Tabletop Game / Res Arcana

Clockwise from 12 o'clock: the Transmuter, Druid, Artificer, Necromancer and Duelist. Background: Fire Dragon and Water Dragon.

"In a high tower, an Alchemist prepares potions, using vials filled with otherworldly fluids. In a sacred grove, a Druid grinds herbs for a mystical ritual. In the catacombs, a Necromancer summons a bone dragon... Welcome to the world of Res Arcana!"

Res Arcana is a fantasy-themed engine-building Eurogame designed by Tom Lehmann and published by Sand Castle Games in 2019.

You play as one of several alchemical mages who use magical items and their own unique powers to gather and manipulate essences, which can be spent on crafting helpful artifacts, summoning creatures or dragons, conquering Places of Power and constructing Monuments.

Mechanically, the goal of the game is to get at least 10 Victory Points,^note 13 if you're using Perlae Imperii and then have the most points when a victory check occurs. They usually happen at the end of a round, but there are also some Places of Power that can force them. While some artifacts grant a few points, most of your points will come from Monuments and/or Places of Power.

The game has received two Expansion Packs, with a third on the way:

• Lux et Tenebrae (2019): Mostly an expansion that adds more game pieces, notably introducing the Demon artifact type and the scroll mechanic. It also fine-tweaks the rules a bit by introducing setups tailored for different player counts.
• Perlae Imperii (2021): In addition to adding game pieces, this expansion brings the valuable Pearl essences, which can be exchanged for essences as a free action or kept until the end of the game for 1 VP each. To compensate for the fact that each player now starts with a pearl, it also raises the game-end condition to 13 VP.
• TBA (2024)

In addition to this, there are two Alternative Mage Packs (one for the base game and one for Lux et Tenebrae) that feature re-imagined, Gender Flipped versions of the mages. The change is purely cosmetic.

Compare fellow Tom Lehmann game Race for the Galaxy. See also Pandemic, as Lehmann collaborated with Matt Leacock on several released in that series.

This game provides examples of:

