MASTER LIST of Games playable with a MODIFIED (or UNMODIFIED) deck of STANDARD playing cards. PLEASE ADD!
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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OK everyone -- here is my first geeklisk. Please go easy on me.
Now most people are aware of the popular geeklist by Sonja of games playable with a standard deck of cards. A very useful list. At the risk of flames of piracy, I wanted to create a MASTER LIST of card games that are playable with a modified (or unmodified) STANDARD deck of cards. Modification rules include (but are not limited to):
Multiple decks of standard cards.
Marking up cards with *simple* symbols, numbers, or letters.
Addition of simple playing pieces (i.e. dominos, counters, poker chips, bits from easily aquired thrift-store games).
Variants of games playable with a single deck of cards.
Games playable with a 5-suit, 6-suit deck (i.e. rage, 6-nimmt, and similar geeklist items).
This list should NOT include the following:
(Standard card games using a single deck of cards)
***Update: as I've been adding games that require two decks, etc..., I've eliminated this restriction and am allowing ALL GAMES (EASILY) PLAYABLE WITH A STANDARD DECK OF CARDS.
The following restriction still applies:
Marking-up cards with large amounts of text (i.e. MtG) should NOT be listed.
Now a word about piracy. Please use this list as a reference to *try* out games that you may find appealing. Many of us waste a ton of money on games we have never played that we've seen on BGG that end up not beoing our cup-of-tea. This list will allow us to temporarily make some homemade versions of card games that look interesting *before* we go out and buy them. Am I making myself clear here? If you enjoy the game -- please, PLEASE support the designer.
Please add and please tip if you found this geeklist useful!
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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35 cards in 5 colors with the values 2,2,3,3,4,5,6
2 black Joker cards with the value 2
(mark up 5th suit) -- requires 4 decks
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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- 2-4 players
- 5 suits, 10 cards in each suit: the real game has 1-5 twice in each suit, but with Sticheln cards, use 1-5 and 11-15 and only look at the last digit (1=11 etc)
- Extra components needed: you have to cut 11 manor/city tiles and 10 treasure tiles from some cardboard. Just write the names and numbers on with colored pencils or crayons, no drawing skills necessary. There are plenty of photos of all of them in the game's image gallery (like this one: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/133171). Don't forget that the reverse side of the city/manor tiles look like treasure tiles.
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78.
Board Game: Tarot
[Average Rating:6.70 Overall Rank:1576]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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14 cards in the four regular suits (there is a fourth figure card inserted between the jack and the queen). Add to those 56 cards 21 trumps and a special card which is called the excuse (l'excuse) for a grand total of 78 cards.
3+ decks
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79.
Board Game: Scopa
[Average Rating:6.72 Overall Rank:1609]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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A-7,J,Q,K (one deck -- 40 cards)
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Take 14 cards from each of 6 suits and 10 of the black cards to make up your Klunker deck. You'll need a start marker, 5 player markers, and 5 'shop windows'. Read the rules and you'll understand perfectly. It's a fantastic set collection game by Mr. Bohnanza. I should note that you can also play this with a Bohnanza deck.
Requires 8 decks.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Playable with 2 decks of cards.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Uses 2 decks of standard cards.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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1-7 in 6 colors (43 cards), plus lego (or similar) men.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Cards up to 20?
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Ben Bodrero
United States
Tremonton
Utah
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Well, technically you could with three decks. You just need to come up with three different sounds for the four standard suits and some tokens to hide under a cup.
A stretch for this list, but it could work if someone REALLY wanted it to.
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86.
Board Game: Don
[Average Rating:6.20 Overall Rank:1711]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Don / Serengeti
3-6 players
6 suits, 5 cards per suit numbered 0-9 (different distribution in each suit)
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Sure.
Netherlands
Rijen
Noord Brabant
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This is a 'deck of STANDARD playing cards'.
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88.
Board Game: Rage
[Average Rating:6.17 Overall Rank:1731]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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This one is a bit tricky. You would need 6 suits of 0-15, plus wilds. Would require marking up 4 decks of cards.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Playable using at least 2 standard decks of cards.
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91.
Board Game: Coda
[Average Rating:6.09 Overall Rank:1912]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Two decks of A,2,3...Q with separate backs. Lay face down on the table. The only problem is that you have to keep looking at the cards...
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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3 suits, numbered 1-20 (requires 2 decks of cards)
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Playable with a standard deck (12 "suits" of 4 cards each) -- Just swap suits and rank!
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Not sure of the tile distribution, but this looks like it can be played with A-10 (multiple sets of 10), counters, and a homemade board.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Playable with a standard deck of cards.
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96.
Board Game: Blink
[Average Rating:6.02 Overall Rank:2071]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Variant game, "Speed", can be played with a regular deck of cards.
