Tabletop Game / Arcadia Quest

And all was right with the world!... well, no, actually

Opening Narration

Arcadia Quest is a game developed by Spaghetti Western Games and released by CMON. A competitive board game that pits four groups against each other to complete objectives.

The premise of the initial title., Arcadia Quest, revolves around a world of Sun and Moon, both of which never move in the sky. The elves dance in the daylight while the Orcs maraud in the moonlight, a world perfect for the two races... until humans show up. The humans mess up both sides by ruining the day woods and the moonlit mountain. At some point in history, the humans started the sun and the moon cycle with magic, and everything got all kinds of screwy and ruined everything for the Orcs and the Elves. This upsets Lord Fang, who spends a millennium trying, and failing, to kill King David, the human leader, and eventually succeeds after bringing the Orcs, Trolls, and Goblins together. They take Arcadia, set up home, and make it eternal night. The Guilds that were created to defend Arcadia were too busy with stealing treasure to help, but eventually decide the time has come and they want their home back.

The game has numerous expansions including

• Arcadia Quest: Inferno: a devil-themed core box that can be played independently of the main game, although the characters included in both core boxes can be used for either.
• Arcadia Quest: Beyond the Grave: A zombie-themed expansion for the base game
• Arcadia Quest: Pets: A more garden-themed version with a new mechanic, the titular Pets which can be obtained and used to aid your Guild, and can be used with either core box
• Arcadia Quest: Riders: An expansion that introduces Mounts as a mechanic and can be used with either expansion
• Arcadia Quest: Whole Lotta Lava: An expansion that introduces two new optional missions for Inferno
• Arcadia Quest: Fire Dragon/Frost Dragon/Chaos Dragon/Poison Dragon: Four separate boxes each including a new boss monster fought at the end of any campaign

The game also has a sci-fi spinoff called Starcadia Quest which functions somewhat similarly, but also has its own list of expansions

• Arrmada
• Build-A-Robot
• Showdown
• Zenith Invasion
• Thornetroopers
• Space Oddities

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Arcadia Quest

The Arcadia Quest series features the following tropes:

