10 Days in Europe: Overview
Ever wanted to take a trip to Europe, but you can't because you don't have the money? Well, this game won't change that, but at least you'll have some fun pretending that you get to plan out a full ten days on the beautiful continent. Oh, Iceland is there too.

The basic idea is that you have a slate of tiles in front of you, ten in total (to span the 10 days that you spend in Europe). You must start your journey in a country, and you must end journey in a country. Modes of transportation include airplane, ship, and by land. The "hook" is that you cannot move the tiles around once you've placed your starting hand--you can only swap a tile, from a discard stack or draw pile, with one in your racks.

That's pretty much it. I won't get into the rules too much; I don't think reviews ought to be nothing but rules re-hashers.

Production Quality
I can't speak for earlier editions; I own the most-recent printing. As for that one, I can say that I was overall fairly pleased with what I got. The box had a nice heft when I looked at it in the store, and bringing it home I was happy with the construction of the box itself. The artwork outside is just fine indeed.


The heart of the game is the tiles. There is one for each country except for a few, like Germany, France, Spain, and others labeled with an asterisk--those have two tiles each. There are also three of each plane color, and several ship tiles. The tiles are pre-punched, which is a help since there are a lot of them. Included is a little plastic tray to hold the tiles in place in the box. Nothing to look at, but functional nonetheless. The tiles are good, thick cardboard and ought to hold up just fine to normal wear, but I imagine that the corners of the tiles will get dogeared over time.


Next, the wooden tile holders--each player gets two, one for days 1 to 5, and another for days 6 to 10. Seems most players on the 'Geek put them at a slight angle to each other; this works well to shield them from other players. I'm glad these are wood, simply because they add some weight to the game (literally) and have a nice solid feel to them. However, the day labels are printed on them in gold ink (or paint?) and I'm concerned about long-term wear on them. That said, it really isn't an issue--they're only stylistic labels anyway, and don't technically serve a game function.


Finally, there's the map. It's a fairly nice mounted map board, roughly (but not exactly) six times the surface area of the box. Mine has a slight ripple on the paper near Ukraine; it's not an issue, but I seem to recall others mentioning this. The board itself, ironically, serves no other purpose other than to indicate relative positions of countries, their colors, and their connections--that is, you do not directly interact with the map in any other way. Thus, so long as each player can see the map, you needn't even lay it flat; I suppose if you were really pressed for space, you could keep it folded and just pass it around as neded.

Score: Certainly an 8 out of 10. The map feels a bit "wobbly" to me (I don't know how to describe that), and the ripple irked me slightly, but it doesn't detract overall. I subtract one point from 10 for those issues, and another because only the creme de la creme gets a full 10.

Rules
Again, I'm not going to get into an explanation of the rules; that's left for elsewhere. Instead, I'm going to critique the presentation of those rules. For me, it's rare to come across a rulebook that I can read in one sitting and feel as though I've understood every single nuance of those rules; it's even more rare that I don't have to go back and re-read them each time I sit down with the game. While certainly the complexity of the game has a lot to do with both issues (especially the latter), in general if it's a well-written, well-designed rulebook, I can get the overview on my first reading and know enough about how to play that I can just jump in.

Certainly, 10 Days in Europe has that sought-after quality. Yes, it helps that the rules themselves are simple, but there's more to it than that. For this game, the rulebook is actually just a two-sided, four-paneled brochure, essentially--basically, four pages of the same size page as Lost Cities, give or take. They're well written, well organized, and walk you through the steps in a very efficient manner. I especially liked the summary bits; these are always welcome and can be very beneficial when playing the game after a long period away, or when introducing the game to new players.

Now, they're not the prettiest rules, graphics-wise, but that's not always important (and can indeed be a detriment).

I can say with relative certainty that once you read these rules only once, you're going to know how to play the game enough to teach it.

Score: An easy 9 out of 10. Again, it loses a point because it's my scale and I can do that.

Gameplay
So let's get to the meat of things--how does it play? I've tried a few games with two players, a few with four, and--if I recall correctly--one with three. It's slightly different with two than with more, mainly because you can't count on a particular tile being on a discard pile when your turn comes around.


The very first thing you do--setting up your initial slate of 10 tiles--pretty much dictates the rest of the game. Yes, there can be some crafty play to get you out of a jam, but realistically I'd imagine that the person who best sets up his 10 tiles is going to win most games. There's a lot of room for strategy here: you might put a country like Germany (with a lot of connections) in the middle, so that you have a lot of options coming and going; or you might put it at the beginning or end, so that you leave yourself open to various paths across the country. You might set things up as best you can to minimize the overall tile swaps (in other words, get the first several days set up perfectly), or you might opt to get a few clusters set and connect things from there.

But beyond that initial setup, you still have lots of strategic (an tactical) options. Paramount of course is the game-winning condition of getting all your days linked up, but you also might choose to mess with your opponents, denying them important countries like Germany and France or an airplane that hasn't come up in a dozen draws.

There's also a bit of bluffing that might come up. Perhaps you placed Russia (slot one) right next to Portugal (slot two), but have the matching plane in the third slot. You might, on your turn, choose to discard the plane--hoping that no one will take it--and through some complex machinations, eventually do a multi-tile swap so that, in the end, you have a Russia-plane-Portugal triad. It's risky for sure, but I've done it (admittedly in a two-player game) with great success.

A note on weight and depth: I'll state unequivocally that this is not the deepest game I own, nor is it particularly heavy. I usually don't like games that are dead simple; I prefer something with a bit of depth, some choice, some strategy. 10 Days in Europe manages to meet most of my criteria, and still manages to engage my wife. It's not a brain burner by any means, but it's still got enough of a challenge to really pull me in.

Some have called the game a puzzle; I can see why they'd think so, but for that to be true you'd have to get rid of the discard piles and draw only from the face-down tiles. So no--it's not a puzzle.

So overall, I find gameplay to be quite good, and certainly much more engaging than I would have expected.

Score: Probably an 8.5, bordering on a 9, out of 10. Loses half a point for being a bit too easy for me, relative to my wife. Loses a point for the occasional win on turn two.

Final Thoughts
I'm incredibly glad we bought this game. It was somewhat of an impulse buy--I never go into the FLGS without knowing what games I want, but I might not go in with a particular game in mind. This was one that my wife and I picked out in tandem.

It's got enough depth to keep me satisfied and is simple enough to keep my wife engaged. My gamer friend played it and liked it too, which says a lot. And it's got a small enough box that it's easy to travel with, without breaking your back or straining your bag.

We plan to get the rest of the series--USA, Africa, and Asia--soon, I suspect, and I'm sure we'll enjoy them just as much as Europe.

OVERALL SCORE: 7.5

(A note on the overall score: This isn't some average of all the scores above. Instead, it takes into account personal feelings about the game. I have few 10s in my collection; I also have few 1s and 2s. I try to bell-curve them, with a center point around 6, 6.5 or so. Anything above that is a definite keeper for me. Anything below likely hits the trade pile.)