Most of the time people refer to card games they’re talking about Poker, Canasta, Hearts, or some other game that can be played with a normal deck of Playing Cards. Board games typically refer to games with some sort of board like Monopoly, Risk, Settlers of Catan, etc. Today we’re going to be talking about games that many classify as board games but revolve around cards.

Coup

Coup is a fantastic game. It’s extremely easy to pick up after one or two rounds and the rounds don’t last much longer than 5-10 minutes. The aim of the game is to be the last person standing with at least one of your roles. You start with two role cards in front of you (there are 5 different ones so there will be duplicates) that have their own unique abilities.

Duke - Allows you to take more money as your action.

Captain - Allows you to steal money from other players. Cannot be stolen from.

Ambassador - Allows you change up your roles. Cannot be stolen from.

Assassin - Allows you to pay to kill someone’s role.

Contessa - Cannot be assassinated.

The catch is that your roles are hidden so no one knows if you’re telling the truth. This is a big game about bluffing but a lot of the fun is trying to figure out who’s lying and who is telling the truth; but you have to be careful because if you wrongly accuse someone of lying, you pay the price of losing one of your roles. You can take out your opponents by calling out their lies, having them wrongly accuse you, use the Assassin’s ability to murder them,  or once you have enough money you can coup them.

Evil Baby Orphanage

This game is fantastic for people that think they can keep anyone from becoming evil. The premise is that you and the other players are Time Nannies attempting to prehabilitate (yes pre) some of history’s most notorious figures such as Adolph Hitler, Atilla the Hun, and Bloody Mary so they don’t become so infamous. Each baby has a point value, 0+ abilities that influence your entire orphanage (and sometimes the orphanages of other Nannies), little tidbits about the person, and creepily adorable artwork. One of the great parts of this game is that there is no cap on how many people can play. Be warned though that this game can take anywhere from about 15 minutes to 1+ hours. Overall though, this game is a lot of fun.

Story War

Battle your friends by telling stories and create a fantasy world in the game: Story War. This is a card game for 3 or more people. One person is a judge who rules all matters, while the rest of players need to tell stories, describe characters and try to convince the judge that they deserve to win the game. It isn’t complicated at all and it’s portable. In this Story War, you make things up. Sky whale can fight zombies in the Volcano, or Hamlet can go to high school and eat a mega mushroom.  My personal favorite is Keyboard Cat, whose catchy tune triggers dramatic twists of fate. There are no limitations and no rules. Use your imagination and Let’s fight!!

Gloom

Negative points are good. This is the first rule I heard when I played this game. Life is beautiful because there are so many good things happen around us. However, we also have dark times and they are components of our life. In the world of Gloom, you are in control of your character's’ fate. Let them suffer from loss, disease, and tragedy in order to gain negative points. Just when you think your day cannot get any worse, even worse things happen.  After all, the point of this game is to be sad. In the world of Gloom, everything is gray and nobody is happy. At the end of game, the player with the lowest total Family Value wins. Darkness exists with brightness. Without sadness to compare with happiness, we will not realize how beautiful our lives are.

Smash Up

In the game Smash Up, there are 5 bases. Each base has a designated point value that it needs to reach before it breaks. You add these points to a base through the use of your minions. Once broken, the bases reward the 3 players that contributed the most points to it with different amounts of Victory Points. The first player to win 15 Victory Points from breaking bases wins.

The best part of Smash Up is how unique each round of the game is. Each player gets a deck of minions and action cards to use, which is made up of 2 different factions. These factions are chosen at random, so it’s different every time. In one game you could be fighting using Robot Mages and in the next you could have Unicorn Ninjas. You never know what you’re going to get, and there’s a different strategy to each pair.