Lost Cities - rules

Lost Cities: Rules

Adventure into the Unknown!
For the daring and adventurous, there are many lost cities to find and explore. The search can take you to the Himalayas, the Brazilian rain forest, and the ever-shifting sands of the desert, ancient volcanoes and to Neptune’s Realm. Of course, one cannot go everywhere with limited resources so the players must choose which expeditions to begin and which to leave to others. Those with high confidence may have the opportunity to invest more: increasing the rewards for success, but risking more should the expedition fail. The player who finds the right balance will have successful expeditions. Too many will put a strain on limited resources and yield failure. Too few may guarantee success, but not victory!

Contents
1 game board
60 cards:
- 45 expedition cards (9 cards for each of 5 destinations) and
- 15 investment cards (3 for each destination)

Preparation
• Place the game board with areas for the five destinations between the two players.
• Decide how many rounds to play; three is a good number. If you choose to play more than one round, use paper and pencil to record the scores for each round.
• Shuffle the cards and deal 8 to each player face down. Place the remaining cards face down near the board as the draw pile.
• Players may now look at their cards; these are their starting hands.

Overview
Each player starts one or more expeditions and then uses cards to continue his expeditions as far as possible. At the start of an expedition, players may increase their investment and their risk. As backtracking is not allowed, successive cards added to an expedition must advance the expedition toward its goal. The cards show the progress of the expeditions from beginning to end, but, for ease of play, they are also numbered 2-10. When the round ends, the players‘ expeditions are scored based on their success.

Playing the game
The oldest player begins and then the players alternate turns.

On his turn a player must first play one card from his hand, and then must draw a card to replace it.

Play a card: The player has two choices when playing a card from his hand:

Add a card to an expedition: The player can start a new expedition or extend an expedition already begun. Players may only start or add to expeditions on their side of the board. To start a new expedition, the player simply places a card from that expedition face up next to the space on the board that corresponds to that destination. To extend an expedition, the player places a new card from the expedition so that it partially covers the previous card from that expedition. Any new card placed must represent further travel than the previous card. The cards must always be added at the end of the expedition and with increasingly higher numbers. The numbers do not need to be consecutive, any higher number is permitted. The cards of an expedition are placed so that both players can see the values of all.

For each expedition there are 3 investment cards. These may only be played at the beginning of an expedition and represent increased investment by that player in that expedition. Any number of these cards may be played before the first numbered card of an expedition. Once a numbered card has been added to an expedition, further investment cards are not allowed for that expedition.

Discarding a card: The player can discard a card instead of adding to an expedition. To discard a card, the player places the card on the board in the space for the destination that matches the card to be discarded. If other cards from that expedition have been discarded, the new card should be placed so that it completely covers all the previous cards. Thus, only the last discarded card for each destination will be visible.

Draw a card: The player adds a card to his hand. He may either take the top card from the face down draw pile or the top card from any of the destination discards. The player may not draw a card he discarded on this turn.

Game end and scoring
• The game ends when a player takes the last card of the draw pile. Players are allowed to count the cards remaining in the draw pile to better plan their plays.
• Then the players calculate their scores. Each expedition is scored separately. The cards in the expedition are added together and then 20 is subtracted from the total. This is the value of each expedition except that if no cards have been played for an expedition its value is zero instead of –20.
• The value of each expedition (whether positive or negative) is then multiplied by the number of investment cards that player played for that expedition plus 1. Thus, the multiplier will be 2, 3, or 4, if the number of investment cards is 1, 2, or 3, respectively. An expedition with only investment cards would be worth –20 multiplied by the number of investment cards plus 1.
• In addition, each expedition, which contains at least eight cards, earns a fixed bonus of 20 points, after the multiplier.
• Thus, an expedition’s value will be between -80 and 236.
• One player records the scores on paper, adding scores from the current round to those from previous rounds. All cards are shuffled for another round of play. The player with the most total points so far in the game begins play for the next round.
• After the agreed number of rounds, usually three, the game ends. The player with the most total points is the winner.

The Author
Reiner Knizia was born in 1957 and lives in Windsor, Great Britain. The doctor of mathematics has published numerous games. Among his largest successes are the awards he won for German Spiel Preis in 1993 and 1998. He also has had several nominations for the Spiel des Jahres award. He is famous for games, which offer freedom of choice with simple rules.

Development:
TM-Spiele
Illustration:
Grafik Studio Krüger: Claus Stephan
Graphics:
Anke Pohl / Thilo Rick
Photo:
Dirk Hoffmann
English translation & editing:
Jay Tummelson

The author and publisher wish to thank the many people who helped in playtesting this game. In particular, the author would like to point out Dave Farquhar, Ross Inglis, Kevin Jacklin, Lieselotte Knizia, Elke Knop and Chris Lawson for their contributions.

Art.-Nr: 681210
© 1999 KOSMOS Verlag

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