Games with just cards

Endless fun can be had with a deck of fifty-four cards! Many sites, like Pagat.com, have great selections and ideas to offer. However, I prefer coop games, where everyone wins or loses together, and these are hard to come by. Here are a few, to make sure I'll never lose them.

Games listed here will never require more than a regular deck of cards, paper, pencils, some sort of tokens (coins?) and regular six-sided dices.

• Magic Rabbit 2-4

  Originally from the board game BoardGameGeek: Magic Rabbit.

  Place the cards from the heart set, ace to nine, randomly in nine piles face down, representing the rabbits. Place the cards from the spades set, ace to nine, randomly on the nine piles face up, representing the hats. Place three tokens on piles 1, 5, and 9, representing the doves. Prepare a timer of 2m30s.

  The goal is, within the time limit, to order all hats and rabbits. The leftmost pile should contain the both Aces, the next pile both 2s, etc. Players are not allowed to speak or communicate.

  On their turn, players take one of three actions, if a pile is not blocked by a dove:

  • Look, in secret, at the rabbit in a pile,
  • Swap the hats of two piles,
  • Swap the entire content of two piles.

  Then, at the end of their turn, players may also move a dove from a pile to another one.

  Harder: To win, hats must be sorted ascending, but rabbits must be sorted descending.

  Harder: During setup, secretly replace one of the rabbits with a joker. It acts as the card it replaced, limiting information.

  Harder: Instead of looking at a rabbit in secret, players show it to every other player, without looking themselves.

  Harder: Add a fourth dove. For added challenge, add a fifth dove.

  Harder: The doves are lazy, and can only be moved to adjacent piles.

  Harder: Two doves are the Lovebirds, and must stay adjacent to each other.

  Harder: A dove is the Owl, and other doves cannot be adjacent to it.

  Harder: Doves can only be moved when the player chose to look at a pile, and then only to that pile.

• Portraits 1-4

  The single-player version can be found on Pagat.com: Portraits.

  For a coop game, simply give each player their own line of 5 assets. The players then take turns trading and/or swapping with the public and private markets. Players are allowed to swap assets of equal value with each other at any time, without using their action.

  Easier: Players can buy assets (not portraits!) from the public market by paying with cards from any suits.

  Harder: Swapping cards between players uses your action.

• 4×4 Rummy 1-4

  Idea suggested by many people on forums, and the only version I found is this guy who doesn't know what he's talking about. So I made my own.

  Setup: Deal 4 cards to each player, and place 4 cards in the corners of a 4×4 grid in the middle.

  The aim is to clear the table. If at any moment the table is empty, the players win.

  Players take turns adding cards to the table. They may add only one card, and it must be adjacent to a card on the table. If they complete a serie, they may remove all cards of that serie from the table. They then draw a card, filling their hand back to 4 cards.

  Series in this game can be triplets (three cards of the same rank in a row, like 7♥ 7♣ 7♠), sequences (three cards of increasing ranks in a row, like 9♦ 10♥ J♦), or the same series with 4 cards in a row instead. Aces can be lower than 2 or higher than kings, but not both (A♠ 2♥ 3♣ and Q♣ K♠ A♦ are valid, K♣ A♠ 2♣ is not).

  The deck will not be reshuffled. Once the end is reached, players will stop drawing cards; when no player has cards left, the game is over and the players lose.

  Easier: Add jokers to the deck. They are wildcards and can complete any serie, but they cannot be used in a serie that would remove the last card from the table.

  Harder: Each player's hand size is 3, not 4.

• Controlled Infection 1-4

  Originally found on Google Drive.

  A pandemic game about social distancing!

  Setup: Separate the suits into four decks (regions) and take out the Aces (hospitals). Keep only one hospital per player, placing them face-up on the table, remove the rest from the game. Shuffle the Jokers (doctors) in any two decks, I usually put them in the Black decks. Place a token in each region: each player should choose one token as theirs, the rest are rogue. Each player should draw 2 cards.

  Drawing cards in this game is special: you should always draw the first card in the deck next to your token, then the next card in the next deck clockwise, and so on. If you need to draw from an empty deck, skip it and draw from the next deck clockwise instead.

  Then, each round:

  1. Move rogue tokens: Each rogue token discards the top card of its region, and moves that many squares clockwise. Figures are always 0.
  2. Move players: Each player plays a card from their hand, and moves that many squares. A player with no card in hand doesn't move.
  3. Draw cards: Each player draws a card for each token in their region. Their token counts, so players will always draw one card.
  4. Resolve infections: Players that have two or more cards of the same suit are infected. They discard all cards that made them infected, and must either flip a face-up hospital upside-down or remove a face-down hospital from the game to be cured.
  5. Upkeep hospitals: If no player was infected this round, turn all face-down hospitals face up.

