Card Games 15 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn

In Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn, an expandable card game, players take on the roles of Phoenixborns, demi-gods and protectors of this world. These characters are the great saviors of their civilizations. Before they came into existence, the humans were plagued by monsters like chimeras that took away their lands and forced them to live in walled-off cities. When the Phoenixborns came, they fought off the chimeras and freed the lands for humans to take over once again.

But the time of peace was short-lived. A prophecy arose that if one Phoenixborn was able to absorb enough Ashes of others, they would ascend into full gods and take mastery over this world. This, as well as humans’ greed for land, fueled the War of Ashes. The great cities now fight among each other, each one of them with a Phoenixborn at its helm, and you will decide who will rise and who will fall to ashes.

In charge of valuable cargo, you must deliver it from Osaka to Edo. But fierce competition and the Black Tide may sink your hopes for fortune! Set sail for Japan in this exciting game for traders full of opportunities… and opportunists!

A compact game that plays fast with impactful choices every turn.

Buy, take coins, or reserve a card: no matter the choice, it will always affect your opponents’ turns.

A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)

In A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, the warring factions of Westeros await your command, inviting you to engage in a life-or-death struggle. In every game, you select devious plots and challenge your opponents on the field of battle, through back alley intrigue, and in the political arena. Whether you play a against a single opponent, in a game known as a joust, or engage in a battle of three or more players, called a melee, winning challenges against your opponents is the way to victory.

Your ultimate goal in A Game of Thrones: The Card Game is to gain influence over the greatest seat of power in Westeros: the Iron Throne! To achieve this goal, you must call upon iconic characters, such as Tywin Lannister, Robb Stark, Stannis Baratheon, Daenerys Targaryen, Euron Crow’s Eye, The Red Viper, and dozens of others. You must maneuver the members of your House and your allies in a constant battle to gain power. The first player to claim fifteen power wins!

In the game, each player has two decks: a draw deck and a plot deck. Your draw deck contains the tactical elements of your struggle, including the characters, locations, attachments, and events that you call upon in your struggle to claim the Iron Throne. You can command characters from throughout A Song of Ice and Fire, and you can march forth from the icy walls of Winterfell or muster your armies around Casterly Rock. You may even equip your characters with storied weapons, such as the Valyrian steel blades Ice or Widow’s Wail. The draw deck holds these powerful characters, locations, attachments, and events. This deck is randomly shuffled and players draw their hands from this deck.

At the start of each round, each player simultaneously chooses and reveals one of the plot cards from their individual seven-card plot decks. Your plot for a round determines how much gold you can spend on cards, which player starts with initiative, and how powerful your challenges are. Your plot also bears a reserve value, which determines how many cards you can keep in your hand past the end of the round. Plots may also offer powerful effects that can trigger when the plots are revealed or persist to shape the entire game round. You may scorch the earth with a deadly wildfire assault, or call upon all players to support the faith of the Seven.

In Evolution, players adapt their species in a dynamic ecosystem where food is scarce and predators lurk. Traits like Hard Shell and Horns will protect your species from Carnivores, while a Long Neck will help them get food that others cannot reach. With over 4,000 ways to evolve your species, every game becomes a different adventure.

Evolution packs a surprising amount of variety for a game with simple rules. The variety comes from the synergies between the trait cards and from the different personalities at the table. Some players thrive on creating Carnivores to wreak havoc on their fellow players. Others prefer to stay protected and mind their own business. Evolution encourages both play styles by giving each of them multiple paths to victory. And it is the mix of play styles at the table that ultimately determines the eco-system in which the player are adapting. So gather your friends and see who can best adapt to the changing world around them.

In Codenames, two teams face a square grid of 25 word cards. Each team has a captain, and both captains can see (via a hidden picture) which cards belong to their team, which cards are neutral, and which single card is the “assassin”.

On a turn, the captain gives their teammates a clue such as “Car 4”. Those teammates then select cards (up to the number given) which they think the captain might have in mind for the clue (perhaps “Wheel”, “Electric”, “Vacation” and “Price”). Choosing a word not belonging to your team ends the turn, and choosing the “assassin” word makes you lose immediately. Assuming neither team falls to the assassin, the winner is the first team to uncover all of their own words.

Funemployed is the satirical job application party game for 3 or more players. Make your best pitch for different jobs using four qualifications not fit for any real job interview. Creativity and the ability to spin a good story are key. It is tricky to justify your “burrito” qualification when applying for the job of astronaut.