• Angry Guard Dog: The Guard Dog is an angry-looking dog with a spiked collar and Glowing Eyes of Doom. In gameplay, it's able to scare off dragons.
• Alchemy Is Magic: The game features alchemical mages who can perform various feats using essences, and there are several "alchemy" effects that can transform other essences into gold.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Playing a ton of artifacts is cool, but this method is usually too slow to win you games. Playing efficiently means discarding some cards for essences, especially in the late game when it's too late for essence-generating ones to pay off.
  • The Dragons in the base game are worth a point each, and have attacks that can destroy some of your opponents' resources. They are also expensive enough to play that they usually aren't worth it unless you have Dragon synergies (which includes cards that let you play Dragons at a discount) or effects that care about high essence costs. To make matters worse, three of them have attacks that usually don't do much because your opponents can just pay for their cheap "ignore" clauses, and protection effects aren't that hard to come by.
  • Windup Man can theoretically generate a lot of essences, but most games between experienced players end too quickly for it to pay off. The Expansion Packs make it more usable, however.
  • The Sorcerer's Bestiary has an ability that lets you play a Dragon from an opponent's discard pile^note It also works on your own discard pile, but you'll often have better options for getting it back from there... by paying its normal cost and four more essences on top of that. Between the high cost (especially considering that most Dragons require a lot of specific essences) and the timing required (if you're too slow, the Dragon's owner might return it to their hand or shuffle their discard pile into a new deck), this is hard to pull off, especially if you don't have any cost reduction effects to offset the additional cost, and it's often not worth it due to the impracticality of the dragons themselves. However, if the stars do align, it's hilarious to steal an opponent's card and get three points off of it (one from the Dragon itself and two extra from the Bestiary's "two points per Dragon you control" ability).
• Back from the Dead: A few abilities let you play a card from a discard pile. There are also effects that let you retrieve cards from it.
• Balance Buff:
  • Both creatures and dragons suffered from being underwhelming in the base game, leading to the expansions making efforts to make them more usable. (In contrast, the Demon type introduced in Lux et Tenebrae did well and received next to no additional support in Perlae Imperii.):
    • For creatures, Lux et Tenebrae added the Beastmaster, which can turn itself and a creature to generate two essences, which is helpful because creatures' turning powers tend to be situational, underwhelming or nonexistent. Also, the Gate of Hell lets you sacrifice creatures for Victory Points, which gives them another use (trying to repeatedly sacrifice cheap ones), or just creating an additional payoff at the end of the game. Perlae Imperii adds an additional creature-centric Place of Power with the Mystical Menagerie.
    • To mitigate the dragons' status as Awesome, but Impractical outside of Dragon's Lair strategies, both expansions bring in new game pieces to help them: Lux et Tenebrae gives them a new Place of Power with the Dragon Aerie. Perlae Imperii adds the Dragon Tamer, a mage tailored for them with one power that makes them cheaper and one power that straightens them.
  • The attack mechanic is underwhelming in the base game. With the exception of the Elvish Bow, each attack power is tied to an Awesome, but Impractical expensive dragon that has no additional ability as a fallback in case your target has a protection effect, or is just capable of exploiting the "ignore" clauses on the Dragon attacks. In contrast, the attacking Lux et Tenebrae demons have decent fallback abilities and no "ignore" clauses.
• The Bard: Lux et Tenebrae introduces the Bard mage, whose special ability allows you to discard a creature, dragon or demon card to gain 2 Gold — presumably the bard tells a story about the creature/dragon/demon in question and is paid for it.
• The Beastmaster: The Beastmaster is a mage whose use of animals is represented by the ability to turn an animal to generate essences. The original illustration features a woman handling a snake, while the Gender Flip is a man handling a crocodile.
• Blood Sport: Implied. The Duelist can generate a Gold essence if you pay 1 Death essence. In other words, they kill their opponent and make money.
• Blow That Horn: The Conch Battle Horn is an example of a destructive horn: its first power creates a bunch of Death essences, and the second ability can destroy any one of your artifacts.
• Blue Is Calm: Among the colour-coded essences, Calm is the blue-coded one. It's associated with cards with less intense flavour, such as the Seer, Healer, Nightingale, Mermaid, Hypnotic Basin and Sunken Reef.
