Fewer than 50 Cards
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards games comprising 49 or fewer cards.
I'm a great fan of card games, and recently I've become interested in games that get by with fewer cards than what I consider to be average (50+).
In many cases, several versions of the game exist. I've noted the edition to which I'm referring, though other editions might contain the same number of cards.
Sometimes my distinctions about which cards to include in the count might seem a bit murky. I ignore blank cards, cards featuring advertisements, and cards I consider to be non-essential to play (e.g. player-aids), but this my subjective judgment.
Also, I'm making the call about whether the game is a card game or not (e.g. LotR: The Confrontation has fewer than fifty cards, but is not, in my opinion, a card game).
Additions are welcome.
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1.
Board Game: Pico 2
[Average Rating:5.92 Overall Rank:6718]
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 11 (numbered 4-13, 16)
Edition: Pico 2
I'd be surprised if someone turns up a game with fewer cards than this (a card version of Tic-Tac-Toe would only need 9, though). Pico 2 is quick and mildly fun, but in this case the game play seems proportional to the quantity of components.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 25 (five each of cards numbered 1-5)
Edition: En Garde (+ 8 special cards in the new Duell edition)
Knizia more than any other designer has impressed me with his ability to weave together the simplest mechanisms to create an interesting system. With only twenty-five cards, players still have opportunity to manage their hand consistency and to lure their opponent into dangerous confrontations in which there is still some doubt as to the outcome.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 28 (14 each in two character suits) (+ 2 cards depicting how the Jekyll/Hyde partnerships should seat themselves around the table)
Edition: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
With just 28 playing cards, this game manages to be wonderfully complex. It incorporates most mechanisms one would expect from a trick-taking game (minus trump), and adds in such features as score multipliers, point values for the cards captured in a trick (a la Mü), and the wonderful card selection method, by which the active player selects another player to play on his/her behalf, and that player selects the actual card to be played.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 30 (five colored suits numbered 0-5)
Edition: Loco!
When first I saw this game I scoffed at its simplicity. Upon finally playing it I found that the simple ruleset and sparse components still allow for an interesting game, with room for planning ahead and lots of Lost Cities-ish agony, meaning that I want to withhold some cards until the last possible moment.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 32 (four colored suits numbered 3-9, three wilds, and 1 snake)
This game has a mechanism similar to that in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, by which a player determines which card to play, but the opponent decides to where it shall be played. There are definitely some fun things going on. The limited number of cards helps keep the game length appropriately short.
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6.
Board Game: Zoon
[Average Rating:5.45 Overall Rank:13719]
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 32 (two teams, each with 12 warriors, 3 trumps, and a team card)
Edition: El Moondo or Zoon
This isn't really a card game, but more a board game using cards in place of pawns, like in Stratego, Chess, or Stealth Chess. Each card has its own movement rules and its own set of 4 attack strengths. The game could probably survive with even fewer cards per side, though numbers are needed to satisfy the battle attrition, one of the only ways players are able to zero in on the opposing flag.
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7.
Board Game: Story
[Average Rating:3.57 Unranked]
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 32 (each double-sided)
My one playing of this title is my only foray into the genre of free-form storytelling games, but I can see that it could be a good mixture of creativity and real-time reflexes. I suppose any story could be told that eventually works in a word as specific as 'frog', but having only 64 unique words might limit the replay value. In this case, the jumbo cards and Matthäus art are a plus, but more than any other party game, I'd say this is one players could manufacture for themselves.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 33 (numbered 3-35)
Similar to Loco! in that the addition of chips allows the cards to have extra worth. The card count seems about right here, to allow for some to be removed, and for a certain length of gameplay. The clever mechanism of trying to get runs of cards to minimize one's penalty points sounded better in theory than in my playings, but I'm hoping to give it another shot with more players.
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9.
Board Game: Camden
[Average Rating:6.27 Overall Rank:3915]
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 36
A tile game disguised as a card game. This card count seems rather arbitrary, decided upon perhaps to ensure a certain card distribution, or perhaps to control game length. The most attractive of the Hip Pocket line, in my opinion.
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10.
Board Game: Nyet!
[Average Rating:6.85 Overall Rank:1212]
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 40 (four suits numbered 1-10) (+ 4 non-essential character cards, kept in front of players as a reminder of each player's identity).
