I am mixed on: Lost Ruins of Arnak (Review)

in my recent review of arnova a Shameless link to which should be appearing in the corner now I said this I'd love to say that I disagree highlight a bunch of glaring flaws that everyone else missed and tell you that anyone recommending Ark NOA is a clueless idiot it would certainly do wonders in attracting some attention to the channel well sharpen your pitchforks cuz I think this one's got some issues in Lost TS of arnac players take on the role of explorers on an expedition to explore research and document the dangerous lands of AR what this in gameplay terms is that during the course of the game you will send your workers to existing locations to collect resources or have them uncover new much more lucrative sides you will improve your starting deck by adding gear and artifact cards and spend collected resources to overcome powerful side guardians or go up on the research track most of these actions will grant you some victory points and as is often the case the player with the most points at the end of the fifth round will be ground the winner if all that sounds very simple it's because it is lost Runes of arnac is not a complicated game It Is by no means a Gateway game but if you've been around the block for a little while played a worker placement game or two maybe try a deck builder as well you will pick this up without much of an issue it is also an easy game to teach as the board layout is great the actions are easy to explain and the iconography and graphing design are both very clear and consistent making it more accessible and letting newbies get into the game without needing to ask what something means every turn speaking of graphic design my God is this game goodlooking all of the side tiles evoke the sense of discovery and beautifully portray all these mysterious locations where humans have not stepped foot in centuries the cards as well draw you into the experience of being an adventurer featuring various tools used in Exploration or mysterious artifacts you've uncovered during the journey the art genuinely never ceases to amaze always attracts people's attention and makes lost Runes of arnac a much easier sell to new players than another big europeo now from the way I've talked about the art in the game you may have gotten the impression that arnac is a deeply atic board game however this is where I strongly disagree with a lot of the other critics there is a theme Here I appreciate the fact that you actually discover new sites as your Expedition continues I'm covering more and more of the mysterious lands of arac and delivering on that implied promise of Adventure I also like how some of the actions on the cards make thematic sense with my favorite probably being the gun that lets you overcome Guardians without much of a hassle because well you can just shoot them I started blasting and I like that some thought has been put into how the research track Works giving you two tokens to advance a magnifying glass symbolizing doing the research and a book token representing the documentation of your findings however I've played this game multiple times with a few different groups and every single time the topic of theme came up the consensus has always been that lost ruins of arnac is not a thematic game and I believe that is because any and all thematic elements are completely overshadowed by arnac core gameplay Loop lost Runes of arac is all about efficiency about making your limited resources and cards like last longer finding the best action combo that will take you the furthest and finding ways to turn zero into one and it is really good at that with gameplay elements designed around the idea of offering you the flexibility you need to execute your plan like the fact that if you buy an artifact card you get to activate it straight away without even wasting an action and the benefits of those cards will more often than not let you stretch yourself for at least another couple of rounds or all the different ways to get some resources such as cards that give you a compass or a coin if use a free action discard them or the tokens you gain from exploring that at the cost of some victory points can get you pretty much anything you might need in a pinch with the amount of options available to players not only are you not done once you've placed your second worker in the round I'd almost argue that that's when the real game begins however figuring all this out also obscures the theme of AR neack when you're looking for ways to get a ruby or a compass the theme's the last thing on your mind you don't see placing your worker as exploring buying a card is acquired ing some gear or an artifact or going up on the track as you're doing research it is very much if I go there get that resource then spend that to go up on the track there buy that car to get another resource and go up on the track again don't get me wrong though I'm not trying to say that the think GE game cannot be thematic because you're too busy doing math just look at AR NOA it has the same idea of you needing to figure out a set of actions that get you to a particular outcome but I don't feel like the theme is ever lost when I'm playing that game the issue in arnac I believe is the lack of theme integration with gameplay yes what you're doing has some thematic flare to it but it never achieves that symbiotic relationship with the gameplay you get in truly richly thematic euros and look that might not even be a real issue there's lots of great games out there that have absolutely zero theme and I don't think that detracts much from the experience of playing arack however when I see all the other creators praising how rich the theme is here when that hasn't been my experience at all I got to call it out what is a real issue though is the downtime caused by the gameplay Loop the first couple of rounds are pretty Snappy but as your deck improves and the number of actions and choices available starts growing that quickly slows down with players needing to take longer and longer to plan out the rest of the round or adjust strategies because some card or action is no longer available and to be clear I'm not talking about players who are already AP prone I'd say my group is usually pretty quick at making decisions but there's a lot you need to calculate here if you want to do well in l ter Rons I see possible Futures all at once and in so many Futures our enemies Prevail but I do see a way there is a narrow way through I saved my biggest issue with lost T of arck for last though and it's something I've been noticing more as I've been playing the game more there seems to really only be one pth to Victory here you are either on that research track and at least in second if not first place or you have done un considerably worse than others as the rewards and victory points you get from the research track far outway focusing on either the cards or the sides and in fact make going after the other two easier making them more of a tiebreaker than its own separate path to Victory this is particularly prevalent when playing on the bir side of the board where the first couple of players seem almost guaranteed to go either for the Ruby or the arrowe heads as that lets you start climbing the track nice and quick the snake side alleviates this problem quite a bit though doesn't get rid of it entirely by making it much more difficult to climb that research track and in my opinion resulting in a more interesting tense and Competitive Gaming experience in fact I think the last time I played on that side I won by just a single point and it was exhilarating now look there's nothing inherently wrong with the game having a set P to Victory and in fact you could argue that since everyone must go up on the track cards and sides are the real deciding factor in who wins in Arna but for me I think it hurts the replay ility of lost Runes of arck and I have definitely noticed a pattern in my relationship with this game I will typically get really into it bring it to a few game nights in a row play it on Bard game Arena 2 but inevitably we'll cool down on it just as quick as the novelty wears off and the sameness of each gaming session sits in maybe it's just me but when you tell me that there's a Euro about exploring an unknown land somehow I imagine an experience that offers a bit more freedom of choice than arneg does at the end of the day lost Runes of of arck is a solid game that offers players a very smooth streamlined gameplay experience it is easy to get into quick to play and more likely than not you will stay engaged throughout despite this I think the game also has its fair share of issues but I've already spent half the damn review talking about these so I won't Bore You by reiterating them once again and at the end of the day if you've heard what I had to say and none of my criticisms set alarm bells ringing then it seems like a pretty safe B lost Runes of AR neck might just be the game for you

Channel: Gems & Biscuits

Views: 1,605

Keywords: Lost Ruins of Arnak, Dune Imperium, Dune Imperium Uprising, Tapestry, Stonemaier games, Euro Games, Boardgamegeek, Dice Tower, Shut up & Sit down, Before you play, Watch it played, Deckbuilding games, Terraforming Mars, Broken Meeple, No Pun Included, Ark Nova, Earthborne Rangers

Id: FJOLBnHPzgQ

Length: 8min 0sec (480 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2024