History TabletopGame / LostRuinsOfArnak

* LuckBasedMission: Both decks of cards, the Guardians and the ruins they sit on are completely randomized during game set-up. There are also random bonus tiles on the research tracker and the order of Assistants to draw from. Oh, and the idols and the bonus they provide when picked. All of this can completely change how the specific game plays out due to different options at players disposal, making the specific game easier or harder (or even making it downright impossible to reach the Temple) depending on purely random elements.

** Trovel card allows to trade a Compass into a Ruby. Sounds like a great trade... except in the long run, you will almost never be able to benefit from it, as Compasses are some of the most valuable resources, while spending Rubies can often be simply avoided.
** Two-thirds of all Artifacts have some super-duper ability that is in reality a very finnicky gimmick, while often also providing very little points in the final count. On top of that, each Artifact when played outside of the moment of being bought, requires to spent a tablet to activate, which might reduce their utility to simply the Airplane travel icon, rather than whatever they are supposed to do.
* BearTrap: A single-use card that allows to defeat any Guardian that wasn't taken down during the initial expedition ''and'' the field is unoccupied.

** Tier 1 expeditions. Sure, tier 2 gives better rewards and two Idols instead of one... but that only further highlights the mundane practicality of tier 1. Especially since few of the cards make it very easy to score tier 1 expeditions at a high discout, making it all that easier to get them going.

** The variety of powerful, multi-use cards costs 3 or even 4 Coins or Compasses. Getting them, however, completely changes the dynamics of the game (eg. an early Aeroplane allows for sending far more expeditions than normally).

* DraftingMechanic: Players buy Items and Artifacts from a shared pool. Same goes with Assitants, but details depend on which side of the board is being played.
* ExpansionPack: ''The Missing Expedition'' expansion, adding a new gameplay mode, cards and Assitants.

* FatherNeptune: One of your Assistants is a ship captain: white-bearded, [[StockCostumeTraits wearing captain's hat and grog coat]]. Naturally, he offers Ship travel icons.

* HumanPackMule: One of the Assistants is a big guy with an even bigger crate. He allows one to draw a new card, but without an upgrade, one must first discard something from the hand.

* LuckBasedMission: Both decks of cards, the Guardians and the ruins they sit on are completely randomised during game set-up. There are also random bonus tiles on the research tracker and the order of Assistants to draw from. Oh, and the idols and the bonus they provide when picked. All of this can completely change how the specific game plays out due to different options at players disposal, making the specific game easier or harder (or even making it downright impossible to reach the Temple) depending on purely random elements.

* MoneyIsNotPower: ZigZagged. The exact moment varies depending on the board side and how the game has played out so far, but there is a clear point after which Coins stop being useful, as there will be either no point to buy new cards (other than extra points at the end of the game) or simply nothing worthwhile left in the game to buy at all. Coins don't count towards the final score, so there's no point hoarding, either. On the other hand, having a stable source of Coins early on is extremely useful, while certain effects require paying Coins to get results.

* ShipwreckStart: The premise behind Snake Temple side of the board: your expedition started with crash-landing on the island. Not only is the board itself significantly harder to highlight the less than fortunate start, but the second Assistant draw is about finding a shipwreck survivor, rather than drawing them from the common pool, greatly limiting Assistants choice, (there is only a pool of randomly selected characters stacked on the research tracker).

* DeckClogger: Fear is a bad card that mostly serves to clog up your deck. It has no effect, its travel value is only a single boot (the worst of any card), and it's worth -1 point if you still have it in your deck at the end of the game. You start with two of them in your deck, and can gain more as a penalty for leaving an archeologist on a site with an undefeated guardians on it, or sometimes even if you defeat the Guardian. Fear cards will probably be your first targets when you get the chance to exile cards.

* DraftingMechanic: Players buy Items and Artifacts from a shared pool.

* ScoringPoints: How the game is resolved. There are few major sources of points, which allow players to win the game even without reaching the temple (even when other players managed to do not only that, but also buy scoring tiles from the temple), since the cards in the deck, Idols and defeated guardians all contribute to the final score, too.

* CanineCompanion: The Dog card. Gameplay-wise, it's a fetch hound bringing badly needed resources from camp.

* LiteralWildCard: Any travel icon can be paid for using a higher travel icon. This means that the plane, the highest icon, can pay for any travel symbol.

