Players: 2
Time: 20-40 minutes
Difficulty: 2 (of 10)
This game is co-produced by Rio Grande Games in English and Kosmos in German.
The Components
Lost Cities contains a small set of components in the 8"x8"x1" box typical of the Kosmos two-player line.
- 60 cards
- 1 game board
- 1 rule book
Cards: The cards are printed at a large Tarot size on a medium-heavy cardstock with rounded corners. They're full color front and back, though the front of each card is predominately the color of its suit (yellow, blue, white, green, or red). Each card contains a number or icon, displayed at both top right and top left, and artwork which covers the majority of the card. The artwork is attractive, though not stunning. It's, however, very cleverly laid out, with each different card in a suit showing a different portion of the same picture, to imply the progress of an archaeological expedition.
Game Board: The three-panel game board is printed with a linen texture on sturdy cardboard. It contains a discard space for each of the five suits, and is attractively produced, with each discard space looking like a map or other written artifact, and the rest of the surface looking like an archaeologist's table.
Rule Book: The four page rulebook is short, succinct, and easy to follow. It's printed in full color on glossy, stiff paper that should hold up well. It also includes a scoring example.
Overall the game is well-produced and attractive, though not spectacular. It's easy to use and seems to have held up well over my first dozen or so plays, though the cards are starting to show slight signs of wear. It earns a "4" out of "5" Style rating.
The Game Play
In Lost Cities you are trying to mount successful expeditions that fully explore up to five different regions of the world. Or, if you prefer, you're trying to put down large enough selections of each suit to score.
The Cards: The cards in Lost Cities are divided into five suits: yellow (Egyptian expedition), blue (Atlantean expedition), white (Tibetan expedition), green (Mesoamerican expedition), and red (volcanic expedition). Each suit has one each of the numbers 2-10 as well as three "investment" cards, marked by iconic shaking hands.
Setup: The board is placed directly in between the players. At the start of a round of play (there will be three) each player is dealt a hand of 8 cards.
Order of Play: Each turn each player takes the following actions:
- Play or Discard a Card
- Draw a Card
Play continues until the last card is drawn, at which point the round ends immediately and scoring is done.
Play or Discard a Card: If a player wishes to discard a card, he simply places it atop the appropriate discard pile on the playing board. Alternatively, a player may play a card to one of his expeditions, which he does by placing it in a column beneath the appropriate discard pile on his side of the board.
Expeditions are made up of an ascending set of cards, all in the same color. Investments of a color may only be played if there are no cards yet in the expedition, or only investments. Numerical cards must be played in ascending order: you can only play larger numbers than those already played in your expedition.
(Note: your opponent may be conducting an expedition to the exact same location as you; this has no effect on your own journey.)
The ultimate goal here is to get at least 20 points of cards in an expedition, so that should be your guide as to whether to play cards into an expedition or discard.
Draw a Card: Afterward you may either draw a card from the draw pile or else from the top of any of the five discard piles.
Scoring: At the end of each round of play each player scores each of his expeditions. If no cards have been played to a particular expedition, it has no cost and no value. If one or more cards have been played, however, a simple calculation is made: all of the points in the expedition are added up, then 20 (the cost of mounting the expedition) is subtracted. That total is then multiplied by 1 + the number of investment cards.
For example, an expedition of "investment, 5, 8, 10" would be worth 5 + 8 + 10 = 23, minus 20 is 3, then times 2 for the investment, for a total of 6.
An expedition of "investment, 3, 5, 7" would be worth 3 + 5 + 7 = 15, minus 20 is -5, then times 2 for the investment, for a total of -10.
A few more examples appear in the nearby picture.
There's also a 20 point bonus for each expedition with at least 8 cards, scored after all multiplication. it rarely comes up, but is worth waiting for when you're getting close.
Game End: The game ends after three rounds of play. The player with the highest score wins.
How It Plays
Lost Cities is a surprisingly tense game. You don't want to lay out expeditions until you're fairly confident of their success. However, the limit of 8 cards in your hand is a serious issue; worse, whenever you discard, you might give something to your opponent.
