What is it?
A number crunching puzzle with a treasure hunting theme.
What do you get?
Lost cities comes with Meeples, a game board, rules and a host of cards.
How does it work?
Every player has 6 cards in their hand and can play a card from 1 to 10 or draw a card. You separate your cards into colours and that is the track you go down. The catch is you can never place a card of lower value on your deck meaning later game you require high value cards and early you want the low ones. There is a discard pile that all players can swap cards for. Along the way, hidden treasures give points, move people along or you find artefacts. The game ends when the draw deck is empty.
Is it any good?
If you asked my wife, she would say this is in her top 3 games easily. It seems to be the game we pack and bring on holidays with us every time. I quite like it though; it was really made as a 4 player game but the compromise for 2 or 3 player means removing cards from the draw deck which is so interesting to ponder which numbers and colours have gone missing.
It’s a pretty easy game to jump into and new players get it really quickly.
The biggest negative to it is the game has 2 modes, quick and normal. In quick mode you play through once and in normal you play through 3 times. It’s just a shame there isn’t one normal mode as the quick mode doesn’t seem worth it. The resetting the board is a bit of a clunky mechanic too. I suppose it’s good if you have a really awful round, which does happen more than you’d like.
Conclusion
I took a gamble with it when I bought it and it’s a game I’ve had far more than my money’s worth of playtime. It’s not quite kid friendly though as simple as it sounds. There is a level of maths involved that means making decisions on opponents play necessary.
And for the record I’ve never beaten my wife. She is some kind of genius at this game.
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