Your Future’s In the Cards
By Marc Q
Despite what you might think with a title like that, this isn’t a post about predicting the future… or about Tarot or Magic 8 Balls, despite the fact that we periodically have each of those in stock.
No, this is a discussion about card games. And a personal pet peeve that I freely admit is silly.
See, we often get questions in some variation of “What’s a good card game?” or “I love card games, what do you recommend?”
And here’s the thing: I honestly don’t know what defines a “card game.” Is Poker a card game? Because it uses chips and tokens. What about Candy Land? It has a board, but the entire game is the deck of cards determining where you can move. What is the dividing line?
As far as I can tell, it’s arbitrary, and more importantly, it’s kind of irrelevant. What people usually mean when they say “card game” is either “I want something that’s small and transportable” or “I want something with really simple rules,” and occasionally both of those things.
And that’s great! Because there are hundreds of those games in stock. I just don’t know what counts as card games by any specific definition.
I should also point out that this is a totally “me” issue, and I doubt any of my colleagues have this particular tick about the category. I’ll be moderately surprised if Ian doesn’t add a comment or two during his editorial passes to the effect of “This is just Marc being weird, pay no heed.”
(Ian: I guess I don’t have to now. :D)
So with that in mind, let’s talk about a few games that I think will satisfy customers looking for card games!
The first is the notoriously good game Scout. Produced by the Japanese publisher Oink Games, who are famous for designing tiny, little games that really respect your shelf space. Most Oink Games measure less than 12cm on a side, making them among the smallest games available at the store! Scout is a brilliant Ladder Climbing game… I suppose I should explain that “Ladder Climbing” games are ones in which you are playing cards to collect sets (runs of consecutive cards like 4-5-6, or multiples of the same number card, and so on). Gin Rummy, Five Crowns, or Rummikub are classic examples… anyway, Scout has a deck of cards where every card has two numbers on it, one on the top half, and one on the bottom half of the card (so a card might be a 3-7 or a 2-9 or whatever). Here’s the catch: when you’re dealt your hand of cards, you are not allowed to rearrange it. You are allowed to decide whether you want to use all the top numbers or all bottom numbers, but that’s it. From that point on, if you want to play a set the cards must already be touching, and they must already be in the correct order. You have a 4-6-5 in your hand? No good! What about 3-3-6-3? Well, you can play that pair of 3s… let’s say you do that. The next player can now play a better set (a pair of 4s, or a run of three cards), or they can take one of the cards you just played, giving you a point, and put that card back in their hand wherever they want! And in either orientation! And then the next player to go only has to beat a single 3… and suddenly the game sparks. I really love it! It has a circus theme that doesn’t really matter, but the game? Pure gold.
How about “Follow the Leader/Trick-taking” games? Games like the classic Euchre, where you have to play the same suit as the first card played for the round, and the best card played wins all the cards for that round. A few excellent options for the genre includes Wizard, Fox in the Forest, and the cooperative game The Crew. The crew has 2-5 players working together to try and make sure specific cards are won by particular players, but without communicating about the cards they’re holding. A devilishly clever game with 50 different missions, all which have a gentle trajectory of increasing difficulty, adding depth and nuance to the game… if I were fancy, I’d put in a chef-kiss emoji here.
If the idea of a trick-taking game appeals, but you’re not a cooperative kinda person, then may I recommend the brilliant Cat in the Box? The idea is pretty basic: four colours for the suits, red is always the power suit, and cards numbered from 1-9… but the catch is that none of the cards actually have colours. They’re all black. When playing a card, you declare the colour using a little token to keep track of both the cards that have been played, and the colour you lead. That means your opponents can just decide to play a red card, beating whatever you played! But of course, you have to follow suit if you are able, which means if they declare they don’t have any of the colour you lead you can manufacture a situation where the only card they can play happens to be a colour they’ve declared they have none of! The rules are simple, but when you pull off causing a paradox you feel like an evil genius. It doesn’t hurt that the components are really pretty.
It behooves me to discuss one final option, which is even more simple and straightforward than the other games I’ve listed, and that’s the ol’ classic Sushi Go. There are very few games I think everyone should own a copy of, and this little box is one of them. Inexpensive and clever, this is a “drafting” style game (also known as “Pick and Pass”). Everyone starts with a hand of cards, picks one they want to keep and passes the remaining to the next player. The fun part is that this all happens simultaneously. So no downtime, no waiting for others to take their turn. Once everyone has passed their cards down the line, we all reveal the card we kept, and then pick another card! Now I know that Maverick is collecting Tempura cards, we both know that Ian is collecting Pudding, and they both know that I took some Chopsticks. This brings us to a lesson on “hate drafting”. If I take this Tempura card that Maverick really wants, that would just be tragic, wouldn’t it…
We’ve barely scratched the surface of great small box games, but I think this is as good a time as any to stop. I will mention briefly that there is a deluge of great small games coming down the pipeline for the next few months, so if you’re as excited as I am about little games, keep your eyes on our New Releases!