Capital Lux Review – A Game That Waits in a Back Alley to Steal Your Wallet

Describing how Capital Lux plays is best done in an old-timey carnival announcer’s voice. Step right up, step right up, we got bluffing, card drafting, action selection, area control, and hand management. Want to win a doll for your doll, you’ve come to the right place!

Despite this laundry list of mechanics, Capital Lux is a rather simple game. As long as you don’t mind some basic mathematics.

To get points, and win the game, you’re trying to get professionals into your Hometown. Each professional has a point value, that will only add to your score if it’s in your Hometown at the end of the game.

A not so simple task.

Capital Lux is played over three rounds. At the end of each round, you compare the cards in your Hometown against the cards in the middle of the table (The Capital). If you have a higher point value of a card type in your Hometown than in The Capital. Then you immediately lose all of that type of card from your Hometown.

Therefore, you need to constantly pay attention to this balancing act. Where you need to score a lot of cards, but always make sure there’s more in The Capital.

Thankfully, Capital Lux gives you all the tools you need to do this.

Simple but complex

Capital Lux reminds me a lot of Love Letter. It uses the same thought patterns, but where Love Letter treats you to a fine dining experience of logic and deduction. Capital Lux waits in the back alley for you to come out, and then beats you up, stealing your wallet with its cunningness, greed and ruthlessness.

And it all begins with the card drafting phase.

Starting with one hand of cards you pick two and pass on the rest. Continuing this until there are no more cards to pass on, and you have an entirely new, curated, hand of cards.

While you’re passing around these cards, you’ll get a cheeky peek at what other cards are available, and what other players might be planning. Allowing you to adapt your strategy to counteract their plan before the round even begins.

After drafting is done, the rest of the round is played out in turn order. Where you choose to play a single card into your Hometown, or The Capital. The dichotomy here is that playing the card to your Hometown gets you points, whereas playing it to The Capital activates the card’s special power.

It’s such a simple, but tough decision of what card to play, to which location, and when.

This is what makes Capital Lux such a blast, it takes what should be an easy decision but adds so many ramifications that it’s hard to know if you’re ever making the best choice.

A big game in a tiny box

A lot of the difficulty in figuring out the right move is that you have some idea what cards other people have, but also each card is so influential to the game state. For example, by playing a card to The Capital you get a special power, but also increase the number of points people can have in their Hometown for that card type.

If that weren’t enough, one of the cards special powers it to adjust the number of points in The Capital. Allowing you to bluff, or play around with information that only you know.

Capital Lux is a damn near-perfect small box game. From the very start of the game, it feels like you’re on the edge of a cliff face. Where one wrong move can see you free-falling. You’re doing everything you can to build up the points in The Capital so you can add more points to your Hometown.

Meanwhile, everyone else is doing the opposite and trying to push you off – while also balancing on a cliff themselves.

This combination of bluffing, deduction, card play and tension makes for a fantastic board game and one of my favourites.