I've avoided Sequence for a long time. I figured there are generally better things to do with ordinary playing cards and plastic chips, and those things involve money. But the couple across the street pulled it out last week for us, and after playing it a few times, I saw that this game actually has some potential to be used as a gateway game to other "tile-laying" games - because at its core, that's what this is.

That the game uses ordinary playing cards is deceptive, because there is nothing remotely like a card game in here. This game could have had some theme tacked onto its purely abstract nature, but the playing cards work well as they are familiar to nearly anyone (read: people that don't play games much).

There are the equivalent of two full decks of cards, matching the spiraling sequences of card spaces on the board (it initially makes the card placement look random on the board, but actually just distributes the patten enough without making it impossible to find a space to play on). Only the Jacks are missing from the board, and the four corners are "free" spaces. Each player gets a hand of six cards and a pile of colored chips. On your turn, you play a card from your hand, put a chip on a corresponding space on the board, and draw a new card. Simple. Two-eyed Jacks act as wild cards, and one-eyed Jacks allow you to remove an opponent's chip from a space.

The object is similarly simple - get five of your chips in a row (any direction). With two players or two teams, you need to make two rows of five; with three, you need only one. With this goal in mind, the corners can be especially attractive because if you create a row of four adjacent to a free corner, you can automatically claim the corner to complete your row of five.

This may sound like a terribly innocuous and shallow game, not much more than an elaborate version of tic-tac-toe. In reality, there is more depth to it than that. You have only one play to make each turn, but which play to make is the question. Your hand of six cards will generally give you options to build a row of your own (offense), block an opponent's build (defense), destroy an opponent's build (with the Jacks), or just plain start in a random spot because you have drawn terrible cards. In this sense, the game mirrors more complex euro-games that offer numerous possible actions each turn but restrict you to taking only one or two actions out of those possibilities. In the middle and end game, it forces players to make hard decisions regarding building their own rows or blocking an opponent - especially since players do not know whether or not opponents can complete their rows, or are missing a key card from their hands.

These were the elements I recognized while playing three rounds of this game - I saw that there were enough shades of tile-laying games or limited action games, that having introduced this game to a group of non-gamers, I might (in the not-TOO-distant future) be able to advance non-gamers to more complex games of a similar nature.

Sequence can be played individually or in partners/teams. In partnerships, players alternate turns between teams, with every player laying tiles to build rows for the team. The key here: players cannot communicate with each other - they can't discuss which plays to make or what they have in their hands. This clearly added a significant element to the game-play. Rather than relying solely on my own garbage hand, I found that even a random play in an uncontested area of the board could quickly build into a threat because my partner would happen to have cards that complemented mine. It also meant that if I removed a chip from the board, I didn't have to wait for my turn to take advantage of it - my partner would often have the card needed to grab the spot.

Apparently the game is listed as playable by 2 to 12 players, but I honestly can't see playing the game with more than 6 players (playing in three partnerships). With more players, it seems like the number of plays each player will get to make drops as there are so many other players taking a turn ahead - the fun factor seems like it would drop off. I also think that, because of the extreme simplicity of the game, it works better for three to six players, rather than 2 - the game has more depth to it with three players (or three teams) working against each other, or with two/three teams trying to work together to build a win without communication.

While I would not immediately recommend this to be played every game night, I would highly recommend that gamers interested in opening up their non-gamer friends to more complex games consider getting a copy. It's a mass-marketed game, easy to find at any toy store or Target (plug: avoid Wal-Mart), or even at Thrift Stores. By introducing this as a foundation, you introduce players to some basic mechanics and strategy elements that they'll find in common with other games down the road.