'''Lost Ruins of Arnak''' is a board game released in 2020 by the husband and wife team of Michal "Elwen" Štach and Michaela "Mín" Štachov. In it, players compete to travel across the eponymous uncharted island via foot, car, boat and plane, conducting archeological digs at various sites, overcoming said sites' animal guardians, collecting useful loot, tools and artifacts, and working their way up the "research track" looking to reach either the Bird or Snake Temple. The game is notable in that it is played over only five rounds, forcing players to prioritize their limited actions among a multitude of options and quickly and efficiently collect the needed resources to advance.

** To progress the research tracker and eventually get to the Bird and Snake Temple, your expedition must spend an enormous amount of resources, gathered via expeditions, camps and cards played. And then, once in the Temple, there are point tiles that further require specific resources (and combinations of them) to gain additional points.

* DigitalTabletopGameAdaptation: Both Boarding Game Arena and Yucata had a digital version of the game almost right at the premiere, as part of a marketing gig to make the pretty pricey game more familiar to people.

* AdventurerOutfit: All theAssistants are wearing some variant of khaki suits, tropical clothes and practical, [[StockCostumeTraits job-related]] outfits.

** Hook with Rope. Discard one card, to draw a new card, and have the ability to remove a card from your deck. It sounds very useful, but in practical terms, it never pays off. In a similar vein, unless your deck is really thick, the Assistant offering a +1 card to draw is this, too - especially since the silver side requires to discard a card first. In a game with such a limited draw, this is a big deal.

* TwoFistedTales: It's a 2023 board game styled after pulp adventure and using the interwar period for its setting and general aesthetics.

* AdventurerArchaeologist: Each player controls an entire expedition of those, exploring the unknown island, facing monstrous creatures, finding trap-riddled ruins and finding their way toward the temple ruins hidden somewhere in the jungle.
* AntiHoarding: Despite being a deck-building game, ''Arnak'' has very limited drafting ability and the starting hand each turn is just five cards. This means getting a lot of card is an excellent way to only ever play each of them once - ''if at all''.
* AwesomeButImpractical: A whole lot of cards fall under this category, but some stand out more than other.
** Trovel allows to trade a Compass into a Ruby. Sounds like a great trade... except in the long run, you will almost never be able to benefit from it, as Compasses are some of the most valuable resources, while spending Rubies can be often simply avoided.
** Two-third of all Artifacts have some super-duper ability that is in reality a very finnicky gimmick, while often also providing very little points in the final count. On top of that, each Artifact when played outside the moment of being bought requires to pay a tablet to activate, which might reduce their utility to simply the Airplane travel icon, rather than whatever they are supposed to do.
* BigCreepyCrawlies: ''Half'' of all Guardians are some giant anthropods, be it ScaryScorpions, massive beetles or other nasties.

** Dog card, which offers 1 Compass and ability to use unoccupied camp site. It's nothing fancy and pretty easily to block (since the camp has to be unoccupied), but it's cheap and offers enormous flexibility. It is further contrasted against similar Lantern card, which doesn't require unoccupied camp, but is more expensive and doesn't offer the free Compass.
** Pickaxe is a 1 Coin card that changes a single Compass into a Tablet and an Arrowhead, some of the most sought after and useful resources in the game. It's one of the most useful cards in the game, while being cheap to buy and play, yet offering an equivalent of one of the better tier 1 expeditions for a fraction of a price and not needing to use one of your archeologist tokens.

** Any "thunder" effect card, since they are nothing fancy, but offer instant payoff of badly needed resources and also tend to have a Pass action, too, offering even more resources when played in the end of the turn.
* CashGate: The game is build on few different layers of those
** To progress the research tracker and eventually get to the Bird and Snake Temple, your expedition must spend an enormous amout of resources, gathered via expeditions, camps and cards played. And then, once in the Temple, there are point tiles that further require specific resources (and combinations of them) to gain additional points.
** The variety of powerful, multi-use cards cost 3 or even 4 Coins or Compasses. Getting them, however, completely changes the dynamics of the game (eg. an early Aeroplane allows to send far more expeditions than normally)
** On Snake Temple side of the board, you need to pay with ''an Idol token'' to advance further the temple tracker.

* CompetitiveBalance: Players start with different amount of Coins and Compasses, depending on their order of play, which balances between ability to go first vs. being able to afford more things.

