Reiner Knizia: "The original version that we developed is exactly what Jay [Tummelson, owner of Rio Grande Games] has now published [LCBG]"

Time to travel once again to distant locations, but in Lost Cities: Rivals you might find yourself running short of cash to take the trips you want! The game ends when a total of 5 playing pieces have reached the 7th space (or more) on their paths. Now, scoring happens:If you don’t want to use a dice on a turn, you can pass. But beware! Use it too many times and you’ll take a huge hit when it comes to end game scoring. Although it is also worth noting that if you don’t use it at all, you’ll also take a hit at VP time! Sneaky! You start off with eight cards. There are five differing colours of cards which correspond to five paths on the board. The object of the game is to move your people along the paths gathering points as you go. To do this you plot a route by playing the cards – these have numbers on them from zero to 10.

Lost Cities: The Card Game is from the Kosmos two player line. The game is very similar to Lost Cities: The Board Game, but is specifically designed for two players. The ability to place numbers equal to those before them in columns is a little bit of a pressure-off moment. And being able to combo moves to trigger urns and accelerators to gain more points is very satisfying. Likewise, being able to pass but having to balance crossing off dice just enough to get you out of negative scoring is another lovely twist. Because although it feels like the game is inviting you to take it easy or even cheat, the dice you want is going to come up at the point you need to pass. It always does! During that first game, my wife caught with my trousers down as the game ended abruptly, leaving me with my top scoring cards in my hand. I’d realised too late that there would only be 1 more turn. But all is not lost, you can buy yourself a little more time during the game by drawing a previously discarded card and hope your opponent does the same. To get a better understanding of why you would want to discard a card you need to look at how points get calculated. Scoring the game The game is played with each player having a small sheet showing 6 different potential expeditions. There’s also a column filled with artefacts (urns) and one with dice. Each round, the starting player rolls the 6 dice and selects one for number and another for colour. The remaining players get to select from the rest. Then everybody simultaneously writes their chosen number in the corresponding colour column on their sheet. Bottoms UpAs you go along the path you collect tokens that are either extra points, artefacts, or the ability to jump an extra square. The artefacts are counted up at the end of the game and become plus or minus points depending on quantity. Whether you want to clear your hand of unwanted colours or maybe you have cards in your hand that you’ve drawn but can no longer play. In these instances discarding your cards is a good way to optimise your hand without mounting more costly expeditions. Draw a card Like most card games, the box is fairly small, making it ideal for when you go away on your own adventures. One downside is that the discard board is tri-folded and doesn’t always sit completely flat. Final Thoughts Players play cards to move their playing pieces along stone paths. There are cards with 5 different colors/symbols, each corresponding to one path; in addition, each card shows a number (0-10, twice each). In each color, each player can play his cards either ascending or descending. Like Lost Cities, it’s better to concentrate on a few paths, since the last spaces grants high points, but ending early gives negative ones.