10 Days in the USA Board Game Review

Traveling across the United States has been a past time enjoyed by many, whether you live in the United States or are from another country, like myself up in Canada. Many Canadians, for example, are all to familiar with the trip down i75 to Florida, while others load up and trek cross country along Route 66, seeing iconic locations, camping in their favourite places, or perhaps catching various sporting events as they go. In 10 Days in the USA, players will be competing to complete a valid trip across the United States. This quick and easy game is great for a wide variety of audiences, and should be a crowd pleaser, especially by casual game players.

While many games in this decade have been overproduced to create beautiful table presence, 10 Days in the USA is more about the practicality of everything in the box. It’s not an ugly game, mind you, but I would still call it non-descript. The game will include two different types of cards: 50 State cards (one for each state) and transportation cards. Each players will have their own plastic trays for holding and hiding the cards they have, and a central plastic insert will hold the draw deck and the three face-up cards. Pretty? Perhaps not to many players. Incredibly useful? Most definitely.

Players will take turns, and on their turn, a player will first draw a card from the facedown deck, or one of the three face-up piles. Where you choose your card from will depend on whether or not a face-up card will benefit you 10 day journey. Players can then decide to discard the card they just drew, or swap it for one of the cards in their tray, discarding that card instead. Think of this like a game of Racko, but with pictures and paths instead of number sequences.

There are a few things to consider. To have a valid journey, a player needs to be able to legally travel from state to state. That means you can travel on foot between two sates that share a border. So you could put the Michigan card next to the Ohio card on your board, and that would be valid. If you want to cross a state you don’t have the card for, you can use an automobile card which allows you to “skip” over a single state. So a valid sequence of cards would be Michigan – Automobile (for Ohio) – Kentucky. The game also includes flight cards, two of each colour. To use a flight card, the cards on either side of the flight card must match the colour of the flight itself.

10 Days in the USA feels like a more detailed and strategic version of Racko. And if you play the game and feel this way, don’t be surprised. That is essentially what this is. While Racko is very much luck based – with only a LITTLE bit of strategy as you attempt to determine what cards someone else might be throwing away or wanting – 10 Days in the USA is a much more strategic experience. That isn’t to say there isn’t some luck here as well. If the cards you need never turn up, and you are constantly having to change your strategy to fit what you can see, it could be tough to win the game. And I could see this being a big turnoff for some players. I found that having a liquid strategy – that is not getting too attached to what I see in front of me – was the best way to really enjoy the game. In one game, I fixated on a few cards way too much and ultimately lost. After other players revealed the cards they had, I realized there was a 0% chance of me winning because, the two cards I need to win where firmly placed AND were benefiting other players.

I enjoy 10 Days in the USA for how simplistic it is. It is an easy game to teach, and seemingly even easier to play. Like with Racko, we find ourselves finishing a few rounds in a single session. If you do get wrecked, the games never long enough that you felt you wasted a lot of time simply to lose. 10 Days in the USA might not be for everyone, but I think casual players specifically are going to find something to love here.