• Brutal Bird of Prey: The resemblance to an angry bird of prey contributes to the creepy appearance of the Jeweled Statuette, which can produce a lot of Death essences for you and even gives some to your opponents.
• Card Cycling: Divining things has this as a theme. Draw 3 cards then discard 3 cards. In the game design, its purpose is to help a player dig for a card they need, or just bail them out of a bad draw by replacing bad cards with better ones:
  • The Divination magic item.
  • The Lux et Tenebrae Expansion Pack introduces the Diviner mage.
• Cast from Hit Points: Downplayed:
  • The Life essence can be attacked, which forces you to pay that amount in Life, or twice that amount in other essences. This makes everything that costs Life a pseudo-way of paying HP for stuff even though the main purpose of Life essence is still to be spent on stuff. Some of the game pieces have flavour that highlight the fact that you're paying with life, such as the Ring of Midas letting you exchange Life for Gold, reflecting Midas's curse.
  • The Catherine Wheel from Perlae Imperii has the unique property that its attack hits every player including its owner. However, its second power rewards you for using "ignore attack" effects.
• Color-Coded Elements: The essences are colour-coded: Calm is blue, Elan is red, Life is green, Death is black, Gold is yellow, and Pearls are white.
• Comeback Mechanic: Some Places of Power give a quick sum of points when you buy them and have the ability "check victory now!" This means that if buying one of these would put you ahead of everyone else and at 10 or more points, you can activate this ability for an instant win even if your opponents have strong engines that would let them surpass your score had they been allowed to play on.
• Creepy Crows: The Raven Familiar sits on top of a skull and passively produces Death essence.
• Crystal Ball: The male Seer uses a crystal ball.
• Dark Is Evil: Among the colour-coded essences, Death is the black-coded one. It's associated with many evil-flavoured cards, like the Corrupt Altar, Gates of Hell, Cursed Forge, and almost everything related to Demons.
• Digital Tabletop Game Adaptation: The game is available on Board Game Arena.
• Dracolich: The Bone Dragon resembles an undead skeleton dragon. Fittingly, its summoning cost consists almost exclusively of Death essences.
• Drafting Mechanic:
  • Players choose magic items from a common pool. When they pass for a round, they have to return it and take another one.
  • All players buy Places of Power from a shared pool. They also have a shared pool of Monuments, which use the "shared deck and open display of a few cards" approach.
  • The draft variation has players use the "select and pass" method to draft their artifact decks instead of just being dealt eight random artifact cards to use as their deck.
• Dragon Hoard: The Dragon's Lair is implied to contain gold hoarded by dragons, as controlling it lets you collect a lot of gold.
• Dragon Tamer: The Dragon Tamer mage, whose control over dragons is represented by the ability to summon dragons at a discount, or straighten an existing dragon to allow it to act again. She is depicted as a woman who wears a dragon-themed outfit and wields a whip. The illustration also has several dragons in the background.
• Druid: The Druid is a mage whose connection to nature and life is represented by the ability to passively generate a Life essence per round, as well as the ability to straighten (i.e. reverse the exhaustion) of a creature. The original illustration portrays a female druid together with a wolf, while the male version gets a bear.
• Element No. 5:
  • Gold is more valuable than the other four elements: it's the only one that lets you buy Monuments, and it has the distinction that discarding a card only gets you one Gold, as opposed to the usual 2 essences.
  • The Perlae Imperii Expansion Pack introduces the even better Pearls: not only are they worth a point each, but they can be converted into other essences.
• Elixir of Life:
  • The Chalice of Life is implied to turn water into an elixir of life — if you dump the water-like Calm essence into it, it'll give it back alongside Life essence. It also passively generates Life and Calm.
  • The "Life" half of the "Life/Death" item is represented by a potion that generates a Life essence.
• Expansion Pack:
  • Lux et Tenebrae: Its biggest additions are the Demons artifact type, support for a 5th player, and the "Inscription" magic item, which has the unique property of giving you scrolls that can be saved up for later rounds. It also tweaks the rules to Nerf the Monuments strategy a bit, and adds some new artifacts, mages, etc.
  • Perlae Imperii adds the valuable Pearl essence to the game and increases the goal to 13 Victory Points. It also introduces a new magic item, new artifacts, new Places of Power, etc.
• First-Player Advantage Mitigation: For the first round, magic items are drafted in the opposite of the play order. This gives the later players the chance to grab a good one, which helps compensate for how they're at risk of falling behind in the race for Places of Power and Monuments.
• Fortune Teller: The female Seer resembles a Fortune Teller who uses cards to tell the future.
