Flash 10 2013

Wolfgang Kramer's Flash 10 is a quick-playing take on the Rack-O game system, with players trying to arrange cards in numerical order – but doing so all at the same time.

The card deck includes 120 cards, twenty showing a thunderstorm and the other hundred numbered 0-99, with each card ending in 0 or 5 showing a lightning bolt. Someone shuffles the deck, then each player receives ten cards face down, which they place in a row in front of them. Playing simultaneously and as quickly as possible, players reveal these cards (without rearranging them), then start taking cards one at a time from those scattered in the center of the table and placing them on one of the ten cards in front of them, thereby creating stacks of cards as the game progresses. If a player draws a thunderstorm card, she can place it on any stack.

As soon as a player has ten number cards in ascending order from left to right, she yells "Stop!" and ends the round. If she's correct, she scores 10 points, plus 2 points for ending the round. Each other player scores points for the number of cards in order starting from their left stack. In addition, each card with a lightning bolt (whether in order or not) is worth 1 point, while each thunderstorm card is worth -1 point. Players then shuffle the cards and start another round. Whoever reaches 50 or more points first wins!

Flash 10 includes two variants. In one, players can end the round even if they have one or more thunderstorm cards in their row. In the second, players use nine cards instead of ten, and they must arrange their cards in ascending, then descending order with the fifth card in the row serving as the turning point.