Lost Cities

Based on the game by Reiner Knizia

You are archeologists embarking on expeditions to remote locations. Push to create as many successful expeditions as you can, but be careful. If you spread your resources too thin, a bad expedition can ruin your overall score.

Setup

Use 5 suits: Clubs♣, Spades♠, Hearts♥, Diamonds♦, and Caps■. From each suit, take cards 2–9, X, and the Jack, Queen, and King. You should have 12 cards per suit, 60 cards total.

• Jack, Queen, and King are Investment cards (No numeric value, but they serve as score multipliers. You’re getting more and more support from the royal court for your expedition.)
• 2–9, and X are Expedition cards (X=10 and all other cards are their face value)

Lay out a shared play area between the two players with space for 5 discard piles (one per suit color). Shuffle all 60 cards together. Deal 8 cards to each player. Place the remaining deck face-down as the draw pile.

Gameplay

Choose one person to go first however you would like. Turns alternate between players until the draw pile is exhausted. The game ends immediately when the last card is drawn. The goal of the game is to add the most cards to your expedition for each suit.

On your turn, do two things in order:

1. Play or discard 1 card

• Play a card in front of you, adding it to that suit’s Expedition Column. Cards in each column must be played in ascending order (investment cards in Jack, Queen, King order first, then numbered cards low to high). You may decide to play a card to an Expedition Column out of sequence, but it may prevent you playing other cards to that column. For example, if you play a 5 in your Clubs♣ expedition column, you can not play a 2, 3, or 4 to that column.
• Or discard a card face-up to the matching suit’s central discard pile.

2. Draw 1 card

• Draw the top card from the draw pile
• Or pick up the top card from any one discard pile. (You may not discard and pick up from the same pile in the same turn.)

Scoring

Score each of the 5 expeditions separately:

1. Add up the values of all numbered cards in that expedition.
2. Subtract 20 from that total. (Every started expedition costs 20 points, even if you only played one card.)
3. Multiply by the number of investment cards played, +1.
   • 0 investments = ×1
   • 1 investment card = ×2
   • 2 investment cards = ×3
   • 3 investment cards = ×4
4. Bonus: If an expedition has 8 or more cards in it (including investment cards), add 20 points after multiplying.

An expedition you never started scores 0 (not negative). Add up all 5 expedition scores. Highest total wins.

Example:

You played the Jack and Queen (2 investment cards), then 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, X in the Clubs♣ expedition.

So, you would earn 86 points from this expedition.