Lost Ruins of Arnak - 5 Beginner Tips

[Music] hi there everyone hope you're all doing great this video is about lost ruins of arnac which is a fantastic deck building work replacement hybrid game that i've been playing a lot of recently and really been enjoying uh and i've seen on the board game trading in chat that i'm not alone a lot of other people are really enjoying this one too but there have been a few posts from some people um saying that they're having a bit of difficulty getting used to some of the systems and they were asking you know how did i get a decent score you know what what what the strategies that i can use so with that in mind i thought that i would put together a wee list here of five beginner tips to help you get started with lawson's varnack now i'm not claiming to be an expert of the game um but i'm getting kind of consistent scores now by doing the same thing so i thought it would maybe be worth sharing some of my approaches okay so before we go straight into tip number one and i thought i would make one point about lost runs of varnak and that's the about the type of game it is so as i said before described it as a deck building worker placement hybrid and it is definitely that but to me the game at its very core is all about this idea of chaining actions together so to me i call an action chaining game what you're essentially trying to do is given the actions that you have at your disposal you are looking for a path to kind of link these actions together so that one action leads to another and you're building up this chain and if you can do that in our act and you can do that successfully you're generally going to do pretty well so just bear mind that as i go through these steps there's going to be this undercurrent of the idea of these different actions that you have the idea of chaining them together you know to keep getting stuff to get you know to get another action to get stuff to get another action and you're kind of planning together a wee path in your head okay so that's going to be the kind of fundamental underpinning um of the next things that i'm going to cover and it's just that idea of that strong foundation of connecting all your actions together in a big long chain okay so tip number one is all about the cards now obviously being a deck building game this is pretty obvious you're going to be picking up cards you're going to be using cards but what might not be clear to most new players is how powerful cards are especially when they're used you know to their optimum potential so in the game there are two types of cards you have your tools and you also have your artifacts now the way the game is designed at the start of the game there's going to be more tools available and only one artifact and over the course of the game there will be less tools and there'll be more artifacts that come into play and nothing that's intentional that's part of the design that is to tell you that in the early game you should be focusing and building up so a deck of some tools that you can reuse and then towards the end of the game you might want to be picking up some artifacts okay that's not to say that you have to do this but i find that works quite well for me so we're just going to look at some of these cards here okay and i'm going to discuss ones that i think are quite useful but as i said the game's filler cards so cards that i like um particularly are ones that give you extra actions that's one of the really powerful thing and powerful things about cards is the fact that they're giving you extra actions in addition to your two workers which is not a lot every time let's be honest so things like the lantern that allow you to activate any site um well any low level site regardless of whether that site has been blocked by another explorer so that's a really powerful ability and the binoculars does the same as well but it's just a wee bit more powerful and you've got things like the tent that um are good for reactivating a site that you're already at so effectively you can get two activations of the same site uh the dog again so it's activating an occupied site also gives you an explore token so you can see that these are cards that i feel are always useful they're very flexible because you're able to use action spaces so you're very rarely not going to have a good use for these um another couple of cards i really like as well the swiss army knife this is one that allows you four different options and you pick two of them um and it's very thematic it's like a swiss army knife and it's very flexible so depending on the situation you can choose what actions you want it could be an exhale you know it could be maybe you need another coin to to buy a card so i really like the flexibility of this card and then this one here the large backpack um i think it's a really cool card now it doesn't look that great on the surface you know draw a card from the bottom of your deck you know well why would i want that i mean i just it gives me an extra card but then you know i'm only replacing what i'm using well not really because the way that the the buying of cards of the tools in our networks is when you buy a tool it goes to the bottom of your deck so you can pull off some pretty cool combos with this card where you buy a card from the market on that turn and then play the large backpack and draw it reliably uh enabling you to play at that very same turn so if you plan well you can use the large backpack to effectively play a card that you bought the same turn which can be huge you know if kira planned around other actions and also gives you a coin as well so this is this is one that i really like um in terms of the tools uh other tools that i feel are really quite strong um are things like the airplane which is fantastic for discovering new sites especially if you're doing the top tier ones that cost the six explorers because not only does it give you a discount of two and but it also gives you a discount of an icon as well so effectively you only really need four explores and the worker and one more icon to do that big explore so it's really good i've seen a player