I liked it, but my friend thought there were just too many options and that a little more direction was needed. A friend and I tried playing that way recently. So instead of having to do 2 sets of 3 on the first round you could go for a run of 9, 7 of one color, or whatever other phase you thought you could make with the cards you have. The thing I wanted to try was to let players complete the 10 phases in any order they want.
It’s pretty fun but I always thought it would be interesting to mix it up a bit and recently I got a chance to experiment with the game. There are 10 phases in all that have to be done in order and the first one to finish all 10 phases wins. You try to make certain combos of cards, like 2 sets of 3, a run of 8, 2 sets of 4, etc. Each round you get 10 cards and every turn you draw a card and then discard one. If you’ve never played it, the deck consists of essentially two decks of playing cards. The card-based is by far the more established game, so it’s the one most people have played. Ever played Phase 10? The original is card-based but there is also a dice-based one that’s pretty fun.