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Nick
United Kingdom
Unspecified
Unspecified
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Lost Cities is a game recommended to me in a shop. We (I) were (was) on a board game buying spree and the hugely helpful staff member pointed us in the direction of this game. I know that much more detailed reviews reside elsewhere, but these thoughts are more my impressions of the game after 10+ plays. Once we get to 50 I’ll have a rethink.
Aforementioned staff member said that this was a good game for 2 players, which is how we (Katie and I) tend to play in general, and, what with Knizia’s game on the cover, the sale was assured. We played it once or twice, enjoying it, but the real Cities-fest came last week during a jaunt away (for which, see my last post).
For those who don’t know, Lost Cities is a two-player card game with a board in the middle which is really surplus to requirements. In fact, much of what you part with for your money in this game is surplus to requirements, because with a five-suited deck you could recreate this game fairly easily. If truth be told, though, I am of the opinion that it is worth paying, what, a whole £10 or so in order to get the proper product. Yes, you could make this at home, but Herr Knizia has spent time developing this and deserves to be paid for his effort if you are going to play it. The artwork on each suit of cards develops into an attractive tableau as well.
So the game boils down to this – you have five possible expeditions which are, from what I see on the cards, jungle, desert, snow, water and volcano, but you could easily play this game without that knowledge. In fact, you could easily play this game completely devoid of its theme, but you pays your money and you takes your choice. Again, I like to play with the theme, though here it is pretty much secondary to the gameplay.
In each game you decide which expeditions you will undertake, but (because expeditions advance) each card you place must be of a higher numerical value than the previous one. In placing the first card of an expedition you also incur an ‘expense’ of 20 points, so, for example, you would need to place 5,6,9 in that order merely to break even.
There are also multiplier cards which double, triple and even quadruple your score so that, the more confident you are of an expedition, the more you may invest, but losses are multiplied as well as gains. Lastly, an expedition of 8 cards or more (including the multipliers) gains a bonus, which can be a real game swinger.
KT and I have found this to be a light and fast-paced game, highly enjoyable and capable of producing some real tussles over a 3-game match. We find it not as tactically deep as Battle Line (also by Knizia), but not a million miles away in its card-laying ethic. It is a lighter version of that game, also, significantly, with far less interaction between the players. Yes, you react to what your opponent has played, but you do not play against it quite as much. This makes it a less involved but consequently faster game, where decisions can be made without the sometimes convulted thought processes demanded by Battle Line.
The supposed faults of this game are well known – the flimsiness of the theme, the fact you could make your own cards at home, the lack of opponent interaction – but this is still a game close to the top of those I would wish to play. Something like Agricola is undoubtedly the deeper game, but for something light, brief and tactical I would be very happy to play this again and again. It also plays a significant role, I think, in being the kind of game that would entice a card player to cross the divide and join us board gamers, and that is a significant plus. Once we graduate to Tigris, Agricola and the like, it is all to easy to forget what brought us here. Although Carcassonne and Catan are the usual suspects, this is also another game deep enough to get its hooks into the curious without letting them go.
KT and I played this several times last week, and I aim to post further thoughts once we reach 50 plays or so. For now though, the news is merely that this game is good enough to merit another 40ish plays, and will probably get there sooner rather than later. The faults in this game are largely down to taste, but the basic mechanic is enticing and balanced enough to keep us returning to this. I currently rate Lost Cities as an 8, and would be happy to play it whenever suggested. So what's the 'proper' board game like?
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