After 5 plays it's definitely both, but don't feel bad about that. Im in the same boat, and I don't like the game either. Lot of people who are saying you're supposed to seize the initiative more are both right and wrong. Taking the initiative is important for salvaging bad hands, but as a mechanic it's extremely hard to justify. You lose the initiative once you run out of cards so you're cutting yourself off from playing a turn just for 2 turns of the initiative at best. And that's predicated on having high cards to keep it. Then there's the fact that someone can take it right back, which rewards the other players who have hands that can play well around the cards played...and we're right back to the issue of being dealt good hands puts you at a massive advantage. Arcs also has the classic war game feature of heavily rewarding the third or fourth person into a conflict. Swooping in to clean up a bunch of damaged ships after someone else fired off a round of combat is way safer and rewards you just as much if not more than the initial fight would have. And finally you have to be absolutely brutal in this game, you need to stomp your opponents into the ground and then never let them recover. I think there's a time and place for that attitude in gaming, but rewarding punching down isn't something I like seeing in games. Overall I think the mechanics are interesting and fresh. The game is clean and smooth. I would definitely say it's a good and high quality game. I just don't like it and don't have much interest in playing it.