Lost Cities board game review

Full disclosure: I only managed to play this game once at the UK Games Expo so this review is just my first thoughts on Lost Cities.

You are explorers. Questing into the unknown for great treasures that you can (slightly problematically) take home to earn great fame, fortune and prove to your family that you aren’t a disappointment just because you didn’t become a doctor.

Lost Cities is a two player board game where you aim to collect the most points by the end of the game. To do this you must place down different coloured numbered cards (from 2-10) in rows of ascending order with the total of the cards you placed being your score. However, each new row of different coloured cards gives you -20 points so you need to think carefully before committing to a new row. Some special cards can actually multiply all the cards in one column by 2 to give you the extra boost you need to win.

If you are asking yourself how the rules, I described above, even vaguely resembled going on an expedition… I’ve put some thought into it… And I still have no clue. This games theme is so lightly smeared on that, take away the mediocre artwork, you’ve got a game about putting different coloured numbers into rows which sounds about as dry and unexciting as my Grandmother’s chocolate cake.

However, to give this game credit where credit is due, the rules are very simple. Even at a convention
when I had spent the last couple of hours running after my little cousin (who I think secretly drinks 542 cups of highly caffeinated coffee in the morning before anyone else gets up) I could still push through a tiredness induced haze to easily understand the rules.

Unfortunately, that is where my praise for this game comes to an end. For this game commits a cardinal sin so massive that I think it may be the most sacrilegious board
game I have ever seen. What heinous crime is this game guilty of? What foul act has it performed which shocked me so much?

It made me do maths.

The end scoring for this game feels actually like I am back in school and slaving over some complicated maths equation. I think you could probably get a good chunk of the next game in before you have finished adding and subtracting all the numbers you need to just find out who won.


So, although the rules may be simple, there are many more, much better two player games out there (for example the excellent Patchwork) that don’t require you to crack out your calculators.

Rummikub family game review

Rummikub is a game where you make lines of different coloured number tiles and then group them into pleasing patterns. No, you haven’t been transported back to preschool but you are playing the brain burning family game Rummikub.

In Rummikub you must get rid of all the tiles in your hand, which have a number from 1 to 13 and a colour (either red, green, blue or black). To get rid of tiles you must place them into the communal centre of the table by putting down sets of groups or runs, that are at least three tiles big. A group is a set of tiles that all have the same number on them all with different colours but a run is where you have a group of consecutive numbers all in the same colour. If you can’t do anything on your turn you have to take another tile from the bag and your turn is over (a punishment so bad it almost rivals standing on Lego). However not all hope is lost as, if you can add tiles on to the pre-existing sets in the centre of the table or shuffle all the tiles about to make new sets of groups or runs that you can add to, you can escape this terrible punishment.

This game does one thing very well, the feeling you get when figure out how to shuffle all the tiles, into new groups or runs ,to let you add more tiles from your hand, is amazing. This game gives you the power to feel very clever and at the end of the game when more people have put down more tiles, you have even more ways to organize them to your liking. This however can sometimes slow the game down to a standstill as people are overwhelmed by all the different methods of manipulating the tiles that they could take.

However, this is slightly overshadowed by the fact that if you want to even start shuffling tiles around (which is the fun part) to start with, you must collect tiles at the start by randomly pulling out of a bag to make sets and runs that add up to 30 points or more. This means almost every game one person is unlucky enough to not get the tiles that lets them get to the 30-point threshold and so have to sit most of the game out just drawing tiles.

Also, while Rummikub excels in the mid-game it can really loses its pace towards the end. The game leads up to a slightly anti-climatic end where everyone is trying to get rid of those last few, hard to place, tiles in their hand and so everything stagnates. Like me in a running race, it starts of strong but by the second lap it can barely crawl across the finishing line.

But Rummikub’s saving grace is how simple and accessible it is to teach and play. I have many fond memories of playing this with my Grandma who would normally not touch board games with a barge pole. It is a game that practically anyone and everyone can learn to play which is a major plus in my books.

Overall, while not the best game in the world, Rummikub shines through with its easy to play nature and gives you the tools to craft incredible gaming moments. If this review appealed to you then I would definitely give Rummikub a go and see where it takes you.

The Final Empire book review

The Final Empire is the first book in the widely acclaimed fantasy Mistborn series. This novel set in a dystopic world where the dark lord has already won and now rebels must fight back with unique magic powers, a small degree of political skulduggery but most importantly a selection of names that would get them teased so much in primary school that the parents might want to consider home schooling.

The first thing that drew me into this book was how intriguing the setting was. With a unique magic system and a captivating world, once the book starts revealing its secrets… I was hooked. The most exciting thing was how wizards in this world can ingest metals to access magical powers that they can use to, for example, sooth other people’s emotions or push psychically against metal objects to launch themselves into the air. While this magic system sounds like a very dodgy, pop-up ad that advertises huge body-building gains by only consuming 20 grams of iron a day, it is actually one of the things that separates this book out from the crowd of thousands of generic fantasy titles.

The only minor complaint I had with this book is that I didn’t feel like the characters were described in enough detail to let me fully picture them in my head. This led to the unfortunate situation where I imagined that the tyrannical dictator of the world looked like Lord Buckethead (see pictures of Lord Buckethead here). By the time the book got around to telling me what the Lord Ruler actually looked like, I couldn’t get the image out of my head so now the Dark Lord forever more has a large black bucket over his face.

But that small problem didn’t stop me getting hooked and losing my entire social life while I romped relentlessly through this book (not that I have a social life to lose anyway, what can I say my hobbies are board games, reading books and writing blog posts…). This book gets you addicted with almost perfect pacing and makes you care about the characters so you never want to put the book down.

Overall the Final Empire is an interesting fantasy book with a fascinating concept and world building that drags you in time and again. If you are a fantasy fan then it is almost certainly worth a gander but even if you aren’t, I would still recommend at least giving it a go.

P.S. Don’t trust any adverts saying that you can get ripped if you just click on the link below and start taking 20 grams of very expensive iron flakes which you can buy exclusively from their company. Your wallet and more importantly you stomach will thank you.