"How many players does that game take?"
Plenty of board games have a sweet spot -- the 2-4 player game that's best with 3, the game that says it takes up to 5 but you really shouldn't try more than 4, the 4-10 player party game that would be a joke if you actually tried to play with only 4. And generally, this is not a "flaw" I would hold too hard against any of those games. With each number of players can come a host of design considerations, and what's balanced for a group one size won't necessarily work for another.
This makes the game "6 nimmt!" quite a rarity. According to the box, it can take up to 10 people. I myself have played it with 4 through 7. It's certainly different as you add players, and more chaotic -- but I've enjoyed it every time.
The game has been published as 6 nimmt! (German for "6 takes") and Slide 5. There was even a variant with a Walking Dead theme a few years back. But the gameplay is the same. A deck of cards numbered 1 to 104 is shuffled; each player is dealt a 10-card hand, and then four more cards are dealt face up on the table, each of the four becoming the first card of a separate row that will count up during the game.
Each player simultaneously chooses one card to play from their hand, and then all of them are revealed at once. The choices are arranged in order, and then assigned in that order to one of the four face-up rows. A card is added to the end of whatever row is closest to its number (while always counting up); for example, if you play an 18 when the last card in each row is a 3, 15, 19, and 94, your 18 will be added to the end of the 15 row. Each row has room for exactly five cards. If your card becomes the sixth card in the row, then you have to take all five cards there and replace them with your card to start a new row. If your card is lower than the last card in all four rows, you must choose one of those rows to take, then use your card to start a new row.
Taking cards is bad. Players begin the game with 64 points, and are fighting an inexorable countdown to 0. Each card has a number of symbols on it (bull heads in 6 nimmt!, skiers in Slide 5) that are immediately subtracted from your score when you take it -- one icon is most common, but some really dangerous cards have five or more. The game ends if any player has fallen to 0 points at the end of a round, and the winner is the player who has the most points remaining.
The rules are simple, but the strategy is a quite entertaining little game of trying to outthink your friends. Choosing the right number to play on each "trick" is quite the exercise. "Hmm, that row has room for only ONE more card. Do I try to play there, and risk that someone will play a lower number than me that gets there first?" "Maybe I just bite the bullet on this one and take a row, because the points aren't too bad right now and I could get into real trouble later." There are a lot of fun considerations here for a game that takes only a minute or two to explain and perhaps 20 minutes to play.
Like I said, it does get more chaotic as you add more players; 7 or more, for instance, introduces enough variables that you might call it random. Yet you still have more control over your destiny than in most super lightweight games you could quickly teach anyone in your family. The emotional ride is great, from the lows of getting saddled with a row full of points to the highs of just barely escaping such a fate. It's easy, it's fast, and it's fun. Sometimes, you need a game like that. And that it can work decently with such a varied number of players is fantastic.
No, 6 nimmt! does not cross the threshold into "I would always want to play this game." But it's also fast and easy enough, with just enough going on, that it would be hard to say no to. I think it's a solid B+ that I think deserves a spot in a wide range of game collections.
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