Lost Ruins of Arnak

Today’s day number eight, and this is Amanda bringing you the details on Lost Ruins of Arnak, a deckbuilding worker placement game. I’m told this is the hottest new game, and it’s easy to understand the hype. We became explorers trying to have the best expedition, balancing purchasing items and artifacts with exploration and research.

This game is super easy to understand, and all of the pieces make sense and work in the ways that they seem like they should. You get the choice of doing one main action each turn, and each person has two explorers and two research tokens. You can do as many quick actions as you would like at the start of your turn. Some of the main actions include exploring, researching, buying an artifact or buying a regular item. Starting by drawing five cards from your deck, each person gets to go back and forth as many times as they have actions to do, or until they say pass. While you can only do two explorations per the 5 phases of the game, you can still purchase items and research, not to mention using cards from your hand to gain compasses or coins.

The actual components are very nice, with some pretty sweet stone tablets, arrowheads, and red gems, but one is left wondering why the coins were left as cardboard given the amount of games that use weighted/metal/plastic coin components. The pictures are crisp and fit the feel of the game.

From our first play through I don’t think there is a set way to win, and I believe things will be slightly different each game depending on how cards, people, and monsters are drawn. It was pretty fun getting to build an engine and trying to figure out what would get you the most points going forward. Even when you think that your strategy may have lost, there are usually more ways to find/get points if you look across the board.

Kage’s Notes: What impressed me, though what may be a disappointment to people who prefer more sandboxy games, is how tight the turns and actions are. You will not have enough time in the game to do everything you want or even most of what you want, you need to pick your path to victory and follow it. Turns leave you with a sense of wanting to do everything, but only being able to do a few things, which adds to tension, but will probably be a bad thing for AP prone players. With limited workers and game rounds, there is not going to be a lot of repeats, cards bought for the deck often turn up only once or twice and there are a maximum of ten worker placements in the game, making each move and purchase really count.

Although playing two player is perfectly fine, I think this is a game that will benefit with more players. Exploration of new areas opens those areas to all players in future turns, and with only two players, not that much of it gets done, we finished our play through with only four of a potential twelve locations explored. With a variety of ruins to explore, guardians to defeat and items and artifacts, all of which are randomized with each play, I suspect this one has some serious legs going into the future.

The Teal Dear

Game: Lost Ruins of Arnak
Designer: Min & Elwen
Price: $65
Players: 2-4
2 player Scaling: Decent, but seems better suited for 4 players
Playtime: 30 minutes per player
Estimated Lifespan: 10+ games
Average Play Frequency: Every Odd Month
Complexity: 3.5
Components: 4.5
Bang for Buck: 5
Value for Time: 4.5
Fun Factor: 4.5
Overall: 4.5