Ah yes, Keltis, the Spiel Des Jahres of 2008. The moment of glory for Dr. Knizia. And a damn hard boardgame to get hold of.

You've all heard about this game being just Lost Cities for four and that it really doesn't have much to it. Well, I had the chance to obtain the game mainly because I wanted to see if the game was anything special. And while it indeed appears to be Lost Cities for four, it isn't identical.

Keltis is a game whose aim is to advance as much as possible in five different paths on the board. You do that by playing cards. There are 110 cards with values from 0 to 10 divided into 5 suits repeated twice. You advance each path using one of your figures, 4 small and 1 large, and each path step gives you more points though the first three steps awards negative points.

On your turn you can either play or discard a card into a pile of the card's color and then draw a card from the face down stack or from the top of one of various color's discarded cards. You can see the similarities with Lost Cities and indeed the rules of play are exactly the same with a notable exception. You can now play in ascending or descending value order, or in other words you can play a low valued card and play cards that have a higher value, a la Lost Cities, or you can play a high card and then play cards of lower value. You can also play a card of equal value regardless of the order you play.

Also, gone are the investment cards of Lost Cities, with them being replaced with the large figure. This figure will count as double when counting the points in the path the figure is. So you only have one chance to increase your points unlike Lost Cities where each color had three investment cards.

To encourage players to follow a given path tokens are randomly distributed on certain stones in the paths. These tokens can be either points, clover leaves or wishing stones. The points are scored immediately and vary from 1 to 3, the clover leaves allow you to advance one of your figures one step in the path and the wishing stone gives you points. All but the wishing stones remain on the board.

The game ends either when 5 figures reach the final three steps of any path or when the deck of cards is exhausted. Points are given accordingly to where your figure stands in each path and then to the number of wishing stones you hold, and you must have at least 2 wishing stones in order to receive positive points from them, less than two and you get negative points.

That's about everything there is to the game's rules. It's simple and fast to learn and teach. But how is the game in reality? Is it fun?

Presentation: The components of the game are adequate though quite green. There's green everywhere you turn with this game, from the cards to the board to the tokens. The board is functional and sturdy and the tokens' quality is your average euro-like quality. The cards themselves are the size of a regular deck of cards, they aren't huge like in Lost Cities. Due to this and their quantity shuffling can be a chore unless you really know how to shuffle. The wooden pieces are kind of a cloven leaf form and the box's insert is quite good with room for everything. All in all it's a functional game in terms of components. Nothing out of the ordinary except for the huge amount of green.

Theme: This game manages to have even less of a theme than Lost Cities, and Lost Cities didn't really have a theme. Though the game tries to convey Celtic imagery I find that this game is, bottom line, an abstract. If you think Lost Cities had some measure of a theme then this game simply strips things to its basic, adding some sort of Celtic tones to it but no more than that. In the end I simply couldn't see this game as having any sort of theme at all, for me it's an abstract plain and simple.

Tactics and Strategy: This is where things turn different than Lost Cities. Due to the way cards can now be played, the tokens in the board and the removal of the investment cards, replacing them with a single token that doubles the points this game feels a bit different than Lost Cities. There's now some strategy into the game as you have to analyze which path is the more advantageous for you while you have to take into account that you have to get wishing stones since not having any docks you points. Suddenly the game gains a bit of strategy that wasn't present in Lost Cities. You now have to weigh if you want to take a path, if the advantages of taking that path outweigh the possible losses, or rather, if another path will give you more points. Play is more careful here as players try to figure out if a certain play will be the optimal play since now they have a more wide array of choices. Being able to play the cards in ascending or descending value makes the game far more flexible than Lost Cities and makes it more forgiving as well.

All the tactical gameplay of Lost Cities remains intact here, you're still dependent on the luck of the draw and how you react to it. The game of probabilities and watching what your opponents play remains, only this time you can add three more persons to the equation. You do have more choices now though and the game ends up feeling much more forgiving than Lost Cities. The negative points you gain are far less in proportion than in Lost Cities for one and since there are two suits of each color chances are that if you didn't get a card to play next you might still get it later on. This ends up being good and bad at the same time, since although you may get a chance to play a huge number of cards it also makes you delay playing them because you'll be waiting to see if the next card you draw is the one you want.

Also, finishing up a path doesn't give you any reward unlike Lost Cities where 8 cards played netted you 20 points. Here all you get from finishing a path is advancing another figure of yours when you play the color of the finished path, making the incentive for completing a path is 10 points and the tiles along the path and at the end of it plus moving one of your figures. Each path has 9 stones to travel with the possibility of the clover leaf making you advance one extra step on any figure you choose, but even so the number of cards played ends up being slightly higher than in Lost Cities, at least in my experience with the game. I also noted that there's a lot less cards discarded..