• Anti-Hoarding: Because money cannot be carried over from mission to mission, collecting a boatload of cash and saving it serves no purpose.
• Asshole Victim: The Dread King ultimately felt so annoyed at his children for not conforming to his ideals of the kingdom that he disowned both and got a Necromancer to make him immortal in order to rule forever so his kids could never take the throne. The necromancer ended up cursing him into the giant Skeleton he is today, and he has been trapped underground in a crypt for a considerable amount of time thanks to the curse. You can somewhat feel bad for the guy on some level given he got cursed for being a bit too strict, but his first decision after being freed by Dr. Spider is to murder his way through Arcadia to reclaim his throne.
• Bad Boss: The Underlord is entirely unbearable and the other demons mock him with the name "Rock Bottom" because he keeps his behind squarely in his stone throne all the time. That said, he's so lazy that they can basically just screw around and do what they want as long as he doesn't know it's happening.
• Big Bad: Depending on the expansion
  • For the base game, it's Lord Fang, a vampire who has overtaken Arcadia.
  • For Beyond the Grave, it's the Dread King, a former king of Arcadia who disowned his children and wished for immortality. He got it, but was transformed into an undead warrior.
  • For Inferno, it's The Underlord aka "Rock Bottom" (as he never leaves his chair), a powerful lord of the inferno itself and mastermind behind an invasion to Arcadia.
  • For Pets, it's Vexia. A mad witch who perfected "Cuddlemancy". Despite being blind, she is incredibly dangerous and powerful, and almost entirely immune to damage when her pets are nearby.
  • For Riders, it's Malkhor. An ancient legend of the hunt, he has returned thousands of years later to Arcadia to hunt his newest game: humans.
• Black Mage: Syybbyl, Seth, Trandir, and Algus.
• Bragging Rights Reward: The Level 6 items included in the Dragon Expansions are some of the most insanely powerful weapons possible to obtain, and most of them can mop the floor with almost any hero... but by the time you even get a chance to buy these items, you have two stages left, and one of them is cooperative. As such, all you can do is flaunt your impressive regeneration skills or excellent attack boosting long enough to take out the dragon and then call it a day. Unless you decide to fight numerous dragons in a row, this is where the campaign ends. Additionally, by the time you reach this point, there is likely an obvious victor before even entering the dragon fight, and thus all that part is mostly for show by this point (unless the person with this power manages to tie the score).
• Chainmail Bikini: Played straight with most of the characters. Characters like Natasha, Britney, and Diana all basically wear an armored bra and bikini with some arm guards and boots (although this at least does make sense with Britney given she's a succubus, but doesn't with the other two given they're human warriors). Leah, Mika, Valerie, and Greenhood all have decent armor on their legs, but apparently decided their chests needed more sunlight than defense. The characters that avert this are Diva, who wears a full set of appropriate armor that covers up to her neck, Angel Eyes who has full armor save for her thighs, Viola who wears a full armor save for a diamond-shaped opening in the middle of her chest, and Jaimie who wears such a massive suit of armor that she probably has more iron-plating on her than all of the female characters combined.
• Circles of Hell: The campaign for the Inferno expansion is set up this way. You go from the 1st circle which has twp options, then either the West 2nd Circle or the East 2nd Circle, and finally the 3rd Circle, which leads to the mission "Hit Rock Bottom".
• Collision Damage: If The Dread King or any of the dragons makes contact with a hero while moving, that hero instantly takes a hit.
• Combat Breakdown: After using an item, it becomes exhausted and you must rest your guild which unexhausts all weapons and revives dead teammates, but skips your turn. If you're up against another hero and do not have an ally nearby to defend a specific hero in your guild, you may have to make due with weapons specifically suited for fighting NPCs, as that's all you have. That said, if you both start with a full inventory and you reached this point, it's likely so has your opponent.
• Creepy Twins: The Sister of Pain and Sister of Pleasure on the box art and manual show them standing next to Lord Fang. Both are in the shadows, their large grins and glowing red eyes a giveaway of their vicious intent. As for their descriptions in the manual, they say "This will only hurt/tickle a little. Oh wait, I lied!".