** Any card (and the Assistant) with ability to remove cards becomes this on the Bird Temple side of the board, as there are far less Fear cards to clog your deck and thus trimming it down isn't all that viable as it is on Snake Temple side.
** Machete. It offers 2 Compasses and ability to remove a card, but it also costs 4 Coins, making it hardly worth its price, even on Snake Temple side. There is a whole variety of cheaper and more viable cards to get the job done.
** Hook with Rope. Discard one card, to draw new card, and have ability to remove a card from your deck. Sounds very useful, but in practical terms, it never pays off. In similar vein, unless your deck is really thick, the Assistant offering a +1 card to draw is this, too - especially since the silver side requires to discard a card first. In a game with such limited draw, this is a big deal.
** Any card that applies its effects only to placed archeologist tokens or occupied ruins and camps. Especially when they scale with numer of placed archeologists. This means they come very late into play and you might never truly benefit from them, too.
* CoolPlane: The Aeoroplane card, depicting a red floatplane soaring in the sky. It's cool looking, while also one of the best cards in the game by a large margain.

* DiscOneNuke: If the starting Item shop contains either Aeroplane, Hot Air Baloon, Pickaxe or Map, it's an instant race for any of those items, in that exact order. They offer enormous benefits, especially when bought right at the game's start. Aeroplane in particular is a card that diminishes its value after each turn, going from all-powerful in first turn to pretty useless by the final two turns.

* ExpansionPack: ''The Missing Expedition'' expansion, adding new gameplay mode, cards and assitants.

* FatherNeptune: One of your Assistants is a ship captain: white-bearded, [[StockCostumeTraits wearing captain's hat and grog coat]].

* MagikarpPower: Bow And Arrow and Brush are cards that offer scaling bonuses depending on number of - respectively - defeated Guardians or Idols owned by player. Getting one extra Compass isn't all that great, but three is pretty powerful
* MoneyIsNotPower: ZigZagged. The exact moment vary on board side and how the game played out so far, but there is a clear point after which Coins stop being useful, as there will be either no point to buy new cards (other than extra points in the end of the game) or simply nothing worthwhile left in the game to buy at all. Coins don't count into the final score, so no point hoarding, either. On the other hand, having a stable source of Coins early on is extremely useful, while certain effects require to pay Coins to get results.
* NotCompletelyUseless: Fear cards. There are many effects that require to discard a card, making them prime targets - especially when the discarded card can be then instantly removed from the game. At the very worst, Fear card can be used to place your archeologist token in a campsite.
* RefiningResources: The upgrade resource icon, which comes from certain Artifacts, one of the Assistant and Idol bonuses. Tablets can be turned into Arrowheads and Arrowheads into Rubies.
* ResourcesManagementGameplay: You have to collect and spend tablets, compasses, jewels, coins and arrowheads.
* RevolversAreJustBetter: The only firearm in the game is a revolver. It's perfectly capable to kill any given Guardian, which range from BigCreepyCrawlies to {{Kaiju}}.

* ScoringPoints: How the game is resolved. There are few major sources of points, which allows to win the game even without reaching the temple (and other player managed to do not only that, but also bought scoring tiles from the temple), since the cards in the deck, Idols and defeated guardians all contribute to the final score, too.

* TomboyAndGirlyGirl: The female Assistants range from girly nurse, feminine researchers and traders, to badass AcePilot and WrenchWench with [[ThisMeansWarpaint warpaint stripes below her eyes]].
* UnstableEquilibrium: The game can be very quickly decided when one of the players gets ahead by turn 2.

* ResourcesManagementGameplay: You have to collect and spend tablets, compasses, jewels, coins and arrowheads.

* DeckbuildingGame: Features a deckbuilding aspect in that you can buy cards. These cards may either be played for their effects or to pay for travel costs.

'''Lost Ruins of Arnak''' is a board game released in 2020 by the husband and wife team of Michal "Elwen" Štach and Michaela "Mín" Štachov. In it, players compete to explore the eponymous uncharted island, conducting archeological digs at various sites, overcoming said site's animal guardians, collecting useful tools and artifacts, and working their way up the "research track" looking to reach either the Bird or Snake Temple. The game is notable in that it is played over only five rounds, forcing players to prioritize their limited actions among a multitude of options and quickly and efficiently collect the needed resources to advance.

* LiteralWildCard: Any travel icon can be paid for using a higher travel icon. This means that the plane, the highest icon, can pay for any travel symbol.