Gamehelparnak

Theme

In Lost Ruins of Arnak, you'll be trying to uncover the titular lost ruins and the area around it. You'll do this by sending out your team of archaeologists to various locations to gather resources, collect cards for various effects, and advance on a research track to further find the lost ruins. The player with the most points at the end wins the game!

Components and Resources

In Lost Ruins of Arnak, each player has their own board, mostly to track their own resources and pieces. To gain resources a player can use their explorers, cards, idols, or guardians, as well as any resources they've acquired.

Player Components

• Two explorers, which can be placed on the main board to activate revealed locations or investigate new spaces.
• Cards, which can be used for various effects. Each player has a hand of cards they can play, a draw pile that can be drawn from, and a discard pile for previously used cards.
• Idols, earned as a reward for being the first to explore new locations, and can be spent for a few bonus effects. Each idol is also worth 3 points, and bonus effects that were never invoked also award points.
• Defeated guardians, which can be overcome from the main board. Each guardian is worth 5 points.

Resources

• Coins, mostly used to buy more item cards.
• Compasses, mostly used to explore new locations and buy artifact cards.
• Tablets, mostly used to activate artifact cards or advance on the research track.
• Arrowheads, mostly used to advance on the research track.
• Jewels, mostly used to advance on the research track.

Game Board

In game setup, players can choose between the Bird Temple, or a more complex Snake Temple. Each has its own temple and research tracks. On the game board there are:

• On the top: a market with cards for purchase, with artifacts costing compasses on the left and items costing coins on the right This also serves as a round tracker that advances to the right each round, increasing the ratio of artifacts to items.
• The map, which contains various actions that explorers can activate by visiting, ranging from advanced at the top to basic at the bottom.
• The research track, where players can advance their tokens (magnifying glass and book) by spending certain resources, thus gaining the rewards on the right side and possibly tokens from that space as well.

Structure Of A Round

Lost Ruins of Arnak takes place across five rounds. Each round essentially lasts until all other players have passed, all in between some setup and end phase.

• In the beginning of each round, each player draws 5 cards from their deck.
• Then, starting with the player with the first player token (shaped like a clock) and proceeding around the table, each player takes a turn. What to do on your turn will be discussed further down this article. This continues until all players have passed.
• Once all players have passed, if any explorers ended their turn on the same space as a guardian, they add a Fear card to their deck. Then they collect all explorers on the board back to their supply.
• All players shuffle their discard piles and cards still in your hand, then place them underneath their draw piles (so that any cards that weren't drawn last round will be drawn again first).
• Straighten all used assistants so that they may be used again.
• The first player token passes one player to the left.
• The item and artifact card closest to the round marker are both exiled. The round marker advances one space over, then both card markets are refilled.

What To Do On Your Turn

During each turn, a player takes one main action, which can be preceded or followed by any number of optional free actions. The main actions are as follows:

• Send an explorer to a location. To do this, you'll need to discard a card from your hand (or use another effect) containing a matching travel symbol. Note that a plane symbol can be used in place of any other symbol, a car or boat symbol can also be used for a foot symbol, and you can always pay 2 coins to generate a plane symbol on the spot. You can also explore a new location by spending 3 compasses for any of the actions in the middle of the board, or 6 compasses for any of the actions on the top of the board; if you do, you gain the resource or bonus pictured on the space, gain an idol (2 if it was on the top row), the action itself is revealed and immediately applied, and a guardian is revealed.
• Overcome a guardian, if you have an explorer on a space that contains one. Pay the resources and symbols on the guardian to claim it. This will be worth 5 points at the end of the game, prevents you from gaining Fear cards, and gives you another bonus that can be used once per game as a free action or travel symbol.
• Advance on the research track. Pay the cost between spaces to advance between them. If you're the first player to do this, gain the resource or bonus on the space, then remove it. Either way, you'll also get the bonus listed on the right side of the track. You can move either the notebook or magnifying glass, but the notebook can never advance further than the magnifying glass.
• Gain a lost ruins tile, if your magnifying glass is at the top of the research track. You may pay any combination of symbols listed at the space - the more you pay, the better tile you will get. You'll gain a brown tile worth 2 points for one set of symbols, a silver symbol worth 6 symbols for two, or a gold tile worth 11 points for all three.
• Play one of the cards in your hand (unless it has a lightning bolt symbol, in which case it's a free action). Do what the card says, then discard it. If the card is an artifact, you need to pay one tablet first.
• Use an assistant (as with cards, many of these might instead be free actions). Turn it sideways to indicate that it was used.
• Buy a card from the market. The cost for any given card is in the bottom left corner. If it's an item, put the card at the bottom of your deck. If it's an artifact, immediately use its effect as if you played it, then put it in your discard pile. Either way, refill the market by moving all cards of that type towards the round tracker, then add a new card from its deck.

The free actions you could take in addition to this are:

• Play a free action card from your hand. These almost always give you resources.
• Use a free action assistant. These almost always also give you resources.
• Spend an idol for a bonus effect. There are five bonuses you could gain from this, which are pictured to the left of the idols themselves. However, the spent idol occupies a space containing points, in turn meaning you'll score points by NOT using these.
• Use the effect of a defeated guardian. These are one-time effects that can only be used once per game.

End of the Game

The game ends after five rounds. When the game ends, you'll score points, which will come from:

• The cards in your deck. Lose 1 point for each Fear card, but gain points for all other cards as indicated by their point values in the bottom right corner. (All other starting cards are not worth any points.)
• Idols. Each idol is worth 3 points, whether or not it was spent or not. In addition, score points for each unused bonus action.
• Guardians. Each guardian you overcame is worth 5 points, whether or not you used its bonus effect or not.
• Final position on the research track. Gain points for the position of your magnifying glass and notebook.
• Tiles gained in the lost ruins. Each bronze tile is worth 2 points, silver is worth 6, and gold is worth 11.

The player with the most points wins! Ties are broken with preference towards the player who reached the top of the research track first, or was closest to doing so.