[Sound-Off Sunday] 5 Great Card Games You’ve Probably Never Played (But Should!)

Have you ever turned off the TV and/0r video games, sat down and spent an evening just playing cards with your friends and family?

We do this pretty frequently at the Jordan house. It’s a lot more fun than watching a movie, and it’s lead to some legendary rivalries. Card games are a lot cheaper than board games, and they’re usually easier to play.

But when most people think of card games, they think things like Poker, or Blackjack, or Uno. Not us. Here’s a list of five card games that we enjoy playing… and that you might like too!

Gotta love that horny helmet and chainsaw.

1) Munchkin: Back in the early days of Dungeons & Dragons, there were two kinds of role-players: those who were interested in developing their characters through role-playing, and those who just wanted to kick down the door of every dungeon, kill all the monsters, take all the treasure, and get to level 10 as quickly as possible. This latter group generally consisted of younger players, and they became known as “munchkins.”

And that’s the premise of this simple card game. Everyone at the table begins as a level 1 human with no class. But as you take your turn, you flip over a “door” card — “kicking down the door” and either fight the monster you find or loot the room. The monsters are generally pretty goofy and named with puns — for example, “The Shadow Nose” or “The Great Cowthulhu” — and the weapons you’ll use to attack them are humorous as well. For example, you can get a “vorpal sword” that gives you a special bonus against monsters that have the letter “J” in their names, or you can get a “horny helmet” that’s just a piece of Viking-inspired headgear, but which sounds very naughty.

Groaner puns aside, what’s really fun about Munchkin is the way you can stab your friends in the back by assisting the monsters they have to fight or throwing curses down on them. Since the object of the game is to be the first player to get to level 10, most people are willing to help other players out in their lower levels. But once a player reaches level 9, everyone else at the table will be gleefully against him or her, often coming up with ingenious ways to prevent that player from winning the game. And that’s where Munchkin really shines — it’s won partially by skill, partially by luck, and partially by being able to outwit everyone long enough to slip a winning combination of cards through.

Munchkin itself has a bunch of expansion packs that add things like steeds, new weapons, new monsters, and new character classes and races. But it comes in many other stand-alone varieties, too:

• Star Munchkin is the space equivalent, lampooning sci-fi shows and films.
• Munchkin Bites is the horror equivalent, lampooning monster movies, Halloween and horror in general.
• Munchkin Impossible makes fun of the spy and espionage genre.
• Munchkin Fu takes on ninjas, martial arts and kung-fu films.
• Munchkin Cthulhu is for fans of H.P Lovecraft’s bizarre epic about that which man was not meant to know!
• Super Munchkin lampoons superheroes.
• The Good, The Bad and The Munchkin makes fun of westerns.
• Munchkin Booty takes on pirates.
• Munchkin Blender throws several of these varieties together into one nutty game. (Though you can always combine sets, if you like!)

There’s even a Munchkin Quest board game, Munchkin Dice, a Munchkin d20 paper-and-pencil RPG (and a Star Munchkin equivalent), and other Munchkin merchandise that can have an effect on the game, like bobbleheads, t-shirts and bookmarks.

We own several versions of Munchkin, and we enjoy it quite a bit. I’d recommend the original game (with expansions) and Munchkin Bites for starters, since both are extremely fun. From there, any Munchkin is good Munchkin.

Price range: $25 for a core game, $10-20 for expansions.
Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Fairly simple.
Length of play: 1 -2 hours (but longer if you get too many people playing)
Family-appropriateness: Many of the cards are tongue-in-cheek, but there’s nothing grossly raunchy.
Recommended number of players: We usually play with 4, though we’ve done as many as 15. When the game gets that large, it’s best to split the group in half, just because it takes so long to go around the circle as everyone plots and schemes.

Make up the rules as you go along in Fluxx!

2) Fluxx: It all begins with two simple rules: “Draw 1. Play 1.” But as the game goes on, new rules can be added, and the objective of the game can shift rapidly. Within a few turns, the rule can be “draw 3, play 5″, with the added caveat that you can only end your turn with one card in your hand. And while the goal of the game might begin with the objective of trying to collect the cards “milk” and “cookies,” the goal can be replaced, sometimes several times in one turn, and an additional rule can be thrown down to make it possible for there to be two different ways to win the game.

That’s the way a game of Fluxx goes. It’s a chaotic card game where you literally make up the rules as you go along by playing cards. It’s extremely simple to play, and always unpredictable — I’ve had games last close to an hour, and I’ve had games finish within a few minutes. The unpredictability factor means that it’s impossible for someone to dominate the game through sheer skill, and the haphazard way that rules can be stacked really makes the game take turns that will foil and long-term strategies.

Winning the game is accomplished by accumulating cards called “keepers” that portray simple things, like “love” or “peace” or “rocket” or “the moon.” If the goal “All you need is love” is played, any player who just has “love” and nothing else will win. If the goal “Rocket to the moon” is played, and player who has both “rocket” and “the moon” wins. Keepers can be stolen or destroyed, and goals can be replaced, so the best strategy is to try to play the winning goal and the appropriate keepers down at the same time.

