“Explore an island to find resources and discover the lost ruins of Arnak.”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/312484/lost-ruins-of-arnak
Playing Time: 30-120 mins
Weight: Midweight
Genre: Worker Placement Deckbuilding
Designer: Elwen, Min
Players: 2-4 (1 with solo expansion)
Lost Ruins of Arnak is a game that combines worker placement with deckbuilding. This is a relatively new genre, but one that has resulted in some absolute home runs, including Dune Imperium and Endless Winter. But Lost Ruins of Arnak comes out on top for me due to its more relaxed feel and swashbuckling Indiana Jones-esque theme.
The game is played over five rounds. During each round, you’ll place two workers, and play from a hand of cards. In early rounds, you’re not doing too much as you’re trying to collect more valuable cards and build your card engine, but in later rounds the game really unfolds. Games are tight but the games still never feel stressful.
I’m a sucker for new worker spots opening up in worker placement games, and Lost Ruins does it incredibly thematically. Players go explore new tombs which earns them victory points and other bonus resources. In future rounds, these newly discovered tombs act as more lucrative worker placement locations for players to exploit.
Lost Ruins of Arnak has been hovering in my top 10 for a couple years now, but the new Missing Expedition expansion pushed it to be my top game of the year. The expansion adds a campaign mode, which is designed to be played solo or in two-player coop mode, and while I tend to roll my eyes at all the campaign modes for games I’ll never play to, going through this was quick, extremely fun, added some very new challenges to the core formula, and was more than enough to push Lost Ruins of Arnak to be my #1 game of the year.
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