Typically a player starts off with a mess of cards which won't guarantee any expedition's success. He'll then play a couple of low cards for which he has support in his hand, hoping that he'll get enough additional support during the game to pull the expedition off. Sometimes he'll hoard a good run of cards, waiting for an investment so that he can play it first, then get doubled, trebled, or quadrupled return for his cards.
Usually a player will decide he has to discard after a few rounds, just to try and get one more card before he starts having to play high stuff. Sometimes a player will be able to throw out a card that's useless to his opponent, because his opponent has already passed that stage of his expedition. Other times, however, an opponent will gleefully grab the card thrown out.
Toward the end of the game, players will start counting cards in the draw pile to figure out how many plays they have left. Sometimes they'll start pulling cards from the board rather than the draw pile to extend the duration of the round. When the last card is drawn, the round ends; by this point each player will tend to have 3-4 expeditions out, and the majority of them will include at least 20 points. Hopefully the expeditions with investment cards at their base have done better.
Game Variations
I suggest a simple variation that I discovered on the 'net: count out the bottom 8 cards of your draw pile, then count out the next 8 and lay them crosswise, then place the rest of the deck crosswise again. This helps players see when the end of the deck is coming. When you get to the 16-card mark, you know you can still play every card in your hand. When you get to the 8-card mark, you know you can still play all your cards if your draw from the discard piles every round.
Relationships to Other Games
Mechanically, Lost Cities is what I call a singleton card climbing game. You play singleton cards to various areas of the table and you must play in ascending sequence. Big Top is another game which I've recently reviewed which falls into the same general category. Unlike most other card climbing games, the object in Lost Cities is to earn points, not to empty your hand of cards.
Lost Cities is also part of a card stacking trilogy of games by Reiner Knizia, each of which explores similar ideas of game play in different manners. Lost Cities is the simplest of the three. Tabula Rasa allows you to stack cards by suit or number to capture value tiles (where Lost Cities is sort of Rummy, I think of Tabula Rasa as sort Uno). Schotten Totten allows you to try and capture value tiles by playing 3-card Poker hands. The last has also be rereleased as Battle Line, a game which adds on a bit of tactical chrome to Schotten Totten.
The Game Design
When I first read the rules for Lost Cities I didn't think there was much there; you may well have had the same reaction, reading about The Game Play. however, much to my surprise it's a very tight, tense, and tactical game. Here's some of the good points:
Quick, Simple Play: The simplicity of the game is, of course, itself a benefit. It's easy to learn, easy to teach, and easy to play.
Constant Rewards: At any point in the game you might draw a card that totally turns an expedition around for you. This constant-reward system keeps you consistently interested because things could turn around for you in a moment.
Hard Decisions: And this is really the heart of the game. Everything in the game is very tight. You never have enough space in your hand to save up enough cards to start an expedition with surety. Likewise, there's never enough turns left in the game to do everything you want. The result of all of this is that every single round you have very hard decisions to make and you never feel like you have quite enough info.
Some Nice Strategy: This isn't a super strategic game, but there are still some nice elements: in how you can choose to draw from the deck or the board to shorten or lengthen the game; and in how you can choose discards carefully to try and encourage or discourage certain plays from your opponent. They're minor, but still nice adds.
Here's my one real complaint with the game:
Largely Non-Interactive: Other than the shared discards, and the combined use of the deck of cards, you don't really interact with your opponent much. In fact, if I'm deeply in "the zone", I can almost totally ignore how well my opponent is doing until scoring comes around.
Overall, Lost Cities plays well for a light two-player card game, and it has very high replay value. I originally gave it a "4" out of "5" in Strategy, but it's remained extremely replayable, and thus I eventually upped my rating to "5".
Conclusion
Reiner Knizia's two-player card game has been highly lauded as one of the best card games in print. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's a nicely strategic game that will probably get years of play, and thus is well worth picking up.
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