Tabletop games are broad and varied, ranging in price, size, and complexity. Card games, however, are often an exception to this. Tabletop card games can usually be played almost exclusively with just cards, are often affordable, and their rules are often (but not always) easy to learn.

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Although many tabletop games use cards as a way to interact with their rules, these games primarily use cards as their core component, and provide a varied range of experiences, from story-telling card games to Lovecraftian horror games.

Updated January 13, 2024 by Harry Ted Sprinks: With card games continuing to gain popularity in both tabletop and video games, there's never been a better time to play tabletop card games. With recently popularized games such as Scout and Bohnanza showing that there's still a market for the small and accessible experiences that card games can offer, the number of great card games available is only growing.

1 Once Upon A Time - A Card Game About Telling Stories

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 6.4/10

• Player Count: 2-6
• Play Time: 30 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.37/5
• Released: 1993

This story-based game has players crafting a narrative together through playing cards but manages to make itself mechanically engaging through a unique twist. This twist has players competing to steer the story toward their own secret ending.

In Once Upon A Time, players have a hand of cards that range from objects to locations that they can use to interrupt the current "Storyteller" and take control of the narrative. For creatively-minded players who don't mind a bit of light role-playing, Once Upon A Time is a relaxing and unique experience that is played entirely with cards and requires next-to-no setup.

2 Royal Visit - A Visually Striking Tug Of War

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 6.7/10

• Player Count: 2
• Play Time: 20-30 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.66/5
• Released: 2006

This two-player game, developed by prolific tabletop game designer Reiner Knizia, is a visually striking strategy game in the form of an elegant tug-of-war. In Royal Visit, players take cards of the same type from their hand and play them to move the character they represent along the game board, with the goal being to attract the King character to their side of the board.

Although Royal Visit's design is brilliant, it also has great production value. The card art is clean and stylized, the tokens are wooden and tactile, and the game board is a colorful piece of cloth that makes interacting with the game a joy. For fans of abstract design looking for a short two-player card game, it's hard to go wrong with Royal Visit.

3 Regicide - A Co-Operative Dungeon Crawler

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.5/10

• Player Count: 1-4
• Play Time: 10-30 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.94/5
• Released: 2020

Although Regicide can be played with a plain deck of playing cards, there are also boxed editions of the game that come with a set of custom cards. What makes the purchase worth it, though, is that the custom deck still retains the regular playing card suits. This means that players can use the deck not only for Regicide but for other card games as well.

Regicide is a cooperative slug-fest in which players battle enemies one after the other using their decks of cards to deal damage and activate various suit-related abilities. The game has a lot of strategy under its simple surface and can lead to a lot of dramatic moments as players barely defeat an enemy just before it takes them out for good. What's best about Regicide is that players can test it out with a deck of playing cards before deciding if they want the beautifully illustrated boxed edition.

4 Dominion - A Classic, Influential Deckbuilder

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.6/10

• Player Count: 2-4
• Play Time: 30 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 2.35/5
• Released: 2008

Often regarded as the first deck-building card game, Dominion is a modern classic. For the uninitiated, the standard gameplay loop of a deck-builder is to draw and play cards from a weak starting deck and slowly add more cards to the deck from a shared card shop, therefore making the deck stronger over time. There's a lot of strategy involved, and for players who have never played a deck-builder before, Dominion is a great place to start.

In the game, players begin with identical decks, which are very small, and spend their early turns gathering money to buy from a shared pool. This pool, however, is semi-random every game, and players will have to balance cards that gain victory points with currency cards and attack cards to play the most efficiently.

5 No Thanks! - A Brilliantly Simple Game About Trying To Score Low

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.1/10

• Player Count: 3-7
• Play Time: 20 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.13/5
• Released: 2004

Perhaps one of the most simple games on this list, No Thanks! has players taking turns declining or accepting cards, doing the former by spending one of their precious tokens (which are also worth points) and placing it on the card they're declining. Players will want to decline cards, as the goal of No Thanks! is to have a low-scoring hand, but accepting a card allows players to take all the point tokens already placed on it.

In No Thanks! every card is worth negative points, meaning players want to spend their tokens wisely on declining higher-value cards because if they run out of tokens, they'll be forced to take any card that comes their way. Furthermore, nine cards are randomly removed from the deck at the start of the game, adding a level of randomness that mixes up the game every time. This simple but brilliant core loop makes No Thanks! an extremely great card game for beginners.

6 For Sale - A Game Of Risk And Reward

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.3/10

• Player Count: 3-6
• Play Time: 30 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.25/5
• Released: 1997

Originally released in 1997, For Sale is a three-to-six-player game in which players are tasked with buying various properties and selling them for profit. The game has a tight playtime, at around thirty minutes, and is split into two unique phases.

