Arctic Scavengers: Base Game, HQ, and Recon Review

You know Dominion, that smooth deck-building O.G. that boasts tremendous variety and stellar engine building? Arctic Scavengers is another one like that but with a fully realized setting of post-apocalyptic mayhem in contrast to the dour, flavorless “let’s build a castle town” concept of its immediate ancestor. You're still building an engine of cards to gain more population (victory points) but play is underscored with tension and bloody carnage. Instead of villages and copper you're fielding brawlers and scavengers. Instead of a buy phase where you're passively tossing coins on the table you're hunting wild game and pushing old-world narcotics. And instead of jonesing for additional actions you're jabbing crude spears into a stranger's gut.

The goal is to have the most population after 16 rounds of play. This is accomplished by supplementing your deck-based engine with new cards from one of three places. The primary source is the face-up stacks of Mercenary cards littering the table and serving as the equivalent to Dominion's Kingdom cards. You play from your hand to amass the food and medicine required to recruit one of the available warriors and add them to your discard pile, grinning stupidly in anticipation of wielding that dog sled team or lone wolf sniper.

However, there is a crucial misstep in the base game of Arctic Scavengers in that the available Mercenaries piles are static and not randomized as we see in Donald X. Vaccarino’s seminal design. This is a substantial flaw in the game as it can result in a sense of repetition that belies the greater strengths of the design. This flood is partially dammed with the interesting inclusion of the junkyard.

The junkyard consists of weaponry and tools, medicine, and the appropriately titled "junk". Tools supplement tribe members in your deck by enhancing their stats, medicine is needed to recruit the more expensive units, and junk is just filler in the face-down deck. What's interesting here is that there's a slick push your luck element in that committing additional gangers to dig into the pile results in you drawing more cards, the rub being you only keep one. So you may really need that last bottle of pills to recruit an Engineer but you're hesitant to throw another brawler into the waste when you'd rather use him for the oncoming skirmish.

This multi-use card mechanic is one large area where this design breaks away from its deckbuilding peers. In addition to the strategic decision process of evaluating the available mercenaries and sizing them up for your particular engine, you need to have strong tactical decision making in order to adequately assign resources to their most efficient tasks. If you commit too many warriors to hunting so that you can recruit effective new units, you may be overlooking an opportunity to acquire that delicious hunting rifle that's sitting near the top of the junk heap.

Continuing in that vein the Skirmish is the single most interesting aspect of Arctic Scavengers and it throws an even greater wrench into the shifting tactical landscape. Instead of playing cards during your turn, you can hold any number back and save them for the end of round bout. The cards you keep in reserve for the skirmish are hidden allowing for a social atmosphere to creep into the game where you're bluffing and throwing insults at your opponents and trying to beat them over the head with brinksmanship. You're mumbling to yourself and half-cringing as you hope they won't realize you're really holding four Refugees and want them desperately to back down and not compete. Tension organically flows and the design offers drama you don't see in a typical deck-builder.

The game offers several legitimate paths to victory but the boon of winning the Skirmish should not be ignored. The best Mercenaries and Tools in the game are in the Contested Resource deck and the only way to crack that safe is to break some skulls and spill crimson on the packed white snow of tomorrow. Of particular interest here is that the majority of players don't even know what resource they're fighting over as the first player is the only one given a peek at the card. While the chance of extreme reward is there, depending on your particular build you may have no use for the grenade resting comfortably on top. Relying on intuition and reading the behavior of that first player can certainly help in evaluating the perceived worth of any given round.

This is a very solid game that approaches moments of excellence, but it is derailed by two distinct flaws. The first issue is one that is not easily dealt with and it's that it tends to run too long. With four players this game can approach the two hour mark which is absolutely excessive for a deck builder. Experienced players will get it down to 90 minutes but it rarely hits that golden one hour mark; turns aren't quite as quick as they should be. I've found the best solution here is playing with three and cutting the Contested Resource deck down by a few cards, effectively shortening the turn limit.

I've already touched on the second issue- variety. This particular problem is mostly an affliction of implementation and it’s remedied by the included HQ expansion that now comes with every copy of Arctic Scavengers. This mini-expansion adds a couple of new Mercenaries but also brings in special power cards for each player and additional paths of exploration.

Buildings and Gangs are the two main elements that will hit you in the kisser. Buildings consist of a new deck of facedown cards that Engineers can dig through, allowing you to build permanent structures to enhance your engine. They’re another element that players can largely ignore if they want, seeking to ply their effort elsewhere. However, those who take advantage will be rewarded with additional flexibility in storing cards for the future or generating food each turn. It’s all about options and empowerment.

Gangs serve as new overarching goals that afford additional population to players requiring specific conditions at the end of play. This means the player with the most drugs gains the associated victory points of the Pharmers while the player with the most Tools is backed by the Gearheads. These additional strategic vectors do a great job of providing increased incentive to interact with the disparate elements of the design and add a much needed touch of variety and richness.

The new Recon expansion that is now included in the second edition of Arctic Scavengers is a more full-blown affair that serves as a huge step forward. It introduces a large mound of cards and most notably, additional Mercenaries piles that are rotated in and out of play. Without a doubt this is game changing and pushes a very solid experience into an excellent one.

The expansion is layered and nuanced including a suite of new mechanisms that will shift play in interesting directions. You can now peek at the top card of hidden decks, fish cards out of your discard pile, and bluff in new and interesting ways. Everything feels much more fleshed out as if the original clouded vision has finally come into focus. It's a fascinating extension and a product I'd urge every single Arctic Scavenger fan to try.

Rio Grande has brought this gritty deck-builder back from the dead in great fashion. The complete package now feels almost like a "big box" deluxe release while still maintaining an easy entry due to a relatively streamlined rule set with minimal complications. If there was a way to force a spiked Rooster Booster down its throat and tighten up the journey it would absolutely be a classic. As consolation it will happily settle for taking its seat alongside Legendary Encounters as one of the most thematic examples of the deckbuilding genre.