Let’s go explore the world, looking for treasure and ruins and trying to find the best things we can to add to our collections! Today we are going to just that in a game that lets you create some amazing combos and be the greatest explorer in the land!
Ruins is published by Allplay and is for 2-5 players in approximately 30 mins. It is a designed by John D. Clair with illustration from Jake Morrison.
Game Objective:
In Ruins, players will try to play all the ruin cards in their hand before anyone else over multiple rounds. Cards can be upgraded with some really cool transparent cards to alter their value or add special abilities. Victory points are scored based on finishing positions each round, and the game ends when the winning condition is met at the end of a subsequent round.
Setup and Gameplay:
Insert the 50 ruin cards into card sleeves with the day side face up. Shuffle all discovery cards and place them face-down to form a deck and then place 1 discovery card face up under each market token. Each player takes a player aid, 2 claim cards, 3 torch tokens and a score marker. Flip the scoreboard to show the correct scoring track for the current player count. Shuffle the ruin deck and deal 9 cards to each player as their starting hand for the round. Place the round marker on round 1 and you are ready to go!
The game is played over multiple rounds. Each round proceeds with players taking turns until all but one player have passed consecutively. The lead player plays either a single ruin card or a set of ruin cards all of the same rank from their hand. Subsequent players may follow by playing the same number of cards of equal or higher rank and if a player cannot or chooses not to follow, they pass. If a player plays a set that matches the exact same rank as the previous play, the next player is skipped and the game continues around.
Whenever a player plays ruin cards, they may upgrade any cards just played by adding claim cards or discovery cards from hand or market. These transparent upgrades remain permanently on that ruin for the rest of the game. After playing and upgrading, refill the market with discovery cards so there are 4 available. Players may purchase from the market using torches to end their turn.
When you are down to 1 player left with cards in hand the round ends. Players score victory points based on the order in which they went out. Advance the round marker and begin the next round of play to continue and the game ends when either a player reaches 9 or 10 points. If no one has won by round 4, play one more round with the leader and the last player to go out first. Whoever goes out first in round 5 wins!
Impressions:
Ruins is a fun card-crafting game where the game allows you to change things up in fun and unique combos. I love cards games and this one has a familiar goal-play all your cards-but allows you to upgrade in crazy ways to really move the game along at a crazy pace.
The sleeving of existing cards to mix and match them into new and more powerful combos makes it shine, giving you what seems good and making it so much better. I also likes the player skip portion where you can follow someone exactly and force the next player to have to pass on their turn which is a great way to keep others from going out before you.
The art is fun, simple and colorful and adding the sleeves changes the card and art just enough to notice but not be distracting. While I have played a few games with sleeves like this in the past they are rare, and Ruins does do it well and smooth which propels it to being one of the better card-crafting games I’ve played.
Overall this is a fun one that has played smooth at 2 all the way up to 5 on our table and one I expect to get more play in the future as well. Make sure to check this one out and see how well your exploration skills stack up to all of your friends!
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