First game of Lost cities

I've just had my first proper game of Lost Cities. I've previously played the game with myself just to get a feel for it but that was a couple of months ago ( I think it was that long ).

Well it was actually very good, better that I feared it might be.

The outsize cards were a joy to handle and the numbers/symbols in the top left corner worked well to let me keep an eye on what cards I had.

The game was against a complete newbie who hadn't even played by himself but you know what(?), we both had a good feel for the game and felt the brain burn ( such as it is ) when deciding what cards to play.

For example, my noble opponent played a Green handshake and I was holding Green 2,3 . I was planning on waiting a couple of turns to see if I could get a green handshake, but didn't get one. With only 2,3 in my hand I didn't want to risk starting the expedition and the fact that he had played a handshake suggested that he was holding some good green cards himself. I also didn't want to discard the 2,3 because he would have picked them right up and played them down.

In the end I had to use two spaces in my hand to keep these two cards until much later when he played a Green 5, at which point I was able discard the 2,3.

There were a few situations like this as the game went on. Another pressure I felt was the deck running out, as the game ends as soon as the last card is drawn and I'd managed to collect a bunch of cards that HAD to be played and so had to rush play them all during the last few rounds.

In the end we both had 3 expeditions on the table and I had managed to have two successful expeditions and one minor failure, my opponent had two mildly successful and one disaster, so I got a win, HUZZAR(!) for me.