Anyone who has explored our previous Expedition Leaders expansion for Lost Ruins of Arnak will already be familiar with just how much playing Arnak with the asymmetrical leaders injects a fresh strategic element to the experience. It nudges players to focus in specific directions, which makes certain resources and options more valuable to particular leaders’ play styles.
Both of the two new leaders included in the upcoming second expansion, Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition, feel quite different from the six previous leaders. Today, we’re excited to introduce you to The Mechanic, a versatile tinkerer whose skill to repair even the most broken things makes life easier on any expedition.
Spin the wheel!
One of the more obvious unique elements of The Mechanic is her player board (you can get a sneak peek in the trailer here). It features a gear that can be rotated through her card abilities to gain a variety of resources and effects. It’s completely modular, too. You start with some basic gray actions located on the cogs of the main wheel, but each round earns you a new pair of random gold cogs actions that you can pick one from to slot into one of the remaining available cog spaces in the gear. This essentially lets you customize and build out The Mechanics abilities to suit your play style from game to game.
When you activate the wheel, it spins 90 degrees and you have the option to select a resource/action depending on what’s available on adjacent cogs and what type of spin you triggered. A silver spin lets you pick one cog action from either of the two diagonal silver cog options available on the left side of the gear. A gold spin lets you pick the available gold cog action OR both of the adjacent silver cog options. If you trigger a gold spin and there is no gold action slotted there, you can activate one of the two silver cog options instead.
You may have also noticed The Mechanic has a cute furry companion. Her monkey pal is gained in the second round, and is a special assistant token that can be used to gain extra free spins of the wheel.
Behind the scenes
“The gist of the Mechanic is all about having a deck of cards that levels up as you play and gets stronger,” notes Mín, one half of the husband and wife design team behind Arnak. ”Her cards start off being sort of weak, but then they level up over time, and she needs to be careful about getting too many cards, because that can slow her down.”
“The Mechanic’s basic cards tell her that they are anything the machine can do, and that adds a lot to the puzzle of figuring out what you actually want and when,” she adds. “I really like that. It’s a fun way to play.”
Some of the other leader characters’ were designed with a theme from the get-go, but others grew from specific mechanics they had in mind. “She was inspired by her mechanics, which is kind of funny…being the mechanic,” says Mín. “We were first trying to experiment around that, and then the wheel came into play and it became looking more and more like a real mechanical part. So it was fun to watch that progress.”
Next up, we’ll introduce you to The Journalist. Stay tuned for our next article and don’t forget to subscribe to the Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition BGG page so you don’t miss any important updates! You can also head over there to comment on this article in the forum, as well!
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