Lost Cities

Lost Cities is a game wherein two players try to gain points by embarking on expeditions to different sites of the world; the Himalayas, the Brazilian rain-forest, the shifting sands of the desert, an ancient volcano and Neptune's realm.

Each player aims to start and continue expeditions which can result in points, the player with the most points wins. You do this by using five coloured suits of cards, each colour has numbered cards 2-10 and three handshake cards called investments.

Set up

Place the game board between both players, this represents where players will place any cards, or expeditions. Then shuffle the deck of sixty cards, deal out eight to each player and place the remaining at one end of the game board, this is the draw pile. Leave a space at the other end of the board for the discard pile.

Gameplay

Players must do one of two actions on each of their turns; play a card or discard a card.

When you player plays a card, they put that card under the corresponding colour on their side of the board. Any expedition can start on any number but once you have played a numbered card, you can't play another numbered card next turn below that number. For example: you play a blue 4, next turn you can play any blue number above 4 but not 2 or 3. The numbers must increase but do not need to increase consecutively.
The other card you can play is an Investment card. Investment cards can only be played to start a colour and not after you've already played a number to start that column. Investment cards aren't necessary for a column but do affect the scoring at the end of the game so it's a trade off between getting more numbers of a certain colour quicker, or getting the pay off later.

The second action you could do is discarding a card. Players play with separate discard piles but they are visible to all players. You can choose to discard a card in your turn instead of playing anything, possibly if you don't have any relevant cards or are after Investments.

At the end of each players turn, that player draws a card, either from the top of the draw pile or from any discard pile, this is why they are visible to all players. You cannot choose to draw any cards you may have discarded this turn however, effectively nullifying the discard and draw mechanics. This can be very effective because your opponent may have come across an Investment card or certain coloured number that you were after and drawing a card from any discard pile can let you utilise a lot more cards.

The game ends when a player draws the last card from the draw deck, immediately.

Scoring

Each expedition embarked on costs 20 points. When scoring the game each player scores an expedition with at least one card on it, totals up the value of all number cards on all of your expeditions and then minuses 20 from that total. Do this for all expeditions embarked on. If you have played no cards on a colour then you won't subtract 20 points for that expedition. If you have any investment cards starting a column the total of that column is multiplied by the amount of Investment cards in that column plus one, so if you have one Investment card in a column, you multiply the column total by two, if there are two Investment cards then it's multiplied by three and so on. If a player has a column that contains at least eight cards that player receives a total of twenty points.
Investment cards do give you a good reward but there may be sometimes when you aren't able to progress that much in a column and at that point it's not able to be as effective so be careful and think ahead a little.

Thoughts

Lost Cities is such an intuitive game, it's super easy to learn and is a great game for players that aren't massively into board/card game. It's a mix of solitaire meets rummy in my opinion as it contains aspects of both, in the sense of building columns of sets and colours and choosing the right cards to invest in when drawing blind from the top of the deck or picking and choosing from the graveyard. It doesn't take too long so it makes for a good quick game but still retains challenge and substantiality and for that reason I think it's a perfect addition to any board game shelf or cupboard, it is only two players but a good game of heads up is always fun.

If you wanna check out Lost Cities for yourself head down to your local games and hobbies store and they'll be happy to demo it for you but until then, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.

Hanamikoji

Today I'm going to looking at a game that I've been having a lot of fun with over the last couple of weeks, Hanamikoji.

Hanamikoji is a two player game in which both players try to win the favours of various Geisha's - entertainers, artists, dancers etc - and they do this by providing each Geisha with their performance items.

There are seven Geisha's each with their own unique performance item, ranging from a flute to a flowery hairpiece, your objective is to provide them with a majority number of their items to win their favour.

Each Geisha comes with a number shown on their card; there are three Geisha's with a number 2, two with the number 3, one with the number 4 and lastly one with the number 5. The number on the Geisha cards denote two things, firstly: the amount of cards showing that Geisha's item that are in the deck, for instance a Geisha with the number 2 on it only has two of the corresponding items necessary to win her favour in the deck, whereas the Geisha with the number 5 on the card has five copies of her necessary item in the deck.
Secondly, the numbers on the Geisha card represents how many points you gain for winning her favour.

Set up

First, place all the Geisha cards in the centre of the table between both players ranging from 2 to 5, as shown above, it doesn't matter what order you put the three Geisha's with the number 2 on them as long as they are the first three in line and the same for the two with the number 3 on them.
Then place one of the seven victory markers on each Geisha to represent that they are neutral and haven't been won over by either player. Shuffle the deck of twenty one item cards and remove one face down, then deal seven cards to each player.

Finally, take the action tiles - there should be four pairs of two - and give each player one for each of those pairs.

Gameplay

Each turn, players must use one of their action tiles to try and provide the Geisha's with their corresponding item in order to gain favour.

Action Tile 1 - Take one card from your hand and remove it from the game face down. At the end of the round, take that face down card and place it in front of the corresponding Geisha. This tile is very useful if you are worried that your opponent will get the majority on a Geisha, you can use it almost as a late game trick to possibly tie for a Geisha or maybe even win the majority.

Action Tile 2 - When you use this action tile, you take two cards from your hand and remove them from the game. Unlike the first action tile, you don't get to put them in front of a Geisha at the end of the round, these cards a removes until the start of the next round. This tile is useful if you know you have the majority of items for a Geisha and don't want your opponent getting their hands on them, so you can get rid of them guaranteeing the victory point of one Geisha.

Action Tile 3 - Using this tile requires you to take three cards from your hand and reveal them to your opponent. Your opponent then chooses one of those three cards and puts it in front of the corresponding Geisha and you get the other two cards and do the same. Using this tile early can give you a good idea of what your opponent might have lurking in their hand and it could create a tough decision for them as they only get one of the three cards.

Action Tile 4 - For the last action tile you must take four cards of your choice from your hand, split them up into two piles of two cards each - the split is completely up to you - then your opponent gets the choice of one pile and puts those cards in front of the corresponding Geisha and you get the remaining pile and do the same. The beauty of this tile is giving your opponent an option between a duo of cards that looks good for them but leaving a great set for yourself, possibly resulting in winning the majority for a Geisha.

The object of the game is to gain the favour of four Geisha's over a number of rounds, keeping the victory point of each as long as your opponent never gains the majority, or scoring eleven points. Points are scored equal to the Geisha you have a majority and therefor have gained the victory point of, for example; if a player wins the majority of the Geisha's with four and five in the corners, that player has scored 9 points, players keep track of their points scored from round to round to make sure the game has an ending point. If at any point both scoring eleven points and gaining the favour of four Geisha's would happen, the four Geisha's takes priority as it's harder to achieve.

Thoughts

Hanamikoji as a whole is a very interesting game that promotes forethought and strategy. It has a lot of replay-ability and has a lot of charm and enjoyment when it comes to the design; compact, colourful and the right amount of challenging that doesn't always punish you for making errors. It's a very easy game to grasp and hard to master and will always vary from player to player as to what cards they want to use with what tiles, but overall I think players will have a lot of fun with this little two player game and get a lot of use out of it.

Hopefully this look at Hanamikoji has inspired you to try it for yourself, in which case head down to your local games and hobbies store and they will be more than happy to demo it for you. Until then however, keep checking back to Game Changers for more gaming news and updates.