• Critical Existence Failure: An odd version. while it holds true to many games with a health system, every enemy of the game except the final version of a Major Villain or the Dragons have an "Overkill" count. If you manage to deal damage equivalent to this number in a single attack (which usually is 1 higher than the HP of the target), that enemy dies instantly and is removed. If you do not deal all of that in a single combat regardless of the target health before attacking, the enemy gets a chance to respond with an attack. This, however, only holds true to NPC enemies. Actual heroes killed in PvP hold this trope straight.
• Crutch Character: Some characters, such as Mamba or Mika, that focus on helping exhaust cards on the enemy never become entirely useless, but as a character's armory expands and they gain more cards, it can become functionally much more dangerous to use their abilities.
• Critical Hit Class: Phyx, Greensleeves, Diana, and McHammer all gain bonuses when they roll attack crits. Yun and Spike gain bonuses when they roll Defense crits.
• Difficulty Levels: One neat feature of the game is that there are Equipment Cards from "Starter" to "Level 5", and all enemies have 4 cards, one for "Level 1", one for "Level 2-3", one for "Level 4-5", and finally one for "Level 6". Even though there is no option in the campaign books to ever fight the Major Villain in a starter mission, this means a player has the option to do so anyways with Episodic Mode (playing a late-game mission with early equipment, or an early mission with late-game equipment), or just when crafting a homebrew mission.
• Disability Superpower: Despite completely burning out her sight prior to becoming a villain, she's not only able to fight despite it, but Vexia is more lethal now than before.
• Early-Bird Boss:
  • The Bullroarer is the boss of the Brightsun Arena (one of the listed "easy" missions, and a special variant of the Minotaur enemy. All versions of the Minotaur have 2 Move with an ability that lets it deal double damage with crits. The difference is the Level 1 Minotaur has 5 HP, 6 Overkill, 1 Defense, and 4 Melee, the Level 2-3 version has 6 HP, 7 OK, 1 DEF, and 2 M. The Bullroarer has 6 HP, 7 OK, 2 DEF, and 4 M with an additional ability granting it 2 rerolls for any action. While the level 4-5 and Level 6 Minotaur's overpower it with 7/8HP, 9 OK, 2 DEF, and 5 M, the double reroll ability and its stats are staggeringly high for such an early mission.
  • If you do either the Bridge of the Damned, Slaughter House, or The Graveyard, you have an objective for killing a boss: Frank, Ivan, or Dr. Spider for each respective mission. Each one comes with a defense point at least, making them potentially difficult to kill, especially if they are in the first mission.
• The Judge is a potential boss in numerous missions, and it's entirely possible to face him down in Mission 2 or 3.
• Egomaniac Hunter: Morkhal returns to hunt in Arcadia after years of absence for no reason other than possibly being bored with hunting game and preferring new sources, such as Arcadia's heroes.
• Elite Mooks:
  • In the base game, the Orc Captain's are slightly more powerful than Orc Marauders, and have a +2 Reroll ability, but are still classed as "Minor Minions". The base game also has the Hammer Beastman and Spear Beastman, along with the Sister of Pain and Sister of Pleasure which are "Major Minions".
  • In the Beyond the Grave expansion, the Necromancer fulfills this role as a "Major Minion".
  • In Inferno, the Demon Captain and Demoness Captain are still much stronger than most other minions, but are still "Major Minions".
• Evil Is Deathly Cold: Icewyng.
• Excuse Plot: Players can completely ignore the plot at hand and just play the game regardless. All the mission briefings and opening narration do is give some context. Beyond that, the narrative is wholly unnecessary.
• Fantasy Character Classes: It should come to no surprise that most of the characters are an assortment of various sword-wielding fantasy characters or bow-wielding elves.
• Fartillery: Rotwailer's main weapon are horrid smelling eggs, and her body excretes an odor so horrific that if your character gains 4 poison tokens from it, they instantly die.
• Fluffy the Terrible: The powerful scarred warrior tiger covered in various weapons and thick armor named "Mittens".
• Fragile Speedster: Wisp is only character capable of moving around the board and entirely ignoring Guard Reactions. To make up for this, he is one of the few characters that has an ability and his Defense and Health total 5, whereas almost every other character has a defense and health that totals 6.
• Glass Cannon: Characters like Phyx or Greensleeves have some exceptional damage output, but a base defense of 1, making surviving attacks almost impossible until at least mission 2 if they purchase an armor.
  • the Dread King has absolutely no defensive ability, but makes up for it by only taking damage from crits. Also ties with the Underlord and Malkhor for a great 6 attack rating, and can deal extra damage by running into his target.
• Game of Chicken: Because the game rewards players for actively killing each other, once two players have the opportunity to fight, it can sometimes come down to who takes those first emergent steps to attack.
