How to play Tenzi
Set up
Players
TENZI is a game for between 2 and 6 players.
What you need to play
10 six-sided dice numbered from 1 to 6 for each player. Yep, that’s a whole lot of dice! Six players? That’s 60 dice! But don’t worry, in the market there are packs of 100 dice of excellent quality at a very good price.
No shifts!
No turns, no waiting. Everyone plays at once!
Goal of the game
Who wins?
The TENZI game is won by the first player who gets all 10 dice to show the same number.
Tenzi rues: playing a game
Roll dice and choose number
All players play at the same time. Everyone shouts: Three! Two! One! Go! They roll their 10 dice, choose a number from the results and set aside the dice showing that number.
And now… let’s go!
They pick up the remaining dice and roll them again. Any die showing the number chosen earlier will be quickly set aside with the others. Then roll the remaining dice again , and keep going until they all match!
Game over – And the winner is…
And the winner is…
The winner is the first player to get their 10 dice to show the same number.
Tips for playing Tenzi
The table
Use a big enough table so the dice don’t get mixed up.
Colored dice
Use different color dice for each player or the game will be chaos.
Sure, investing in colorful dice for a one-minute game might seem over the top, but if you take into account the number of Tenzi variants that exist, you will see that it is not so, that with these beautiful dice you can play dozens of games.
Tenzi game variants
VARIANT 1 – One at a time
Instead of rolling all the dice at once, it is done one at a time. Before starting, all players line up their 10 dice. Everyone shouts: Three! Two! One! Go! They choose a number, set it aside and start rolling the other dice one at a time until the chosen number comes up. The first to get all 10 equal results wins.
VARIANT 2 – Doubles
The first player to get 10 doubles wins. The 10 dice are thrown and if two threes are rolled, they are set aside. We throw again and if two fours are rolled, we put them aside. And so on. The first player to run out of dice wins.
There are many, many more variants of Tenzi. There is an excellent book that covers them all in depth: 77 ways to play Tenzi. Perfect for those who are seduced by this fun dice game mechanic that mixes chance and speed.
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