Lost Cities
Lost Cities
Lost Cities is a quick 60-card card game designed by Reiner Knizia in 1999. It’s about leading profitable expeditions to five lost cities: the Himalayas, the Brazilian Rain Forest, the Desert Sands, the Ancient Volcanos, and Neptune’s Realm. It was originally for two players, but fans added rules for 3–4 players, and Knizia published semi-official four-player rules.
How to play: On your turn you play one card or discard one, then draw a replacement. Each card shows progress on one of the five expeditions. You can only move forward on an expedition by playing higher-numbered cards. Decide which expeditions to pursue. Start an expedition, but if you don’t complete it, you get negative points (investment costs). After three rounds, the player with the highest total score wins.
Interaction is indirect: you can use other players’ discards, and since the card supply for each color is finite, opponents’ progress can slow you down.
Board: An optional simple board shows where discards go.
Expansions and variants: If you use four expeditions, a standard deck can be used (face cards as investments, 2–10 as progress). In 2016 a sixth expedition promo added grey cards. From 2018–2019 some editions include Expedition 6 and two-sided boards, giving six expeditions total. Keltis, a 2008 game, was re-themed in the US as Lost Cities: The Board Game for up to four players with more complexity.
Video game: Lost Cities was released for Xbox Live Arcade in 2008, with online and solo play, but was delisted in 2009 after a merger.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 03:51 (CET).