Yes, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna pick on one of the BGG's sacred cows, the beloved Knizia's Lost Cities. I'm gonna do it, and then I'm gonna lay under my bed for a few weeks because I know I'm gonna get so much flak I could get rich by exporting it to mr. Bush in exchange for oil. But yes, I'm gonna do it. Sure am. Here I go. (deep breath)

Lost Cities is a lame overproduced overpriced set matching card game with a pasted-on theme and fiddly scoring mechanism. It plays quick, it's light and it's pretty darn boring uneventful. If your non-gaming girlfriend loves it, it's probably because she sneakily indulges you cause she is scared that if she admits she hates it (and she does) doesn't really enjoy it you will pull out your humoungous game box of some overly complex wargame with four hundred components and rules you can only understand if you got your PhD in Law, Economics, Warfare and Advanced Mathematics combined. I know this, cause I've been there. Too long have I been living in denial, but the horrible truth is finally here, for everyone to read.

Seriously, why do I dislike Lost Cities so much?

I'll tell you. Because, in my truly honest opinion, this game is dangerously overvalued here on Boardgamegeek. BGG is usually right on the money when it comes to evaluating a game's, well, value *. However, due to some crazy voodoo magic conducted by Reiner Knizia, Lost Cities somehow found its way to top hundred of all games, and top 10 of the light two-player games selection. It got the 1999 Meeple's choice award, and the 2000 Intrernational Gamers Award. Wow. On the other hand, the "Traditional Card games" entry, which is, like, Lost Cities' closest cousin (or rather a family of hundreds and hundreds of cousins living in the same deck..err house), is rated 1857th. Hmm. I smell something fishy, and it's not the tuna sandwich.

If this is the first LC review you've come across, let me slip in the more traditional review form and describe what you get when you buy Lost Cities, the, ahem, boardgame. You get a 5-suited deck of cards and a totally superfluous board. That's it. For the compulsive-obsessive readers, you also get the rulesheet, the actual box, and I think there was a protective foil protecting some pieces but I'm not sure anymore. The deck is pretty close to a traditional deck, and could be easily simulated with one, except for the fact that it has 5 suits (clever design choice, there). Each suit has cards numbered from 2-9 and three "handshake" cards. The board, as I said, is only there so you can call this game a "boardgame" and keep a straight face. Barely. Of course, instead of boring all suits like diamonds, spades, hearts and that fourth suit I could never remember the english word for, you get the desert suit, the forest suit, the water suit, the snow suit and the err.. the Mars suit. So much better, init?

One thing I sneakily failed to mention is the gorgeous artwork you get on the cards. It is, as I said, gorgeous. Seriously, no sarcasm here, I love it. Except, of course, for the fact that it has nothing to do with the actual game, it's totally just eye candy. You can damage 95% of your deck in a nasty circular saw accident, and still play LC. Seriously. You can admire the artwork by looking at this really pretty picture I stole pulled from the gallery:



Yep, lovely pictures we have here. In fact, one can have plenty of fun admiring the artwork. In even bigger fact, the artwork is probably one of the biggest reasons the game is so popular. Why do I think that? Because, if you scour through the threads and gallery pictures, noone has made a home-made version of Lost Cities. Noone. Even though it is horribly easy to do so with two traditional card decks and some black marker, noone did it. Why? Because, let's face it noone would play it. Lose the pretty pictures, lose the appeal. Yep, it's such a great game.

I'll describe the gameplay in just a few sentences. You must make sets, like in Rummy, but you must place them on the table, one card at the time, in ascending order. You can exchange cards, like in Rummy, but you have five distinct piles instead of one (hence the board, whatever would we do without it). Like finishing with extra Jokers in Rummy, handshakes can double/triple/quadruple your scores, but they work on each pile separately and have to be played at the beginning. Unlike Rummy, the game is designed for only 2 players (yes, yes, I am aware of the variants, but because they involve buying ANOTHER LC box, thank you very much on that). Unlike Rummy, the scoring mechanics will require you have a math prodigy kid or a laptop with a handy excel sheet nearby to make the final scoring.

So you see, this game is pretty similar to Rummy in many aspects (similar in broad terms of course, don't pull my tongue and tie it around the pole for this). In fact, if one likes Rummy, one could easily enjoy LC. I like Rummy, ergo I probably enjoy LC. And now here's the Shyamalan-like twist - I DO enjoy LC (to some extent)! But don't start wiping your sweat just yet, cause I'm not finished. So, even if I enjoy LC as much as I enjoy Rummy, I don't see Rummy up there winning Gamers awards, I don't see 20 reviews praising Rummy as "the ideal girlfriend's game", and if I get bored with Rummy I can choose to play some other game with the dirt cheap card deck I bought, I am not restricted to only two choices - Rummy or "looking at pretty pictures"! And here's the kicker - Rummy isn't such a great game, really, and instead of playing Rummy I'd rather play one of hundreds and hundreds of games out there! My gf too, with the only condition being that the particular one of those hundreds and hundreds of games she's playing has "Ticket to Ride" written somewhere on the box, but that's another story.

OK now that the bucket of vile has been dropped, let me put on my handy steel-enforced bullet-proof apologetic hat. I apologize to plenty of people who enjoy LC and who will see this post as something written by the green guy whose day job is not letting people pass over the rickety bridge. If you enjoy this game, good for you. If your girlfriend (or boyfriend) enjoys playing this with you, and you are getting hours and hours of fun out of it, even better for you. But this review (or "bashing" as some of you are lovingly calling it already) is not for you. This is for people who were, like me, hypnotized with hundreds and hundreds of posts praising Lost Cities and who will, like I did, at some point in the future open up the game and realize they bought yet another plain card game in disguise. A card game which is not bad, but not really good either. A card game which cost them about twenty times more then a good old card deck they already own. A card game which, bottom line, isn't really that entertaining at all. A card game which will be played a few times, then put in the closet never to be opened again, because they will realize there are SO many better boardgames around nowadays.

A card game that is nothing more then an overproduced set matching card game with fiddly scoring mechanism.

There. I'm hearing sounds of people cocking their guns, so if you'll excuse me, I've got some ducking to do.

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* except for the occasional unfair shilling of the commercially succesful games, party games and children's games, but I so did not go there right now