• Fountain of Youth: The Fountain of Youth artifact is portrayed as a fountain with angels pouring out glowing, presumably-healing water. Mechanically, it passively generates Life essence and can turn Death essences into Calm and Life.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The mages consist of five men (Scholar, Duelist, Healer, Alchemist, Artificer) and five women (Witch, Necromancer, Seer, Transmuter, Druid). The Expansion Packs add two more mages of each gender: Lux et Tenebrae adds the Bard and the Diviner (male), and the Beastmaster and the Demonologist (female). Perlae Imperii adds the Infuser and the Seafarer (male) and the Illusionist and the Dragon Tamer (female). Moreover, the Alternative Mage Packs feature Gender Flip sets of mages, which are also balanced.
• Gender Flip: The Alternative Mage Packs contain gender-flipped re-imaginings of the gender-equal ensembles of mages.
• Ghost Ship: The Ghost Ship is a demon in the form of an abandoned ship. Its abilities let you pay 1 Life essence to place an artifact from your discard pile, or spend 1 Death to get 1 Gold.
• Green Means Natural: Among the colour-coded essences, Life is the green-coded one. It's associated with cards related to animals and nature, such as the Druid, Beastmaster, Tree of Life, Sacred Grove, Mystical Menagerie and many creature cards.
• Hand of Glory: The artifact Hand of Glory is a severed hand being used as a candle — each finger has a wick in it, with one of them being lit. Its creepiness is highlighted by the fact that it not only gives you quite a few Death essences, but spreads Death to your opponents as well.
• Hellhound: The Hound of Death is portrayed as a creepy dog-like demon. In gameplay, it passively generates Death essences, can attack opponents, and can generate an amount of Death equal to an opponent's amount of Gold.
• Highly Specific Counterplay: The Possessed Demon Slayer's second ability lets you ignore attacks from Demons. There are only two Demons capable of attacking (three if you're also using the Perlae Imperii expansion).
• Kingmaker Scenario: If you play at three or more players, you may sometimes find yourself in situations where you can't win, but will decide which one of your opponents will win. Example scenario: Alice currently has ten points and no way to gain more. Bob has eight, but his engine can get him to twelve if the round is allowed to continue. You are too far behind to catch up, but you do have a Place of Power with a "check victory now" power. So, do you use the power and hand the victory to Alice, or pass and allow Bob to catch up and win during the end-of-round victory check?
• Latin Is Magic: It's an alchemy-themed game with the Latin title Res Arcana ("Arcane Things"). Its Expansion Packs Lux et Tenebrae ("Light and Darkness") and Perlae Imperii ("Pearls of Power") have Latin names as well.
• Literal Wild Card:
  • The game effectively lets your cards function as a kind of wilds. Any card can be discarded for a Gold or any two non-Gold resources.
  • Many components have effects that can generate any type of normal essence, or at least offer some choice (e.g. letting you choose between getting one Elan and one Death).
  • Perlae Imperii introduces Pearls, which can be converted into a Gold or any two normal essences as a free action.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic:
  • The Seer and the Hawk have the ability to rearrange the top three cards of your deck or the Monuments deck.
  • The Diviner and the Divination magic item let you draw three cards, and then discard three cards, which can give you a second chance to get something you want.
• Midas Touch: The Ring of Midas is a nod to the Midas touch — it can be turned to make gold, but also references the downside of Midas's power with its ability to turn life essences into gold.
• Natural Elements: The Calm essence is tied to the classical elements of water and air, and the Elan essence is tied to fire and earth.
• Necromancer: One of the mages is the Necromancer, who passively provides one Death essence per round and can spend 2 Life to get you 3 more Death essences in the next round, which can be spent on death-related stuff like the Crypt or Catacombs of the Dead. The original illustration is a woman holding a skull from which a Sickly Green Glow comes, and the Gender Flip has a man with creepy grey skin holding two mysterious items.
• Nerf: Lux et Tenebrae nerfs two common strategies from the base game:
  • It weakens strategies that revolve around Monuments in multiple ways. The most notable are reducing the number of them in play from 10 to 7 (in the 2-player mode) and adding more ways to get gold, which makes it more likely that your opponent will grab enough good ones to make it impossible for you to win through Monuments alone. Perlae Imperii further nerfs this strategy by increasing the game-end condition to 13 Victory Points, which you're unlikely to reach with only Monuments even if you manage to grab all 7.
  • Thanks to the addition of the affordable attack card Fire Demon, it's now riskier to be a Witch player who just aims to grab the Dragon's Lair or Catacombs of the Dead as soon as possible, and then straighten them over and over with the Witch's power. If you try to do that now, resources are tight enough that a Fire Demon's attacks can screw you over.
