I'm a huge fan of card games that can be played with a regular deck of cards, and I play Cuttle with my kids somewhat regularly. It's a fast-paced game, but you do have to get over the initial learning curve of the effects. I find just printing out a piece of paper with a quick reference on it helps.
As others have alluded to in the thread, teaching people the rules is a barrier. As I looked around for a professionally printed game, I found a game that was very much like Magic the Gathering, but also just a single box of cards called Mindbug.
Turns out it was designed by some folks that brought Richard Garfield in near the end of its design and he ended up having some say in the final product. I've played it a couple of times and each game is only played with a random subset of the cards, so the combinatorics create a lot of replay value.
Epic Card Game is another cheaper/fast MTG alternative. The base set costs $10 and comes with 120 unique cards, enough for 4 players, constructing decks, or drafting. No lands like in MTG, no weak cards, I found it to be really fun.
The name is stupid though, impossible to search on the web or YouTube (everybody had an "epic" round of some card game), a shame.
I'm also a huge fan of games that use a standard deck. I absolutely love Regicide for example, which can be purchased with an original deck (the art is nice) but plays with any 52-card deck.
For anyone who wants a more complex game proximate to this design, there's a small production called Reinforcements (https://reinforcementscg.myshopify.com/). Non-collectible, single box.
You play a hand of up to 5 cards each turn: Adding cards to (concealed) stacked ranks of defending troops, attacking an opponent's ranks, using a card's ability. The suits have different defensive properties when arranged in a rank, and combine in interesting ways; there are also "ultimate" powers players can grab from the center by forming their ranks with particular arrangements of suits, which act as turtle-busters.
Highly recommended, quite fun, probably plays best 1v1. Definitely a lot of small rules to absorb, so it's a more complex beast. But nowhere close to the complexity of Magic.
+1
Regicide is a great game, difficult to master, but when playing with the same people often you learn how to play and work off each other in subtle ways.
Here are the notes I wrote for myself as a magic player, to translate it into purely MTG terms. (These probably aren't enough to explain on their own, but they'll probably help MTG players who want to get the gist.)
Your opponent has 21 life and you win when your creatures have at least that much power. You can’t attack.
Setup: dealer goes second and starts with 6 cards, opponent starts with 5 cards. Hand limit of 7.
On your turn:
Either play 1 card or draw 1 card
Point cards (ace - 10; ace is 1) are creatures with power equal to their point number.
Face cards (and sideways 8) are enchantments.
No lands or mana costs.
"Playing" a card refers to casting that card or channeling that card.
Every point card has “channel - discard this card: Choose a creature with lesser value. Destroy it.” (suit matters, spades > hearts > diamonds > clubs, e.g., 8 of hearts is greater value than 8 of diamonds or any 7 but less than 8 of spades or any 9.) Note that this doesn't target.
Most point cards can be played as sorceries for an alternate effect:
Ace: wrath of God
2: disenchant OR muddle the mixture (this is the only instant and does not count toward your 1 card per turn limit. Everything else is sorcery speed)
3: regrowth
4: mind rot
5: divination
6: tranquility / back to nature
7: mind’s desire
8: sideways as enchantment - glasses of Urza
9: aura extraction*
10: none
Face cards are exclusively enchantments:
Jack: control magic**
Queen: Privileged position***
King: reduce your opponent’s life total based on the number of kings you control for as long as they remain on the battlefield: 0: 21; 1: 14; 2: 10; 3: 7; 4: 5.
Notes: The card types are pretty explicit - muddle the mixture can only counter sorceries or instants, not creatures, enchantments, or channeling. Wrath of god only kills creatures, tranquility only kills enchantments.
Rules can differ, depending on the source:
* sometimes as "reflector mage for enchantments", sometimes as "unsummon for enchantments".
**sometimes as "exchange control of target creature".
***sometimes as "all permanents you control have hexproof", I.e., including itself.
*I recently stumbled upon this, but haven't had the time to play yet. It seems like it would be fun.
I've recently started learning card games that use a standard deck of playing cards and have been pleased with many of them. The advantage over trading card games is that it is MUCH cheaper and takes up a lot less space and it doesn't feel like I'm chasing an impossible goal.
A number of years ago I was at a friend's house and he wanted to play Uno but he couldn't be cause his dog got into the deck and many of the cards were damaged.
I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the jokers.
So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.
