genghisdhan

Lost Cities is a great, light, two-player card game with some strategy to punch it up. Like most Knizia games, the trick is to figure out when you want your pain and in how big a dose. You are always going to be forced to do something you don’t want to do whether it is play a card your opponent can use or play something sooner than you want. The fun part is watching your opponent go through the same agony.
The goal is really just to play enough cards to get positive points more often than you play cards to get negative points. That’s right, you start in the hole on this one. But keeping ahead of the giant rolling boulder is most of the fun in this game.
Also like most Knizia games, the theme is really an afterthought to the mechanisms. Still, the theme in Lost Cities actually feels like a part of the game if you have any sort of imagination due mostly to the beautiful art work on the cards (although I did feel like I was playing one of those Old Maid games with the giant cards).
If you are on the lookout for a good game when there aren’t many gamers around, Lost Cities is a great bet.

This is a game that gets it all right. The mix of races and powers makes the replay value high, the choice to ‘restart’ with a new race keeps you in the (often close-scoring) game, there are meaningful choices (with declining being agonizing at times, a good thing), the conflict is not too painful, and the theme and artwork is fitting and fun(ny!). The only hitch is newbies often need a game play to really ‘get it’ since it is hard to pick up just by hearing the rules. I can get everyone in my house to play it and enjoy it which is saying something.

This is a great game that keeps you involved with what other people are doing. If you don’t keep watch, you’ll find yourself w/o resources or powerful enough plants or maybe even cities. I think the resource market is one of the best I’ve played and really impacts the game. Power Grid also scales well to different numbers. And the more you play, the more ways you find to win. One of my favorites.

This is a unique game by far in the way it plays. Having a different race to draw each game provides you with different ‘cheats’ giving you unique ways to modify the rules during your turn. The negotiation process in battles where you have to convince others to help you or not (in exchange for a chance at the spoils) is also fairly unique.
So you think this would mean each game is unique. I have found this not to be the case. Partly because of the imbalance provided by the luck of the draw, your strength cards in battle can vary wildly. This can give you little chance to win anything until you draw better cards. You will also need to play with gamers who get into the whole space alien race theme and who are creative with their approach to see much variety. I have played some games with gamers who try the same approach no matter who they get and it really breaks the system. Maybe part of the reason for my lower rating of a supposedly classic game is the fact that I don’t enjoy negotiation games where the negotiations always seem to come down to the same question; in this case, “Do you want to help me pound on this person, or not?” Playing with more risk-takers could make this game more fun, I guess.
Fun in the right situations, but not something I play unless the options are limited.
Caveat: My low scores regarding components are based on an older addition to this game.