use us to great effect actually and with a really small deck and they were drawing us every turn and using it for every single turn and getting lots and lots and lots of um benefit from it uh the brush and the bone arrows these are quick these are situational cards but if you're going down a strategy where you're going to be collecting idols or you're going to be defeating gardens or overcoming guardians should i say these could be really good because they're going to give you a good source of explore tokens so if you're going for that particular true approach you can work these cards into your your game plan the revolver i don't think is really powerful i must admit because it's quite expensive and you know you need to be in a position to use it it's very situational um but if you're going for a strategy where you're going to be overcoming a lot of guardians it could be quite useful um so it's one may be taking southern and then the final two the fishing rod and the precision compass are good for getting more cars at your deck so you know they're just over time they're going to give you more cards which is equal to more actions um so definitely ones to worth picking up as well if you're going for a strategy of building a big deck full of lots of actions we're also going to look at the artifacts so the artifacts work a bit differently these effectively trigger when you buy them and then when the card comes up in your deck again you need to pay a tablet to use the ability i think the artifacts are better to use tactically okay so you know you might say you want to really get the research track you're going to buy the inscribed blade to give you a discount to get you that bump you know just so that you can keep ahead of everybody um you might want to use the pathfinder staff to get an extra action you know so you've already placed your two workers you can move a worker to another site and get another action you know so it's kind of works around that lamentation uh the war club you know if you're on a site and you don't have the resources to kill uh or to overcome the guardian then you could buy that and it instantly takes care of the problem you know so it's a lot of these um these artifacts they're more used tactically you know they're not going to become a focus of your deck it's not going to be something you're going to be drawing you know ever you know like maybe two or three times in the game and relying on the ability uh of it's more that you know they're you want that ability there and then and you've got the ability to buy the card you know which which can lead to another combo so to me these are more used tactically when they are there in the market you're looking at what's there and you're thinking right that artifact right now would be really good for what i want to do and you know that's going to be the focus um of these cards more than the tools which are kind of more recurring actions that you know you're going to reuse over the course of the game now one last thing i just want to say about the cards um not only do they give you actions but they also give you points each card you buy will be you know between one to three points and it all adds up you know if you go for a kind of bag buy strategy you could end up with 20 points you know uh worth of cards which is you know a quarter of your score so that's something that also is to be considered as well sometimes it's worth it just to buy a car just because you know you're getting some points off of it as well as the ability to use it okay so tip number two is get your assistance out early so what are assistance well assistance are effectively helpers that give you an action every time and it's an instant action so you can use it at any point during your turn and get the benefit and what's great about the assistance is that for every full turn of the game of which there are five they refresh and you get to use them again so the earlier that you get your assistance the more you can make use of them the more the more uses of them you're going to get now generally speaking you're not going to be able to get an assistant in the first turn unless you get both the arrow head and the gem space which is unlikely but you can reliably get one turn two you can maybe even get your second one and turn to as well and if you plan well but the point is they're giving you free stuff just like the cards that you know they can get you out of a bind and the earlier that you get them yeah the more you're going to get from them especially if you get them to the gold side as well they can be extremely powerful to get to them to the gold side now this does involve moving up the research track but the research track is a very uh valuable source of points so it's something you're probably going to be doing anyway so the quicker you do that the quicker you get access to your assistance so with that in mind let's have a we look at some of the assistants and talk about you know why they're so useful so these are i've picked here um a collection of assistants i feel are really good there are other ones as well that i feel a bit more situational but these ones are really really helpful um so the first one they are the one that's the the basically it's a uh boot symbol for an arrowhead this can be really good early game when you've got some fear cards in your deck you could just get rid of a fear card and you get an arrow head which is a pretty good action doesn't use a worker as well so um that's what i really like when you upgrade it it just gives you an arrow head arrow heads are always useful you know they're great for defeating guardians they're great for moving up the research track so having access to them is always a good thing uh the second one along the top row i really like i think it's a really powerful one this is one that gives you a discount on buying a card as i said before my last tip cards are really powerful in this game so if you get this guy early and you get them upgraded to the gold level you can get a lot of value um now it does kind of shoehorn yen into only using the ability to buy a card you can't use the gold or the explorer