Ark Nova | Sponsors Tier List (live)
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ต.ค. 2023
- Today I'll be ranking all 66 Ark Nova sponsors currently available on BGA! Is this an impossible task to do accurately? Yes. The game is highly situational. These ratings will be based on how likely I am to keep a card if it's in my opening hand. I'll mention how the available projects, map and even player count can affect these decisions.
The Final Tier List: tiermaker.com/list/board-game...
JDansp's Sponsors Tier List: • Ultimate Ark Nova Spon...
Check out the full Ark Nova playlist for more replay analysis and strategy videos!
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It would have been nice to have a closeup of each card.
About that... I did have a separate window open with an enlarged version of each sponsor that I was clicking through as I was recording. I only realised the day after that the window didn't capture properly and can't be seen at all. So yes, that's my bad 🙁
@@NoWondersTV Captions would really help. It's easy enough to find sites where you can view all the cards, but I had to keep backtracking to get the names of them since they aren't visible (and I'm easily distracted, LOL!)
Really appreciated this as a very new player! There are some other ranking lists but none really explain in so much detail WHY that card is so good. In my currently running 2p game I was really torn when both Veterinarian and Tech Institute came out right at the beginning of the game and I had first pick. I did go with the Vet based on another tier list that put it higher, but my first instinct was that Tech Institute was the better. Will be interested in how it plays out (already those x-tokens have allowed my opponent to snap up another good sponsor card when otherwise they would not have).
Framing it as how likely you are to keep the card in your opening hand definitely influences it. Given that criteria I mostly agree. Rewards early game and consistently good sponsors, but not conditionally broken sponsors. There's no reason not to keep and play Federal Grants, but I'm way more scared when my opponent plays Explorers.
Very true, this list favours generically good cards, which is something I did want to convey to newer players. If it's the midgame and you have 4 science icons then Science Museum is the best card you can play. And if it's round 5 then Side Entrance could be one of the worst cards to play!
@@NoWondersTV True, I'm a big wingspan player, value the cards the same way. Of course, point bombs are good later, but you should consider what is good early and build from there. The decisions you make early are more crucial to having a good game later.
Edit: As in, I think this is the best way to frame a conversation on the power of (X) in any game. Good job!
Thanks for doing this Sam, I keep breaking into top 10 this season and then falling back out again so resources like this are really helpful. I pretty much agree with a few exceptions:
Expert on Africa | 75%→90% I think the clever effect is not negligible especially late game when you want to consistently have animals/association at the top, early game moving association down in a sponsor-heavy first few turns before first break is valuable, and you can often get a few X token points at the end.
waza special | consider→75% I think this card is often good enough to be a build around, especially if you get some big birds. I often end up getting 12+ appeal with it and its a card you play when its good, and you don't play when it isn't. Like you mentioned you don't want to play it to early but I think its a card that rewards you so heavily for being smart with it that it can win you the game and any card that can singlehandedly win you the game goes into the number ranks for me
I think you rated spotted hyena compound fairly but I love the card and it often feeds into itself wherein once you get 2 or 3 you are guaranteed a hit and once it starts to hit other predators you're off to the races. 3 or more predators and I think you remove the need for the cards action entirely which I think is really powerful especially in tandem with expert on africa which I mention above (and there are some good africa predators).
Great tier list Sam :)
Waza Special is a bit of a weird one for me. It's a card that if you see your opponent play it you say "oh f@#&". But I feel like I only see it 1 in every 20 games or so. The question really becomes is this card worth holding for the next 2 breaks and sometimes it will be, sometimes it won't. I don't tend to hold it very often but I could see it working if I prioritised it too.
Great video. Very hard list to make, cause so much is depending on context. Even beyond the "if tag X is a base project this is a keep 100%"
For instance a card like Meerkat Den becomes better when the 2 or 3 of the base projects are about continents. But if most of the projects care about animal type it becomes less desirable.
Another thing to consider is Expert on Predators is slightly better than the rest because of the Pack ability ( and hyena compound). Not many of the other animal types care about how many you have, but Pack does.
I am late to the party but finally started to play Ark Nova. Of course I am looking for tips here!!! Thanks again.
Oooh exciting! Good luck!
Very insightful. Can you do a vegemite tier-list next? Personally I think vegemite-vanilla is a sleeper S-tier vegemite (but could also very well be "depends"-tier).
Look at you showing off how cultured you are. Very good
Your videos are a hidden gem！
Yo this is cool, thanks for doing this. Subbed
I feel like this needs a "depends on map" tier. Like on Ice Cream, Aquarium sucks because you're starved of water tiles. Meanwhile Okapi stable is actually quite good on Ice cream as it's a long tile that can get your free kiosks online really fast
Yeah, all the sponsors are map and game-dependent so making an accurate tier list is a fruitless exercise. I think it mostly does its job though. New players can look at this and see Aquarium is generally a very strong card whereas they might get the wrong idea if Aquarium and Okapi Stable are in the same "map-dependent" tier 😝
This would be better is you showed a blown up image of the card being discussed. Thanks for the content!
