1. Scout

How to play

In Scout, you are dealt a hand of cards that cannot be rearranged. When it is your turn, your challenge is to play a set of cards from that static hand (whether it is a run or a set) that is larger or more valuable than the cards played by the previous player.
If you do this, you can take the previous player’s cards as points, and the turn advances to the next player. If you can’t (or don’t want to), you can take a card from the current run or series in progress and place it anywhere on either side of their hand to “scout”.
The turn ends when any player’s cards are used up, or if every player scouts instead of playing cards during their turn. Every card left in your hand is against you. The score is calculated, and the game continues until you have played as many rounds as there are players in the game.

What’s special

The greatest fun in Scout is watching veteran players squirm when they realize they can’t rearrange their hands. But other than that, the game is easy to play, quick to play, colorful, and pleasing to look at.

2.Hanabi

How to play

Hanabi is a cooperative fun card games in which you play cards from your hand in order of 5 cards. But of course, there is a catch: you can never look at your cards. Instead, you turn the cards face out so that everyone else can see their information.
On your turn, you can play a card from your hand (without looking at it) and spend one of several timer tokens to convey specific information about the other players’ hands. For example, “This is a yellow card” or “These two cards are a 4.” Or discard a card to refresh these timer tokens. If you play a card out of order, you must flip over one of the three fuse tokens (also called lightning tokens in some versions). If you flip all three, everyone loses. Once the cards you drew are used up, everyone takes another turn, and you add the highest-valued card from each run to find your team’s total score.

What’s special

The desperation is offset by the pure joy you feel when you give them a perfectly worded hint. Their eyes widen. They confidently play the one card you all need them to play. Everyone is a winner.

3. Sprawlopolis

How to play

Each game of Sprawlopolis requires you and your friends to build a small city using 18 cards. (Each card has four quadrants, representing different areas of the city, such as parks or manufacturing. The game starts with three cards randomly turned over from the deck, which show the scoring criteria and the target score for that round. Then, the first player draws a hand of three cards, and the other players each receive one card.
On your turn, you play a card horizontally on the shared play space, then pass the remaining two board game cards to the left and draw another card from the deck. The game continues until all cards are played, at which point you evaluate your performance based on the target you found at the beginning of the game. If the team beats the sum of the numbers on the target card, everyone wins.

What’s Special

This is a fun game to challenge your friends, not because of the despite, but because of those well-designed annoyances. Friction is the point. When you shockingly, miraculously, pull it off. The process of overcoming the straight-jacket-like limitations becomes so satisfying.

The post The Best Fun Card Games Second Bullet appeared first on VartGames.

1. Skull

Skull is pretty simple. Each player has just four cards: three roses and a skull.

How to Play

If you win the bid and then succeed, but don’t find a skull, you get one point and you win halfway. An’d If you fail and flip a skull, you lose one of four cards. Either randomly chosen by your opponent or one of your own, depending on where you found the skull. If a player succeeds twice, or only one player is left holding a card. The game ends and that player wins.

What’s Special

Poker has never given me the thrills it seems to give others, but Skull really delivers on its promise. When you first play, you’re all about trying to win the bid so you can get the one of two you need to win. But soon, you’ll find out how fun it is to set traps for your friends, bid early to make them believe you didn’t place a skull on the top of your stack, and then sit back and wait for them to flip it.

2. Dominion

Dominion is the granddaddy of a game mechanic called deck building. It’s also the best card game.

How to Play

Each player starts with the same deck of board game cards. In each turn, you draw cards from your personal deck, which you can use to buy cards from the central market. These new cards go into your deck and can used to perform additional actions, buy more cards, or just get points at the end of the game.

What’s Special

Like the best traditional card games, Dominion is easy to learn and fun to play, but it reveals complexities and difficult options as you get through the first few games.

3. Cat in the Box

Cat in the Box mostly played like any other trick game.

How to Play

The game played over a number of rounds (called tricks). And in each round, players start by playing a card of a specific value and suit. Whoever plays the highest card in that suit wins. If you don’t have a card of that suit. You can play other cards, Including the Joker. Which a special card that wins even if the suit is wrong.
The fun twist on the theme in Cat in the Box (a play on Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment) is that cards don’t have suits. Instead, players announce a suit the moment they play it. They also leave tokens of their color on the game board to keep track of which cards have been played, thus eliminating that suit/card combination from the round.
You get points for tricks won, and if you bid correctly on how many tricks you’ll win. You’ll get extra points for the longest consecutive set of tokens you’ve placed on the board.

What’s Special

Balancing all of these options is what makes this game so great. And helps it improve the format by giving players more opportunities to feel clever. Which is where sleight of hand really shines.

The post The Best Card Games First Bullet appeared first on VartGames.