Review - Lost Cities: the Board Game

Continuing with the trend of reviewing games that have a colon in the title, I'm going to take a crack at Reiner Knizia's Lost Cities: the Board Game. First, some background about this game. Reiner Knizia is a pretty famous designer, winning the German Game Prize (best gamer's game) no less than four times (Modern Art, Tigris & Euphrates, Taj Mahal, Amun-Re). He's also famous for a simple 2-player card game called Lost Cities, which, if you hadn't figured out already, he converted into a board game. However, in Europe, the game was given an abstract Celtic theme, dubbed Keltis, and had slightly different rules. That version went on to win the Spiel des Jahres (best family game of the year) in Germany, and led to several expansions and spinoffs. However, the Keltis rules are listed as variants for the American version of the game.

One more thing before I get to the review - here is the breakdown of the criteria:
Components - Does the game look nice? Are the bits worth the money? Do they add to the game?
Accessibility - How easy is the game to teach, or to feel like you know what you are doing?
Depth - Does the gameplay allow for deeper strategies, or does the game play itself?
Theme - Does the game give a sense of immersion? Can you imagine the setting described in the game?
Fun - Is the game actually enjoyable? Do you find yourself smiling, laughing, or having some sense of satisfaction when it's over?

Components: Let's start with the game board. It's extremely colorful, and evokes the theme of the game very well. A picture from BGG is given above. It's also extremely clean and utilitarian - you can clearly see the score chart for artifacts, where the treasures for the round go, and the score value of each space. The board is simply fantastic (and I like it much better than the one for Keltis).

The next thing are the wooden "meeples" in the game. These are very large and cut into the shapes of explorers, with one explorer bigger than the rest (for gameplay reasons). They look extremely nice, except that the colors are kind of awful - white, black, brown, or mustard-yellow. However, in their defense, purple and pink pawns wouldn't go well with the board or theme, and red/blue/green might not show up as well on the board when the colors match.

The last part of the components are the many cardboard chits given, and the box. The chits are great, except for one thing - victory points are supposed to be hidden face-down, but the different values have different physical sizes, so it's mostly obvious what you score is to an acute observer - fortunately this doesn't ruin the gameplay. The worst offender is the box insert - it's just a giant empty hole, with no spaces for cards, or chips, or anything. My copy now has an organizer from Hobby Lobby and a deck box, both of which I shouldn't have needed. The components look great during play, though, and I'm okay with a 4/5 here.

Accessibility: This game is extremely easy to play, which is one of Knizia's strengths - his games are an exercise in making a lot from a little. Each turn, you simply play a card, or discard a card, and then draw a new one, from the deck or the discards. Cards must be played in non-decreasing value, but you can skip numbers. While the consequences of which card you play can become very interesting, the actual gameplay is extremely basic, and you can still play the entire game as a new player without ever having to ask "Wait, what do I do?" on your turn. The only strange or fiddly rules are that you draw at the end of your turn, which isn't really convention for American card games, and that the last pawn to pass a bridge to end the round does not get any treasure or effect on the space where it arrives. But these are minor quirks, easily overcome, and the game gets a 5/5 here.

Depth: Before I say anything about the depth of the game, let me outline the differences in the rules between Keltis and Lost Cities: the Board Game. In Keltis, you play only 1 round instead of 3, and you may play your cards in increasing or decreasing sequence (but once you commit to an order, you must continue in that way for that card row). We continue to play 3 rounds, but after trying the increasing/decreasing Keltis rules (listed as a variant in the American rulebook), we have continued to play it that way. I have read complaints that this game has no choices, because the ones in your hand are obvious, but I feel that the Keltis variation makes your hand much more "open" - there are more options available for a given hand, and it's not so clear which one is right. On the other hand, the discard piles become less of an integral part of the game.

While most of the goal is to move your pawns as far along the paths as possible, one of the subtle player interactions comes from the artifacts in the game. You need these for points (you'll even go set without at least 5), but when someone claims an artifact, it is gone off the board, unlike the other special tiles. Thus, the game becomes a bit of a race for the artifacts, and the game's tension comes from things like "Should I wait for more cards to make this sequence longer, or go from a 3 to a 7 to make sure I get that artifact first?" The game has very much a push-your-luck feel, not a plan-an-overarching-strategy feel, so you should know what you are getting into.

The other player interaction is of course the discard piles. Each color has its own discard pile, and at the end of your turn, instead of drawing from the deck, you may take the top card of any discard pile, so you have to be very careful what you toss into the bin, as it may help one of your opponents. This part of the interaction becomes more interesting with more players, although it's still important in a 2-player game. This game is not Agricola or Puerto Rico, but I don't think players who find zero strategy in the game are seeing everything. 3.5/5.

Theme: Although accessibility is one of Knizia's strengths, theme is often cited as one of his weaknesses. This shouldn't be surprising, considering that I've already described the fact that this game has been given different themes (so have many of his projects). It's clear that in his mathematical mind, it's not that the theme creates the gameplay, it's that the math creates the gameplay, and that hopefully creates a theme. As a fellow mathematician, this probably bothers me less than most people. Fortunately, if Knizia has to depend on the components and the gameplay to provide the theme, they both do well here. As I've mentioned before, I enjoy the components, and they give off the proper Indiana Jones vibe. Where I feel the gameplay becomes thematic is in the fact that, as I said above, the game feels like a race to be the first to find the artifacts, or to get deepest into the temples, which is basically the plot of any similar-themed movie. Incan Gold, a game that is truly nothing but pushing your luck, has a similar theme as well, so it seems they go hand-in-hand. The theme is not complete immersion, but it works. 3.5/5.

Fun: Like I said, while playing, we find ourselves racing for the artifacts, and we also find ourselves staring at each other and gambling on whether or not the other has the cards they need to get there first. Laughter and groans ensure when our gambits fail or succeed. Somewhat because it's such a simple game, it is a light, enjoyable romp through some ancient temples. 4/5.

Average: 4/5
Bias: 4/5

Lost Cities: the Board Game is a step up from its predecessor (we never play Lost Cities anymore), and gives a great feeling of racing and pushing your luck. If you enjoy that kind of gameplay, and want a game of that style that looks nice and is easy to learn, give this game a try.