• Giggling Villain: Vexia.
• Healing Factor: As if the Dragons weren't hard enough to kill with 9-12 HP, 2-3 Defense, and total immunity to damage that are not crits, it's possible during the dragon's turn to draw a card where it slams down into the middle of the arena and just heals a wound back. Given the dragon can retaliate with a devastating 9-12 damage and special attack abilities that can instantly kill their targets, losing that one damage can be devastating.
• Increasingly Lethal Enemy: The dragons are extremely dangerous, but even worse is the Dragon Deck. Every time a guild ends its turn, the Dragon Deck is drawn from, and while it is possible to draw the cards where nothing happens, or a card effect where the dragon just jumps over to where nobody is and does nothing, It's also possible to draw cards that summon minions, draw cards that heal the dragon, draw cards that activate their unique board effects, and draw cards that make them flat-out attack. The longer the fight goes one, the more enemies will be present and the more potential an instant game-over will be triggered.
• Insane Troll Logic: Havok is destroying Arcadia because it's not fashionable, and that is it. His annoyance with humans and their version of Arcadia is that it isn't some weird time-displaced mess of stones and towers at bizarre angles and impossible geometry. He genuinely thinks this is helping, and that the humans trying to stop the Chaos Dragon from destroying their home are just too stupid to see the problem. To him, this is a favor.
• Jack of All Stats: Diva has 4 health and 4 defense, giving her a fantastic 8 between the numbers, but she also has no ability, meaning she is entirely dependent on her starting defense and a good set of equipment.
• Instant-Win Condition: During the final fight with a Dragon, all players win the moment the dragon goes down regardless of anything else happening at that time. This is also true in reverse, if a Dragon claims five enemies in combat, all players lose instantly.
• Kingmaker Scenario: By default, if 3 or 4 players are in the game and two are holding position, the remaining player(s) can break the stalemate by helping work against someone as alliance are not illegal in the game.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Rotwailer, one of the dragons, has absolutely no humanoid female traits of any kind in her design. If you didn't explicitly read the flavor text on her enemy card or read the backstory in the manual, you'd mistake her massive dragon muscles for just being another male dragon like the other three.
• Lightning Bruiser: Vexia's villain ability can make her the single-handed most powerful Major Villain in the entire game. If she has 4 Wild Pets surrounding her, she can have 17 health (surpassing even the Elder versions of every Dragon), 7 Defense (beating Malkhor's defense of 5), and 9 damage (which is so high that she matches against Mog'Dor and Rotwailer). If a pet is removed from the board, she can replace it using her ability.
• Mad Scientist: Dr. Spider, who was expelled from Arcadia Academy for excessive necromancy.
• Man in a Kilt: Anvil
• Master of All: The six Angel characters from Inferno and Whole Lotta Lava are downright broken. Their stats, between health and defense, total 7, and they all have exceptionally powerful abilities that make them invaluable. While they can be used freely by the players, they're also only intended to ever be collected on the few specific Angel missions in Whole Lotta Lava and Inferno, and failure to rescue them means they return in the late game as a boss.
• Mechanically Unusual Class: Izzy and Jack-Jack are different than every other hero in quite unusual ways. Jack-Jack's ability allows him, with damage, to swap items between his target and one other character in the same guild, which can really screw with a character until they rest and swap everything back. Izzy is the only character whose ability specifically relates to monsters, in that any monster he kills becomes a potion he reserves in his inventory for use as a full-heal when he needs it.
• Mini-Boss: Any fight against a Minor Villain can often be classed as a Mini Boss. They tend to be much more dangerous opponents and usually only appear one per any map. Defeating them usually also grants specialized rewards.
• Narcissist: Icewyng arrives in Arcadia, freezes it with his ice breath, eats humans, but sits back and genuinely thinks the only reason people in Arcadia want him to leave is because he's too good at Dragon Figure Skating.
• Optional Party Member: The Angels only join your team if you actively finish their objectives in the campaign for Inferno/Whole Lotta Lava. If you fail, you not only lose them as potential teammates, but they become bosses later.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The Beyond the Grave campaign introduces "Ghosts", a Major Minion with the power of Intangibility that are capable of moving through walls and objects regardless of the board setup, and even trigger their Guard Reactions through walls.