• Noble Bird of Prey: The Hawk has a noble-looking illustration and is mechanically tied to the Life and especially Calm essences. Moreover, its abilities are tied to knowledge and Psychic Powers.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • The Ancient Dragon, a particularly expensive dragon in the Perlae Imperii Expansion Pack, says that it can't be placed by Dragon Teeth^note which normally lets you pay three essences to play a dragon for free or discarded with Sacrificial Dagger.^note which would get you a burst of 12 essences, a net gain of 5 in just two actions
  • The Mystical Menagerie's card draw power has a "your deck has cards" clause to shut down an infinite loop with Guard Dog.^explanationTap Guard Dog and spend a Calm to draw a card. Discard the card you just drew for one Calm and one Elan. You can now spend the Elan to untap the Dog, and the Calm to draw another card.
• Official Game Variant: The main variant deals 8 random artifacts to each player, but there are two variants where the artifacts are drafted instead. The first works for any player count and has a pick-and-pass draft. The second is a 2-player only mode played over 3 rounds with the same mages and artifacts, where the second round used as Rochester draft.
• Our Demons Are Different: The demons have widely varying appearances, such as an imp with fins on its head, a possessed sword, a cursed dwarf king, a shadowy figure and a Ghost Ship. They share a Dark Is Evil theme, with the exception of the Homunculus.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Most Dragons are big, spiked creatures. There is one for each of the four classical Natural Elements, with only the Fire Dragon actually breathing fire. There's also the Bone Dragon, the Sea Serpent (which counts as a dragon), the Prismatic Dragon (the only dragon who can't attack, instead preferring to deal with essences) and the huge, expensive Ancient Dragon. The Dragons are implied to hoard gold, as the Dragon's Lair is very centred on the gold essence.
• Our Dwarves Are All the Same: Like many other works, Res Arcana portrays dwarves as miners who love gold; there's an artifact called the Dwarven Pickaxe (which lets you spend Elan to "mine" gold) and a Place of Power called the Dwarven Mines (which generates gold, and has abilities that let it put gold on itself). Also, the Cursed Dwarven King is a heavily gold-based card whose illustration features the king with a pile of gold, mesmerized by a coin.
• Our Homunculi Are Different: The Homunculus is a scaly demon grown in a jar. Its effects are giving a discount on other Demons and generating essences.
• Our Imps Are Different: The Chaos Imp is a scaly demon with fins on its head, the ability to straighten another demon (letting it act again), and the ability to turn 1 Death and 1 Elan into 3 Death.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: The Mermaid is a woman with a Seashell Bra and a fish-like tail in place of legs. She has the rare ability to infuse a component with one of the listed elements (Calm, Life or Gold — notably not Pearls).
• Out-of-Turn Interaction:
  • "React" powers can be used out of your turn as long as the required situation happens (such as an attack or a victory check) and you can pay the cost.
  • The Perlae Imperii Expansion Pack introduces pearls, which can be converted into other resources out of turn when using a React power or when responding to a React power condition.
• People Jars:
  • The male Demonologist has three jars containing demons on and around his desk.
  • The Homunculus is a scaly demon grown in a jar.
• Pegasus: The Celestial Horse is a winged white horse. Its noble nature is hinted at by its ability, which can generate any basic essence except Death.
• Philosopher's Stone: The Philosopher's Stone is an expensive artifact that can convert any essence to gold on a 1-for-1 basis, which is the best rate in the game for this kind of effect. It's so powerful that the first Expansion Pack took several steps to Nerf strategies that revolve around it.
• The Phoenix: The Phoenix card in Perlae Imperii can destroy itself to generate four Elan and let you ignore an attack (symbolizing its Taking the Bullet for you and fiery death) and place it on top of your deck (so it can easily be "reborn").
• Random Effect Spell: Downplayed. If you want to construct a Monument and don't like the two that are available, you can instead choose to buy the hidden top card of the deck.
• Red Is Violent: Among the colour-coded essences, Elan is the red-coded one. While there's more to it than just violence, it's associated with many violence-flavoured game pieces such as the Duelist, Fire Demon, Elvish Bow, Dancing Sword, Possessed Demon Slayer and dragon-related cards.
• Reduced Resource Cost: Many cards let you play other cards at a discount that can decrease any essence costs, with the exception of gold and pearl costs:
  • The Artificer is the only mage without a tap ability, but he passively lets you play all your artifacts at a 1-essence discount.
