Miscellany: Lost Cities

I bought a truckload of board/card games from Thought Hammer (great place to buy games from, BTW), so I'll be reviewing them over the next few months. First up is "Lost Cities," a light family card game for two players designed by the famous Reiner Knizia. In LC, you mount expeditions to five regions using cards drawn from the deck...only trouble is, your opponent is also trying to mount his or her own expeditions. Expeditions that have enough cards played on them can become very profitable, while expeditions that are started but then neglected penalize you.

The heart of the game, then, lies in risk and reward - invest several cards into a single expedition, and you take a huge penalty if you don't manage to complete it; however, the reward for expeditions that are progressed far enough is substantial and key to winning the game. The game even emphasizes this by allowing you to play "investment cards" before an expedition is even begun, doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the points AND penalties for that expedition.

LC is a fun little two-player game, perfect for those half-hour gaps of time people sometimes find themselves stuck in. The theme is fun, the mechanics are easy to learn, and the cards are satisyingly oversize and well-made, with attractive artwork. There might be a problem here with lack of depth (that is, it might get boring after a dozen or so plays), but the addition of some house rules (for example, some good-old fashioned betting) might alleviate that.