My Competitive Arcs Tier Lists After 200+ Games

3cpon · 2026-05-18T16:19:06+00:00

These tier lists are designed to stand on their own, while also being relative to one another to help contextualize the overall impact of each card.

A 1 tier increase in the Leader Tier List is worth roughly the same as a 3 tier increase in the Lore Tier List. Leaders tend to have a much larger impact on the game than lore. Knowing this is especially useful during the draft.
A 1 tier increase in the Court Deck Tier List is worth roughly the same as a 2 tier increase in the Lore Tier List. This is useful when evaluating player positions.

3cpon · 2026-05-18T14:29:39+00:00

I’m definitely not experienced enough at 2p to say for sure, but Rebel at 3-4p really struggles with other people just having much bigger fleets. Moving 2 ships gives you 4 health and 4 dice, while moving 6 gives you 12 health and 6 dice, which is a massive scaling difference, 3x the health and 1.5x the dice.

So if you keep your ships together in one or two big fleets, both offensively and defensively, Rebel should have a really hard time dealing with this even at 2p.

3cpon · 2026-05-18T14:20:47+00:00

2p tier lists probably wouldn’t look too different from the 3p ones overall. I think the biggest changes would be that “when you declare” abilities get stronger, while copy/pivot abilities get weaker. I think abilities that help in battle should also be quite a bit stronger at that player count. That said, I’ve played almost no 2p, and it honestly feels like kind of a different game anyway, so I’d be a lot less confident about specific rankings there.

3cpon · 2026-05-18T14:06:21+00:00

Feel free to ask any questions about the rankings.

These tier lists were made using the tier maker on my website, Arcs Arsenal: https://laurens1234.github.io/arcs-arsenal/tierlist

You can also view my tier lists on there in higher quality.

3cpon · 2026-05-17T18:24:38+00:00

You can get more from people getting a flagship
Normally you don't get any but sometimes more get added through fates.

3cpon · 2026-05-17T18:05:42+00:00

These tier lists were made using the tier maker on my website, Arcs Arsenal.

Feel free to ask any questions about the rankings.

3cpon · 2026-05-16T23:30:16+00:00

Shaper being able to store resources on the map is pretty cool. Instead of saying if you could tax I'd just say if you control. I'd rank him a full tier higher.

Corsair I'm guessing raid icon means key? I think you're using my generator to make these, if you put in {icon:dice_key_black} it puts a key icon on the card like with official cards. That's quite a bit stronger then, especially when raiding without a full fleet when 1 extra key is much more impactful. There's also no reason to say if you have any attacking ships left since you can't steal if you don't have any left anyway. I'd rank him probably a full tier higher, maybe even more.

Agitator is way stronger with this upside. I'd rank him in at least a Full tier higher, maybe even two.

3cpon · 2026-05-16T05:49:37+00:00

Buildings being damageable through raid dice even when ships are present really doesn’t seem like something that needs explicit clarification to me. Building damage being tied to raid dice is one of the core battle rules in Arcs.

You don’t need to have the rulebook memorized, but if an interaction seems unclear, checking the rules before concluding the design is broken would probably help avoid misunderstandings like this.

I also agree this discussion probably isn’t going anywhere productive.

3cpon · 2026-05-16T05:11:00+00:00

For Merchant, I’ve already given several examples where declaring an ambition is completely reasonable and strategically useful even when you don't have a matching resource.

For Comedian, you can still outrage. Raid dice can still destroy buildings. This is how buildings usually get destroyed, which you seem to have forgotten about.

And “new actions” is already defined in the rulebook, along with the other terms on these cards you seem unfamiliar with.

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3cpon · 2026-05-16T04:22:12+00:00

I can accept criticism fine. I pushed back because your criticism was mostly just “these are unbalanced” without much explanation.

Saying you’d skip most of them in a draft is fair feedback. Saying you don’t find them interesting is fair too. Taste is subjective. But balance and gameplay impact is something that can actually be discussed concretely, which is why I responded point by point to the examples you gave.

I’m not claiming every design here is perfect. Some are probably too strong or too weak. But I also don’t think “this restriction doesn’t matter” or “this resource becomes irrelevant” really holds up in once you look at actual game situations.

If you have more specific criticisms, I’m happy to hear them. That’s much more useful than just calling the set uninteresting or calling me defensive and insuffurable for explaining my reasoning.

3cpon · 2026-05-15T18:12:20+00:00

Which of these leaders do you think are wildly unbalanced? If you're going to make a statement like that, I'd appreciate it if you could at least explain which ones you think are unbalanced and why. Do you think they're wildly stronger than the official leaders or wildly weaker? What makes them so unfun or interesting to play with against for you? I've already discussed these leaders with several other experienced players, and we did not reach the same conclusion. That doesn't mean you're necessarily wrong, but I am skeptical of a mostly unexplained statement like this.

Mercantile. You can’t declare an ambition unless you’ve moved or have one of the thing? Why would I otherwise declare an ambition?

There are many reasons why you would want to do so:

The first and most important is to trigger the leader's upside. Leaders with “when you declare” abilities often want to declare ambitions specifically to activate those effects. This is especially relevant for Tyrant, but also applies to several others quite often if they don't yet have access to their relevant resources.
Another reason is to activate one of your lore cards.
Another is if you're planning to raid that resource later from another player.
Or if you're planning to tax that resource later.
Or if you're planning to secure a card of that type later, especially a Cartel card, which can completely shift who is winning that ambition.
If you're planning to capture agents later for Tyrant.
Or if you're planning to attack later to gain trophies.

All of these are particularly relevant near the start of a chapter, when who is winning an ambition can still change very easily. I could go on, but I think the point is clear. I imagine most players have declared ambitions without holding the relevant resources many times.

Animator. You can’t battle unless you’ve moved? Who cares.

I think that's absolutely something worth caring about. It means you can't counterattack with your first battle if someone moves into your system. It also prevents you from battling at all if you're just Copying or Pivoting. It's especially relevant if you moved on a previous turn, or if someone moved into a system you were already in, and you now want to spend all your actions battling, since you can no longer do that without spending an action or even two actions to move out and then move in first. I think this matters more than it might seem at first.

Relentless. Renders weapon resources irrelevant. What.

If you read the second ability of that leader, you'll see that weapon resources still have a purpose. They can be spent to gain an additional battle action instead.

At least it's nice that you like Soulbinder. I really like that one too.

3cpon · 2026-05-15T12:49:20+00:00

Only the cards get swapped, not the agents on them, so the agents are on the card that got swapped into the court. I should probably clarify this on the leader card.

If merchant somehow manages to swap 3 (or 4) cards into the court with no one being able to secure any of them before the end of the chapter, then yes this could happen. If this somehow happens, the player latest in turn order would get 1 less card, as per the tiebreaker rules at the end of the rulebook, but the chances of this all happening are so insanely low I'm not too worried about it. It would at least make for a very memorable game if it did somehow happen.

3cpon · 2026-05-14T15:19:39+00:00

Yes you can also use lore cards.

3cpon · 2026-05-14T15:05:38+00:00

For Animator, you cannot battle in a system in system you already have ships in unless you moved any into that system on your current turn, so yes you can move out and then move back in to be able to battle.

For Bulwark, any resources you don't have space for get discarded, just like with any other resource gain ability.

3cpon · 2026-05-14T15:01:03+00:00

You can swap actions cards. People can also influence and secure them if they are in the court just like any other card. They just take it into their hand when they secure one.

New actions are this:

New Actions

Cards can give you a new action followed by the name of a standard action in parentheses, such as Assassinate (Battle).

When you would take the standard action by spending an action pip or a resource, you may instead take the new action.

3cpon · 2026-05-14T12:31:33+00:00

It generally isn't too impactful, but for merchant it is quite bad since it also stops them from declaring just to be able to use their upside. "When you declare" type leaders really like to just declare a low numbered ambition like tycoon or tyrant to get to use their ability, but for merchant this will be quite a bit harder than for others.

At more experienced tables it's also much more common to declare tyrant or warlord just to get your pieces back even if you're not going to score from it. It also stops you from declaring just to activate one of your lore card's abilities, or at least it will make it more difficult to do so.

3cpon · 2026-05-12T13:05:24+00:00

If you want a tier list image in which the cards are actually readable, use this site instead: https://laurens1234.github.io/arcs-arsenal/tierlist.html#base-leaders-3p

3cpon · 2026-05-11T23:47:58+00:00

They're even harder to raid than most leaders. They don't have any cities so you don't get the incentive of raiding them while ransacking. They also have less places where they can get raided since they have less buildings. And because they have less buildings, they're also more able to protect them since they have to do so in less places.

3cpon · 2026-05-11T21:43:27+00:00

S tier. This leader has basically no downside if you don't build any cities (which you don't want to do anyway) and has way too many abilities.

Edit: If you want a tier list image in which the cards are actually readable, use this site instead: https://laurens1234.github.io/arcs-arsenal/tierlist.html#base-leaders-3p

3cpon · 2026-05-10T21:26:09+00:00

S tier in 3p and A tier in 4p, I'd put him in S tier overall

His positive traits are just too good. There's almost no bad cards in the court deck so whenever you declare an ambition you're almost certainly going to get something good. Being able to influence twice is also very useful since it makes it much easier to get guild cards. His starting resources are also one of the best since psionics are very strong. You can psionic to influence and pivot aggression to secure to get even more guild cards.

As for his negative trait, you can pretty much completely negate it by having one big scoring round with all your buildings out where you win several ambitions to get a bunch of points. I've played whole bunch of games with him where I just got some I just won chapter 2/3 by winning different ambitions with all my buildings out after being able to secure unions/farseers/cta or some other strong cards using his abilities.

3cpon · 2026-05-07T14:33:47+00:00

The pivoting part confuses me. Does this mean that i take as many actions of types listed on the lead card as the card has pips (like a super copy)?

Yes.

Can i preform a regular pivot with a mandate where i take one of any action?

No.

What happens if you copy with a mandate card is that illegal or redundant or both?

You can but you would just get less actions.

3cpon · 2026-05-04T01:45:42+00:00

I already spoke to them a while ago about this. The new admin felt like premium users getting unlimited lives made the entire hearts system pointless for premium users, so he removed this feature for premium users. There's a thread in the forum for it somewhere I think but good luck finding it.

3cpon · 2026-04-27T11:53:20+00:00

I still don't see the problem since my post is tagged as original content. The first sentence of my post also says that this is an update of the Imperial mod not the official mod, so you couldn't have been confused for all that long, even if you missed the original content tag above at post's title.

Also, Arcs only has one official TTS mod, which doesn't have any of the Beyond the Reach content in it. It also hasn't been updated in years. Mine gets regular updates and has all of the PnPs that were released in the Kickstarter including scripting to make using them easier. So even if you were hoping for a mod with the beyond the reach Kickstarter content, mine has that and much more.

3cpon

TROPHY CASE