A bunch of these pages and hub guides have fancy titles, and yet, when we’re left with card games, there’s just too many types of card games to come up with something pithy. Should deckbuilding games fall under this category? (Editor’s note: I said no and moved them to a different Hub page.) Does any game with cards count? Or are we just talking about things where the cards are the primary interaction mechanism for the game? This kind of stuff will keep you up at night, provided you’re the kind of person who’s kept up at night by the nuances of maintaining a board game review site. If you are that kind of person, might I recommend getting into the reviewer business? There’s no money here, but you certainly have the right kind of brain problem for it. But I digress.

Within the wider world of card games there are many genres, ranging from the storied trick-taking games of yore to the more modern drafting games to, frankly, the difficult-to-categorize games that we just call “card games”. One of their main strengths is that they can cover a wide variety of genres and themes. Even here, we’ve got space exploration via The Crew, time travel shenanigans with Time Chase, chameleons, geishas, bears, and more. I love this category because the games are also often easy to pick up and easy to take with you, improving their approachability for many gamers without sacrificing strategy or complexity. There’s a great mix of both, here, so let’s dive in and check out a few of my favorites!