LogFAQs > #933024886

81. Lost Cities: The Board Game (2008)

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Push-your-luck, racing, sequence-building, set collection
Rules complexity (0 to 7): 1
Game length: 30-40 minutes
Experience: 3-5 plays over 2-3 sessions (2017-2018) with 3-4 players
Previous ranks: NR (2016), 51/80 (2018)

Summary - There are five different paths, each corresponding to a color. Any player can go on any of the paths by playing a card (numbered 1-10) of the appropriate color. The trick is, to advance further on any given path, the next card you play in that color has to be either higher or lower than your previous card - and once you've done that, you have to keep going in the same color. Advancing further down a track gives more points, but if the time runs out while you haven't advanced much down a path, you get negative points.

Design - The original Lost Cities was a card game for two, and I only played it after the board game version. There's a lot to be said for a game that you can take anywhere as a filler, as opposed to a game with a big-ass box that takes up a lot of table space and is actually quite light.

But... the board game is better. It's not just that you can play with more players (which is really nice), but the major quality of life (and strategy improvement!) change is that you can build paths that go backwards numerically. In the original Lost Cities, getting dealt high numbers to start with was strictly bad (leaves you fewer maximum steps you can go) and getting low numbers later was strictly bad (no way to advance with lower numbers if you always have to increase). That's absolutely huge. I will also say that while the game itself is as simplistic in weight as as a Candyland type, there's a reason people like Candyland - it looks great.

But of course, it's got gameplay to back it up, and more specifically, decisions. I believe this is the first of around three ranked games on this list from the Great Reiner Knizia. He's not my favorite designer, but he unquestionably gets at what it means to be a game: making decisions. You have a limited hand in LCBG; on each turn, if you're not playing a card (and possibly cutting yourself off from future advancement), you're discarding one... and the discarded cards can be picked up by your opponents. Should you jump straight from 5 to 9 in blues and lose that future advancement of 6, 7, 8? Giving up the 9 to your opponent who hasn't even started blue yet is clearly not an option... but starting on white is dangerous - you might wind up with big negative points there! No decision is easy, and that's where LC:BG gets its meat.

LC:BG is made the slightest bit less cohesive by its three-round structure, which functions like a card game going "best out of three"/summing your scores. The only carry-over, like in Sushi Go!, is one set collection mechanic that stays. Nonetheless, it's so quick and juicy each runthrough that it does seem to round out your game.

Experience - Like I said, it's an impressive design, and even more so when you consider how much it surpasses its "source."

Future - Maybe because LC:BG is so abstract and light, it doesn't necessarily fulfill my hobby-game itches. But it's really solid game design. Would definitely play again.
---

yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness