Traditional card games (played with some subset of a standard 52-card deck) have become something of an archaic art form, but they have an endearing messiness that you can’t find in modern board games. These are games that weren’t designed for a target audience, or produced with an eye on profit margins and visual appeal—they grew organically over decades, influenced by the cultures and events surrounding them. To play an old card game is to catch a (very narrow) glimpse of the past.
Unfortunately, despite (or sometimes because of) their rich cultural cachet, it can be tough to find a group ready and willing to dive into a classic. Board gamers won’t hesitate to spend 20 dollars on a glitzy new trick-taker, but pull out a deck of playing cards and you’re likely to get more than a few reticent stares.
It’s worth pushing through that hurdle, though, because there are a ton of great card games all across the genre spectrum, all for a lower price than any modern game you can think of. Here are ten of my favorites:
Honorable Mention: Regicide
Regicide can’t really be considered “traditional”, due to both its recency (it came out in 2020) and its modern design trappings (it’s a cooperative boss-battler with special powers). You can tell it has been designed with intent, rather than gradually sprouting from a collective subconscious, and it has a tight, cinematic game arc that you don’t see in more “classic” card games. That doesn’t make it any less great, though! I’m not likely to suggest a game of Regicide on a rainy holiday with family, but it is a strong testament to the robustness and staying power of the 52-card deck.
1-4 Players • 30 minutes
10. Bridge
On its surface, Bridge is a fairly simple trick-taking game. Four players in teams of two bid for how many tricks they can take, with the bid determining the trump suit for the round. In practice, the bidding is so arcane and inscrutable that Bridge puzzles are still regularly published in newspapers, and Bridge tournaments are held with the same competitive zeal you might find in Chess or Go. Sadly, that same depth is what keeps me from actually playing. For the best experience, you either need to immerse yourself in the competitive Bridge scene or find a group of exactly three like-minded friends willing to dive into the game with you, and neither event is likely for me. Still, Bridge is so distinct and idiosyncratic that it belongs on any list of great card games, and if you can find a group for it, it just might become your next obsession.
4 Players • 60 minutes
9. Sergeant Major (aka 8-5-3)
Sergeant Major is another trick-taking game, but where Bridge is strange and intricate, Sergeant Major is turgid and simple. What it lacks in depth, though, it makes up for with an unbeatable sense of flow. Each player has a target number of tricks they must win or be punished for the next round. Those targets loop in a way that pushes you through cycles of fighting for your life, then digging yourself out of a hole, then making a big push for the win… then fighting for your life again. It can take a while to finish a game, depending on what players set as the victory condition, but it maintains a wonderfully conversational tone, making it a great family game.
3 Players • 60-120 minutes
8. Cheat (aka Bulls***)
Perhaps the most morally dubious choice on the list, Cheat is a raucous bluffing game, great for large crowds and loud evenings. Nominally a sort of betting game, players have to play cards exactly one higher than the cards previously played or pick up the entire pile… except that cards are played face-down, and you have no compunction to tell the truth about what you’re playing. It’s silly, it’s unfair, and it’s arguably light on decisions, but that doesn’t make it less funny when a bad call forces some unlucky sap to take half the deck into their hand. Cheat is one of the few games I’ve seen where players will take an unnecessary risk just to get away with it—and whether they pull it off or not, someone’s laughing.
2+ Players • 15-30 minutes
7. Palace (aka S***head)
Palace is dumb. For the first three-quarters of the game, you’re playing a pretty standard beating game–players discard sets of equal-rank cards, and if you can’t beat the previous set, you have to pick up all previously played cards. The endgame is where things go fully off the rails. Each player’s final cards are face-down, and your final plays see you randomly flipping cards face-up, with no knowledge of whether your card will be valid or not. A game of Palace always devolves into nonsense, but it never outstays its welcome and never fails to entertain. Plus, when someone flips over their last card to an unlikely and undeserved win, the whole table will riot, which is a feather in any game’s cap.
3-5 Players • 20 minutes
6. Solitaire (various)
Microsoft has a lot to answer for. The version of solitaire bundled with Windows operating systems, specifically Klondike, has become so culturally ubiquitous that most people only think of that game when you say “Solitaire.” I hate Klondike, and it’s not what I’m talking about here. Instead, I’m talking about the entire sub-genre of patience solitaire games. A cheap move, sure, but in my defense, solitaire is the most personalizable entry of this entire list, so limiting it to a single game would be unfair. Without needing to worry about other players, you get to decide what “your” solitaire is, and there are so many flavors to choose from; my personal favorite is Calculation, which sees you sorting cards into four rows in a strict order, with only a few tableau piles to help organize them. If you have any interest in solo gaming, you owe it to yourself to take a look at the wide world of solitaire.
