My initial thoughts about Racko came from a Thanksgiving dinner with the family. A few of them were sitting around playing this simple looking card game, constantly giving each other flack for “what a terrible deal you gave me” or “stop giving me cards I don’t need”. They were all laughing and having fun, while still engaged in the game at hand. Looks like something I could get into, so I got dealt in the next game.

Before getting into my review of Rack-o, let me tell you that this family style card game was explained to me in less than 2 minutes. Seriously, it’s that simple.

You get dealt 10 cards and have to put them in your rack in the order they are dealt, the object is to slowly exchange cards out to get your rack in order from lowest to highest. The player before you will discard a card, which you can use or you can pick up one from the deck, at which point you use that card to swap out one of the cards already in your rack. This continues around the table until someone has them all in a row and yell “Rack-o”, pretty simple stuff.

The game states that it is for ages 8+, but I think it would work with even younger players.

This game reminds me of something I would have played with my mom and my aunts at a younger age, probably camping or something. You know the ones I am talking about. You got sucked into some simple card game like crazy 8s or cribbage and played for hours on end.

There isn’t a tonne of strategy involved in this one other than trying to find the best spot for your card. There is a lot of luck of the draw involved as well. Normally this combination in a board or card game would probably make the game fall into the dislike pile for me, but not this time.

I think the reason for it staying more in my good graces is because of the calmness of it. The game doesn’t take much thought or effort, it feel more like a game you are playing to keep yourself busy and/or as a side event.

What I mean by that is that you can play this game while carrying on a conversation with whoever you are playing with. For us, we were catching up with family on what they are doing these days and what is new and exciting while we were playing. There were times during the game that we would concentrate on the game, complain about our cards, or tally scores up.

That’s where this game shines the most for me. Sometimes small talk can be boring and laborious (not with my family obviously, love you guys!!), but if you can take small breaks to focus on something else then it just seems to make the conversation easier. This is not a game you would call your friends up to come over and play a game of by itself, since it doesn’t have that much substance to it.

I also like the fact that this game can be played almost anywhere. The only components you need to have are the racks and the deck of cards.

The game is only up to 4 players, so you can’t have a lot of people involves like you can with some other card games. Though I don’t think you would want more than 4 people playing since it isn’t a very fast paced game.

The cards and the racks are good quality, so they feel like they would last a long time. They also have the numbers placed on the card in a way that you can easily see if they are going from lowest to highest which is nice (see picture above).

This is a simple and fun card game that you can throw on your shelf or in your RV and enjoy from time to time. It isn’t one that you will focus your night on, in fact you might not even keep score some times. Rack-o is a fun little game that can help occupy some time when you have company and would be a decent starting game while you are trying to catch up with friends or family. It might even be used as a transition to some harder or more strategic board games if your visitors enjoy it a lot.