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Lost Cities: The Board Game (aka Keltis) *Spiele des Jahres 2008 Winner* Price: £29.99 Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 10+ by Rio Grande Games Spiel des Jahres 2008 Award Winner (under it\'s German title of Keltis) Each player leads a five-member group of four adventurers and a researcher on the search for lost cities. To reach each city, the players must travel a separate path nine steps long. On a player‘s turn, he plays a card and moves one of his adventurers or his researcher. The color of the card played determines which path the figure moves on. The player should try to play a card of low value, because when the player wants to move this adventurer again, he must play a card of equal or higher value. Each player must send his adventurers on different paths - no two from the same player on athe same path. A player may send all his adventurers to search, but need not. The goal is it to get one‘s adventurers as far as possible along the paths they travel since the first steps of a path score minus points. Only the later steps on a path score positive points. At the end of the game, the winner is the player who earned the most points. Artifacts, which adventurers can collect along the way, also earn the player‘s points toward a possible victory. Also, the researcher (the larger figure) is more valuable than the adventurers: during the scoring at the end, the player doubles its points, making it imperative to move it as far along its path as possible. GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Kosmos 2-4 players, 60 minutes designed by Reiner Knizia reviewed by Alan How This is Reiner Knizia\'s newest game and the latest one to be nominated for the Spiel des Jahres. More importantly, it is the first to win him that prestigious award. More on this later. Keltis has a board with 5 paths radiating from a central point, each in a different colour. Each path has 9 spaces that pieces can progress along, and at the start of the game four of these are populated by a random set of chits. Players begin with a hand of 8 cards and the rest form a drawpile. On a player\'s turn they plays a card from their hand face-up in front of them to start or continue a set of cards. The colour determines which track to start down and the size of the figure (1 large and four small) will determine the multiplier (x2 or x1) respectively. This figure is then moved forward down that track. If the figure reaches a space with a chit on it, the chit is taken by the player. There are three types of chit. Victory point chits score between 1 and 3 VPs; 4 leaf clover chits provide the player with an opportunity to move any one of their figures an extra space and the final type to be collected are wishing stones. You need to collect these to avoid negative points, but if enough of them are chits you can increase your haul of VPs. The main way that you earn victory points though is to advance your pieces down the tracks. The highest scores are at the end of the track, so the game encourages you to get your figures as far down as possible. Several aspects of the game hinder that progress. Firstly, when you play cards you need to follow them down with further cards of the same colour and they have to follow a high to low or low to high sequence. So if you start with a 10, you can play another 10 (there are 2 of each colour) or any lower card of the same colour. You could have started with a zero, in which case you would obviously be playing higher cards later. So the initial issue is what direction will you play cards and how many of the cards you have got in your hand of that colour. The second issue is that if your figure finishes in the first three spaces down each track, you score negative points. When deciding which track to go down, you may not have 4 or more cards so you will need to draw more in due course to avoid a negative score. Of course the chits provide goals for players to reach, especially the extra move chits as these inevitably will earn you more points and often allow multiple gains. You also need to consider when to make your move down each track. Concentrating on a few (2? 3? more?) tracks will maximize your focus and minimise your negative points. But by doing this you restrict what cards might be useful. Of course, when you start a new track will also make a difference. If you start late in the game, then you may not get far down the track and if you start too late the chits may well have been taken by other players. The game ends when the last card from the drawpile is taken or when 5 figures occupy spaces in the last three positions of track. Keltis draws very heavily on Lost Cities. As the two player game of Lost Cities is a personal favourite, I could say that Keltis is a diluted follower so could only be a good game but not a great one. In Lost Cities, the cards have to be played in increasing sequence; in Keltis the cards can be played in decreasing or increasing sequence. As there are duplicated numbers in Keltis the cards can also be played on cards with the same number. The longer the set of cards, the greater the points scored, with smaller sets of cards giving penalties. One of the beauties of Lost Cities is the control over the pace of the game, because cards can be discarded. While Keltis shares the same mechanism, the fact that the game is aimed at 3 or 4 players means that control is limited. Keltis is not a complicated game and so you can see why it would get nominated for the Spiel des Jahres prize. The rules are quite straightforward, there are clear goals and it is quick to teach. However, it is closer to the family end of the game spectrum rather than the gamers\' end. So while it is surprising as a winner from Reiner Knizia\'s set of great games, it is less so when you consider the nature of the award. Perhaps earlier games from Reiner should have won - classic gamers\' games such as Euphrat and Tigris, Modern Art or Medici, but maybe the competition was too strong in those years or perhaps they would have been more suited to the award that the SdJ jury introduced a few years ago for more complex games. Either way it is very pleasing to see Reiner get the award he has been missing and that his game designs deserve. Keltis will probably sell well in Essen, but fare less well on the Boardgamegeek scores. It is worth a game or two and is a pleasant way to end an evening\'s gaming session. More ...

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