That's interesting. I always assumed that UNO was a branded version of a very similar game we used to play as kids with a regular deck of cards (e.g. 7 is draw 2, Jack allows you to pick a color). The game is called Tschau Sepp and very commonly played in Switzerland. I just assumed other countries had their own version of it, and that UNO derived from it.
As with other commenters, we used to play a game similar to what is now Uno with a standard deck, we call it "pesten" (bullying), but the wiki page says it's similar to the US Crazy Eights, and internationally it's known as Mau-Mau [0].
A bit of a shameless plug, but maybe it could be of interest. Having been through a similar journey some years ago I spent some time back then to design a variation of Knizia’s Battle Line/Schotten Totten for a standard deck:
I tried to embark on this a few years ago, thinking particularly for cases where space is at a premium (airports) or I don't want to worry about wrecking/losing game components (camping, the beach).
Overall I didn't find a lot that I liked, particularly in the two-player space. Everything seemed to be either Rummy-family games around set collecting, or trick-taking games that might as well have been Hearts or Euchre.
All that to say, if you've got a few favourites, please recommend!
Solitaire based games have been big with my family recently. We sometimes do them cooperatively. If you go on YouTube, people have all kinds of newly invented ones or ones that are slight variations of another. Joker jailbreak is an example. Also Dungeon Crawl or Clear the Dungeon or something like that. I think I also watched a video for Osmosis. None of these are like Warhammer 40k exciting, but they are surprisingly fun at killing 10-15 minutes when you're waiting on your food. Even though they are 1 player games, my family and I frequently do it as a family activity or take turns. We keep a pack of playing cards in the glove compartment of the car so we never forget. I feel dumb for not learning more than a few card games as a kid.
Just a note for people who are fascinated by the idea of sometimes skipping proprietary games that require specialized, expensive, and often irreplaceable equipment: Other than pagat, and David Parlett's page (https://www.parlettgames.uk/), we can observe that the master has already given us two gifts.
New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards and Dice Games Properly Explained by Reiner Knizia
There’s a local pub by my old house that has a considerable collection of board games so we got to sample a lot that we or friends didn’t already own. It always amuses me when I figure out that a board or card game was obviously prototyped on a standard card deck. It didn’t happen a lot but it did happen a few times.
Four kinds of cards in 1-2 stacks? 10-13 cards of each kind? 2-4 special cards that are identical? Hmm, I wonder how this game was invented…
I do wish we would get back to games that were just played with a deck of cards though. More options for bored people at small gatherings.
There are tons of them, mostly thanks to a renaissance in Japan starting maybe a decade ago but spreading elsewhere.
Taylor's Trick Taking Table is a YouTube channel dedicated to them. The Portland Game Collective's Discord channel is the de facto English language home to the movement.
Most of them are very small scale and artisanal but a few bigger publishers have also started doing more of them in the past year.
The Tokyo Game Market has literally hundreds of new ones released every year but most don't have English and can only be bought in Japan.
A few smaller companies like Tricky Imports and Newmill Games are importing them, though.
There are quite a few made in niche communities but often not very discoverable, as they aren't commercially viable and marketed. One notable exception is The Emissary[1] which had a successful retail release as For Northwood![2]. Kni54ts[3] is often held up as another very good example of the genre, making very creative use of the deck, but you can find many more browsing through the links.
Couldn't you just translate the rules to a standard playing deck? Seems like a PITA, but if you dont want to go through that effort, the ruleset inventor should get compensated for their effort...
Readit News
As others have alluded to in the thread, teaching people the rules is a barrier. As I looked around for a professionally printed game, I found a game that was very much like Magic the Gathering, but also just a single box of cards called Mindbug.
https://mindbug.me/
Turns out it was designed by some folks that brought Richard Garfield in near the end of its design and he ended up having some say in the final product. I've played it a couple of times and each game is only played with a random subset of the cards, so the combinatorics create a lot of replay value.
The card effects are interesting, the illustrations illarious and the interractions a lot of fun.
The twist of the game, the mindbug itself, is a blast of bluffing and gambling that garanties some smiles.
Limited to 2 players but a great small box to have on all occasion of you are into that kind of stuff.
The rules are simple so ir's easy to get in.
The name is stupid though, impossible to search on the web or YouTube (everybody had an "epic" round of some card game), a shame.
https://www.epiccardgame.com/learn
I second Mindbug too. Also Radlands.
