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.
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:
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.
Remove all JQKA♦♣♥ from a first deck, leaving JQKA♠. Remove all JQKA from a second deck.
Distribute all cards from the first deck equally among players.
From the second deck, draw N objectives (start at 3), placing them at the center.
The player with the A♠ is the captain.
After discussion, starting with the captain, going clockwise, players choose objectives for themselves.
Then the game proceed as a standard trick-taking game, starting with the captain.
The goal is to complete all objectives. A player completes one of their objectives if they win a hand that contains the objective.
The figures are trump cards. They count as a separate fifth suit. (If the trick is in spades and you have 9♠ A♠, you must play 9♠.)
Players are allowed to talk about their strategy and their hand, but should not mention which specific cards they hold.
Easier: Once per round, players can reveal one card from their hand.
Harder: The objectives must be completed in the order they were drawn.
The inspiration for this game can be found on Pagat.com: Oh Hell!.
Distribute N cards to each player (start at 1). From the remaining cards, reveal one: that's the trump suit this round. Choose a player to start. Players agree on exactly how many hands each one will win. Then, the game proceed as a standard trick-taking game.
The goal is that everyone's bet was exact.
Players are allowed to talk about their strategy and their hand, but should not mention which specific cards they hold.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
The following games are more vague and experimental, but could be interesting with the right group.
Originally found on LogicMazes.com: Eleusis and on Pagat.com: Eleusis.
A leader secretly makes up a rule about which cards can be played, and the other players attempt to play cards and/or guess the rule.
Setup: Choose a leader, deal 7 cards to each other 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 manages to play his last card.
Originally found on Pagat.com: Shamus.
Looks complicated but amazing, I have yet to try it.
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.
If you're feeling competitive, you can play