Tony and I have been enjoying a non-word-related card game called Lost Cities. It wasn’t too difficult to learn, and I don’t know that it can ever truly be mastered, which adds to the fun. As with a lot of card games, we’ve gained knowledge about what to do in certain situations through multiple plays—situations like “Holy shit! The game is almost over, and I’ve got three expeditions I need to close out.” or “I’ve got an awful hand. Which card am I least likely to regret playing?”
The gist of Lost Cities is to score points by successfully carrying out expeditions to discover you-know-whats. There’s no storyline really; the details of each expedition are only hinted at in illustrated cards that are numbered 2 through 10 and must be played in ascending order. The basic game has five expeditions, in yellow, white, blue, green, and red. I got the version with a bonus sixth expedition, which is purple, and we’ve been playing the six-expedition version almost exclusively since our second game day. (We usually play on Sunday afternoons.) We played with only five expeditions this past Sunday, and the match was low scoring and ended too fast, so I think we’ll be sticking with six-expedition play.
In addition to those numbered cards are three wager cards in each color. Playing one or more of these cards lets you multiply your points by either 2 (one wager card), 3 (two wager cards), or 4 (you guessed it: three wager cards). These special cards can only be played before you start laying down numbered cards. I wish there were a second chance at using wager cards: maybe after you play a 5 or 6. The game is so well designed, by prolific game designer Reiner Knizia, the option to use wager cards sometime other than at the beginning surely came up during testing and was rejected.
It’s not uncommon to get in your initial hand of cards, say, two wager cards for an expedition and no other cards at all in that expedition’s color. If you’ve got a lot of high cards for other expeditions, which you will want to play later in the game, and no other wager cards, you feel like you don’t have much of a choice but to gamble on that expedition. In that situation, your daring move is just an act of desperation.
The big point I’ve left out so far is that it costs you 20 points to fund your expedition, so if you manage to place cards valued at only 14, for example, before the game ends, you’ll lose 6 points on that expedition. If you had started out with two wager cards, you’ll lose 18 points, because losses are also doubled, tripled, or quadrupled.
Each player is dealt eight cards at the beginning of a game, and that’s the number you will always have in your hand at the end of a turn. Every turn, you must play a card on your growing lines of expeditions or into the discard piles of different colors that sit between the two players. You then take a card from the top of the deck or from the top of a discard pile. (You can’t discard a card and then immediately pick it up.) I’m certain the number of cards was also tested extensively, and eight must have been the right number for making decision-making neither too easy nor maddeningly hard.
Speaking of eights, if your row of cards for a given expedition (color) is eight cards or longer at the end of the game, you get 20 bonus points. The bonus points are not multiplied if you’ve played any wager cards.
You’re supposed to play three consecutive games to determine the overall winner, but sometimes Tony and I stretch it out to four, if the person in the lead at the end of three games is willing to do so. A game is over when the last card in the deck is drawn; it can’t be played, which lends an air of anticlimax to the final turn.
I started out more cautious, usually initiating only three expeditions per game, but I’ve learned from Tony that the winner is often the boldest player. I’m more likely to discard cards that could eventually come in handy for me, hoping I can scoop them back later if I need to, but almost inevitably, Tony will grab them before I can. I’m also more likely to discard a card I know or strongly suspect Tony can use, but never something so helpful as a 7, 8, 9, or 10. Tony hangs on to cards that would be helpful to me like he’s trying to turn them into diamonds. Ha!
He’s right to do that because foiling your opponent is the only way to consistently win at this game. During a game this past Sunday, I discarded some purple cards that helped Tony get a row of eight, cementing his victory.
I decided to buy Lost Cities after watching this video from British game enthusiast Actualol in which he names his top 10 games for couples and this video from Homestead, Florida–based board game site The Dice Tower of Mike DiLisio, Zee Garcia, and Tom Vasel listing their top 10 casual, two-player games. Lost Cities was Actualol and DeLisio’s #1 game and Garcia’s #2 game.