In the first phase, players take turns bidding for various properties. In the second phase, players take the cards they bought to form a hand. “Cash Cards” are then revealed, and players simultaneously choose a property card to play, the highest of which gains the highest Cash Card. For Sale is simple, quick, affordable, and plays with a wide range of players, making it one of the more accessible card games on the market.

7 The Crew: The Quest For Planet Nine - A Co-Operative Trick-Taking Game

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.8/10

• Player Count: 2-5
• Play Time: 20 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.96/5
• Released: 2019

The Crew is a cooperative trick-taking game for two to five players and one of the most popular card games of recent years. The game has a unique take on the well-worn trick-taking genre of card games and explores it throughout over fifty missions.

In The Crew, players take turns playing cards and trying to win specific tricks, each requiring specific cards. Because the game is cooperative, and players are barred from communicating about the cards in their hands, players have to use social deduction to figure out which tricks they should take, and which they should leave for other players at the table. The Crew offers a rare trick-taking experience that is fresh and unique and offers a lot of playtime for a low price.

8 Air, Land, & Sea - A Fast-Paced, Condensed War Game

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.5/10

• Player Count: 2
• Play Time: 15-30 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.72/5
• Released: 2019

This war game has players vying for control over three separate battle theaters: Air, Land, and Sea. Players take control of these areas by playing their cards face up for their strength and unique power, or face-down for a flat two strength.

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Air, Land, & Sea only has eighteen cards in its box, which are randomly distributed each round; six of which go to each player, with the remaining six being discarded from the game. Whoever controls the most theaters after players have exhausted their hand of six cards wins the round. What makes Air, Land, & Sea unique, however, is that players can retreat from the round and stop their opponent from scoring maximum points; this mechanic makes losing a round feel like a tactical decision and keeps the game from being one-sided.

9 Arkham Horror: The Card Game - A Co-Operative Survival Horror Played With Cards

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 8.1/10

• Player Count: 1-2
• Play Time: 60-120 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 3.53/5
• Released: 2016

Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a two-player horror tabletop game (though it does support a third player, should players have a second core set) that has players take control of investigators with their unique decks, investigating Lovecraftian horrors throughout a campaign. This "Living Card Game" (LCG) has been supported for years now and offers a plethora of expansions and content that fans can dive into should they enjoy the core set.

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Throughout a campaign in Arkham Horror, players can customize their decks to balance their various strengths and weaknesses, adapting to each scenario, which themselves often take repeated attempts. Players can't actually lose Arkham Horror, instead marking their failures every time, working towards several objectives that determine a unique ending.

10 Bohnanza - A Chaotic Trading Game About Beans

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.1/10

• Player Count: 2-7
• Play Time: 45 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.67/5
• Released: 1997

This game by designer Uwe Rosenburg, is a frantic card game that tasks players with growing, trading, and selling beans. The bargaining, bribing, and bidding wars that ensue during the game's trading phase are what makes Bohnanza so unique, though this also makes the game less fun for smaller groups.

Bohnanza is a relatively accessible game thanks to its clear rules and simple structure, though unlike most card games, players aren't allowed to move the cards in their hand. Furthermore, every turn, players are forced to play the first card in their hand, leading to players frantically trying to trade away the beans they don't want. This chaos is at the heart of Bohnanza, and while it won't be for everyone, it's an extremely unique tabletop experience.

11 Scout - A Simple Game With A Unique Twist

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.8/10

• Player Count: 2-5
• Play Time: 15 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.34/5
• Released: 2019

This lightweight card game is best played with at least three players and takes place over a series of rounds. Every round, players play sets of cards from their hand (either runs or matching sets), but the cards played must be adjacent to each other in the player's hand. This is especially tricky because, like Bohnanza, players can't move the cards in their hand.

Players take turns attempting to beat the last set laid, and if they can't beat it, they have to take a card from it instead. This combination of unique mechanics and easy-to-learn rules makes Scout a remarkably accessible and strategic game.

12 Love Letter - A Strategic Experience With Just Sixteen Cards

Board Game Geek Average Rating: 7.5/10

• Player Count: 2-6
• Play Time: 20 Minutes
• BGG Complexity Rating: 1.13/5
• Released: 2019

Coming in a small velvet bag and packing a strategic experience into just sixteen cards, Love Letter is an extremely approachable and accessible game for two-to-six players. At the start of a round of Love Letter, players are dealt one card, then, on their turn, players draw a second card and choose one of their two cards to play. The game continues like this until there are no cards left in the deck (with one card being randomly removed at the start).

What makes Love Letter strategic, despite its simplicity, is how unique each of its cards is, as well as the fact that there are two ways to win a round. Firstly, players can have the highest value card when the deck runs out, and secondly, players can be the last one standing. This is done by playing specific cards to knock out other players, or simply by bluffing well enough to prevent being knocked out by the game's most common card: the Guard, which allows players to guess the card another player is holding, and knock them out if they guess correctly. Overall, Love Letter is a game that can be played several times without getting old, though it shines best at higher player counts.

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