presentation

Lost Cities

Unter Rivalen

A new version of Lost Cities. The core game mechanic is the same – you place cards of identical or higher value at the end of a row of the same color, in ascending order; you can leave gaps, but cannot close them later.

In Lost Cities Rivals you again lay out routes for expeditions; this time you use 65 expedition cards in five colors – two cards each of values 2-5 and one card each for values 6-10 as well as three wager cards per color and ten starting wager cards in five colors; of those you are given two of different color at the start. All expedition and wager cards are shuffled, and you form four stacks, 36 coins are evenly distributed.

The active player reveals the top card from the draw pile and puts it on display or begins an auction for the display. When all but one have passed, this player pays hid bid and can put any number of cards from the display into his expeditions and also take one card out of play, face-down. Remaining cards in the display stay for the next auction and the winner of the bid adds one card from stack to the display. The turn passes to the left neighbor of the winner of the bid. When the first stack is empty, coins in the bank are distributed evenly to all players and the next stack is used. When all cards are used, you score expeditions, wager cards – which can only be placed at the start of an expedition – double points; routes comprising four or more cards give bonuses.

Lost Cities Rivals shifts the game’s central aspect from forming of rows by card placement to auctions, in which high bids generate capital for your opponents. An interesting version, but for me less elegant than the original.

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 30+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Sébastien Caiveau, Anoka Design, Andreas Resch

Price: ca. 13 Euro

Publisher: Kosmos Verlag 2018

Web: www.kosmos.de

Genre: Row formation, auction

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Auction has become the central element

Bets at the beginning without information

High bids generate capital for all

Compares to:

Lost Cities and variants, Traumfabrik for auction

Other editions:

Lost Cities: Rivals, Kosmos (en)

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 3

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0