Best Card Games

Sixteen cards, eight characters, and a genius design that creates real tension in 15 minutes. Deduce which card your opponents hold and use your cards' powers to eliminate them. The best micro card game ever made. Fits in a tiny bag, plays anywhere, and has infinite replay through subtle mind games. An essential pick up.

Russian roulette with cats. Draw cards, play cards, avoid the Exploding Kitten unless you have a Defuse card. Action cards let you skip turns, peek at the deck, or force opponents to draw. The deck is hilarious, the tension is real, and it plays in 15 minutes. One of the most backed Kickstarter games of all time for good reason.

A drafting game where you pass cards around the table building the best sushi meal. Simple rules, deep decisions about which cards to keep vs. pass. Sushi Go is the best introduction to the drafting mechanic and works with ages 8+. The adorable art doesn't hurt.

The game that invented the deck-building genre. Start with a weak hand, buy better cards, build an engine. No board, no luck except the shuffle. 500+ cards across 20+ expansions if you get hooked. Dominion is one of the most influential games ever made and still one of the best.

Social deduction at its purest. Spies (or Mordred's agents) are hidden among loyal players. Go on missions; succeed or sabotage. Figure out who's lying before the spies win. Avalon is the Arthurian-themed version with additional roles. The best hidden-role game for players who take their bluffing seriously.

Bluff your way to being the last player standing. Claim to have any character card, use its power, and dare someone to call your bluff. If you're wrong, you lose influence. Coup is the most aggressive bluffing game in this list, plays in 15 minutes, and gets incredibly tense with the right group.