Lost Cities: The Card Game Review

Lost Cities is a two player card game created by Reiner Knizia. It contains cards with gorgeous artwork. The game has simple rules too. Lost Cities is popular with serious gamers looking for a card game filled with strategic game play. It's simple enough for anyone to just jump in for a casual game. It only took me about two minutes to figure out how to play my first time with Lost Cities. (The scoring subtleties took me a hand or two to get the hang of, though.)

Lost Cities consists of sixty generously sized illustrated playing cards of five suits.  Each suit is numbered two to ten with three unnumbered “investment” cards. Provided is a board with spaces for each of the five suits. This board serves as a playing mat for discarded cards.

The aim of the game is to commit to at least one of the five suits (expeditions) to earn winning points. Each expedition cost twenty points to start. Every card played on the suit will lower the needed twenty points by its face value.

Each card is played sequentially from low to high; skipping past numbers is fine and sometimes can’t be avoided. The game ends when the drawing pile has been exhausted. Normally three games are played to complete a match, and the higher total score wins.

How to Score a Game of Lost Cities

• Add up all the cards and subtract 20 points.If one, two, or three investment cards were played, sum is multiplied by two, three, or four.
• If an expedition has eight or more cards played, earn 20 bonus points. 
• Total the five expedition points. The player with the highest score is the winner.

Matches are fast, and strategy is key to victory. Investing too much or drawing too often can result in a loss. I enjoyed Lost Cities, and I will continue to play in my spare time.