LogFAQs > #962439134

61. Lost Ruins of Arnak

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/312484/lost-ruins-arnak

Category: Player vs player
Key mechanics: Resource management, worker placement, deck-building
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 5
Game length: 60-120 minutes
First played: 2021
Experience: 1 play with 3 players
Previous ranks: N/A

Oh hey, it's another game following... well, following almost exactly the same principles of the previous game. Lost Ruins of Arnak is nominally a worker placement game, played over five rounds, where you mostly are gathering resources to trade them up for better resources, and eventually win victory points. To help make your actions more efficient, you can buy and play cards, which enter a deck as in a deck-builder. The theme of the game is an archeological exploration, where you get to explore some ruins and pursue knowledge and research.

Like Everdell, Lost Ruins of Arnak mishmashes mechanics together that aren't always found in the same game. Worker placement games are often determined most by how you place your workers; deck-building games are often determined by how efficiently you run your engine (and they compensate the randomness for you by letting you repeatedly draw through your deck many times). Arnak contains both mechanics, but it kneecaps both - you only have two workers to place per round, meaning that the vast majority of your actions are instead just spending resources to move up the track, or buying and playing cards. On the deckbuilding side, the card-cycling is such a minor part of the game that you don't really use this mechanic to build a real engine. As a result the game gives neither the feeling of excelling at something crunchy nor the flow-state of streamlined design.

The coolest thing about Arnak is probably encountering monsters. You can send a worker to a dig site, and you'll uncover a random enemy monster there. Defeating the monster (by assembling the resources you need) will give you some benefits, while not defeating it will give you a very mild punishment. In practice this just gives you a different way to spend resources, but thematically it's at least interesting and visually appealing.

I have Arnak slightly above Everdell because it feels slightly less necessary to keep track of your and others' tableaux. That's one plus-side of deck-building versus permanently played cards.