After all players have had their “interview,” the interviewer selects the person who created the best story out of their qualifications. That person wins the card and a new round starts.

It’s not always easy to explain why Fairy Dust, Jacked Forearms, Treats, and a Time Machine make you the most qualified to be a Competitive Eater, but we have faith you can do it.

As in its parent game Kakerlakenpoker, Kakerlakenpoker Royal has nothing to do with poker – except that the game is all about bluffing, but with cards showing cockroaches, rats and stink bugs instead of queens, 10s and aces. To set up the game, shuffle the deck and deal the cards out to players. On a turn, a player takes one card from his hand, lays it face down on the table, slides it to a player of his choice, and declares a type of critter, e.g., “Stink bug”. The player receiving the card either:

Accepts the card, says either “true” or “false”, then reveals the card. If this player is wrong in her claim, she keeps the card on the table in front of her face up; if she is right, the player who gave her the card places it face up before him.

Or passes the card to another player, peeking at it first, then keeping it face-down and either saying the original type of critter or saying a new type. This new player again has the choice of accepting the card or passing it, unless the card has already been seen by all other players in which case the player must accept it and make a true/false claim.

The game ends when a player has no cards to pass on his turn or when a player has four cards of the same critter on the table in front of him. In either case, this player loses and everyone else wins.

To this, Kakerlakenpoker Royal adds new rules and new nasty “royal” critters to create more options for players during the game.

Star Realms is a spaceship combat deck-building game by Magic Hall of Famers Darwin Kastle (The Battle for Hill 218) and Rob Dougherty (Ascension Co-designer).

Star Realms is a fast paced deck-building card game of outer space combat. It combines the fun of a deck-building game with the interactivity of Trading Card Game style combat. As you play, you make use of Trade to acquire new Ships and Bases from the cards being turned face up in the Trade Row from the Trade Deck. You use the Ships and Bases you acquire to either generate more Trade or to generate Combat to attack your opponent and their bases. When you reduce your opponent’s score (called Authority) to zero, you win!

Multiple decks of Star Realms and/or Star Realms: Colony Wars, one for every two people, allows up to six players to play a variety of scenarios.

Everybody’s got an opinion. The Metagame gives you a chance to exercise your smartest and most ridiculous opinions on just about everything: music and movies, fine art and fashion, junk food and videogames. It’s a card game where you do what you already love to do with your friends: talk about culture. There’s not just one way to play – The Metagame comes with six unique games. Each one makes use of both types of cards in The Metagame deck:

CULTURE CARDS feature a single cultural object or icon, from the Mona Lisa to Ms. Pac-Man.
OPINION CARDS say things like “Which feels like first love?” or “Best reminder of our mortality.”

Some of the games get you debating, and some are more strategic. Some are best for a handful of players and others are designed for dozens of them.
The six games are:

Matchmakers: match your culture cards to the right opinion cards
History 101: put everything in the right chronological order
Debate Club: argue to the critics for your hilarious opinion
Head to Head: a fast-paced race to get your cards out first
Massively Multiplayer Metagame: for big parties and events
Metaquilt: a tricky combination of strategy and discussion

You don’t usually find games where players have debates like: Which is more fundamentally misunderstood – Fox News or the rainbow flag? The Metagame covers every possible kind of design, media, and art and helps you see culture in new ways. We’ve played The Metagame at hardcore tabletop game conferences and in dimly lit hipster bars. The Metagame works in just about any social setting – just pick the game variation that suits your group and situation the best.

A card game which involves a judge choosing a black question or fill-in-the-blank card. Each player holds a hand of ten cards at the beginning of each round, and each player contributes card(s) to the “card czar” anonymously. The card czar determines which card(s) are funniest in the context of the question or fill-in-the-blank card.
The player who submitted the chosen card(s) is given the question card to represent an “Awesome Point.”

In addition, there are a few extra rules. First, some question cards are “Pick 2” or cards, which require each participant to submit two cards in sequence to complete their answer. Second, a gambling component also exists. If a question is played which a player believes they have two possible winning answers for, they may pay in an Awesome Point to play a single second answer. If the player who gambled wins, they retain the wagered point, but if they lose, the player who contributed the winning answer takes both points.

After each round, the role of card czar rotates around the table, and play continues until everyone decides to stop.

Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn

Traders of Osaka

A Game of Thrones: The Card Game (Second Edition)

Evolution

Codenames

Funemployed

Cockroach Poker Royal

Star Realms

The Metagame

Cards Against Humanity

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