Fluxx comes in other editions as well, and some include “creepers,” which are bad cards that automatically go in front of you if you draw them. For example, in Zombie Fluxx, creeper cards are actual zombies, while in Monty Python Fluxx, they’re things like “The Spanish Inquisition” or “The Knights Who Say Ni”. Even though the presence of creepers in your collection generally prevents you from winning the game, there are ways around in — there’s a goal in Zombie Fluxx called “Zombie Baseball Team” that states that if you have nine zombies in your collection, you win!

The varieties of Fluxx currently include:
•Fluxx 3.1, the version we have, which has 84 cards and several expansions (Jewish Fluxx, Christian Fluxx, Family Fluxx)
•Fluxx 4.0, the latest version of the game, which has 100 cards, including some creepers not in earlier editions.
•Zombie Fluxx, one of my favorite versions, where you attempt to collect weapons or means of escape to get rid of all the pesky Zombie creepers.
•Eco Fluxx, the environmentally themed version of the game where you collect animals and environmentally conscious items and see nature at work.
•Monty Python Fluxx, the latest version of the game, which is wonderful for fans of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and which has a little bit of other Pythonesque humor thrown in for good measure.
•There are also special language editions like Japanese Fluxx, German Fluxx, and Fluxx en Espanol.
•You can get a few extra cards from Looney Labs, the maker of the game.

The only thing that could possibly be better would be if they could somehow do a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Fluxx. Maybe I should email them and suggest that…

Price range: $15-20 for a core game, $5-10 for expansions
Learning curve: About 10 minutes.
Ease of play: Very simple.
Length of play: 2-42 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Extremely appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: You can play with two people, but I’d say 3 or more is ideal. Since this is a fast-moving game, you can have large numbers of people (8, 9 or 10) and still keep things under control somewhat. But the more players you have, the harder it is for someone to actually win.

Much less gore than cutting off heads on your own...

3) Guillotine: It’s the French Revolution, and the peasants are revolting… and not just in appearance and odor! This simple game takes place over 3 game “days” where you line up twelve members of the French nobility (including other corrupt people from the clergy, military, and courts) and take turns chopping off their heads down the line, one at a time! You score points by how important the person was. A lowly Piss Boy is only worth one point, while Marie Antoinette and King Louis XVI are worth five points each. You also have to be careful not to execute an innocent victim or a Hero to the People, since these cards actually cause you to lose points!

What makes the game fun is that each player gets a handful of cards that allow them to manipulate the line or score point bonuses. So, for example, if the Innocent Victim is next to be executed, and it’s your turn, you can play a card such as “Trip” and move the victim back one place in line and take the Palace Guard behind her, leaving the next player to either have to take the victim or find some other way to manipulate the line. There’s certainly an element of luck involved, and the real skill involved in the game is figuring out how to upset everyone else at the table. But when you’re playing a game that makes fun of the French, everyone’s a winner, right?

Price: $15-20
Learning curve: About 10 minutes.
Ease of play: Very simple.
Length of play: 20-30 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Fairly appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: 3-4 at a minimum, though you can play 6-8 comfortably.

Experience all of the fun of time travel... from your kitchen table!

4) Chrononauts: You’re a time traveler stuck in an strange and alternate timeline where John Lennon was assassinated, the Titanic sank, and Soviet communism collapsed. But in your home timeline, John Lennon is still alive, which led to marijuana being legalized. The Titanic avoided the iceberg, and blew up later on in the 1940s. And since Ronald Reagan was assassinated in 1981, the Soviet Union is alive and well. What else can you do but hop in a time machine, change history, and find your way back home?

If this sounds like a crazy game, it is. But man, is it a lot of fun. It starts off with a timeline that looks something like this after a few rounds of play:

The picture is from the official website, where you can learn more about the game!

There are two kinds of cards on the timeline: linchpins and ripplepoints. Linchpins are the big events in history; if you alter them, you create ripples in time that will cause several of the “ripplepoint” cards to flip over and become paradoxes. You can fix these paradoxes in two ways: first, you can alter time again by flipping the linchpin back over and removing the ripple, or second, you can apply a “patch” to a ripplepoint and change history further.

You alter time with the cards in your hand, which give you all sorts of time-traveling abilities. You begin the game with a secret identity (which tells you which timeline you’re from) and a secret mission. If you decide that manipulating the timeline is too much trouble, you can attempt to complete your mission by collecting artifacts from the past, present and future. For example, one mission is to collect three different kinds of dinosaurs, while another sends you after holy relics like the Ark of the Covenant, the Crown of Thorns, and the Videotape of the Creation of the Universe.

