Since it was first designed by Doug Reuter in 1982, Sequence has been published in numerous different editions, including the edition featured here from Goliath Games. It's a game that's achieved wide distribution - so it's a title you can find on the shelves of retailers that don't otherwise stock many board games. Its appeal to mainstream audiences is predicated on its combination of simple and straightforward rules with an attractive board and two decks of standard playing cards that everyone will instantly recognise.
In Sequence, the players each have a hand of playing cards (up to 7, depending on the number of players) and, on your turn, you play a card and place a chip on the corresponding card on the board, and then you draw another card. All the cards in a conventional 52-card deck appear twice on the board with the exception of the Jacks. Two-eyed Jacks (diamonds & clubs) count as wild cards: play the Jack and you can place your chip on any open space on the board. One-eyed Jacks (hearts & spades) by contrast let you remove any one of your opponent's chips.
Your aim in the game is to create a row, column or diagonal of five chips, which constitutes the eponymous sequence. In a two-player game, you have to create two sequences to win; with three players, you just need one sequence to win. Corner squares are marked as wild, so if you have a row, column or diagonal that runs to a corner the sequence needs only four chips.
Play a card, draw a card. That's pretty much it, and it makes for an entertaining family game that's both appealing and intuitively easy to learn and play. Tho' if you're playing with a rules stickler, watch out!: this game's rules are unforgiving of those that forget to draw a card at the end of their turn (if you play strictly enforcing this rule then a player who forgets to pick up is playing with one card less in their hand for the rest of the game!)
With the proviso that you may need to house rule a more forgiving approach to forgotten card draws, this is the game to break out among friends whose eyes glaze over when you otherwise produce a game with a rules sheet that runs to more than a single paragraph. The only downside is that it's not a 'gateway' game because it's unlikely to introduce non-gamers to mechanics they won't have previously seen: anyone who has previously played Connect Four (Milton Bradley) or any of its variants will see Sequence as a natural extension.
The game notionally takes up to 12 players, with numbers above three organised into two or three teams. Oddly, the rules expressly prohibit communication between team members - indeed, they discourage all table talk! Team games usually have party game vibe about them and in our plays at Board's Eye View we found this vow of silence sat uncomfortably with the team-game format. We much preferred Sequence as a two- and three-player game, and it's one that definitely favours card counters!