Game Overview

As I mentioned in the close of my last article, Lost Ruins of Arnak is another game I have looked at previously and just have not committed to purchasing. It’s excellent to be able to try games that have been on the bubble with basically no commitment on Board Game Arena. I’ll no doubt end up picking up some physical copies based on my ability to try them out online, which is a win for everyone.

Lost Ruins of Arnak has a lot of different gameplay elements and mechanics vying for attention. Part deck builder, part worker placement, and a boatload of resource management and optimization come together into a game that presents players with a host of tough choices to make. With its robust gameplay, my play sessions have been running at a healthy 40 minutes to around an hour online. I expect it would take my playgroup around an hour and a half in person.

Thematically, players are explorers who are venturing to undiscovered locations and exploring temples for their secrets and treasures. As is true for any expeditions of this nature, everything you want to do and everywhere you want to go has a cost. Effectively planning and juggling your ability to pay the cost for the things you want to do makes up the vast majority of the gameplay focus.

On a given turn, you start with a five card hand. Each card can be played for its action, typically gaining resources or card draw, or can be used for the travel cost value it grants, which is used to send your two explorers to locations. Where they can go depends on what travel you can afford, and how many compass resources you have available.

Once sent exploring, if somewhere other than a basic location, both a random location and a random guardian of that location are revealed. The location grants the player the resources shown immediately. The guardian shows resources that must be spent to vanquish it, and the reward it confers. If you don’t defeat a guardian where you have an explorer, you gain a fear card, which clutter up your deck and count as negative points at the end of the game.

In addition to sending out explorers, resources can be spent to advance two distinct tokens up the temple track, with each level costing varied resources and granting varied rewards, which differ based on the type of token advanced. The top of the temple track confers significant victory points.

The other main action that can be taken is to buy cards. Cards come in two varieties, artifacts and items. Artifacts are purchased with compasses and grant their ability immediately, as well as going into your deck where their ability later costs a tablet resource to use. Items are purchased with gold and go into your deck where they must be drawn to play. Both types have a victory points value the card grants toward end game scoring.

The game plays over five rounds and each round there are more artifact options shown in the market river. One the first round there is only one artifact available for viewing. On the last round, only one item is available. Once a player has spent as many resources as they can or wish to, they pass and are done for the round. Once all players pass, the round advances. The player with the most victory points at the end of the game wins.

General Impressions

With so much going on, I found this game a bit tough to jump right into, which isn’t necessarily any kind of indictment on the game itself. The gameplay is fairly easy to pick up. There is not really any direct impacting of other players, but someone else traveling to a site you planned to or buying a card you wanted can really throw a wrench in your plans.

One frustrating element to the game are the assistants, which are just mechanisms for abilities or resource gaining that are acquired through advancing up the temple track. There is significant disparity in the quality of the assistants, so losing out on good ones for any reason can put you at a notable disadvantage.

The game will appeal to players who are good at engineering their turns to chain resources together from event to event, extending their turns and available actions as much as possible. Early rounds play pretty quickly, but later rounds can drag out quite a bit as players parlay new and better cards in their decks into lengthy sequences of actions. This can feel bad for less experienced players who pass earlier in the round and then sit watching the other players accomplish seemingly endless feats with resources that appear to come from thin air.

On the whole I find the game to be enjoyable, but intense resource optimization is not a game mechanic I always want to engage with. I found that I definitely cannot fire up a game of Lost Ruins of Arnak late at night when I am tired, and expect to do well.

BGA Particulars

There’s not a ton of setup or upkeep in this game that makes the Board Game Arena implementation particularly attractive. Other than shuffling and dealing, there’s also not a lot of gameplay optimization, other than automatically ending turn after your main action has been taken.

There are some scenarios where multiple options for steps to take are presented in a top ribbon. I did face one situation where I didn’t quite get the language nuance right between options and lost out on an interaction I should have been able to do because I chose the wrong option. The game state advanced, and I had no option to undo. This is one downside of playing on BGA, as sometimes these oh shoot events happen, and if playing physically one could just slightly retcon or the gameplay would have proceeded naturally without awkward menu prompts.

Fun Factor

I wouldn’t say that Lost Ruins of Arnak screams fun to me, but I can see a significant sense of satisfaction when everything comes together into a seemingly never-ending wombo combo of a turn. The game plays a bit long, and if you don’t play effectively, there can definitely be some feels bad elements of watching better players play as I mentioned above. Are you guys ever going to be done with this round!?

Next Up

For my next BGA spotlight, I’ll be diving into Captain Flip. This is a game I had never heard of until recently when it came up on a video I was watching on The Brothers Murph YouTube channel. I’m excited to try out something completely new to me!