One of my favorite things about Chrononauts is that it encourages role-playing, so if you change history so that JFK is only wounded, you’re supposed to explain that you tackled Lee Harvey Oswald as he was firing the rifle and that Kennedy lived on as a result. But if another player wants JFK dead again, they can play the appropriate card and then explain that they were the second shooter, behind the grassy knoll. Now, imagine having to explain why you helped the Nazis win, or how you encouraged the US to start World War III (which actually brings about the end of the world… in 1962.)

If that doesn’t sound like enough fun, you can get a booster pack of extra identites to make the game even crazier. There’s also a version of the game called Early American Chrononauts that starts in the days of the colonies and goes up through the Civil War. Oh, and you can even stack both games together for a game called “Ubernauts,” which is quite a lot of fun indeed! (If you want to go it alone, there are also rules for a version called “Solonauts,” where you help eight time travelers make it home. It’s not as fun as playing with others, though.)

If the game sounds like it could even be educational, creator Looney Labs agrees — they’ve even developed lesson plans so the game can be used in the classroom. If you even slightly enjoy history, this is a game to try.

Price: $20 for the core games, $3-5 for the booster pack.
Learning curve: About 20 minutes.
Ease of play: Easy.
Length of play: 40-60 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Fairly appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: 3-4 at a minimum, though you can play 6-8 comfortably (and even more if you play Ubernauts).

Set is one of those games Mensa people like.

5) Set: Twelve cards are laid out on the table, each depiciting a shape, a color, a number and a shade. Your job is to find a pattern that consists of three cards and add it to your collection before other players spot it. As cards are taken off the table, more are added until every possible set is captured. But what makes the game challenging is that sets don’t just have to consist of cards that are alike — they can also consist of cards that are all different!

This simple pattern-matching game is great for a quick warm-up round to get your mental energies focused. People who have a strong sense of the visual will really clean up initially, since this game is about learning how to spot things quickly and grab them. But once you start to get good at the game, it’s very easy to spot patterns you’ve seen before and fun to yank them out of someone else’s hands when they spot the pattern a split second after you do.

Learning curve: About 30 minutes.
Ease of play: Moderate.
Length of play: 10-20 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Extremely appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: 2-3 at a minimum, though you can play 4-6 comfortably.

Such a simple game... and yet so much fun!

Honorable Mention: Apples to Apples

Apples to Apples didn’t qualify for my list because it’s a game that’s actually fairly popular. But if you haven’t played it, you should. The premise of the game is simple — every player holds seven cards with a noun of some sort — a famous person, an object, an event, or so forth. Each player takes turns reading off a card describing something , and the other players each secretly submit a noun that they think fits the description. The person reading the card judges the entries, and gives a point to the one he or she feels is best (or funniest).

So, for example, the descriptive word may be “Messy,” and the cards that other players turn in may be “My Room,” “Earthquakes” and “Adolf Hitler.” The player who read the card will pick the most appropriate noun, find out who submitted it, and give that player the point. As you may have noticed from my example, this is a very subjective decision — one person might feel that their room is messy, while another might find a strange appropriateness in Earthquakes or fascist dictators!

It’s very simple, and very fun. This is a game that I’ve even played with my non-gamer grandparents. It’s almost guaranteed to get the laughter going around the room! My only caveat is that I don’t play the game with children under the age of 10 or 11, since it’s a little above their level. Even the kids’ versions of the game can be difficult for some kids to play since they’ll need to have enough of a vocabulary to be able to play cards.

There are expansion sets for Apples to Apples, as well as a children’s version, a Bible version, a Jewish version, a British Isles version and a travel version. Expansions simply add more cards that can be mixed in to the core deck, though you actually can play the expansions on their own if you really want to. You can also buy versions where you can make your own cards with an inkjet printer. Since there are two different publishers for this game (creator Out of the Box and Mattel), it’s often hard to tell which version you’re buying. I’d say stick with one publisher or the other and you’ll avoid duplicate cards. The Party Box is probably the best one to start with.

Price: $25-40 for a core set, plus around $15-20 for the expansions
Learning curve: About 5 minutes.
Ease of play: Very simple.
Length of play: 30-60 minutes.
Family-appropriateness: Extremely appropriate for most families.
Recommended number of players: You can play with three or four people, but I’d say 5 or more is ideal. Since this is a fast-moving game, you can have large numbers of people (10+) and still keep things under control somewhat. But the more players you have, the harder it is for someone to actually win.

3 Comments

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  By Andrew Hackard, January 12, 2009 @ 9:38 am

  Thanks for the great comments on Munchkin, Sean. It’s an honor to be mentioned along with so many other great games.

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  By SeanJJordan, January 12, 2009 @ 9:43 am

  Hey Andrew, thanks for reading. You guys keep up the good work … I’ll keep spreading the gospel of gaming!

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1. [Sound-Off Sunday] Five Board Games You’ve Probably Never Heard of (But Definitely Should Try!) | Sean Sounds Off... Random Musings of an Iconoclast — January 18, 2009 @ 1:19 am

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