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Roughly a month ago, I raved about Knizia's Blue Lagoon ahead of its Gen Con 2018 debut, but I didn't get to play Lost Cities: Rivals enough times to feel like I could do it justice, so I brought the game to the show and played it six times while I was there. I missed out on playing tons of other new games, sure, but I played something that I wanted to explore in more detail, so it's a win all the same.
In many ways, Lost Cities: Rivals feels like a mash-up of Ra, Traumfabrik, and (of course) Lost Cities. As in Lost Cities, your goal in the game is to travel far on expeditions (as represented by cards of increasing value) with your score mostly being based on the value of those expeditions at game's end, but instead of having a hand of cards, you now need to compete against others to buy them. Abstractly, I suppose we're bidding against one another for resources or information that will allow us to reach a certain destination, but whatever. The story explanation is there if you want it and able to be swept away if you don't.
Another playing in the BGG Hot Games Room at Gen Con 2018
You start the game with a limited amount of money, and on a turn you either add a card from the deck to the pool of cards available for auction or call an auction. Flip or bid. Flip or bid. If you've played Ra, you know how this goes, with the value of the pool fluctuating over time as new cards are added to the pot. The trick, however, is that when you win an auction, you can take any number of cards from the pool, after which you can optionally throw a card in the pool from the game. I like to imagine you torching the place as you pass by — if I can't have this location on my travelogue, you suckers can't have it either! To end your auction victory, you add another card to the pool, giving everyone something new to fight over.
All the money spent on auctions is pooled separately, then redistributed to players three times during the game, similar to how your money ebbs and flows in Traumfabrik. Run out of cash before then, and you'll be left flipping over cards on your turn and watching everyone else buy what you wanted. Sit on your cash forever, though, and you'll never get everywhere. Where's the balance between patience and paying out? That's the question you ask yourself over and over again.
The answer to that question has seemed different throughout each of my eight playings on a review copy from Thames & Kosmos. The cards come out in different orders, of course, and everyone has different ideas of when it's appropriate to dive into this or that trek, partially based on the two random investment cards that everyone receives at the start of play and partially based on who has how much money at any particular time. Sure, you might not have thought about starting that one expedition, but you can pick up two cards relatively cheap and stick a knife in someone else along the way. Is it worth it? Maybe you should add just one more card to see what else you might get...
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