Lost Cities
by Reiner Knizia
Kosmos/Rio Grande Games

Well-informed fans of board games know German-born designer Reiner Knizia as one of the medium's superstars. And while this doesn't offer him the same earning potential or public visability as, say, Vincent D'Onofrio, the award-winning designer and doctor of mathematics has earned mad kudos for the elegance and playability of his games.

Lost Cities is among his finest achievements. Beginning gamers can play it, enjoy it, replay it and not entirely know why such a simple and nonviolent game was so compelling.

Advanced gamers will give it a few runs and then boggle at its deft mastery of that hard-to-define — yet paramount — quality known as "playability."

Lost Cities is a simple draw-and-play/discard card game intended to simulate the staging of exploratory expeditions to one of five lost cities. The more cards within a given color scheme (or "city") you have, the more profitable the expedition will be. But you can only play the cards in ascending order — once you've played the 5 from the aquatic expedition, you can't play the 2, 3 or 4 — even if you acquire them later in the game.

The whole game is about deft risk management. If you start an expedition, you're immediately in the hole by 20 points. If you draw the special cards that "finance" the expedition, you double, triple or quadruple your risk — and the potential rewards if you pass the break-even point.

Deciding to start (and finance) expeditions is the macro aspect of the game. Deciding when to play particular cards is the micro aspect. Play the 6 for the desert expedition, and you've gotten it out of your hand, letting you draw another (potentially useful) card. But you've eliminated the chance to play the 5 (or lower) from that expedition, should they later come into your possession.

Likewise, it might be very useful to discard the 7 from the polar expedition in order to avoid a sloppy play or valuable discard. But if your opponent is playing polar, your loss could turn into her gain. And because you play your cards head-to-head against your opponent, you can watch — in horror — as she starts a rival jungle expedition that plays out the 7, 8, 9, and 10 of the suit — cards you'd been hoping to draw down the line.

Inevitably, Lost Cities boils down to an exhilarating sudden-death race to the finish when it becomes clear that the draw pile — and thus the numer of turns yet to be played — is dwindling. Players are forced to dump their high-value expedition cards in order to struggle toward break-even, or lock in profits before the game's conclusion makes their hands unplayable. When the final card is drawn, all expeditions end, and scores are tallied.

Easy to learn yet subtle enough to require mental computation each time it's played, Lost Cities hits a rare sweet spot: a game that's engaging without dragging out into a tedious two-hour slugfest. And its card art — bold, consistent and gorgeous — fires the imagination during a game that might otherwise seem a bit dry and arithmetical.

Granted, there are no orcs, no earthquake cards and no popping bubble. But Lost Cities offers a bang-for-buck ratio far above the standard deviation.

— James Norton (jim@flakmag.com)