If you came here for the hot new games, well, you’re about to be disappointed because here I am excavating this modern classic for 2-players from 1999!
‘Lost Cities’ is yet another banger from Reiner Knizia, one of the bigger names in modern board game design. It’s a card game, with a big push your luck element as you have a limited amount of turns to gather the cards you want and play them before time runs out.
The “story” of the game is that you are explorers leading expeditions into different places (represented by the 6 colors on the game board). You dream of finding fame and fortune but gathering the supplies for a journey isn’t free! By playing a single card, you’re immediately down 20 points.
You could increase your chance of finding wealth by teaming up with the local guides and for each guide you hire (up to 3) you add a points multiplier - which is great if you manage to find enough to earn more than 20 points…but beware, if your exploration fizzles out and you’re left with negative points, those multipliers still apply.
You start the game with 8 cards and an empty board. On your turn you play a card - either to your expedition side of the board or into the center area - and then pick up a card - either drawing it from the deck or taking a card from the center. You will always have 8 cards.
Cards played to your expedition must be in ascending order, 2-10. You don’t have to play every number. In fact, it’s better if you don’t try because your opponent might be hanging on to that 4 just to mess with you! You must play the “handshake” cards first - this is that push your luck element I mentioned above, gambling that you’ll get enough cards that those multipliers will help you at the round end.
When does the round end? When the draw pile is empty! There is a fine art of seeding that center board early on with cards so you can avoid pulling from the draw pile later in the game to give yourself a few more turns.
Play three rounds, adding up your scores (numbers on cards minus 20, times multiplier (2,3,4) from handshakes + 20 (if more than 8 cards in an expedition)) at the end and the one with the highest score wins!
What does this look like on the table?
What you can’t see/hear in this photo is my hand of cards that is probably a mix of things I know my opponent needs and things I am hanging on to, hoping to get to the board later on. You also can’t hear both of us grumbling as we draw a card that would have been helpful last turn or is too high a number to play without missing out on points. It’s a tense game and it plays it about 45 minutes.
Honesty, you could probably just take the cards and leave the board behind if you wanted to make this more “travel friendly”. But it doesn’t take up that much room overall. (Oh I just had the idea that if the board was cloth, you could easily wrap it all up to go and then play it anywhere… KOSMOS, call me!)
Want to give ‘Lost Cities’ a try but don’t have anyone to play with? I honed my skills on Board Game Arena (which claims you can play in 9 minutes???)
Have you played ‘Lost Cities’? What did you think? Let me know in the comments!