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97.
Board Game: Pitch
[Average Rating:6.82 Overall Rank:2108]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Uses standard deck of cards (plus jokers)
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98.
Board Game: Whist
[Average Rating:6.52 Overall Rank:2106]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Playable with a standard deck of cards.
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Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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4-6 players
5 suits, 3 numbered 0-20, a 4th suit numbered 0-18, and a 5th suit numbered 9-11
- The fourth and fifth suits are only necessary if playing with 6 players; otherwise, four suits numbered 1-18 are adequate
requires 2+ decks
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100.
Board Game: Olé!
[Average Rating:6.53 Overall Rank:2194]
Glenn Laurent
United States
Lakewood
Colorado
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Four suits 1-15, chips
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Denver
Colorado
Tremonton
Utah
I did end up marking up two decks to try Battleline - pretty crude though. I definitely need to find that game! And that really is the power of this list - try something cheap to ensure you will be happy to spend the money on the game.
I love the idea behind the piecepack. Nice classic components, public domain—both these factors makes it timeless. But so few games makes me want to bring it to the table. Many piecepack ports require tables upon tables of crib text or memorization.
The degree of orthogonality is too big. Or too small, I forget which. I’m no math wiz.
The rainbow deck has a lot of redundancy. The dice suits match up with the colors, for example.
Edit: they’ve changed the rainbow deck a lot since last I looked at it. One good thing they’ve got going on now is that the two colors that are supposed to be shared actually have a common icon on them.)It’s even harder to play Hanabi with the rainbow deck than with a couple of identical Bridge decks.Decktet ports OTOH can be fun because they usually drop any aspirations of isomorphism. Which is a double edge sword—designer games are sometimes fun because of how well the numbers work out and how well they are tested. E.g. Lost Cities where five suits are just perfect.
ni'o:
As for piracy, I love, or would love, to play good games with timeless classic components. But many newer games are better than traditionally evolved hodge-podge (with many notable exceptions, of course).
It’s less a matter of »Heh, heh, heh… I see this nice game, wonder how I can rip it off to save money!« and much more a case of »I have these beautiful decks of playing cards. [Or: This nice Piecepack, or this cool checkers set, or go set or Rummikub tiles or what have you.] I want to have fun with them with a good game. Which good games can I find that I can play with these tactile components?«
And yes, part of the charm/promise of these »generic« systems are that they lure us with their words of saving shelf space, saving money. I live in less than 240 feet² and that’s with shower, kitchen, books, drawing equipment, bed, clothes… there has to be a limit. To what I spend on games and to how many games I will store here. Where do I draw the line? How many decks, of what is essentially the same suits and rank system with minor variations, do I need to buy? But those reasons are the same reasons pirates use…
I can play Lost Cities with plain cards and Knizia will lose out. Or I can play go and Knizia will lose out.
How humanity should react to opportunities and problems with the value of ideas as opposed to tangible goods is an unsolved problem for now.
A new world of porting opportunities has arisen since I learned the Bridge suit order: clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades. [mnemonic: alphabetical order of the English names]
Now there’s truly a three-dimensional array of 1–4 × 1—13 (in two distinct categories no less, faces vs numbers) × [number of decks], and any categories can be conflated either in parallel (e.g. suits can be ignored, just having duplicates of each rank) or in serial (e.g. suits can trumph each other, in effect creating a linear array where the two of diamonds follows the highest clubs). This goes for each axis.
Get three decks from the same company with identical backs. Two of the decks should be the same, but the third should differ significantly. For example, jumbo vs standard (or the other way around). Or another set of suits if you can get weird cards.
Now you don’t even have to write anything on the cards.
For example, the five civilizations in Lost Cities can be clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades and Big Hearts.
Card games with significant amount of text, such as Magic, are trouble, of course, but other than those…
Many card games have cards with one or two dimensions. Colors and numbers are common.
“Colors” in one game can become numbers in your port, and “numbers” can become colors, if need be.
With 2 + 1 deck setup above, you have access to potentially:
8 (one feature, suits) × 14 (numbers) unique cards.
or 4 × 14 with up to three of each one in duplicate (if you can count Big Suits as regular suits for that particular game)
or up to 14 card types with up to 12 in duplicate. So one-dimensional–decks like Coloretto (7×9 + some two-point cards and so on) become a cinch.
Or you can mix it up: let most cards have suits and ranks as usual except that all jacks, for example, mean this-or-that.
Or you can switch in specific weird-suited cards to carry some extra semantic load in some games: i.e, in Triumvirate, put in a Big Suit for the tree, five and seven. They still count as a five of hearts but you don’t need to memorize which cards are legion cards.