists, which were invaluable, and Ravenpolar at Boardgamegeek, who came up with a Wyld Hunt checklist that I used as a baseline, and thus saved me some data entry.

Game Statistics and Information

The following information is taken from the Scrye Collectible Card Game Checklist and Price Guide:

Publisher: White Wolf
Designer: Mike Tinney

Booster displays contain 24 packs

Booster packs contain 15 cards

Character booster packs contain 1 Character and 14 Merits/Flaws

Story booster packs contain 1 Quest and 14 Leagues/Waylays

Wyld Hunt
Released August 1996
Cards in Set: 377

King Ironheart's Madness
Released December 1996
Cards in set: 404

No rarities levels in either set.

"Billed by White Wolf as both a card game and a role playing game, Arcadia never quite caught on with fans of either game format. The cards, square-edged and featuring different images and text on both sides, may easily be mistaken for simple trading-cards by the uninitiated.

The Wyld Hunt was designed to be the first in a trilogy of releases for the Arcadia line. The second installment, King Ironheart's Madness, with a whopping 404 cards, was released at the end of 996 - just as the upheavals following the initial CCG glut led White Wolf to reconsider its plans.

The concluding installment, The Lion's Den, never saw print, but 781 cards is still plenty for a two-release game. Only MLB Showdown in 2000, would come near that mark." - James A. Mishler

Reviews

Here are some reviews of Arcadia:

Adam B at Boardgamegeek

Bruno Canato at Boardgamegeek

Mike Haverty at Boardgamegeek

Sofacoin at Everything2

Rules

There are now links in the sidebar to rules for both TWH and KIM in a shared Google docs folder..

From this point forward, all rules references will be made using the KIM version, where it differs from TWH. Specifically:

• 10 points for character creation (instead of 5)
• rolling 2 six-sided dice for tests (instead of 1)
• if you discard all your merits, if returning to your base camp helps you complete your quest, your opponent may move you to a league of their choosing
• The winner, if the players are playing in Chronicle (Epic) mode, gains 2 experience points (instead of 1)