After going though the sponsers and so many of them being silly on silver lake, are you still very high on open areas?
I'm still high on Lake, just higher on Outdoor 😉
What I love about Outdoor is it enables a r1 upgraded sponsor like Talented Communicator. Archaeologist is also busted on it (like Lake).
But I guess Lake does bust Free-Range Monkeys so gg!
@NoWondersTV pretty sure free-range monkeys is the worst card in ark nova, and don't think that will change even when new cards come out
@@timmaddams1093 From my experience with Marines so far I agree (except maybe Okapi) 😝
This could been done so much better like enlarging the card you are talking about for the viewers to have a better look at it.
I know, I'm quite upset about it. I had a separate window with the enlarged versions that didn't capture properly when recording. My bad 😞
@@NoWondersTV Ok thats a shame. Maybe consider adjusting it postprod and reupload the video? Enjoying your channel and gameplay analysis. 😊
Thanks! I think the plan will be make a new tier list when Marine Worlds comes to BGA and I have some experience with all the sponsors@@DonPers
I'm super, SUPER surprised about Meerkat Den. You put Aquarium 1st in the 95% tier... And there are 23 animal cards with water icon, with 3 doubled VS 26 animal cards with herbivore. So globally, same power. Same requirement. Ok, minus 2 appeal. But very easy to put on a map, vs the aquarium that can (not often, but can, vs meerkat that is always a straight forward path) be tricky with the 2 water needed. I would rank Aquarium better because of the 2 more appeal and the 5 sponsors with water (all good) vs 3 sponsor with herbivore (clearly NOT all good), but clearly both are 95%, without an hesitation.
I am a big fan of Meerkat Den. Maybe it is a tad low. The difference between the tiers is quite small and I wouldn't mind boosting it up to 90% looking at it now. I think Aquarium has a few big advantages over it - aside from the instant 2 appeal difference. Aquarium can work side-by-side with any of the base conservation projects. You need to get 5 Reptiles, no problem. There are plenty of them with water tags. Meerkat Den can work with Habitat projects but then is a non-combo with all the Species projects.
The other factor is those double water tag animals. Playing that late game Sumatran Tiger or Dugong is a bigger burst of points in one go.
They are closer than the tier list would suggest, it is really difficult to rank them all because nearly everything in 75%+ I would keep on a regular basis!
@@NoWondersTV It totally makes sense. I haven't thought about the work side by side with Conservation Projects. Spot on!
Surprised to see native farm animals so high. I never play this card outside of herbavore/diversity reasons, because I loathe the idea of dealing with narrow of strips of the map to fill later. Anyone got any replays to educate me?
To me, all of the native cards seem to me to only really be good in the midgame, after you've done about 2 full rounds worth of building. In the opening hand, I'm usually focused on cards that will do something for me in the first round. Native Lizards is the one I keep the most, because so many maps want you to fill your rock spaces as early as possible (e.g., parlour, tower, hollywood, restaurant).
Map dependent of course. With Park Restaurant you don't have to sacrifice much of your building arrangement to get huge points.
It can absolutely be worth holding to play in the midgame like you say. If a card is giving you 8+ points it's a pretty big deal. That's the equivalent of a full animals action except it costs 0 money.
I'll look to highlight a Native Farm Animals game in the next replay analysis. JDansp has a ton to choose from as he regularly abuses it.
My comment got deleted because i provided a link, but i'd check out game id #430159615 where I play poorly and NFA saved me at the end. When I showed it to sam all he said was "You want me to analyse another one of your stupid Native Farm Animals games" "I can't encourage my viewers to play like this" :(
❤ . (They only gave me the option to like) 👍
I feel like the subtitle of this video could be: More Reasons Silver Lake is OP. 🤣
BDW told me a cool story from WSBG. He watched Mathias Wigge play a game with his "revised" Silver Lake. All the 2 money spots are removed but instead become free to build on. This solves Archaeologist and also makes Sponsor buildings not work as well. Additionally the bottom rep spot got removed.
I'd love to try this out and see how it balances it out
@@NoWondersTV Interesting. But the determination map bonus was retained?
@@alexbove106 Haha, yes. I think removing it would be too dramatic. But it is the most problematic part of the map.
I am just not keen on guided school tours. Yes, it's a CP, which can be great when played at just the right time, but otherwise it just seems like a huge tempo loss for.....nothing. Even in the end game there are just more impactful things you can do with the limited time remaining. If this is the best play you have, then you've probably already lost. I'd almost just rather break for 3 (or more) money than play it if I had no other sponsors. At least then I'm getting money and a possible X token.
I am not its biggest fan either but I think that's a bit too far in the other direction! A 4 or 7 point action is still worth it at most stages of the game. It can be a tempo hit (which is a non-issue in long early rounds) but the payoff is decent. There are about 20-30 other sponsors I'd prefer to see in my opening hand but I'd still take Guided School Tours a large percentage of the time.
I hit 6 bears the last game I played with my wife. ;)
Impossible!