Explore a lost island in this beautiful, surprisingly thematic worker-placement / deck-building board game 🗺️

Quick Info

• The Lost Ruins of Arnak on BGG
• The Lost Ruins of Arnak: Expedition Leaders on BGG
• Designers: Mín and Elwen
• Publisher: Czech Games Edition
• Artists: Ondřej Hrdina, Jiří Kůs, Filip Murmak, Jakub Politzer, František Sedláček, and Milan Vavroň
• Release Year: 2020 (Expedition Leaders: 2021)
• Affiliate Purchase Link

Overview

The Lost Ruins of Arnak is a hybrid worker placement and deck-building game. It’s one of a tandem of such games that came out in 2020, the other being the perhaps slightly more famous Dune: Imperium (both are solidly in the BoardGameGeek Top 100 ranked games of all-time). I’m not going to compare the two—let me know if you’d like that as a follow-up article in the comments—but they play very differently, and there’s room for both in your collection.

Artwork and Presentation

The first thing you’ll notice when setting up is the fabulous artwork. The board art and graphic design are clear, the cards and guardians in particular stand out for their artwork, and many of the components are a delight (the cardboard gold and compass tokens stick out as exceptions, but there are many upgrade options on Etsy). The artwork invites you in and does a lot of heavy lifting to make the game feel thematic as you explore new locations on the island, encounter guardians, purchase new items and artifacts, and advance on the temple track.

It’s such a beautiful game, you may even forget this is a Euro game where you’re pushing wooden pieces around the board. And speaking (writing?) of the mechanics…

Mechanics

As mentioned, the game is often called a worker placement deck-building game. Those are some primary mechanics, but there’s quite a bit going on. It’s also a resource management game with several resource types to gather, convert, and spend to maximize the efficiency of their turns. It’s also a track game where a significant source of your points is drawn from exploring and investigating a temple (two are available in the base game, and two more come from the Expedition Leaders expansion) depicted by racing two unique markers per player up a branching and merging track. It’s like if Indiana Jones became an accountant…but in a fun way.

While there’s no die rolling in the game, you can dive into the unknown by exploring near areas and far areas with your workers to add worker placement spots that any player can later access in future rounds.

This isn’t even to mention the market of items and artifacts you use to build your deck, nor how your cards have multiple uses as either travel icons to place your workers or placing for effects, or how it all builds into a little engine that crescendos right as the game snaps off its fifth and final round. In clumsier hands, this would turn into a heavy euro game with a tremendous amount to manage and significant downtime between turns. But Arnak streamlines turns to be snappy, with really only a few options on any given turn. It’s certainly not a light game, and I wouldn’t recommend playing it with non-gamer family members, but gamers will have no problem picking it up and getting going before too long.

The basic flow of the game looks like this: you start with few resources, some basic cards, and two archaeologists (workers). There are a few basic uncovered locations to go to and gather resources available. Throughout the round, you will place your workers and play cards to gain enough resources of the right types to advance in your investigation of the temple and discover new locations. That will uncover guardians and overcoming those (again, with resources) will gain you points. There’s also a market where you can spend gold or compasses to gain new items for your deck—unlike most deck-builders, these are placed at the bottom of your deck, not in your discard pile. You’ll play until all players pass, five times, then the game is over. This will take ~1–2 hours depending on player count, teaching time, and how long it takes your buddy to decide between getting a gold or a compass.

Expedition Leaders

The first expansion for Lost Ruins of Arnak is Expedition Leaders. Each of those titular leaders adds asymmetry to the game, ranging from very basic and light to a bit more complex and heavy. They never actually range into the heavy range, but there are a few that I wouldn’t recommend teaching to a newcomer to the game. The leaders each provide cards, a player board, and a core “hook”. The Falconer has a hawk with a little track that the player can advance and pull back to gain some extra resources.

The most basic simply gets a third archaeologist to use. The Explorer only gets one archaeologist worker but can move that worker around the board within the round, potentially re-opening spots opponents through blocked off.

The Professor has expanded abilities to get and use artifacts (the blue cards in the market).

Still another (the mysterious Mystic) can generate fear (normally mostly worthless cards worth minus one point at the end of the game) and then burn them in a fire for bonus resources. These leaders add another element to consider and expand the replayability of Arnak.

Review

Lost Ruins of Arnak has become one of my favorite board games. It has a wonderful mix of individually simple mechanisms that blend into a beautiful web of decisions players have. There’s light interaction between the players—grabbing cards from the market that others may want, blocking up worker spaces, and grabbing bonus resources in the race up the temple, but it’s certainly not a take that game. That means players mostly get to look at what they’re doing, but they do have to be cognizant of other players’ boards.

The web of decisions comes from the competing priorities that are always present for the player. If I purchase that card from the market, what round(s) will I draw it in? The cap of five rounds means you’ll only see each card a handful of times, but the unique draw structure means that you will not be buying cards in round 2 that luck dictates you’ll never see. Should I build up to explore a new space? If I do, will an opponent grab it next round at a serious discount? How much should I push each marker on the temple for their unique rewards? The variability and, dare I say, randomness in the game take the game out of the heavy strategy of many euro games and give it a much more tactical feel. Your short-term decisions and reactions to random rewards will determine how well you fare just as much as your long-term planning.

This isn’t the perfect game for everybody. It’s a few steps above family weight. The interaction of the cards and workers, combined with the multiple resources and market, will make it too chaotic-feeling for newer players to the hobby. It’s also a few steps below games like Brass: Birmingham, Ark Nova, and Hegemony. It’s right about the weight of something like Everdell, and some gamers who like deep, meaty strategy in their games are going to find it a bit too breezy. Without the first expansion, the charge of invariability between games holds some merit as well. The two sides of the board offer a unique experience (one slightly more welcoming than the other)—but not that unique.

Once you factor in Expedition Leaders, however, you now have four temples and six asymmetric leaders to explore and charges of uniformity of gameplay start to fall away. There are also criticisms leveled against the game that the temple track is all-important for points. I don’t entirely disagree (though I don’t entirely agree either), but I think it provides a nice focus for players who enjoy mid-weight Euro games and prevents Arnak from turning into a point-salad game.

Final Thoughts

For players of games like Wingspan, I sincerely believe Arnak offers an excellent step-up into mid-weight Euro games. The presentation, like that of Wingspan, really draws players in and does a lot of the heavy lifting to make the game feel thematic instead of another mid-weight resource conversion Euro. The mix of exploration, resource management, deck-building, and racing provides a tremendous experience. Without the Expedition Leaders expansion, I do think that repeated plays will probably wind up with players feeling like they’ve gotten everything out of the game, but with it, players will have new mechanics and experiences to explore for a long time to come.