Lost Ruins of Arnak: Expedition Leaders Review

Lost Ruins of Arnak: Expedition Leaders

WBG Score: 9

Player Count: 1-4

You’ll like this if you like: Lost Ruins of Arnak & variable player powers

Published by: Czech Games Edition (CGE

Designed by: Elwen, Mín

This is the reviewer’s copy. See our review policy here

By Steve Godfrey

Explorers journal, 7th June 1964. It wasn't long ago that I was almost begging for some leadership because Lord knows we need some organisation in these expeditions. That was until we met this bunch. They’re so focused on one specific thing it's bizarre. Like, one is obsessed with taking us to the scariest and most dangerous places on the island. He can’t have passed basic health and safety training can he? They’re all obsessed with one thing, if it’s not snacks it’s their flippin satchel or money. I tried to complain but I was simply told “that’s just management for you”

So, Basic Stuff First

This expansion comes with a load of new item and artifact cards, new idols, guardians, assistants and level 1 and 2 sites. Simply shuffle these into your base game since they're more of what you know and love. There’s also an artifact card and an assistant that need to be swapped out with new versions for balancing purposes. 

Follow those tracks.

In this box you’ll find a new double sided research track. You can use this with or without this expansion. Simply pick your preferred side and overlay it onto the original track. Both tracks have new research costs,  bonuses and point values but they each have their own new twist to them. 

The Monkey Temple track has space for an artifact card in the middle of it. At set up draw artifact cards until you come across one that costs 3 compasses and put it in the space on the track. Only your magnifying glass can and must move onto this space and when it does you may activate the card without paying the tablet cost.

The Lizard Temple has space for a guardian on it. When a player's magnifying glass first reaches this space, populate it with a random guardian tile. Now no player's tokens can move past it until one player has overcome it in the usual way. All players in the same space as this undefeated guardian at the end of the round will gain a fear card for each of their tokens in that space. 

Both tracks add some new variability to your games of Arnak and if you're looking to change things up but without adding anything in the way of rules complexity then these will do the job. Personally I prefer the Lizard Temple side. The guardian gives this nice tension of ‘who's going to overcome the guardian’. Whoever does gets the guardian and the points but it leaves other players that extra turn to get a step ahead on the research track.

The Monkey Temple track is still worth exploring but since it relies on a random artifact card it could either be a great benefit to your game or the equivalent of stopping at the motorway services with the inferior coffee chain because the kids can't hold it until the next one.

Now, onto the big one, the part of the review I’m sure you're all here for…

You just can’t get the staff these days.

That’s right, the new staff mechanism. This expansion comes with a new red moon staff. Use this in place of the regular staff and at the end of the round discard two of the artifact and item cards instead of the usual one. Yeah, I know it feels odd to need a new component just to implement a simple rule change. In some defence it is now printed on the staff as a reminder and it does make the rule stand out in the book by making it a component rather than a simple paragraph. Regardless, it’s a cool rule that gives more fluidity to the card market and you can absolutely employ that rule into your Arnak games without it. 

Right, that's it for this expansion I think. Oh, no, wait. There's something here about some leaders with variable player powers. I should probably talk about those briefly.

Take me to your leader

First thing to note across all the leaders is that they all come with their own special hand of starting cards. So use these instead of the regular cards but still add the usual 2 fear cards. Each of these starting decks will lean into that leader's special ability. You also get a really handy user guide that properly explains how your chosen leader and the cards work. Each leader also has their own Blue idol actions on their board which they can use when they use a blue idol slot. This is usually a bonus that coincides with their special ability. 

The Captain

This is the easiest leader to grasp as he just has an extra worker. There’s also a space on his board to put a worker that lets them use the silver ability of one of the face up assistants on the board. Nice and simple and the one i’d suggest giving to a new player if you're wanting to use this expansion with new players. 

The Falconer

She has an eagle token and track on her board. The token moves up the track one space at the start of each round. She also has a free action on her cards that will let her move the token extra spaces. During your turn you can gain the bonus of the current space that the eagle token is on. Move the eagle back to the start and use the effect. These effects are either free actions or actions that let you activate level one or two sites. This is another one of my favourites. I like the track and those more powerful spaces at the top are great late in the game and can be a life saver when you really need resources.

The Baroness

At set up, put one coin on the 2,3,4 and five spaces of the round track. At the start of each round the Baroness will gain that coin. She also has a special delivery card. This has a different back and will always go into your hand at the start of the round and will count towards your five card hand. When you buy or gain an item card you can play the special delivery card which allows you to put the gained card directly into your hand. I think the Baroness may be my least favourite of the bunch. Don't get me wrong, she's still useful but I’ve never used a tool card heavy strategy so that's why it has less appeal to me. The fact that the special delivery card takes up a space in your initial card draws makes it feel a bit limiting, especially if you don't buy any cards that round. However the ability to put a card straight into your hand can be incredibly useful and it makes up for the missing card in your hand and gives you control over what that card is.

