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Players: 2-4 (ages 10+)
Playing Time: 20-30 minutes
No matter how many frequent flyer miles you have (or how many stamps you’ve got in your passport), the 10 Days games (like .nightsandweekends.com/articles/06/NW0600029.php>10 Days in Europe, Africa, and the USA) always present a geographical challenge—and 10 Days in Asia, the latest game in the series, is definitely no different.
The newest 10 Days game is played just like the others. Each player is given a rack that fits 10 cards (each representing one day of your 10-day trip). To begin, players take turns placing a card in their rack until each player has 10 cards. The object of the game is then to create a 10-day journey through the countries in Asia, traveling by foot, by ship, by plane, or by train—using country cards and transportation cards to get around.
On each turn, you can either choose from a card that’s face-up on one of the three discard piles or you can choose a card from the draw pile. You then use that card to replace one of the cards on your rack. The card you removed then goes face-up on one of the discard piles, and your turn is over.
Play continues until a player completes a full 10-day journey. That player is then the winner.
Though it sounds simple, 10 Days in Asia is an incredibly challenging game. That’s not to say that it’s a difficult game to learn; on the contrary, it only takes a few minutes to figure out the rules. It is, however, a very difficult game to win.
For starters, you’ll need to locate all kinds of tiny countries (many of which I’d never heard of—and several of which I couldn’t pronounce if you paid me) on the map. It may sound easy, but this is no elementary school geography lesson here. You may be able to locate the continents on a map—but do you know where Azerbaijan is? And then you’ll need to figure out how to get from one place to another in a very specific number of steps. So after you locate Azerbaijan on the map, can you tell me how to get from there to Myanmar in four steps? (Just for the record, I’d recommend taking the train (1) to Kyrgyzstan (2), walking into China (3), and continuing on to Myanmar (4).) Of course, one of your opponents may already have the Kyrgyzstan card that you need—or it may be buried at the bottom of the draw pile. So you might want to have a back-up plan, just in case.
See what I mean? It’s not as easy as it seems at first glance.
It is, however, a whole lot of fun. And, as an added bonus, it’s educational. No only will you learn to find Asian countries on the map, but each country’s card contains a few facts as well.
Sorry, Mr. Heuvelman—but 10 Days in Asia is more fun than I ever had in your sixth-grade geography class.
