DICEBALL VS LOST CITIES

Diceball! is a board game in which two players roll dice to simulate a baseball game, one representing the visiting team and the other the home team. Both players use the dice to throw the baseball from the mound to the plate and field the ball on defense. Diceball! was designed to mirror the statistical reality of baseball. A regular game of Diceball! without extra innings lasts about 45 minutes. The game was designed in 1979 on a pizza box by a 16-year old Daniel Girard from Rawdon, Québec, while the Montreal Expos were chasing the pennant in the National League. Girard brought his game to his high school, where he organized tournaments with other students. Given the popularity of the game in his school, Girard also brought his game to university where it also became popular. The interest created by the game was noticed by entrepreneur Louis Desjardins, who launched the game with Girard. To start the game, the visiting team puts a pawn (as a batter and eventually runner) in the batter's box, to get the pitcher's throws. The die replaces the ball. The pitcher rolls the die until either the batter is struck out, the batter is walked, or the ball is hit. If the ball is hit, the offensive team rolls a die to determine the number of dice to be used to hit the ball. The number of dice indicated are rolled and added up. Numbers from 1 to 36 show the location where the ball is hit and the ball is placed on the game board. If the ball is hit on a circle, the ball was hit in the air and an out is recorded. If the ball is hit on a number in a cloud, it is a ground ball and that the batter will have to try to reach a base before the defense throws to that base. If the ball is hit to a star-shaped zone, the runner starts to run around the bases while the defence recovers the ball on the star. If the stars are from 27 to 36 it is a home run and all runners score. Every batter who runs around the bases and reaches home plate before three outs scores a run. As soon as three outs are recorded, stranded runners are removed from the bases. The teams trade places: the defense becomes the offense.

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Lost Cities is a 60-card card game, designed in 1999 by game designer Reiner Knizia and published by several publishers. The objective of the game is to mount profitable expeditions to one or more of the five lost cities (the Himalayas, the Brazilian Rain Forest, the Desert Sands, the Ancient Volcanos and Neptune's Realm). The game was originally intended as a 2-player game, but rule variants have been contributed by fans to allow 1 or 2 further players, causing Reiner Knizia himself to later provide semi-official 4-player rules. Lost Cities is a fast-moving game, with players playing or discarding, and then replacing, a single card each turn. Cards represent progress on one of the five color-coded expeditions. Players must decide, during the course of the game, how many of these expeditions to actually embark upon. Card-play rules are quite straightforward, but because players can only move forward on an expedition (by playing cards which are higher-numbered than those already played), making the right choice in a given game situation can be quite difficult. An expedition that has been started will earn points according to how much progress has been made when the game ends, and after three rounds, the player with the highest total score wins the game. Each expedition that is started but not thoroughly charted incurs a negative point penalty (investment costs). Interaction between players is indirect, in that one cannot directly impact another player's expeditions. However, since players can draw from the common discard piles, they are free to make use of opposing discards. Additionally, since the available cards for a given expedition are finite, progress made by an opponent in a given color can lead to difficulty making progress in that same color. The game's board, while designed to supplement the theme, is optional and consists only of simple marked areas where players place discards. If Lost Cities had four expeditions instead of five, it could be played with a standard deck of playing cards. When doing so, the face cards would represent investment cards, with numbered cards two through ten serving as the expedition progress cards.

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