Introduction
I’m at a weird inflection point on my board game hobby. Sometimes, I acquire a game, then, after some time passes, I completely forget how I acquired that game. Such is the case for Lost Cities: Rivals. I own it, but I have no recollection on how I managed to come into ownership of this game.
I’ve already talked about my love for Lost Cities by Reiner Knizia. The two player game is one that I adore, and after playing the four player board game, I was quite hesitant to give another Lost Cities branded back a shot. Much like the IP games of old, I assume spin-offs are bad and are using my adoration of an established property to catch my interest. So let’s take a look at what makes Lost Cities: Rivals tick.
How to Play
In Lost Cities: Rivals, players are embarking on expeditions to distant locations, but instead of playing cards from a hand, they’re auctioning off a pool of cards instead. To set up the game, the deck is broken into 4 equal piles, and everyone gets an equal pile of money. Then, everyone receives 2 wager cards, and the game can begin.
On your turn, your choices are to either reveal the top card of the deck and add it to the prize pool, or, call an auction by offering at least one coin. The auction goes around and around the table until everyone bows out. The last player pays their coins into the supply and takes their winnings.
Much like the original Lost Cities, cards are placed in a tableau in front of you. Cards of the same colour form stacks, and must be in ascending order, with the wager cards at the top. Once you place a card, you can’t place cards of a lower number in that expedition.
When one of the decks of cards runs out, play is interrupted. All the coins in the supply are divided amongst players equally, then, play resumes. When the final card from the final deck is reveals, the game immediately ends.
To score, simply count the footprints shown on all the cards of an expedition. If you have any wager cards, those will multiply your score (the first wager card doubles the score, the second triples, and so on). In addition, if you managed to get 4 number cards of an expedition, you get a bonus 8 points, but that bonus is not eligible to be multiplied. Any leftover coins are worth a point each, and the player with the most points is the winner!
Review
I have such a love/hate relationship with bidding games, but I can’t deny that Renier Kenizia knows how to make some fun games. I won’t start by comparing Lost Cities: Rivals to Ra or Medici, but, I’ll start by comparing it to its namesake, Lost Cities.
Lost Cities: Rivals comes in a small box with a regular sized deck of cards. Gone are the tarot size cards from the two player version that features a panoramic expedition as you ascend in the cards. Now, that panoramic art is still there, but it’s quite lost on these smaller cards. It’s functional, but not necessarily attractive. Considering that Lost Cities: Rivals has become a favourite pub game, I’m thankful for the portability.
I always go into my games of Lost Cities: Rivals with the strategies that I’ve honed over dozens of games of Lost Cities, and I generally end up doing poorly for it. My loss aversion kicks in, and I refuse to start an expedition on a 5 or a 6 because I feel like I need the lower numbers to make an expedition ‘worth it’. One rule I often forget is that there is no penalty for starting an expedition, so, other than blocking yourself off from the lower numbers, there’s no reason not to skip the lower numbers.
Further to that, the cards don’t score based off their number anymore, giving much greater importance to getting the 8, 9, and 10 to do well. Instead, the lower half of cards give 1 point, while the upper half of cards earn you 2 points. A 6 and a 10 are effectively equal, for the purposes of scoring. Again, my tendency to fall back on the original Lost Cities strategies do me a disservice here. I don’t need to overspend just because the 9 and 10 are up for bid, it’s only 4 points that I’m ‘giving up’.
The final place where my Lost Cities experience is failing me, is the expectation that I’ll acquire roughly half the cards in the game. It should be obvious, with more players, the fewer cards I’ll take. But my control over which cards I can acquire is quite a bit more chaotic. I can’t hold cards in my hand and wait for the lower values anymore. If someone else starts an auction, and there are cards that I want in that prize pool, I have to bid on them, and put them into my expedition right now.
Almost every card will be valued differently by every player. Thanks to the starting wager cards, and the restrictions on only being able to play higher numbers in your expeditions, as the game goes on, you’ll have a prize pool that two players fight over for very different reasons, and that feels exciting. Add to that, the winner of an auction gets to discard one card that they don’t take from the prize pool, giving you control to remove cards that you can’t take into your tableau, but don’t want other players profiting from.
The gameplay is dead simple. On your turn, either push your luck and add to the prize pool, or, call an auction. If you’re flush with cash, adding cards to the display sweetens the pot that you can guarantee that you’ll take, even if it costs you everything. If you’re strapped for cash, calling an auction with a single coin is a great way to drain the coins from the more wealthy players, assuming there’s anything in that prize pool that they want.
The ebb and flow of cash feels exciting, too. As the current deck of cards gets slim, the players low on cash are quick to flip the cards, giving more prizes to those who chose to bide their time. It makes me cackle with glee when I manage to win 5 or 6 cards with only 4 coins, while others need to spend 7 coins to win only 4 cards. I’m not saying I often win, I just love the feeling that comes when you score a good deal.
I’ve only played Lost Cities: Rivals at 4 players, and it does excellently at that player count. I imagine that 3 works fairly well, but I suspect 2 players is not where this game shines. Heck, at 2 players, you should be playing the 2 player specific version of Lost Cities, which you can actually do with Lost Cities: Rivals by removing one set of the 2–5 cards of each colour. Two games in one!
Lost Cities: Rivals wasn’t an immediate hit with me, but the more I play it, the more I enjoy it. Lost Cities: Rivals needs time to settle in your mind, especially if you’re constantly comparing it to its predecessors. It’s in no way better than RA, but it is much easier to teach and play in situations where RA isn’t an appropriate choice. I think the more stiff competition comes from For Sale by Stefan Dorra. Both are very portable, and both are really fun auction games. Lost Cities: Rivals does take a bit longer to play, but it also feels more interactive.
As I mentioned above, there are some significant changes from base Lost Cities, but you don’t need to have experience with that game to enjoy Lost Cities: Rivals. The inclusion of auctions into the Lost Cities gameplay isn’t something that I would have expected to work, or for me to enjoy, yet here I am. I quite enjoy playing Lost Cities: Rivals while on a patio. It’s a breezy, quick game full of tension and excitement. And what more can I ask for?