1 Player • 5-60 minutes
5. Durak
You probably haven’t heard of Durak unless you hail from eastern Europe, and if you haven’t heard of it, you probably haven’t played anything like it. Durak uses a slim 36-card deck (with all cards 2-5 removed), and it plays almost like a semi-cooperative game. Players take turns as the defender, and the rest of the table teams up to bully them. If you over-extend on an attack, though, you’re liable to get stomped when it’s your turn to defend, leading to plenty of temporary alliances, interesting timing considerations, and general ruthlessness. Durak is also part of a large contingent of classic card games that don’t celebrate the winner, and instead punish the loser—a popular and frequently hilarious mechanism in traditional card games that you don’t see much in modern games.
2-6 Players • 15-30
4. President/Fight the Landlord/Tien Len
President (or A**hole) is an interesting cultural case study. The dominant class of traditional games in Europe and the US is definitely trick-taking games, but climbing games, wherein you must either beat a previously played set or pass, with the usual goal being to get rid of all your cards, are far more popular in Asian countries. President is maybe the only popular climbing game in Western countries, and even so, its origins are probably from 20th-century China, which is home to a wide variety of climbing games.
History lesson aside, President strikes a pleasant balance between tactical decisions and frictionless gameplay. It’s not as funny as some of the other games on the list, but it’s much better for a quiet night in or a lazy Sunday. If you’re well-versed in card games, I would instead recommend Tien Len or Fight the Landlord (which have more complicated rules and more interesting decisions), but President is approachable enough to be played with almost anyone.
4-7 players (President)/3 players (Fight the Landlord)/4 players (Tien Len), • 30-60 minutes
3. Egyptian Ratscrew
Egyptian Ratscrew will surely be a divisive choice here. Players take turns flipping cards off the top of their deck, with face cards letting you pick up the whole stack unless the next player can flip over another face card. Oh, one more thing—if two equal-valued cards are ever at the top, you can slap the stack and immediately take it for yourself. That’s the core of Egyptian Ratscrew, a mash-up of two different children’s games that results in a very different beast. Different variants allow for different combinations to be slapped; I’m a fan of the “sandwich” rule, which allows for slaps even if there is a single card between the matching pair, but there are plenty of regionalisms out there.
It’s stressful, it’s fast-paced, and it’s violent, which will immediately turn off a lot of people. That said, ERS places this high on the list precisely because of the emotions and stories it can generate, both good and bad. I distinctly remember the triumph of playing with twelve other people and winning despite starting with no cards whatsoever, and the physical pain of winning a huge stack of valuable cards, only to have my best friend viciously pound my hand in frustration. Good times!
2+ Players • 15 minutes
2. Hearts
Hearts is what happens when Bridge goes off to college, meets new friends at a party, and learns about the evils of capitalism. It’s another 4-player trick-taker, but gone are the stolid auctions, strict partnerships, and endless scrabble for points; instead, the only thing you need to do in Hearts is lose as little as possible. Specifically, players earn points by winning tricks with heart cards in them, and the winner is the player with the fewest points after several rounds. You also want to avoid winning the Queen of Spades, worth a dizzying 13 points… but, if you manage to win every heart and the Queen of Spades, you actually lose 26 points, rather than earning them. Shooting the moon (a phrase that originated with Hearts, by the way) is a tantalizing prospect that everyone wants to accomplish, and that I’m 100 percent sure has never happened in all of recorded history.
Little twists like that make Hearts feel more like a modern game than any other on this list. Winning tricks is bad until it’s good, and timing when to break hearts or when to slough off other suits is crucial. Players also pass cards to each other at the start of every round, which is both an important strategic consideration and a fun, communal bit of player interaction. Hearts is no less tactically interesting than its contemporaries, but it is more playful, which makes it possible to play for hours on end without getting bored or exhausted.
4 Players • 30 minutes
1. Cribbage
Cribbage is the quintessential Classic Card Game. Even on its face, it’s a bit odd—players alternate playing cards to score certain combinations, then each player scores their original hand in the same way. The dealer also gets to score a second hand called the crib, which all players contribute to. The rules are hard to internalize, there isn’t a ton of strategy or tactics, and the game is chock-full of nonsense. Cribbage sometimes feels like a game you would make up to fleece your younger siblings out of their allowances—there’s an actual rule where, if a Jack is flipped up at the beginning of the round, the dealer for that round immediately gets 2 points. What?
And yet, Cribbage also exemplifies the qualities that make traditional card games so endearing. It’s not mindless, but it’s never so taxing that you can’t keep a conversation going. The rules are messy, but they also feel human, and you play enough hands in a game to even out the worst of the randomness. It’s a game I could never see myself turning down, because it’s so flexible to different environments—it’s a great couples game, a great pub game, and a great tournament game for larger crowds. If you only ever play a single traditional card game, I would implore you to make it Cribbage.
2-4 Players • 30 minutes
Source: Board Game Quest