Another example that 52 cards aren't essential for an interesting trick-taking game. The gimmick here is in the bidding board, by which trump, über-trump, start player, and card point values are determined. The trick-taking element is more straight forward here than in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 42 (ships numbered 1-10 in each of four player colors; 2 asteroid cards)
The game will be played with fewer cards if there are fewer than four players (potentially a 21-card game). Each player's armada has ten ships; the game could probably get by with fewer, but I'm guessing ten was settled on during playtesting as being the amount necessary to ensure the right duration of play and the right amoung of unpredictability. The card play is near-total chaos, but it's fun to see the battle resolved (lower-numbered ships fire first), and see one's plans thwarted or suprisingly enhanced as ships are blasted out of space. (I wish there were a better way to determine the laser pathing.)
This title is probably one of the most original on this list in terms of what it does with its cards.
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12.
Board Game: Chiamo!
[Average Rating:5.46 Unranked]
[Average Rating:5.46 Unranked]
Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 45 (four suits ranked 3, 2, Ace, Re, Cavall, Donna, 7-4; 5 bid cards) (+ 6 reference cards)
Chiamo! is "based on the classic 40 card Italian deck"; if so, then 40 rather than 52 is the standard in Italy, and thus only games with fewer than 40 cards would be unusual to Italian players.
I still haven't played this long-owned game, but it looks to have interesting bidding and partnership elements layered onto traditional trick-taking.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 45 (five colored suits with differing distributions of cards) (+ 5 trophy cards that needn't necessarily be cards)
There are many similarities between this title and Adam & Eva: each location features some quantity of cubes/tokens that players are trying to collect; these objects are won based on which cards are played to which side; the location is resolved when a certain quantity of cards have been played to it; players are able to play cards to their opponent's side of the location.
For some reason Balloon Cup feels a bit screwy to me. I think I'll enjoy it more when I get a better handle on how to play it, and when I've internalized the card distribution for the different colors. Also, it is my understanding that the rule allowing players to play to either side of the hop is not necessarily canonical, so perhaps I'll try without that rule, giving it a more Schotten-Totten-like feel of wanting to delay my play until my opponent has filled the opposing side.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Cards: 48
Another tile game masquerading as a card game. Well, the game itself isn't presenting itself as a card game, but superficially it looks like one. I've enjoyed all my playings of this title, but would welcome an over-produced, 3-D tile version.
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Will M. Baker
United States
Silverton
Oregon
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Just kidding.
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Scott A. Reed
United States
Lawrence
Kansas
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Cards: 36 (numbered 1-36, in three colors)
Günter Cornett's game based on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story. Players must play in the suit led if possible, but and high card takes the trick unless someone plays a value less than the current value of the Imp's Bottle. An interesting little trick-taking game designed for exactly three players.
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Greg Hinkle
United States
Twinsburg
OH
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Cards: 40
You're dealt a hand of 15 each (2 player game) and have to make do with just those cards for the length of the round. Highly strategic, with a learning curve.
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Jim Wickson
United States
Unspecified
Unspecified
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One of many cardgames using only 32 cards
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19.
Board Game: Scopa
[Average Rating:6.55 Overall Rank:2663]
'Bernard Wingrave'
United States
Wyoming
Ohio
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This old Italian game uses a 40-card deck. It may be played with a standard deck (removing 8's, 9's and 10's) or a tarot deck (removing 8's, 9's, 10's, Queens and all the major arcana) if one does not have an Italian deck of cards.
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fishhaid
United States
Downers Grove
Illinois
Hi there, Face here!
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We played a lot of euchre when I was a kid, it's a great and fast game. The game I grew up with used 24 cards (9-A) unless you count the 6 + 4 each team used to keep score up to 10. Oh, wait, let's say those are player aids...
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Clark D. Rodeffer
United States
Ann Arbor
Michigan
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Hammer of the Scots (25 cards) is representative of war games that also use small decks of cards.
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22.
Board Game: Clue
[Average Rating:5.65 Overall Rank:7576]
Clark D. Rodeffer
United States
Ann Arbor
Michigan
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Clue(do) (21 cards) is an odd one. How would you assign this to a print run? Perhaps the volume is large enough so that whole sheets of each card are printed and then collated later?
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23.
Board Game: Mus
[Average Rating:7.90 Overall Rank:1770]
Jorge Montero
United States
St Louis
Missouri
I'll take Manhattan in a garbage bag. With Latin written on it that says "It's hard to give a shit these days"
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Cards: 40
Mus, like all games taht use a spanish deck, uses only 40 cards. The game is pretty hard to describe. It's a bluffing game, just like poker, but you play with partnerships like on Bridge, and there are 4 different ways to 'rank' each hand.
IMO, the ultimate bluffing game.
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Anye Freer
United States
Frisco
Texas
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This one has about 26, not sure exactly but it's well under 50.
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Kristof Tersago
Belgium
Sint Truiden
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About 19 cards. One card per player.
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