Gillian writes...

I've always thought of Alan as a man who would be suited to the salons and gentleman's clubs of Victorian England - he is at odds with the Youth of Today, particularly those in slatted sunglasses, and has customised his iPod to resemble some form of steampunk mechanical orchestra. In this crazy costume-drama-cum-Adventures-Of-Willie-Fogg fantasy, he strides from the cold and smoke-filled north to the oak-timbered premises of a society of visionary scientists and thinkers, checks his stovepipe hat and snuff tin at the door, and fulminates hirsutedly about scripture, temperance, a good whiskey and lands left to discover. So it was with some interest that I eyed the box of Lost Cities in his bag during a train journey to the coast.

Lost Cities allows the player to choose from one, or more,  of five possible expeditions - Egyptian pyramids, Mayan temples, underwater kingdoms, the wastes of the Poles, or what I initially presumed to be Mars until I realised that while the Victorians gave us photogravure and excellent moustaches, they didn't really have any grasp on intergalactic travel. Perhaps it's Vesuvius. Anyway, you have your five territories to go and explore, and it's you and your opponent's job to select wisely which ones to explore. From there on, it's essentially a card game - the hand of cards dealt gives you a selection to choose from, you start laying the cards corresponding to each area, which ideally would be the full set numbered from two to ten, but as there is no restrictions on how many or which territories to choose, your opponent may well get in there first with the best cards, or even withold the plum numbers in an effort to lower your score.

Now, my experience of poker is based on watching gambling advertisements and knowing someone who loved gambling to the point of betting on virtual horse-racing - I have never tried to play myself, and as I'm about as good as hiding my reactions as a two-week old Jack Russell, I doubt I'd be much good. Lost Cities, though, awoke the competitive streak in me pretty quickly. As some of the game involves racing to place your cards (which must be placed in order, so you can't start with the high scores first and then collect the rest over) before the deck runs dry, you need to watch your opponent, particularly if you and they are both fighting over the same territory. What also spices the game up are investment cards - these represent multiplication of the final score, but can only be placed before any numbered cards, so just like the stock market or a box of Beanie Babies, you have no idea how much of an investment something will be until you make your choice and see what happens.

Now, here's where it gets interesting. Once your deck runs out and the round is over, it's time to score - and as each expedition gets twenty points knocked off the score to represent the risks involved, investment cards can be a real burden. Less than twenty points worth of cards, and you end up with a minus score. A minus score which then, thanks to investment cards, will get multiplied. If I learned anything in GCSE Maths it was how to get frustrated easily, and when I saw what I thought were wise investments result in a score of -60 in my first round, I realised that it paid to both weigh up the risks and watch your opponent's actions carefully.

Alan: On the odd occasion that I've played darts, there's something that I find more frustrating than trying to hit the right bit of the board. I stand there with 89 to get, my dart in treble 17, and my tongue poking out of the side of my mouth as I try to figure out what I have left. It's a bit like that at the end Lost Cities. Your opponent's score, and indeed your score, are hidden information to those of us without fast arithmetic skills. There's a bit of tension as you add up your scores and it's close - but there's also a bit of annoyance if there's a wide disparity.

You could, if you wanted, strip back this game to just the numbers and miss out the theme entirely. It barely matters that you're a moustachioed explorer, but it's nice and unusual nonetheless.

The best thing about Lost Cities so far is that one of us often says "again?" at the end of that round. You know a game will only take ten minutes or so.  

So. It's a nice, quick game - you can play one round, or as many as you like in the style of the sore loser's 'best of three' - and the cards and very small board means it's portable enough to play on a train. You will need a pen and paper to score up, and possibly also the knowledge that multiplying minus numbers is A Bad Thing if you want to up your chances of winning. Me? I was hoping that, against everything dimly remembered from hot afternoons drawing pictures of robots in the back of my maths exercise book, that the x sign would quickly start cancelling itself out.

Lost Cities at BoardGameGeek