  • The Crypt and Ghost Ship let you play a card from your discard pile at a 2-essence discount.
  • Dragons are expensive, but there are many ways to play them at a discount: The Dragon's Lair and the Dragon Bridle passively decrease their cost by 3 essences each. The Dragon Teeth artifact lets you tap it and discard 3 Elan to play any dragon (except for the extremely expensive Ancient Dragon, which has an Obvious Rule Patch forbidding it) for free. The Dragon Tamer can be tapped to let you play one at a 2-essence discount. Many of these cards also have other Dragon synergies.
  • The Mystical Menagerie gives you a 1-essence discount on Creatures.
  • The Homunculus is a Demon that lets you play other Demons at a 2-essence discount. Notably, this can negate gold costs, which matters for the otherwise-expensive-for-what-it-is Possessed Demon Slayer.
• Ritual Magic: The illustration of the Flaming Pit suggests that it's used for magical rituals — it consists of a flaming hole surrounded by a pentagram, skulls and candles. Its power lets you pay Life essences to gain Death and Elan.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: The Warlock^note A cosmetic Gender Flipped version of the Witch available in the Alternative Mages Pack for the base game. wears a pointy hat and a cape.
• Scoring Points: The goal of the game is to get at least 10 Victory Points, and then have the most points when a victory check occurs.
• Seashell Bra: The Mermaid uses a pair of seashells as a bra.
• Sea Serpents: The Sea Serpent is a large underwater serpent with scales, fins and a draconic head. It has the unique property of counting as both a Creature and a Dragon, and in the base game it's both the most expensive artifact to play and the one with the nastiest attack.
• Seer: Two mages are themed after the ability to see the future:
  • The Seer's power to see the future is represented by the ability to look at the top 3 cards of a deck (your artifact deck or the Monuments deck) and rearrange them. The original illustration resembles a female Fortune Teller who uses cards to tell the future, while the male version uses a Crystal Ball.
  • The Diviner has a more aggressive variation: immediately drawing 3 cards then discarding 3, the same as the ability of the Divination magic item. The original illustration resembles a male shaman, while the female variation appears to use divine inspiration.
• Skill Gate Characters: In games without Perlae Imperii (whose Pearl mechanic actually makes it a viable choice even at higher levels), Windup Man is good at low levels because it automatically generates a lot of resources at the start of every round, which you can cash out later. However, it's terrible against good players for multiple reasons: The first is that good players can end the game sooner, which leaves Windup Man unable to produce as much as you'd want to. This is extra bad considering how many resources it ties up (not only is it expensive to play, but you have to put a type of resource on it to make it generate that resource), and the fact that you're unable to cash out earlier without losing value. The second is that it telegraphs what you're planning to do, which gives your opponent time to respond (for instance by grabbing some good Monuments if they see you using it to make gold).
• Smart People Wear Glasses: The male Demonologist wears glasses and is implied to be intelligent — he's portrayed studying a book, and he's capable of growing demons in People Jars.
• Symmetric Effect:
  • The Warrior's Hall has a power that gives every player one Elan essence. It's a fairly weak ability, but it can be worth using if you really want that essence and know your opponent(s) can't do much with it.
  • The Catherine Wheel has a unique attack that hurts every player including its user. Its main use is to set up the Wheel's second ability, which grants three wild resources whenever you use a protection ability to ignore an attack.
• Taking the Bullet: Implied with The Phoenix, whose card lets you ignore an attack at the cost of destroying the Phoenix.
• Thieving Magpie: A raven's love for shiny objects gets a nod with the Raven Familiar, whose power is triggered by you gaining gold. However, for gameplay reasons, it gives you a wild essence instead of stealing anything.
• Treants: The Treant creature is a Plant Person with a Green Thumb that passively generates Life essences, and apparently has the knowledge required to create Elan essences based on how many Death an opponent has.
• Vanilla Unit:
  • All Monuments have a power. The exception is the Great Pyramid, which compensates by being the only one worth 3 points instead of 1 or 2. Additionally, the Obelisk is a virtual vanilla that gets you 6 essences when you buy it, but does nothing after that point.
  • The Nightingale is a creature that's worth a Victory Point, but has no power.
• Water Is Blue: Cards that portray water (Hypnotic Basin, Mermaid, Sunken Reef, Seafarer, Diving Cord, Blood Isle, Pearl Bed) have it drawn in blue. Additionally, the blue Calm essence resembles a drop of water.
• Wind-Up Key: The background of Windup Man features a wind-up key.