Dywnarc said:

I think the secondary of warfare II will be more effective in future with the flagships. Build the flagship with production, then move it to a adjacent system with secondary of warfare II. Next action you can move to a system or build with the arborec flagship.

Oh I agree that warfare II's secondary is pretty usefull for flagshisp. As far as the Arborecs go though, I see nothing too crazy about this race.

(I just received Shards of the Throne from my wife as a Father's Day present and will introduce it to my friends tomorrow. Someone loves me! )

Another balancing point to the Arborec GF's production ability is the fact that only their GFs can produce GFs. With a starting capacity of 1 unit, that means they are paying more for their GFs. Everyone else gets 2 GFs for 1 Resource; The Arborec are paying 1:1. Why? Because nothing indicates they can bypass the standard spacedock limitation that unit cost cannot be shared between spacedocks for a single unit and you cannot by 1/2 a Resource worth of GFs. It's the same conundrum that applies when producing fighters in a system which can only support 3 fighters due to the spacedock: If you want to top up, you must spend 2 resources for 4 fighters and lose one for lack of support. You can't spend 1.5 resources for 3 fighters.

So even in the scenario where the Arborec manage to accumulate 10 GFs on a planet, unless they develop their racial tech, it's costing them 10 resources to double their GF at that planet, not 5. So that "free" GF as a racial ability is more than amply mitigated.

At least, that's my 2 cents prior to playtesting. Maybe tomorrow will reveal a different story.

Thanks, Dywmarc, for sharing your experience. Lends the race some balanced credibility.

Thanks for starting the thread. The new expansion looks like a lot of sexy but I do have questions, the answers to which I'm looking for now...

A lot of players are still waiting for the faq on the build capasity issue. I am not concerned what ever way they rule it. Again, they still pay for stuff, still subject to logisical limits, and as there space docks can't build ground units, the ground units spend a lot of time doing that. Very cool race, but they do not overly concern me.

So we had our first Shards of the Throne game. It was a 3-player game so we just used the 3 new races to try out the new bling.

The Arborec were not so bad at first. Especially when interpreting that 1 GF with a build capacity of 1 had to pay 1 resource for that GF. Because of previous FAQ clarifying that 2 space docks could not team up to build the same unit. (In a system with multiple space docks, you can't for example use Sarween Tools to get multiple discounts to build a War-Sun as it can only be produced at one space dock.) So Arborec could not have 2 GF team up to produce 2 GF for 1 resource. He had to waste 1/2 resource at one GF to build 1 GF, effectively paying twice as much for GF until his racial tech was researched.

We kind of felt bad for him. At first. Racial ability to place a GF during Status Phase helped mitigate the early game limitation. He was smart and developed racial tech early. So the GF issue was fixed. Then it was nuts. It took some serious effort just to momentarily keep him in check. Yet another race whose "cure" is to beat up early if possible. In a 3-player game, the distance was enough to afford him some breathing time to set up quite well. One round, he could bulk up the GF presence on any planet. Next round he could build up to his Fleet Supply at the front. Very handy. Early pity was misplaced.

We ended up with one Alpha Wormhole and used the Nexus from Shattered Empires. Alpha was closest to me and I plugged it early out of paranoia of the Creus' worhmole schtick. By the time I went for the Nexus, Creus were within striking range of Alpha. So I had to make a point of sending a minimal force to claim Malice for fear of Creus taking Alpha and stranding the Nexus fleet. By and large, the Creus did not impact the game too much. They took their time getting their racial tech allowing them to place additional wormholes. When they did, they used their spare Alpha to make Arborec and myself closer neighbours so that we would mix it up more (we were already at it) and leave him to peaceful consolidation and expansion. They later moved their spare Alpha adjacent to my home system. Interesting redefinition of the cosmology.

I played the Nekkro Virus. Ignoring the slight disconnect between the fluff stating that the L1Z1X spin-off was lead by a tech junkie and the race's inability to research their own tech, this race was obscene. Their ability/requirement to get tech only by destroying other players' units was amazingly flexible as worded on the race sheet. Apparently it does not have to be your turn nor does it imply you even have to win the battles. Just as long as one enemy unit is destroyed, I guess your own units transmit the new technology to you prior to their own destruction. I had no problem qualifying for the tech objectives, even with the greater distance between 3 players. I had the best of both other player's techs. Creus, who had developed the complete PDS supporting line of tech, found himself rebuffed by that same tech previously "donated" to me. I had 2 Action Cards per round thanks to Arborec's Neural Motivators. Supposedly this was mitigated by the race's inability to vote. In light of that, their presence within the galactic council with the 3 representatives was hard to explain. I was never the Speaker so never went first during the spy resolution. Creuss always had their spy negate whatever my team was doing. Well-played.

