Arch Ravels – The Unboxinating!
Hello! It’s been a moment since I’ve posted an Unboxinating but I’ve been wanting to do Arch Ravels from XYZ Games for a while now. Also, I just backed the expansion: Arch Ravels – Magic Socks over on Backerkit so I thought I’d let you all know about the base game parts so you can get all excited about competitive fiber arts!
Number One: This game has some nice components. The yarn balls are wood (mostly. There seems to be a 3 count yarn ball that’s a cardboard chit), the cardboard components are a good weight and they came out of their jigs pretty easily and you get 4 plastic bowls. It would have been cooler if they were wood but then you would also pay a lot more for that. The cards are kind of a weird size but after they loosened up a bit I was able to get them to shuffle and bridge fairly easily. Plus, you get a spiffy organizer that locks down so you can store your game on edge and not have a parts-a-splosion.
Number 2: Octopus pattern…Whaaaaat? OCTOPUS PATTERN!!!!
Number 3: The art design is pretty and kawaii. You got some embossing on the box lid to call out the Game, the company, and the stats (Number of players, Time, Age recommendation). But also, wee mittens! Cozy bears! Unicorns! Mischievous cats! And the colors make me kinda super happy. The inside of the box top and bottom are a wallpaper of pretty colored yarn skeins and what is happier than that?
Number 4: I was amused by some of the call outs. “Trouble” Heh.
Number 5: The one thing that I didn’t like was that for an extremely color intensive game they didn’t do a really good job of making gameplay easy for people who have problems distinguishing between colors. The player markers are different shapes, which was nice, but the yarn balls are nigh impossible to distinguish between them. Check it out for yourself. I’ve taken a couple yarns from one pile and put them into another pile on one of these pictures. Which picture and how many yarns were moved? Now imagine trying to play the game like this.
Lastly :