You play a hand of up to 5 cards each turn: Adding cards to (concealed) stacked ranks of defending troops, attacking an opponent's ranks, using a card's ability. The suits have different defensive properties when arranged in a rank, and combine in interesting ways; there are also "ultimate" powers players can grab from the center by forming their ranks with particular arrangements of suits, which act as turtle-busters.
Highly recommended, quite fun, probably plays best 1v1. Definitely a lot of small rules to absorb, so it's a more complex beast. But nowhere close to the complexity of Magic.
Link to rules: https://www.regicidegame.com/how-to-play/
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/307002/regicide
Dead Comment
Your opponent has 21 life and you win when your creatures have at least that much power. You can’t attack.
Setup: dealer goes second and starts with 6 cards, opponent starts with 5 cards. Hand limit of 7.
On your turn: Either play 1 card or draw 1 card
Point cards (ace - 10; ace is 1) are creatures with power equal to their point number. Face cards (and sideways 8) are enchantments. No lands or mana costs. "Playing" a card refers to casting that card or channeling that card.
Every point card has “channel - discard this card: Choose a creature with lesser value. Destroy it.” (suit matters, spades > hearts > diamonds > clubs, e.g., 8 of hearts is greater value than 8 of diamonds or any 7 but less than 8 of spades or any 9.) Note that this doesn't target.
Most point cards can be played as sorceries for an alternate effect:
Ace: wrath of God
2: disenchant OR muddle the mixture (this is the only instant and does not count toward your 1 card per turn limit. Everything else is sorcery speed)
3: regrowth
4: mind rot
5: divination
6: tranquility / back to nature
7: mind’s desire
8: sideways as enchantment - glasses of Urza
9: aura extraction*
10: none
Face cards are exclusively enchantments:
Jack: control magic**
Queen: Privileged position***
King: reduce your opponent’s life total based on the number of kings you control for as long as they remain on the battlefield: 0: 21; 1: 14; 2: 10; 3: 7; 4: 5.
Notes: The card types are pretty explicit - muddle the mixture can only counter sorceries or instants, not creatures, enchantments, or channeling. Wrath of god only kills creatures, tranquility only kills enchantments.
Rules can differ, depending on the source:
* sometimes as "reflector mage for enchantments", sometimes as "unsummon for enchantments". **sometimes as "exchange control of target creature". ***sometimes as "all permanents you control have hexproof", I.e., including itself.
I've recently started learning card games that use a standard deck of playing cards and have been pleased with many of them. The advantage over trading card games is that it is MUCH cheaper and takes up a lot less space and it doesn't feel like I'm chasing an impossible goal.
I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the jokers.
So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau-Mau_(card_game)
Deleted Comment
https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/191552/vassal
It is not the first such variant, but one that I felt a bit more pleased with than the other variants I found.
Overall I didn't find a lot that I liked, particularly in the two-player space. Everything seemed to be either Rummy-family games around set collecting, or trick-taking games that might as well have been Hearts or Euchre.
All that to say, if you've got a few favourites, please recommend!
[0] https://Perplext.com
Haggis, Greasy Spoon, Crisps, Dickory, Vidrasso, Cupid: Tricks and Tactics, Tuhao.
New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards and Dice Games Properly Explained by Reiner Knizia
Two of the books I'd take to prison.
Four kinds of cards in 1-2 stacks? 10-13 cards of each kind? 2-4 special cards that are identical? Hmm, I wonder how this game was invented…
I do wish we would get back to games that were just played with a deck of cards though. More options for bored people at small gatherings.
Taylor's Trick Taking Table is a YouTube channel dedicated to them. The Portland Game Collective's Discord channel is the de facto English language home to the movement.
Most of them are very small scale and artisanal but a few bigger publishers have also started doing more of them in the past year.
The Tokyo Game Market has literally hundreds of new ones released every year but most don't have English and can only be bought in Japan.
A few smaller companies like Tricky Imports and Newmill Games are importing them, though.
[1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DB2YF46s0oVFUSIpR9vxoGIbhpT... [2] https://www.sideroomgames.com/product/for-northwood/ [3] https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2946002/wip-kni54ts-a-solo-...
(Supposedly linked from that site somewhere, but I got it from the reddit thread linked elsewhere here.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20100107192618/http://airship.ho...