Lost Cities - Rules of the card game

Objective of the game

You are an adventurer trying to succeed in up to five expeditions (represented by five colors)

To make progress, you will lay the corresponding cards in ascending order.

Investment cards will let you double, triple, quadruple your earnings.

But beware! Starting an expedition costs points and you may fail to cover your costs!

Points are shown in white on black: -3

Player's turn

Every player starts with 8 cards in hand.

A player's turn is very simple:

Play a card
Draw a card

How to play a card?

You can play a card in two ways:

by laying it down on an expedition. The card will stay there for the rest of the game.
OR by discarding it on the matching discard pile. The card may be picked later by either player.

How to lay a card?

Laying a card on an expedition must be done in ascending order.

Cards do not need to be consecutive.

Discarding a card

If you do not want to lay a card on an expedition, you can discard one instead.

There is one discard pile per color.

Drawing a card

Once you have played a card, you must draw another one:

from the main deck
OR from any discard pile

You can not draw a card that you have discarded in the same turn!

Investment cards ($)

Investment cards are represented by the sign $.

They must be laid before an expedition is started, that is before any value card on the same expedition.

They will double, triple, quadruple your earnings or losses (for 1, 2, or 3 investment cards).

End of the game

When a player draws the last card of the deck, the game ends immediately.

Scoring

Each expedition which has at least one card on it costs 20 points. This cost is substracted from the total value of the cards on that expedition.

This total is then multiplied if there are investment cards on the expedition (x2, x3 or x4).

If the expedition has at least 8 cards, a (non multiplied) bonus of 20 points is given.

The final score of a player is the total of points for the five expeditions.

It can be negative!

Scoring example

Let us suppose that a player plays 2 investment cards, then 3 value cards (5, 9, 10) on an expedition.

The total value of his cards is 24.

The expedition costs 20 points which must be deducted. That leaves only 24-20 = 4 points.

If there was no invesment cards, the player would score these 4 points. But as he played two of them, the expedition value is tripled. So the player scores 4x3 = 12 points.

Only 5 cards have been played, so a bonus of 20 points is not awarded here.