for anything else but i just find that it's a really useful uh assistant especially if you get them to level two and you get the discount of two on either card so yeah this is a really really powerful assistant i feel and the next one is pretty simple it just gives you a tablet tablets are useful for the research track sometimes defeating guardians and they're also useful for playing artifact cards if you draw them again so yeah this is a really good one as well when it's upgraded it gives you a gold which is quite nice too uh the bottom left one is the gold one the gold assistant this one's really good i feel uh because gold not only can it be used to buy cards and also got the research track but one thing that a lot of players forget is that you can use two gold to generate an airplane travel symbol at any point so that could save you a card you might not have the card with that symbol on it and so this can get you out of a bind having those extra coins so this is a really good one when he's upgraded three coins again that's that's really good you know uh so definitely one that's that's worth picking up uh the ones in the kiribati medal these are all very similar these are all the assistance of the travel icons so you either use them for a travel icon or they get you a coin or an explore token so you've got a bit flexibility there these are just solid ones to have you know you're always going to be able to make use of a coin or an explorer and having the travel symbol it's a bit more situational but can also save your cards you know or help you for a big double explore you know and they can lay a game so yeah this is one that i think that they're good solid options as well then this collection here and finally uh in the bottom right you have uh similar to the first one the the assistant that gives you the arrowhead now in this case you have to be a coin which is a bit probably a bit more expensive than the boot symbol depending on how you look at it uh but when upgraded it gives you the ability to buy gems as well which is really good because gems are the hardest resource to come by in our knack so you know this again especially when upgraded this becomes a really good assistant so as i said if you get these assistants out early you're going to be able to get the abilities off of them more often and you're going to be using being able to factor that into your other combos as well so if you can get them out then early then that is you know it's going to help you even more so the third tip for arnac is fear the fear those fear cards you start with two of them and they're not great so you want to get rid of them as soon as you can now in the first couple of turns and actually not too bad the reason being that the tier 1 and tier 26 haven't been explored at this point you only have access to the you know the base uh action spaces um which only require a boot so it's not really a problem because you know you can use your fear card to go to one of those spaces and then that allows you to play the rest of your other starting cards for the coins and the explorers so it's not the worst thing to have in your hand however as you progress through the game these cards can really clog up your hand they don't have any ability other than a boot symbol under a negative point which is which is not great so the sooner that you get these out your deck the sooner you're going to be drawing into your better cards especially if you're buying cards as you go as well which obviously you know is point one is the idea of picking up the cards so what you want to be doing is you want to be looking at uh the any sort of spaces any actions that get you the excel ability and you want to try and plan it so that you've played or ideally played your if your card you've used it for the it's in your played area and then you want to get rid of it now you might not always be able to do that you might need to just you know discard it from hand exile it from hand and that's fine too but the point still stands the sooner that you get these out of your deck uh the better because you're gonna be reliably drawing your better cards and it's not even just for the cards actions it's for the symbols as well you know drawing those other starting cards give you the boat and the car symbols and when those mid-tier sites open up you're going to be about in a bit of a pickle if you've got two fear cards in hand it's really gonna uh limit your your ability on and where to go with the spaces so as i said keep a lookout for the excel abilities there's loads of ways you can do it you can do it from cards you can do it from uh bonuses go for going up the research track you can do it for overcoming guardians there's lots of sources it does depend in the game some games there will be less excel actions and it can be quite tight other games are more plentiful so again just read the state of the game um and try and work out how you're maybe going to get to them there is an assistant that does this ability as well um i don't think they're super powerful though unless you you use them a lot to thin your deck completely because generally i find that there are other ways of uh you know getting rid of the fear cards so i don't think this assistant is always an essential one um but yeah definitely you want to be focusing and getting these cards out early if you can get both of them out and turn to which is possible then that is even better but that's definitely something to aim for to try and get to those good cards sooner and keep your deck consistently good okay so my fourth tip is actually going to be quite a quick one and maybe one that's quite obvious um is just being aware of what's out there at all times just having a look at the full boards you know um you know being aware of how you can use your idols your artifact cards you know for a one-off ability the research track you know going up that may get you a resource or a bonus allow you to do something else so looking at the bigger picture and trying to connect everything together um and i said one of the ones i think to focus the most on is those artifact cards just because mentally