• Player Vs Player: Much of the game requires you to be actively fighting Heroes from other Guilds. Every stage must be completed both with a PvE objective and a PvP objective.
• Power Equals Rarity: Some of the best items in the game are the Reward items, however they tend to be limited to only 2 per any given map, and often it isn't limited to one player. As such, if in a 3-4 player game, one of the better strategies is to bee-line for any mission that gives out cool stuff, and take down enemy Heroes trying to take the rewards.
• Pyromaniac: The manual states that Mog'Dor not only loves fighting with fire, but actively adores burning everything around him to the ground.
• Pyrrhic Victory: It is entirely possible to rush an enemy in hopes of opening a path for your Guild, only for the battle to end with both your hero and the target dead. Enemies get to do a Payback Reaction even when killed as long as you don't hit their Overkill, and this can be super messy with a powerhouse such as the Minotaur or Troll. This is fine for a Major Villain like Lord Fang where the campaign ends when he dies, but can come off as pointless when all you managed to do was kill a single Orc and not even clear a mission for doing so.
• Random Number God: Everything you do in the game is almost entirely built on dice rolls. From attacking, to defending, to enemy spawns, you are entirely at the mercy of your rolling. If you roll a melee weapon but all the icons come up range, you deal zero damage. The only way to mitigate this is to get more equipment with higher attack ratings (which means you roll more dice at once, giving you a better probability of an acceptable roll) or rolling crit rolls which count for whatever it is you're rolling for plus giving you another die to roll with. Some equipment boosts a weapon, others are permanent buffs such as a reroll or two, and a good majority of the character abilities are about either dealing extra damage with specific rolls or rolling extra dice under certain circumstances. Basically, you had best hope Lady Luck is on your side, otherwise you can end up rolling a mighty 10 defense and getting nothing.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The Sister of Pain and Sister of Pleasure have the same stats (7 HP, 8 Overkills, 1 Move, 5 Attack, 2 Reward), the only way they differ is their attack and abilities. The Sister of Pain has a melee attack that exhausts a card from the target for every crit, and the Sister of Pleasure has a range attack that heals her 2 wounds for every crit. Additionally, on their enemy cards, the Sister of Pain has an angry expression and is holding a knife at the ready, while the Sister of Pleasure has an evil smile, and is simply moving magic between her hands.
• Replay Value: The base game includes 12 characters and a total of 11 missions, of which you can only ever play 6, and 1 is always the same last mission. The missions you play are chosen based on the last winner, and the Symbols obtained by beating previous missions, meaning you can lock yourself out of content by doing certain missions over others, and some missions grant titles that can affect a mission later and make things easier for the player who gets it.
• Respawning Enemies: Once an enemy dies, if the respawn board is full, the player to the left of the current player rolls for respawn. If the roll of the 2 dice matches 2 symbols from any respawn tile on the board and that tile doesn't currently have two figures in it, that monster respawns there.
• Shoulders of Doom: the Dread King armor
• Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: Of the Free-For-All Competition variant. Players are actively tasked with killing each other and many rewards are limited, only to further increase infighting to get them. Additionally, a player can win the game by having obtained more Medals than anyone else in scoring.
• Surplus Damage Bonus: Dealing the Overkill damage to a target not only kills the target, but it gets removed instantly from the board without being allowed to attack back.
• The Beastmaster: Vexia and Graybark.
• The Goomba: Goblin Archers and Skelebones are the easiest and most common enemies in their respective boxes with little health, no defense, and no ability. Harpy's also fill this role in Inferno, and also help show how dangerous Damnation can be as they have an ability that gives them 1 Defense per Damnation from their attacker.
• The Minion Master: Vexia's entire backstory focuses on an unknown magic she dubs Cuddlemancy, which allows her to apparently not only control monsters, but mix them together such as with the bizarre Korilla, Owlbunny, and Hedgehornet. She can also summon Wild Pets to make her more powerful.
• The Undead: The entire Beyond The Grave campaign. Especially the main villain: The Dread King.
• The Vamp: The Sister of Pain and the Sister of Pleasure.

