Great Games for Beginners: Just One and Lost Cities – two giants in Small Boxes

To learn more about what board games are good for beginners click here.

Lost Cities and Just One are two great games for beginners and two games that really should be in everyone’s collection. Seasoned gamers and new gamers both enjoy Lost Cities and Just One and I can’t recommend them enough. Lost Cities is a top 100 Family Game, and Just One is the Top 3 Party game according to board game geek.

Moving into our next two games – I took the same approach for what qualities the game should have in your next selection. Those qualities are:

• Easy
• Short
• Inexpensive

The next two game come in small boxes, but the games pack a lot of punch. Lost Cities is a classic two player card game by the great designed Reiner Knizia. The “Doctor” is quite well known for the vast amount of quality games. This game is considered a modern classic, but don’t let classic throw you off. It is still a gaming giant and great for two players (only). On the flip side, I offer up Just One. Just One is a relatively new cooperative party game. Where as Lost Cities is limited to two players – Just One welcomes (and demands) a group. It is a great word guessing game with a subtle but great twist on how players can guess words. Both games show that you don’t need a lot of components to make a great game, and each generally under $20, are great additions to any new board game collection.

Lost Cities

---

What is It

Lost Cities is a classic card game that takes you on an adventure as the leader of an exploration team. Supposedly your goal is to uncover artifacts hidden across five locations around the world. That said – the game definitely doesn’t feel like any sort of exploration…. at all…. But that’s ok, keep reading. While the theme, in theory, adds excitement, the game’s core mechanics are set collecting and strategic card play is what makes this game a classic and worth buying. Famous game designer Dr. Knizia has used simple math mechanics into the gameplay that doesn’t overly tax your brain, creating a foundation that defines many of his designs.

The game, a favorite among modern gamers. It offers a very quick game pace that keeps players engaged. At the start, each player receives a hand of 8 cards and must decide whether to play a card to one of the 5 locations (the supposed “expeditions”) or discard a card to the shared center. The seemingly easy game play reveals its strategy as players try and play in such a way they get the most cards in a column while dealing with card placement restrictions.

How can you be the most efficient in playing your cards to maximize your points, and limit your opponent opportunities?

What a Turn is Like

Lost Cities is not just about playing cards; it’s a game of deduction, inference, and calculated risk. The challenge lies in managing your hand effectively, determining when to initiate “expeditions”. An expedition starts simply by playing a card of that color on your side of the board – typically a very low value. You see you can only ascend in value, so you are trying to construct chains that flow in perfect order. As the game progresses, the ticking clock intensifies the experience, making every draw and play crucial. Despite its simplicity, Lost Cities offers a blend of strategy, excitement, and tension. The quick pace makes it a great choice for a pleasant gaming session with a significant other over wine, or bit of filler game sandwiched between heavier games, or while waiting for other players to show up. It can also be a great game to close out the evening.

Obviously aside from the draw deck, a great deal of the game is public information. Your opponent will know when you plan on going deep in a color when you put two score multipliers. This may force you to hold cards you don’t want, because you don’t want to put them in a spot that can be picked up by you opponent. You will also know when you can safely skip over cards in your sequences, when you see your opponent play the card you desperately wanted!

As an alternative, you bluff by putting a card to shared center, indicating you don’t really want that color. Your opponent, perhaps reading it incorrectly, may then put down other cards of that color to the shared middle, that you really wanted in the first place. It can be a way to pick up some higher valued cards.

In the photo above, you might notice that both players are “going” for green – however the player at the top put out two “handshakes” which will double your points (either positive or negative) – but look who ended up with a good deal of the high cards.

Scoring Phase

Once the last card is in hand, players discard the remaining cards and shift their focus to scoring their expeditions. For every expedition that has at least one card played into it, scoring comes into play. In this scoring system, cards played into an expedition contribute points equal to their rank. However, there’s an interesting twist with “handshakes.” A handshake serves as a multiplier against the final total: one handshake doubles the expedition’s value, two handshakes triple it, and three handshakes quadruple it. It’s crucial to note that expeditions start at a value of -20, so playing at least 20 points of cards into an expedition is necessary to turn a profit. Even if left with a negative value and possessing a handshake, the multiplier still applies. That means you can easily score negative points in this game if you aren’t careful.