We didn't finish the game. Score was Creus 8, Nekkro 8, Arborec 7 when we stopped so very close indeed which is nice to see. We unanimously agreed that the Nekkro was the race with the highest knob factor, eliciting the most emotional frustration playing against both on the board and in the galactic council. You might want to avoid using them just for that reason. Although part of that was also my Action Card draw. Twice I prevented the Tech strategy from being used. I ended up with 2 Local Unrests (both dedicated to the Arborec) and 2 Sabotages (plus Nekkro Agent sabotage). So, yeah, fairly squeaky clean.

I was concerned that Assembly II did not offer enough of a Primary incentive to warrant being picked. Political I and Assembly I both offer 2 Actions Cards as well as the Speaker token. Assembly II just gives you Speaker. The other players reassured me that Speaker and ability to resolve spy first was incentive enough, so that was nice to hear.

Interesting game; we look forward to trying the historical scenario next!

Hyperturtle said:

Thanks for the review! It's always nice to hear actual game play experiences rather than hypothesis based on reading the rules.

Pertaining specifically to the subject of this thread, I am correct in walking away from this with the impression that the Arborec are well-balanced, if somewhat easy to slaughter if caught early? It doesn't sound like you shut them down early, but it also seems they didn't get unreasonably many VPs from the effort and it doesn't sound like they were overrunning the galaxy either. Although perhaps that's only due to your concerted efforts to keep them pruned?

Steve-O said:

That's roughly my impression. I don't know how feasible early slaughter is. I would like a 5-6 player game to see if the closer neighbors would do a better job of trimming their hedges. I do think it was from fairly consistent efforts on my part to keep them pruned (well said! ) but I confess my success in keeping them pruned was largely due to a very beneficial Action Card draw. 4 Action Cards were targeted at them. (Though I did sacrifice a significant fleet at one point.) It was still "easy" for him to recover. When we stopped, it felt as though he was well-positioned to overrun the galaxy. Hard to say; I look forward to further experimentation.

i agree groundforces may build anything. and anyone saying "how can spores or plants build ships" is thinking to narrow, esspecialy when we are deling with scifis endless possibilities in our so called infanite universe. wich is moot, the game is very much about the twilight legalize and wording of rules and abilities rather than what fluff states.

and maybe they just masterd gravity and time dialation/lensing rather than burning rockets.

i just wanna be clear. i got the expansion ordered but dont have it yet.

does ground force builds of 1 then 2 with racial mean for the entirity of your groundforces or per ground force.

i belive it means per planet regardless of one groundforce or 20.

i think its not refered to as production because production works its own way and something may have an effect that the designers do not want being confused with or used with the groundforces "build". wich would include the blockadeing question.

Can Sarween Tools be used by Arborec's GF in order to build ??

After all, Arborec's GF follow the same rules of Space Dock in order to build, isn't ?

So technologies wich apply to SD apply too at Arborec's GF build's capacity...

The reason I finally bought this fascinating game was, in fact, the addition of the Arborec. As an amateur mycologist (and necromancy enthusiast) a fungus-race that reanimated the dead seemed to be perfect for me. Needless to say, I have played as the Arborec in nearly every game I've played, and gotten a good feel for the race.

As a whole, I'd say they are far from overpowered, but can spread quite easily if given the chance. One glaring weakness for them tends to be space combat, as they are usually quite invested in ground forces and green tech cards. Enviro Compensator and Sarween Tools are nearly useless for a race that generally relies on GFs to manufacture units, making Warsuns an unwise investment most games.

If you want pure power, there are many other races that are better suited for it, but the subtle, spreading power of the Arborec can grow quite vast if left unchecked, making them a decent contender in any game.

@AleksandrKerensky

Each GF has a production capacity of 1 (and later 2 with the racial tech) meaning that each GF can build up to 2 units. Though this may seem impressive at first, the reality is that the Arborec rarely have the resources to produce too many units, and the amount a GF can produce is NOT modified by the planet's resource value.

@Ctol

Though I wish this were the case, in my interpretation of the rules, the Arborec GFs are not affected by any techs that specifically mention space docks. Just as is the case with the Production Strategy card, however, they can use the extra resource if building in the same system as a space dock.

The Sorcerer King said:

The Arborec can however use production in a system with a space dock and not even use the space dock to produce the actual units. This could be done in a system where you built the space dock this turn even.