And that leads me to one of the problems that Lost Cities players may have with this game, there isn't much incentive to start paths as there is in Lost Cities because the penalties aren't as high and you really don't score a lot of points in the game. You only add the value of the stone where each figure of yours is and with the highest stone being worth 10 players who were used at having really huge scores in Lost Cities may feel disappointed that you can't get them here. Plus, there doesn't seem to be a feeling of risking a new path in order to maybe get lucky and reap lots of points. It almost seems balanced when it comes to giving points, so much so that there's no way to get a huge pile of points from one path, just small increases of points at a time. A player may still end up scoring much more than other players but it's not comparable to the score differences Lost Cities can produce. I felt that there wasn't that feeling of taking a huge risk here as in Lost Cities and I think that ends up removing some of the fun from the game.

So I would say Keltis is akin to a sort of strategic Lost Cities, more forgiving, flexible and balanced in its scoring but with less of a risk-taking element. Therefore if you play Lost Cities and this attracts you then you're definitely going to love this game.

Luck: This game has the luck of the draw, the same as in Lost Cities, but added to that there's the luck of the initial placement of tiles on the board, ensuring no game has the same configuration. I found the game's luck slightly mitigated by the large amount of cards in the deck, especially when played with 3 players.

Player Interaction: Player interaction in this game remains the same as in Lost Cities, with the added differences that now you may have up to 4 players discarding cards, plus the wishing stones add a kind of pseudointeraction as there are only 9 such stones and not capturing any means negative points, with the more stones you get the greater the points you get for them. The stones instill a small feel of a racing element in the game since stones are the only tiles that get removed from game and into your hand, they end up influencing a bit the way players may make plans. Other than that interaction remains the same as in Lost Cities so if you think Lost Cities had no interaction then you won't find any here either.

Game Weight: After playing this game a few times I got the impression that the game is heavier than Lost Cities but not by much. It's probably one step heavier than Lost Cities but even so it remains a light game that can be played fairly quickly. The added strategy overtones of the game do make the game feel a little bit heavier but the game remains a light-medium game that's played in about 30-40 minutes. Almost a filler in fact though not quite one.

Replayability: Well, apart from the random tile distribution on the board this game has the same appeal as Lost Cities. It will be more desirable to play it if the thought of Lost Cities for four with a bit of strategy tickles your fancy. But to cut to the chase this game has the replayability of Lost Cities, so apply that according to what you think of Lost Cities.

Gateway Game: This game makes a great gateway game, far better than Lost Cities in my opinion. The straightforward gameplay coupled with a more forgiving nature may turn this game into a more fun experience to a non-gamer than Lost Cities is, though Lost Cities is faster to play and finish than Keltis. In that regard Keltis does deliver as a good gateway game for those inclined towards euros.

Analysis Paralysis And Downtime: In my experience with this game I didn't notice any AP problems and the downtime was very, very short. However if you know players that suffer from AP with Lost Cities then playing Keltis may be a recipe to AP disaster because now you'll have three more players thinking about their next move. Thankfully, apart from removing the wishing stones from the board, each player's moves do not interfere in any way with that of any other player so basically everyone is playing for themselves and they will have time to think ahead before their turn.

Game Length: In all my games I was able to finish a game at 40 minutes top. Average would be about 25 minutes so you could say this is a relatively fast game to play.

Number Of Players: The game seems to play best with 4. With 2 you remove 30 cards randomly from the deck, however with 3 players the same amount of cards remain in play which results in 4 players' games being more tight than with 3. With 3 I found the game to be easier than with 4. As for playing with 2 players I actually found it a bit better than Lost Cities. I do have a feeling that a lot of people won't agree though and will remain with Lost Cities when playing with 2 players.

Ok, after that analysis what do I think of the game? Well, it's nice. It's not great, not wonderful, it's simply nice. My groups ended up enjoying this game but only as a game to kill time. It's fun to play, sure, but after my groups played there were no talks about the game, it seemed to have been easily forgotten.

But how does it compare to Lost Cities, you ask? Well, having played both games I end up preferring Keltis over Lost Cities. I find Keltis' hints of strategies more enjoyable and when played with 4 it adds more to the social dimension of the metagame. I certainly had more fun than Lost Cities but your mileage may vary. The bits Keltis adds on Lost Cities are well implemented and they add rather than detract to the game with the exception of a less predominant risk-taking element. Sure it's more forgiving and the huge points differences between Lost Cities players are a thing of the past here but I ended up enjoying the game for what it was nevertheless, a light game used between main games. One of my groups used this game between a play of Starcraft and In The Year Of The Dragon and we enjoyed it.

If you enjoy Lost Cities than you might want to take a look at this game. If you love Lost Cities than you're undoubtedly going to get this game, although I think that this game isn't worth more than $25, $30 tops. For more you'll be able to get better games at that price level. If you're Lost Cities' fan and if you've ever wanted to play it with 4 players than this is the game for you. Even Lost Cities fans who never equated that possibility may find this game a very enjoyable one.

It is marginally better than Lost Cities but it isn't different enough to give a completely different experience. When it comes down to it this ends up being more of the same and it certainly won't convince someone who's tired of euros. It plays and feels like a typical euro without anything new or innovative to add.

As for me, I found the game enjoyable but in the end it really isn't anything special, especially for those who don't care for Lost Cities. It's just a nice game and that's about all there is to it. Lovers of Lost Cities will enjoy this a lot, the rest will probably be apathetic.

My game rating: 13 out of 20.