  Players lose if an infected player cannot be treated because all hospitals are removed from the game. Players win if they can survive until all decks run out of cards (even if drawing the last cards would have infected one player too many, they win just in time).

  Doctors never count as any suit to make you infected, and when played, let the player choose which region to move to.

  When a deck runs out of cards, the region has managed to get rid of the virus and will close off at the end of the round. All tokens will be moved clockwise to the next region. From now on, moving tokens no longer step on this region.

  Easier: Add an extra hospital.

  Harder: Remove the doctors.

• Splitting Stacks 2-4

  Originally found on BoardGameGeek: Multi-Stacks.

  Your goal is to work together to play all the cards in everyone’s hands before the deck runs out. Get rid of cards by playing them on any of the stacks in the middle of the table. Cards are played in consecutive order (ex. a 5 or a 3 can be played on a 4). An ace is both the high and low card: you can play upward to a 2 or downward to a king.

  Whenever the 4th card is placed on a stack, it splits: both ends can be played on independently. In practice, this creates a new stack to play on. This repeats every four card: the stack will split again at the 8th or 12th card, and so on.

  Each player is assigned a role, which limits the cards you can play on the stacks (always one step at a time): Write the roles that you will use on small pieces of paper and hand one role to each player. Whenever a Jack is played, roles are cycled to the next player in a clockwise motion, which is sure to disrupt your strategy.

  • Monochrome: You can only play a card that is the same color as the top card on a stack.
  • Alternating: You can only play a card that is a different color from the stack.
  • Upward: You can only play a card that is one number higher than the top number on that stack, regardless of color.
  • Downward: You can only play a card that is one number lower than the top number on that stack, regardless of color.

  In a 2-players game, use only Monochrome and Alternating. In a 3-players game, keep all four roles: one role is left unused on the side will be cycled back into play whenever a Jack is played.

  Setup: Assign roles. Deal 4 cards to each player. Use cards from the deck to start as many stacks as there are players, plus one.

  Then, players take turns doing these three steps:

  1. Draw as many cards as you like.
  2. Play as many cards as you like.
  3. Pass up to one card to each other player. You must have played at least one card to do this.

  All card drawing and passing must stay within the hand limit of eight cards.

  All players win if, at any moment, all players have successfully played all the cards in their hands. All players lose if players can't draw (the deck is empty or all hands are full) and no one can play a card.

  Harder: Start with exactly two stacks, regardless of the number of players.

  Harder: Stacks will split every 5th card, instead of every 4th..

  Harder: Roles are cycled when Queens or Kings are played too, not just Jacks.

• Shamus 2 or 4

  Originally found on Pagat.com: Shamus.

  Looks complicated but amazing, I have yet to try it.

• Concensus 3-7

  The inspiration for this game can be found on Pagat.com: Oh Hell!.

  Everyone knows how to play a this game, or a variant: there's a trump suit, you bet how many rounds you'll win, a leading player plays a card and others must try to follow suit, then the highest trump/highest leading suit wins, and the winning player leads the next round.

  In the coop version, players should still hide their hand and avoid discussing specifics, but the number of bets MUST be equal to the number of cards in each player's hands, and players only reduce the number of cards in their hands for the next draft if everyone's bet was exact. The players win if they can collectively reach zero cards in hand.

  Harder: Track lives! Start with 5, lose one life if bets were incorrect, and gain one if bets were exact (in addition to moving down the number of cards). Don't reach 0!

• Eleusis 3-7

  Originally found on LogicMazes.com: Eleusis and on Pagat.com: Eleusis.

  It's a classic game, where a leader secretly makes up a rule about which cards can be played, and the other players attempt to play cards or to guess the rule.

  Setup: Deal 7 cards to each player, and start the mainline with a single card.

  Players take turns attempting to play a card: the leader tells them if it's right or not. Each correctly played card continues the mainline horizontally, wrong guesses are added vertically. If a players plays correctly, he is given a chance to guess the rule; If he played incorrectly, he draws another card to replace the one he played.

  The game is won when a player guesses the rule, or when a player managed to play all his cards. The game is lost when a player should draw a card but can't, because the deck is empty.

• The Quiet Year in the Deep Forest 2-4

  Full rules on BuriedWithoutCeremony.

  The Quiet Year occupies an interesting space – part roleplaying game, part cartographic poetry.

  Best played with people who are familiar with roleplaying.