The Professor

The Professor has a Suitcase token that will be used to hold tablet and compass tokens. At setup put a compass token on the 2nd and 4th space of the round track and a table at space 3 and 5. The professor will gain these at the start of those rounds and they will go straight on his suitcase token. Draw three artifact cards at the start of the game and put them in front of you. Certain cards in your deck will give you resources that will go to your suitcase. The Professor is all about artifact cards and tokens in your suitcase can only be used for artifact cards. Only you can buy the artifact cards in front of you. There is a card in your starting deck that will let you swap a card in front of you with a card from the row, effectively reserving it. The professor is a step up from the Baroness for me. I tend to use the artifacts more than the tool cards so it fits in more with how I'd like to play the game. The dedicated tokens for the artifact cards are a nice little limiter. I can't tell you how many times I've spent compasses on something only to see the perfect artifact card come out and not be able to afford it. With the professor if you can’t afford it you can at least reserve it until you can. 

The Explorer

The explorer has only one explorer but she has three snack tokens. Place two of these on your board at the start of the game and the other one on space three of the round track. The snack tokens can be used in a couple of different ways. When you’ve put your explorer on a site you can use a snack token to reuse the explorer on another turn. First pay the cost on the snack token (either free, one coin or a compass) and place it on the site your explorer is leaving. Then put your explorer on a new unoccupied site following the usual placement rules. You can't go back to a space with a snack token that round. She also has two cards in her hand that need a snack token to activate. One lets you activate a campsite and the other one gets you a tablet and an idol. She also has a card that lets you draw 2 sites when you discover a new site. This is another one of my favourites. Mainly because I like a good snack as well. Seriously, chuck a pack of chocolate hobnobs at me at the game table and I'll be like Gollum sat in the corner munching away. But also because she can potentially activate four sites in a round which could net you a load of resources depending on what's on offer. I also love that the cards have token spaces can help mitigate the fact that all sites may be taken or in the early game, undiscovered. 

The Mystic

The Mystic laughs in the face of fear (which can get annoying as the game goes on) At the start of each round the mystic player will add a fear card to their hand, giving them six cards in their hand. The mystics cards have ways of excelling cards and when they do (by any means) these fear cards go into a special ritual space on their board. These won't be worth negative points at the end of the game. Rather than use the ability on their starting cards, they can instead be exiled to use a ritual. You spend an amount of fear cards from the ritual pile to use one of the listed bonuses. Spend two fear cards to gain a coin and a compass, three to gain an artifact card at a three compass discount or spend four to overcome a guardian for free. He also has five idol slots, two of which give you a fear card. 

The Mystic is certainly a leader that I wouldn't give to a new player. This is all about managing, gaining and exiling fear cards and while that’s not beyond the skills of a new player, I think having all the rules swimming in your head plus trying to balance out gaining and excelling fear cards could be a bit much. If you’ve got a couple of games under your belt however then the Mystic is a fun spin on the game. It feels weird actively trying to get fear cards and even weirder when you get excited flipping over a site and seeing a fear card on it. Playing as the mystic makes me feel like the brave Ace Rimmer version of me has waltzed in and taken over rather than my regular Rimmer self.  This leader is all about balance and making sure that you can exile the fear cards as quickly as you can get them. There’s also an amount of tension and timing involved towards the end game. The last thing you want is to gain all these cards and then be frantically scrambling to exile them to avoid a load of negative points at the end of the game.

Is this an example of essential upper management?

This is a great expansion. The more stuff aspect is always gonna be welcome, I love anything that adds variety that I can just mix in, not think about and still use with new players. Because let's face it, for some of us this is the only way we can get a lot of expansions played. The new research tracks do that as well since nothing in them adds to the overall complexity of the game. 

The new leaders are the obvious star of the show and let’s be honest, when you go to a festival you're really there for the head line act and here that act is worth the price of admission alone. Each one adds new ways to explore your games of Arnak and each one will give you a little or in a few cases, a big nudge towards certain styles of plays. As much as I want to force myself to change my focus in my regular games I often find myself veering back to my old habits. These new leaders though tend to keep me in the straight and narrow, well as straight as you can be when you're stealing from an uncharted island and its guardian inhabitants. Whilst I tend to stick to the vanilla explorers from the base game when I’m teaching new players there are a couple in this expansion that I could teach to new people. 

For me this is an almost essential expansion with the caveat that you don't need this straight away. It's not an expansion that you need to buy immediately when you buy the base game. You can play many many games of Arnak before you choose to add this to the game but when you do you’ll almost never want to go back to the regular explorers.

Right I’m off to find that Explorer. I had a box of snacks here last night and they mysteriously disappeared. It’s gotta have been her that nicked them…no, wait, turns out I ate them all. Man this is gonna be a long expedition now.