Lost Cities Adapted

To start this blog, here is a card game that I have adapted* from the famous Lost Cities board game, by designer Reiner Knizia.

Requirements: 2 standard decks of playing cards. Take out the jokers and shuffle the decks together.

No. of Players: 2-4 (but more may be possible)

To Play: Deal each player 8 cards for their hand. On your turn you may play one card on one of four stacks in front of you, one stack for each suit, or you may discard into one of four discard piles in the middle of the table, one for each suit. Whenever you play a card in front of you, it must be higher than or equal to the card underneath it. After you play or discard, draw a card from the deck or from one of the discard piles to finish your turn (make sure you have 8 cards in your hand). Play continues clockwise until...

Game end: Whenever any three stacks of cards (not the discard piles) have seven or more cards, the game ends immediately and players score their stacks. You earn points based on how many cards are in each of your stacks. The game also ends immediately whenever someone draws the last card from the deck.

Scoring: If you have 0 cards in a stack, you earn 0 points for that stack. If 1 card, you lose 10 points. If 2 cards, you lose 5 points. If 3 cards you earn 0 points. If 4 cards, you earn 5 points. If 5 cards, you earn 10 points. If 6 cards you earn 20 points. For 7 cards you earn 30 points! (For 8 or more cards you earn an additional 10 points each.)

Special two-player note: After dealing 8 cards to each player, count 30 cards at random from the top of the deck and put these cards out of play. Don't peak!

This is a quick game! Play three times in a row and keep track of your total points to determine the grand champion!

*As an important introductory note, I think I should say that I post these rules here, not to take anything away from the game of Lost Cities or from Knizia or any of the many publishers of the game, but rather to draw your attention to an awesome board game, and to hopefully teach you a fun and easy adaptation that you can play in a pinch with only two decks of cards.

Of personal note, I believe that people tend to be more accepting of things that are familiar to them. I always struggle to find people who are eager to learn a new game I've purchased or designed, because, in my opinion, the rules of new games tend to incorporate principles that are foreign to them, and I hope that by sneaking some of these principles into card games, that people will feel more comfortable with all types of rules.