Publisher
White Goblin Games
15-30
minutes
€17
cost
1-5
players
Game overview
TEN is a push-your-luck card game where you try to get sets of cards by drawing them in your turn. These cards may not exceed a total of 10, otherwise you get nothing!
In TEN, the starting player starts by drawing cards. These cards all have a number and a colour. The aim of the game is to get as many cards of each colour in order as possible. When collecting the cards, you may not exceed 10 total points or 10 in money cards, otherwise you are out and you get no cards. So you have to make sure that you stop before you do. There are also wild cards which can be used for any colour or number. You can't take these cards immediately, but they create an auction. The player to your left can start by bidding on the wild card. In player order, each subsequent player may now make a higher bid. The player with the highest bid must pay that number of chips and receives the wild card immediately. The starting player then continues drawing cards.
In addition to wild cards, there are also money cards. These can be deducted from your total. So if you pick up a 5 and then a 4 money card, your total is 1. In this way you can sometimes go on for a while. If you decide to stop, you may choose between cards and money. If you choose the cards, all the other players receive that amount of money. If you choose money, you get the same amount of chips, but your cards are placed in the market. Only if you got cards, you may buy one card from the market which costs the same as its value.
When all cards have been drawn, the game ends and each player may buy one more card from the market. You get points for the largest set of consecutive cards of a colour. If you have the whole set, you get an extra bonus point.
Our thoughts
TEN is an addictive card game. The cheerful packaging not only contains a lot of colourful cards, but also a combination of fun mechanisms. TEN combines different mechanisms like set collection, push your luck and auction in an original way. This combination of mechanisms works very well and makes TEN a perfect filler game.
A filler game is a small game that you put on the table between larger board games. You can think of it as eating ginger between eating sushi or smelling coffee beans when you've smelled too much perfume. In our opinion, this term is a bit too mean for TEN. Sure, you can use this game as a filler game, but TEN is definitely more than that. TEN is the card game that you play over your Sunday morning coffee, that you play after a busy day at work with your parents or during a cosy evening with friends. A simple, but good and versatile game.
Although TEN uses different game mechanisms, the game is easy to learn. You can perform a few actions, such as taking cards, bidding and buying cards. The combination of mechanisms is incorporated into a streamlined game. Want to play TEN with your parents who never play games? No problem, you have TEN explained in no time. Sometimes this simplicity of a game means that the game is not challenging enough for the experienced player, but that is not the case with TEN. This game is certainly also fun for the experienced player. The set collection, push your luck and auctioning in TEN can fascinate most people for a long time. For a simple game it is very often exciting. Will you continue with the risk of losing? Or do you play it safe? Fans of Quacks will recognise this feeling very well. Do you like Quacks? Then don't miss out on TEN.
The versatility can also be seen when playing with different numbers of players. TEN is fun in larger groups, but is also entertaining with two players and can even be played solo. So it is certainly not a card game that's better when there are more than 4 players.
We noticed that with two players you sometimes get situations where one player has no coins and the other player has. Therefore, that player can buy all the wild cards for 1 coin. This way one of us could buy 4 wild cards in a row, which felt a bit unnatural. This does not happen very often and you can also prepare for it by trying to always have coins in your supply. That's a tip from us!
As far as we are concerned, this is definitely a reason to want TEN in your collection. An accessible, but incredibly fun card game that you can play at any time. TEN certainly has the potential to be played often. We often choose this game to take along to family and friends. Besides colourful cards, different mechanisms, there is also a lot of fun in the cheerful box of TEN!
Pros and cons
+ Simple rules
+ Fun for all kinds of players
+ Not much downtime
- No variation for replayability
