Most rules questions in a first game of Lost Ruins of Arnak are about travel. Can this pay for that? What if the space needs two icons? Can I use my coins? This lesson answers all of them, so the last piece of Level 0 is a table where every payment is right the first time. It follows the current English rulebook from Czech Games Edition.
The four travel values
Every card in your deck has a travel value in its corner. There are four:
- Boot: walking. The cheapest.
- Car: driving.
- Ship: sailing.
- Plane: flying. The most flexible.
Spaces on the board show the travel you must pay to send an archaeologist there. You pay by moving cards from your hand into your play area and ignoring their effects. That is the travel rule from the first lesson: a card pays for travel or does its effect, never both.
The hierarchy
You can always pay a cost with a higher travel value. The rulebook spells out the order:
- A plane pays for anything.
- Anything pays for a boot.
- A car cannot pay for a ship, and a ship cannot pay for a car.
So a car and a ship sit side by side in the middle, each one able to cover a boot, neither able to cover the other. The quick reference sheet in the box shows the same order.
Two coins make a plane
You can always spend 2 coins to make a plane, and a plane pays for any one travel icon. The rulebook calls this hiring a pilot. It is the safety valve when your hand has the wrong icons.
It is not free, though. Those 2 coins could have gone toward an item. Treat the pilot as a fix for a turn that matters, not as your everyday ticket.
Fear pays for a boot
Fear cards have no effect, but each one has a boot. Many spaces ask for one boot, so a Fear card in hand still does something useful. When a space costs a boot and you hold both a Fear card and a Funding card, pay with the Fear. The Funding card can then make its coin.
Two-icon costs
Some spaces show two icons. You can cover them with travel values from two sources, such as two cards, or a card and a pilot. Some cards carry two icons on their own, and one of those covers the whole cost.
A two-icon card can also pay a one-icon cost, but the extra icon is usually wasted. Unused travel does not carry over to your next turn.
Where travel costs appear
- Digging at a site. Pay the travel cost printed on the space. The space must be empty, and in a two- or three-player game it must not have a blocking tile.
- Discovering a site. Pay the compass cost for the region first (3 compasses for a level I site, 6 for level II), then the travel cost to the site you pick. The compass cost is only for discovering. Once a site is discovered, anyone can dig there by paying just its travel cost.
- Some effects and assistants. A few effects ask for a travel icon as part of their cost. You pay those the same way, with a card from your hand or a pilot.
- Guardian boons. Some boons are a one-time travel value. Use it like a card from your hand.
Relocate and activate: no travel at all
Two words on cards trip up new players because they skip travel entirely.
Relocate moves an archaeologist that is already on a site to an empty space at a different discovered site. You pay no travel cost. You cannot relocate to an undiscovered site, and you cannot relocate an archaeologist still on your board.
Activate a site gives you a discovered site’s effect without sending anyone there. You need no archaeologist, you pay no travel, and other players’ archaeologists do not block you, unless the card says otherwise.
Neither is the same as an effect that lets you take a dig or discover action. Those follow the normal action rules: an archaeologist from your board, and the travel cost unless the card says otherwise.
Discounts
A travel discount covers one icon of a cost. A discount on one kind of icon does nothing for a cost without that icon. Discounts never take a cost below zero and do not carry over to another action.
A quick drill
Before your next game, deal yourself a hand of five random cards from the box and look at three spaces on the board. For each space, ask:
- Which cards could pay for it?
- Which card would I rather keep for its effect?
- Would a pilot be worth the coins here?
Two minutes of this and the hierarchy becomes automatic. For the bigger picture of how Arnak mixes cards and worker placement, our explainer on worker placement shows where the archaeologists fit.
Next lesson
Your First Three Games of Lost Ruins of Arnak
Level 1 starts with your first three games: the rules slips almost every new table makes, and the habits that keep a deck from filling up with Fear.
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