Lost Cities, the Card Game Second Opinion

The beauty of Lost Cities is in its apparent absolute simplicity and the quickly discovered complexity which is barely hidden beneath the surface.

Designed by the legendary Reiner Knizia and originally released back in 1999, the simplest way to explain Lost Cities is that you compete against your opponent to play cards of the same colour from low to high, whoever does that best wins.

So simple as to be barely even a child’s game, right? But no, this isn’t My First Lost Cities.

Let’s Go Exploring

The premise of Lost Cities the Card Game is that you’re an explorer - and also something of an irritating braggart.

You’re going to go hunting for some missing metropoli (and the treasures contained within), in the Himalayan mountains (the white cards), the Central American rainforest (green), the Egyptian desert (yellow), a volcano (red - and a ludicrous place to build a city if you ask me), and the bottom of the sea (blue - presumably a victim of flooding, rather than an aquatic civilisation, but who can say?).

Latter copies of the game also include a sixth, non-specified, purple zone. It feels quite alien monolithy to me, but seems to have no official explanation.

Each expedition (i.e. playing cards of any one colour) comes at a cost of minus 20 points, and then you try to turn that into profit by playing cards of ascending order, from 1 to 10 each worth that number of points, to try and tip into a positive figure.

And - this is the irritating braggart bit - you can choose to start your expedition by placing a wager on the outcome, potentially doubling, tripling or even quadrupling your gains (or loses) when it comes to totting up at the end.

Easy, Right?

On paper, Lost Cities sounds too easy, but obviously Mr. Knizia is no fool, and he’s layered this two player duel with enough unknowns, tough decisions and one-upmanship to make it intriguing enough to be worth playing again, again and again.

For starters, there’s only one of each numbered card in each colour. So you might never get that red 10 you’re craving to tip you into profit, or you might start an exploration while your opponent secretly grins to themselves, knowing they hold all the high value cards in their hand.

And the game play forces you to start making decisions quickly. Each go you must either play or discard a card, then either pick up a different discarded card, or the top card of the deck. There’s no chance to amass a mighty deck, or gain much certainty about your chances of success before you start exploring. You have to - to an extent - play and hope.

This forces you into tricky choices straight away. Do you place a wager based on holding one tasty looking ‘8’ in your hand? Do you start scoring one city straight away, or wait to draw a wager? Dare you discard a card that your opponent might just gleefully snap up?

It’s Maths, Stupid

Reiner Knizia had a degree in maths - and when you play Lost Cities it’s very clear that this is the work of someone who loves his numbers. While you don’t need advanced maths to play this game a basic understanding of probability is useful, and the ability to add, subtract and multiply is necessary pretty much throughout.

Don’t let that put you off though…

And Of Course, You Can Be Mean

That there is only one card of each colour allows you to frustrate, or even try and goad your opponent.

The easiest way to do this is by keeping valuable cards in your hand - you’re not going to want to discard a high card for a city your opponent is off exploring. For added fun, you can discard the card you’re holding back just after your opponent has played the card that numerically follows it - thus shutting themselves off from being able to play it. Oh the japes!

Or, once you start getting a bit cocky, you could start discarding a few low cards to see if you can tempt your explorer enemy to start a new expedition, while knowing all along that the high cards are safely tucked away in your hand. They’re going to regret venturing that way…

And Then Comes The Sums

Hopefully you’re doing some maths in your head throughout the game - you’re unlikely to prosper without it - but the real sums come when the last card is drawn from the deck and the game crashes to a halt. Likely with you desperately trying to gain a last minute addition to your scores.

Once the last card is drawn, you score each city - starting on minus 20, and hoping that the cards you played were worth over 20. If they are, you start building a nice score, if they’re not you can easily end up with a negative instead. Especially when those aforementioned wagers are misjudged and add a hefty multiplication to an already awkward score.

A Brief Delight

While the box says you can expect a playing time of 30 minutes, the reality is that once you have two players who know what they’re doing, you can play a good game in half that time and that play is so slick and simple - and just mean and frustrating enough - that you’re likely to want a few rounds each time you get the box out.