Lost Ruins of Arnak rules refresher

Read the refresher

You are leading an expedition to explore Arnak, and you win by having the most points at the end of five rounds. You do that by building a small deck of items and artifacts, sending archaeologists out to dig and discover sites, and climbing the research track.

For setup, use the Bird Temple side of the main board. The moon staff sits in the card row marking round one, with one face-up artifact to its left and five face-up items to its right. Each level one site gets one face-up idol, and each level two site gets one face-up and one face-down idol. Blocking tiles depend on player count: none with four players, three with three players, and all five with two players, so with two players each site has room for only one archaeologist. On the temple, build stacks of tiles with as many tiles per stack as there are players, and place a face-down stack of research bonus tiles, one per player, at the top of the research track. Research bonus tiles go face up on the marked spaces of the track. Your deck is four basic cards plus two Fear cards. Your research tokens start below the track, with the magnifying glass sitting on top of the notebook. Starting resources vary with seat order: the first player takes two coins, the second takes a coin and a compass, the third takes two coins and a compass, and the fourth takes a coin and two compasses.

Each round, everyone draws up to five cards. Then, starting with the player holding the starting player marker, you take turns clockwise. On your turn you take exactly one main action plus as many free actions as you like, before, during, or after it. Your main action can be digging at a site, discovering a new site, overcoming a guardian, buying a card, playing a card for a non-free effect, researching, or passing. Once you pass you are out for the round, and the round ends when everyone has passed.

The main actions in more detail. To dig, pay the travel cost shown on an unoccupied space at a site, move an archaeologist there from your board, and resolve the site's effect. You cannot dig if both your archaeologists are already out. Travel costs are paid with the travel value in the corner of a card from your hand, which goes face up into your play area with its effect ignored. Remember a card is either spent for travel or played for its effect, never both. Higher travel values pay for lower ones: a plane pays for anything, the car and the boat cannot pay for each other, and any travel value pays for a boot. You can always spend two coins to generate a plane.

To discover a new site, pay the compass cost printed for that region, then pay the travel cost to move an archaeologist onto an undiscovered site there. Take the idol, or both idols if there are two, but resolve only the face-up one's effect. Then place the top tile from the matching site stack face up and resolve its effect immediately. Finally draw a guardian tile and place it face up on the site. Guardians do not block digging, but at the end of the round you gain a Fear card for each archaeologist you take back from a site that still has a guardian, even if someone else woke it.

To overcome a guardian you must have an archaeologist on its site. Pay the cost at the bottom of the tile and keep the guardian by your board. Each one is worth five points, and its boon in the upper corner can be used once during the game, after which you turn it face down.

Idols sit on your supply crates and are worth three points each. As a free action you may slide one into the leftmost empty slot on your player board and choose one of the five effects shown. An idol in a slot never moves, and empty slots are worth points at the end.

Buying a card is a main action. Items on the right of the moon staff cost coins and go face down on the bottom of your deck. Artifacts on the left cost compasses, go straight to your play area, and you may resolve their effect immediately, ignoring the tablet cost in the corner. Then refill by sliding cards toward the moon staff and dealing a new card of the same type to the end. When you play an artifact from your hand later, that tablet cost must be paid, and all artifact effects are main actions.

Researching moves one of your two tokens up one row into a space connected to the one it is in. Pay the cost printed on the bridge. Your notebook may never end up in a row above your magnifying glass. If a face-up bonus tile is on the space, take it and remove it from the game, since only the first player to arrive gets it. You always resolve the effect at the end of that row for the token you moved, which is how you recruit assistants and upgrade them. Assistants go on your board silver side up. Using one turns it sideways, and it stays exhausted until it is refreshed. All assistants refresh at the end of the round, and certain card effects can refresh one sooner. Upgrading flips one to gold and refreshes it. When your magnifying glass reaches the top row you have found the Lost Temple: place it on the remaining empty space worth the most points and take a bonus tile from the face-down stack. After that, researching with your magnifying glass instead means paying one of the cost combinations at the bottom of the temple to take a tile from a matching stack.

At the end of the round, take back both archaeologists, gaining Fear for any returning from a guarded site, then keep or discard your leftover hand cards, shuffle your whole play area to the bottom of your deck, and refresh assistants. Exile the two cards on either side of the moon staff, move the staff one space right, refill the row, pass the starting player marker one place to the left, and draw back up to five.

After round five, take back archaeologists and gain Fear from guardians, then skip everything else and score. You score for where each research token sits, with Lost Temple magnifying glasses scoring by the order players arrived, for temple tiles, three points per idol even if it is in a slot, plus the points shown in any empty idol slots, five points per guardian overcome whether or not you used its boon, and the points in the lower right corner of each item and artifact card. Each Fear card costs you one point, and a fear tile costs two. Most points wins. Ties go to whoever reached the Lost Temple first; if nobody did, to the highest research score; after that, players remain tied.

A turn, played out

It is round 3 of a two player game, so every site has room for just one archaeologist. You hold 5 cards: an item with a car in its corner, an item with a boot, an artifact, and your 2 Fear cards. You have 3 coins and 2 compasses. Last round you discovered a level one site, and its guardian still sits there. Your main action is to dig at that site. Its open space shows a boat. Your car cannot pay for a boat, and your boot is too low, so you spend 2 coins to generate a plane, which pays for anything. Your archaeologist moves onto the space, you resolve the site's effect, and you are down to 1 coin. That was your one main action, so the guardian has to wait. The red player takes a turn, then you are back. Because your archaeologist stands on the guardian's site, you may overcome it. You pay the 2 compasses shown at the bottom of the tile and keep the guardian by your board. It is worth 5 points at the end, and its boon in the upper corner is yours to use once before you flip it face down. When round 3 ends and that archaeologist comes home, the site has no guardian, so no Fear card joins your deck. Your second archaeologist can still dig later this round at a space showing a boot. You spend the car item for that travel. It goes face up into your play area, and its effect is ignored.