Hi everyone! I'm back for another post, this time on a two-player card game. Lost Cities is a game by famous and widely admired designer Reiner Knizia. He has designed more than 700 games, and every Knizia game I've played has been both easy to learn and rich in strategy. This game is widely available, comes in a small box, and is lots of fun.
The cover of the game's newest edition, showcasing its theme of exploration. Photo by
W. Eric Martin on Board Game Geek (link to photo here).
In Lost Cities, the two players play as the heads of worldwide archaeological exploration teams, and are looking to turn a profit on every expedition they go on. Both players receive eight cards, and every turn, they either add one card to one of the five expeditions or discard that card onto the corresponding expedition's discard pile. They then draw a new card from any expedition's discard pile or from the deck, bearing in mind that when the deck runs out, the game is over. So, in a clever feature of the game, players can actually prolong the game to give themselves more chances to get the cards they need by drawing from discard piles instead of from the deck.
This is a picture of the board partway through a game. The player casting a shadow has played two cards on the yellow expedition, and the player closer to the camera has risked playing a green investment card. Both players have discarded a red and a white investment card to their corresponding discard piles.
Players can only add a card to an expedition if its value is higher than the last card they played there. That means that if they played a four on that expedition, they can't play a two or a three. Cards with the handshake symbol are investment cards, and multiply both the cost of the expedition and its profits by one plus the number of investment cards on the expedition. These cards are risky but can result in big profits. They must be played before any cards with numerical values are played on that expedition. An expedition that a player has gone on has a cost of twenty dollars, or, if the player used one or more investment cards, twenty times the number of investment cards plus one. Both players add up the value of all of the cards with numbers printed on them and multiply that value by the number of investment cards plus one, then subtract the cost. They add the totals for every expedition they went on, and the player with the higher total score is the winner!
This is an example of a player taking their turn. In this case, they have played the yellow four from the first image
and are taking a card from the discard pile for the red expedition.
This game is a classic in my house. It is quite quick, and you can determine the number of rounds you'd like to play. The rulebook states that the default number of rounds is three, after which point players add up their scores in all three rounds to determine their final score. However, you can also play just one, which will only take you between fifteen and twenty minutes. It is brilliantly designed, because every turn will affect the other player: if you discard a card, they could take that card. If you play a card, because there is only one of every card with a numerical value for each expedition, you are depriving your opponent of that card. Be careful, though: if, early in the round, you play a high-value card on an expedition, you won't be able to play cards with a lower value, so it can often be rewarding to wait on an expedition until you have a relatively low card or investment to start with.
This game's only noticeable flaw is its colonial-era theme, which is unfortunately very common in board games. The genre as a whole is actively grappling with this issue, which is sometimes baked into the mechanics of the game, as it is here, where players control American explorers profiting from expeditions in such countries and continents as Egypt and South America. However, the art and colors are vibrant and attractive and both players will have lots of fun playing. I would recommend this game for ages 10 and up, because of the decision-making involved in deciding whether to play a card or wait until later.
Thank you everyone for your patience after the long delay in reviews – I hope to have another up soon! In the meantime, happy board gaming, and don't forget to leave comments on the games or types of games you'd like to see!
コメント