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Starcadia Quest

The Starcadia Quest series features the following tropes:

• Big Bad
  • For the core Starcadia Quest box, the main villain is the ruthlessly efficient and insanely intelligent Supreme Commander Thorne who has returned to overtake the entire Alliance and destroy the Starcadians with his new armada.
  • For the Zenith Invasion box, the entire Zenith species is attacking, but it is made much worse by the Zenith Queen who spawns the drones and grubs, and is actively the largest and most dangerous Zenith.
  • For Showdown, it is actually one of the players who becomes designated the traitor. The Traitor can, at this point, immediately win the scenario and possibly the game if another player does not unmask them. Unfortunately, if the traitor is revealed, they must also now defeat the gigantic and uncontrollable Mountain Peek.
  • For Build-A-Robot, it's the construction mech Bulldozer who has overtaken and changed his systems, controlling numerous other robots to terminate humanity.
• Combat Medic: Rebecca revives dead teammates specifically when she kills an enemy. As such, decking her out is a good way to make sure she acts as a constant revive.
  • Izzy returns from Inferno and can obtain a Stimpack or Recharge any time he kills a target. Since he actually gains a gagdet, these can be traded to allies during a Rest.
• Cyber Cyclops: Y-Shot, Y-Crush, Omega Launcher, Praetor, and Bulldozer.
• Glowing Mechanical Eyes: All of the robots mentioned under Cyber Cyclops have glowing eyes, as does Z-500.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: Bulldozer
• Human Aliens: If it weren't for Thorne's blue skin, you'd almost never be able to tell he even was a "space alien".
• King Maker Scenario: Much like Arcadia Quest, a single player in a game of 3 or 4 can be the deciding factor in any given outcome or hinder a winner. The difference this time around is all players only have 2 characters, and have more frequent use of the various NPC enemies littering the board, even getting the choice of numerous spawn locations.
• King Mook: The Peek aliens are fairly common weak enemies, with the strongest version outside of the Showdown expansion being Peek-A-Boom and even then it isn't super dangerous... Mountain Peek on the other hand is possibly the highest health opponent in the series, with 15 HP (outclassing the giant Dragons of Arcadia Quest) and even being functionally invincible in certain missions.
• Large and in Charge: Mountain Peek, Bulldozer, and Zenith Queen are all large miniatures and villains who outclass the rest of their team by a significant amount and have the Shove ability which damages targets when they move into them due to their size.
• No Plot? No Problem!: Unlike Arcadia Quest, Starcadia Quest features the bare minimum amount of story. Arcadia Quest had the missions and story printed in a campaign book, however Starcadia nixes the campaign book by presenting campaign cards which contain no story. Thus the only villain that really gets any backstory is Thorne, the others are given just enough to know what they are, but even then they're given almost no explanation unlike the big bads of the original. In fact, Mountain Peek's existence is never explained at all in that campaign. Despite this, the game plays just fine without it and players are free to imagine whatever reason behind the characters and their actions.
• Obvious Rule Patch: One of the issues with Arcadia Quest is that it is possible to not only eliminate every monster on the board, but also make it impossible to gain more money for the next round of purchases this way. The Gravestone and Inferno cards also added a new rule to make the game more dynamic and allow players to actively use monsters to attack. Starcadia Quest decided to take both and make them a core element with the use of the Event Deck, a deck every player draws from every turn after they end their own. Effects include spawning monsters, forcing other players to move, spawning portals and equipment, damaging enemies, and straight up controlling monsters and having them attack.
• Replay Value: Even moreso than Arcadia Quest, the missions are not predesigned tilesets, but rather you're told to draw several tiles and attach them at certain angles so the doors connect. This can result in the exact same mission having dozens of possible room setups. It'll always contain the same enemies and equipment, and be the same locations the players place their boarding ships, but the tile will have different setups and hallways, which means the room might as well be totally different. In one room the enemies may be clustered together while another try they're blocking any path in and out of the room due to their placement and the narrow hallways. Additionally, like Arcadia Quest, there are branching missions that connect back to a final mission, although this time it's a tad more limited in that respect.
• Shout-Out: A number of characters in Starcadia are direct references to other Sci-Fi franchises.
  • Reilly's appearance is a clear reference to Sigourney Weaver, specifically her role as Ellen Ripley in Alien.
  • Calvin is a clear reference to Michael J. Fox in his role as Marty McFly in Back to the Future
  • Neemok is very closely based on Leonard Nimoy's portayal of Spock in Star Trek
  • Blu closely resembles the Na'vi from the film Avatar
  • Mel's uniform, weapon, and her ability "Teleporter Ray" reference the protagonist Chell in Portal
  • Marley heavily resembles Marvin (the name's close as well) from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, specifically the 2005 film adaptaion
  • Cybot is a reference to Alex James Murphy, better known as RoboCop, portrayed by numerous actors.
  • Luna's hairstyle, weapon, and outfit heavily resemble Princess Leia of Star Wars Fame, portrayed by Carrie Fisher. In particular, it looks heavily like her portrayal in Star Wars: A New Hope
  • All of the Zenith, including the playable Zenith Guard, are dead ringers for the Xenomorphs of Alien fame just like Reilly.
  • Lord Dusk looks a lot like a red Darth Vader, with the ThorneTroopers resembling Storm Troopers, the Uber Transport looking like an ATST, and Lt Plasma just being an elite caped ThorneTrooper, all of this from Star Wars as well.
  • Leotron looks much like a Gundam
  • Cury looks a lot like a blade-wielding Namekian from Dragon Ball
  • Wet Willy looks a lot like a space-version of Disney's design for Davy Jones, a non-sci-fi movie series in Pirates of the Caribbean
  • Alpha resembles the suits from TRON, particulary their design in TRON: Legacy
  • The Z-500 looks like the endoskeleton form of the T-100 Terminator from the titular franchise Terminator
• Social Deduction Game: Starcadia Quest isn't one of these, but the entire point of the mission "Traitor in the Ranks" is that one player is secretly dealt a traitor token while the rest of the players are given regular ones. The players then must quickly do everything they can to discover who the traitor is via ingame token collection while the traitor tries to sabotage them as quickly as possible, thus winning the scenario instantly with everyone else immediately failing.
• Sliding Scale of Cooperation vs. Competition: Like Arcadia Quest, Starcadia Quest is an all-out battle. It's even more competitive this time around given the Event Deck is purposefully designed for every player to be as huge of a jerk as possible to everyone else.
• Space Navy: The defacto military group that defends the Alliance. The Starcadians.
• The Chessmaster: Thorne is possibly the most cunning and ruthless entity between Arcadia and Starcadia Quest, and had gotten down victory to such an absolute science that he even strategically placed vacation and punishment schedules to his subordinates, knowing months in advance when his soldiers would tire or fail in combat. It got to the point that his forced resignation was part of his plan all along. He intended to return with an equally powerful fleet and strike at the Starcadians with such overwhelming strategy that they had a 100% failure rate.
• The Generalissimo: Thorne was so efficient as a soldier that every battle he ever entered had a near guaranteed rate of success. It got to the point where he was so effective, that the entire Starcadian Army handed total control over every soldier and ship to Thorne and was given the title "Supreme Commander".
• Tron Lines: Alpha
• Villain with Good Publicity: After a while, the Starcadians stopped court-martialing Thorne for his numerous failings and military violations because of his effectiveness. He was so good at what he did that punishing him became functionally pointless as there was just no better option than letting Thorne handle it regardless of collateral damage.