Lost Cities Review (Kosmos/Rio Grande Games)
Lost Cities is a tough game for me to ramble on about. Out of all the games in my collection it has received the most plays in the recent years, but not for reasons of it being a great game. It is an interesting game which is accessible to most people and if it was published by a major publisher with main stream, big-box retailers, this game has a great chance of success on a large scale.
With Lost Cities, the theme means nothing to the game. The premise behind it is players take the role of archeologists exploring ruins of ancient civilizations. Deep down though the game is just hand management and has many parallels to card games such as standard solitaire or gin rummy. The game is played with a deck of over-sized cards and a board which looks good but is unnecessary.
Players take turns playing cards from their hand on their side of the board which matches the color on the board (for example a green card goes in the green section of the board). These are called “expeditions” and each player runs their expedition from their side of the board. The deck is divided up into five colors or suits with cards numbers 2-10 as well as three “handshake” cards. I’m going to bypass a rules summary here because the rules are simple enough to where a summary would just be a retyping of the rules. Basically the game comes down to knowing the scoring system (which will take a round or two for new people) and once knowing the scoring the system how to manage your hand to maximize the scoring possibilities.
As I mentioned I’m torn on LC. On one hand the game is good, light fun. It is simple and accessible to just about everyone who enjoys card games be it poker, gin, spades, bridge, solitaire…whatever. This, in my experience, has also been problematic. The simple rules and familiar mechanics really does make it a must have in any game collection yet on the other hand, those simple rules and familiar mechanics has also caused a problem for me which soured the game to some extent.
My case in point is when I was teaching some games to a friend of mine who is a poker player through and through. He is also a person that I spent many a college days and nights playing gin rummy. Since this game has familiar aspects when compared to those two games I though it would be a hit. Which it was, but the downside is he no longer had interest in anything else. That caused me to lose any sort of traction on introducing or expanding on any other game that he had interest in and this became, as he described it, “our game”.
So in the grand scheme of things, I was happy to get some gaming in, but all variety was lost and interest in anything else was gone. So that is my word of caution on the game. As I mentioned this game should be in everyone’s collection yet some caution needs to be used on deciding when to introduce this game. Personally during that time I got a little burnt out on the game (three or four games back to back three times a week will do that) but it did provide me with the social experience that games ultimately are meant to provide. For me though, the game doesn’t offer enough depth and variety to justify the amount of plays it was getting and ultimately I feel the game is slightly overrated for the depth and fun it provides, yet LC is still a game that fits very well into any game collection and should be in every game collection.
Rating: 3 out of 5
‘Tile Next Time – Happy Gaming
LvT
