18 Deckbuilding Games Worth Your Consideration

18 Deckbuilding Games Worth Your Consideration

What is a deckbuilding game? It’s a game where you start with a deck of simple, weak cards, and over the course of the game, you buy new cards that are shuffled into your deck. By the end of the game, you’ll have a customized deck where each hand of cards that you draw will (hopefully) be significantly more powerful than the ones you started with. This genre was first popularized by Dominion in 2008, and has really taken off in the past 15 years. Nowadays, there are a ton of awesome deckbuilding games to choose from. Here are some of my favorites, in no particular order!

Superfight

Superfight

Superfight is a game where you argue over who would win in a fight. And it’s hilarious. Each player has a character card (such as Zombie, Pirate, Kindergarten Class, or Abraham Lincoln) and some number of modifier cards (such as 10 Stories Tall, Hands are Covered In Butter, Armed With a Shotgun, or Horrible Self-Esteem), not all of which are under your control. Once all contestants have chosen their fighters, you have to argue to the judge(s) why yours would be the winner!

Cartooner/Mangaka

Cartooner/Mangaka

A game about drawing comics! The way it works is you deal out cards from the deck and draw comics based on the prompts you get. The game is played over several rounds, with the rules changing each round as new trends sweep through the comics industry, so in one round you might get points for working in a romantic subplot, while in the next, you might get points based on how many of the characters you can kill off.

Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars

 In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.