Why I picked it

I picked Lost Cities for you new collection for a multiple of reasons.

A Classic among 2-player card games: Lost Cities has rightly been considered a modern day 2 player classic. The quick back and forth game play with a strategic roots has left it a mainstay for may board game collections. It is easy set up and start playing within 10 minutes.

Easy Rule Set: I believe the entire set of directions is just shy of 2 pages.  Even within this brief review, I think I’ve given you enough of the rules that you could probably start playing. But remember easy rules doesn’t mean its an easy game. As you play you’ll start to notice the subtle nuances of the game, and why it remains a classic.

Inexpensive: Often on sale in my local game shops and online for right around $20.00!

---

“…a two player game that is perfect for couples. It’s ridiculously easy to learn, it’s super addictive, and its’s just the right level where it feels really competitive, but it’s not going to end in an argument…”

—Jon Purkis, Actualol

Just One

---

If, after looking at several games I’ve recommended – and you were only to get one…. Let “Just One” be the one game you buy. It’s that good.

Party games are games that encourage social interaction. They have easy setups, quick to learn rules, and they can accommodate large groups of people and play in a short amount of time.  But perhaps most important – they are generally just excuses to get a bunch of your friends around and laugh at each other. Sound like something you can get behind.

“Just One” is the game that literally anyone that can read, can play – and have fun doing it!

At it’s core Just One is simply a word association game. It shares a lot of DNA with Codenames, but is just a little lighter, a little less “thinky”, and with a bit less downtime in between turns.

Instead of two teams squaring off as in Codenames, Just One is a cooperative game. The table is working its way through a deck of 13 cards trying to get a perfect score based on the guess a player makes. The game gives you a handy mini-white board, and individual dry erase markers. There is a deck of cards with each with 5 words on it. The guessing player picks a number, that corresponds to a word on the card they can’t see – and now the rest of the table write just one word as a clue to give to get the player to guess it. That’s It- That’s All.

What is a turn like

There really is no big mystery here. The only wrinkle- and it’s brilliant – is that if any two people write down the same clue, that clue is eliminated. So your turn is you basically trying to pick a word that will work – but not one that you think someone else will also write down, thereby negating both clues. After everyone shares their clues (aside from the guesser) and eliminates duplicates – then the person guessing can see what is left for them.

More often than not – players are so desperate not to include the word that they think someone else will pick, that no one every puts the clue down that would really help the person guessing.

Why I picked it

I picked Just One as a game for a new collection because of how simple it is, how accessible it is, and really how fun it is. The funny thing is, mechanically, there isn’t anything amazing about this game. It feels like this game should already have been invented, but it debuted in 2019 – its a very very new game, that is winning awards. The game Just One works so well in group settings when you are looking to entertain, and aren’t really sure if the audience you are entertaining are “into games”.

I know as you build out your new game list, this may same to similar to Codenames, but I still kept it here because of its cooperative game play. Everyone working together, as opposed to teams or everyone for themselves makes it a nice addition to your game collection as well. The game is currently #3 on the Board Game Geek list. It’s really shown how great it’s appeal is.

After playing this a few times, my guess is that your group will “worry” less and less about the score, and it will be really just about having the fun.

I recommend giving this game as a gift when you need one to give, and then getting them to open it and play it that day or night!

---

“…I definitely recommend ‘Just One’, really neat stuff, and this one gets the Seal of Excellence from me….”

— Ray Zee, The Dice Tower

---

Enjoy these next two games. They offer a lot of fun packed into two relatively small boxes. Both are readily available, and both are generally under or right around twenty bucks. One is great for a party of two, and one is great for – well a party!