game there'll be a lot of them available and they'll have a whole variety of abilities um you know but basically putting everything together and thinking of how you can use that to plan your chain of actions and just being aware of everything that's available okay so something just take a step back and have a look at what assistance do i have you know um what cards i have in hand how can i use those cards what's out there from the market the research track just you know bring it all together and try and try and use that to forge your path and my fifth and final point for lost runes of arnick um is just this idea of being prepared to pivot aren't actually really interesting game and that nine times out of ten well maybe eight times out of ten you will be able to do your turn if you plan ahead you know you're about right i'm going to do this it's going to lead to that it's going to lead to that generally speaking you'll be able to carry out that plan however it's not completely a solitaire game there are instances where another player will take that card you needed for your your plan or move up the research track and deny you that bonus so there are times where you need to be able to you know be able to kind of take a fork in the path and do something else that you know you weren't quite expecting now the great thing about our mac is because there are so many different actions available to you and different ways to use those actions i've yet to find a situation where i felt that i had no good move there were times where i really had to kind of stand back and say right that's completely destroyed what i wanted to do where did i go from now but as i said if you go back to my fourth point if you look at the full picture you will usually find there is another path that you can take that might not get you quite where you were going but will still get you to something that's going to get you further ahead it's going to allow you to make a bit of progress so just be aware of that just be you know try and plan your turn ahead if you can have a battle plan but just be prepared that it might not always you know come to fruition that another player might inadvertently throw a spanner on the works and you'll need to you know reconsider your options so yeah just be prepared to make that pivot uh but at the same time don't fret don't panic i can guarantee you there always will be another good move that you can make okay so those are my five tips uh on our neck and getting started with it um and as you can see there's a wee bit of crossover there you know um and in terms of how everything comes together uh so i hope that's helped um one last thing that i'm just gonna um mention just before i kind of wrap this up um is the idea of these opening moves now i'm not saying that the iraq is like chess right but at the start of the game depending on player count you're going to be limited to spaces so depending on where you go in the player order and what's available um i would say there are two main options that i think um you know that are really worth pursuing at the start you either should try and get um some resources that will help you get up that research track to get your first assistant so namely the arrowhead and the the ruby if you can get those early they get you that extra assistant which is a really really strong starting move if you can get that out early the other option is if you get blocked off from that completely then it would be usually worth either picking up the double coin space to allow you to buy some extra cards which over the course of the game you know you'll be reusing those actions so that can you know that could be something that could pay off in the long run uh and the other option is to take the two explorers and not usually buy the one active artifact that's out there because usually that's not always going to help you but more so that you can do an explore of a tier one site so those are your three main options at the start of the game really you can either try and get some resources go up the research track which will get you some you know you'll get your coin anyway for the first for the first move and get you closer to your assistant or you can grab some coins to buy a tool card that again over the course of the game is going to help you or the final option is to do your explore now the only thing about the explorer is it can be a bit risky um you might get a guardian where you don't have the resources to defeat the guardian and if you're not able to defeat the guardian on that turn then i'm not saying it's a weak action but it's not optimal however you are guaranteed to get an idle symbol and usually usually you can use that idle symbol to defeat the guardian unless you're really unlucky so just go in there not expecting to defeat the guardian necessarily but know that there's a good chance that you will and even if you don't you're going to get a better action than any of the bottom actions which can set you up for other things so yeah basically those those are three starting strategies depending on what other players are doing and you can pick any three of those and they will generally put you in a good position going forward okay so i hope you've enjoyed the video um you know any questions or comments feel free to pop them in the chat below um if you've played a lot of arnac and you feel that there's you know some tips that you could add or maybe something i wasn't clear about or something you don't agree with then you know please let me know i welcome all sorts of feedback you know positive or otherwise um but yeah i hope you've enjoyed the video and i hope um if you're new to our knack that these five tips has helped you get a better grasp of the game and hopefully will lead to you getting some good scores and beginning to see the combos come together so with that said thanks so much for watching have a fantastic day and take care

Channel: TableTopCloset

Views: 588

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Lost, Ruins, Arnak, CDG, Board, Game, Strategy, Tips, Hotness

Id: ec6NBrANhvE

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 05 2021