Deck building games are among the newer innovations in the ages-old hobby of playing card and board games. Like many fresh ideas, the concept of a deck building game is startling in its simplicity. Card games where you build a custom deck before you play have been around a while. In a deck building game, though, you build the deck while you play. Starting with a hand of currency cards, you cash them in for other, more interesting cards, and make a deck on-the-fly you think is good enough to win.
It wasn't just gamers who got bowled over by the brilliance of the concept: it was designers too. Gaming was soon awash in copycat games, many of limited interest. Since then, the mechanic has seen redeployment into other genres of game with mixed results. But there are loads of awesome examples, too. These are the best deck-building board games.
TL;DR: The Best Deck-Building Games
- Star Wars: The Deck-Building Game
- Dune: Imperium
- The Quest for El Dorado
- Cubitos
- The Quacks of Quedlinburg
- Tyrants of the Underdark
- Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
- Dominion
- Aeon's End
- Undaunted: Normandy
- Orleans
- Mage Knight
Star Wars the Deck-Building Game
At first sight, this looks like a typical example of the genre, where you start with a few cards that give you resources, which you spend to buy more cards to beef up your deck. In this instance, you’re looking for offensive cards that damage your opponent’s base as a route to victory. But there are some really fun tweaks to the formula beyond the appealing theme. For starters, you can attack cards before your opponent buys them, denying them good options and earning you a reward. There’s also a very deep well of card variety, with tons of interesting combos between their effects you can explore. Finally, destroying one base isn’t enough: you need three, and you get to pick which ones you use, with their special effects adding another layer to the game’s strategy.
Dune: Imperium
In Dune: Imperium your deck represents resources that your noble house can draw on as you seek power and influence in the universe of Frank Herbert’s sci-fi epic. It’s married to another classic mechanic, worker placement, as each card play sends one of your agents to a board space, either courting influence with a faction like The Guild or The Fremen, or to the planet’s surface, to harvest spice or do battle for territory. It’s a clever melange of thematic and abstract concepts that mesh to create a fascinating whole with many parts to master. There’s also a whole new concept for deckbuilding called reveal turns where you discard your remaining cards to get a secondary effect, meaning you’re building and playing your deck on two different levels at once. Check out our Dune: Imperium review for more details.
The Quest for El Dorado
This is what you get when Reiner Knizia, possibly the most prolific and talented game designer of all time, turns his considerable skills onto deck-building. The result is a seamless blend of deck management and race game as players compete to be the first to make it across the map, matching cards from their deck to terrain hexes on the board in order to move. But of course that’s only half the story: there are hidden surprises in many spaces to upend your strategy and powerful one-shot cards in the market that can make or break your game if timed correctly. Easy to learn, fun to play, but full of interaction and challenge: all the hallmarks of yet another Knizia classic that’s worth its weight in gold.
Cubitos
Since Dominion spawned the whole deck-building subgenre, various games have switched from a deck to a bag of cubes, but Cubitos takes things one step further and allows you to build a collection of actual dice. Your aim is to propel a running racer across the finish line first, but it’s the dice that do the propulsion when you roll the appropriate symbols to move. Other symbols let you buy more dice, thin your collection, even attack and defend with other players. But best of all are the blank faces, which do nothing except let you re-roll them unless you roll all blanks, in which case it’s turn over. With the thrill of rolling huge buckets of dice, the strategy of combining dice types to suit the action, and the addictive terror of push your luck, you’ll be winning with Cubitos even when you lose.
The Quacks of Quedlinburg
Each turn of this game, you’ll get the opportunity to add new ingredients to your secret bag, from which you’ll then draw counters to mix in your cauldron in a quest to create the most powerful potion. But watch out: draw too many bomb counters and your mixture for the round will explode, ending your turn early. This simple premise is set into flight by the fact that you can change the effects of the other counters each game, choosing from a palette of different abilities that dovetail in new and interesting ways, adding more power to your potion and your purchasing ability as you race with your opponents to make the best brew. Add in a slew of other strategic levers to manage, and you’ve got the makings of a modern classic.
Tyrants of the Underdark
Another game where your deck corresponds to assets belonging to a noble house, only this time they’re minions in the employ of Dungeons & Dragons’ fiendish dark elves. Card play spreads your troops, assassins and influence from your starting city over a network of Underdark locations from the well-known fantasy novel trilogy The Legend of Drizzt. There’s a real sense of struggle as you tussle for territory with other players, card and counter-card adding and removing pieces from the board. Many of the cards represent iconic characters and monsters from the role-playing game with art to match. And there are multiple card sets to combine for new and interesting strategic and tactical options with every play. See our Tyrants of the Underdark review for more.
Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building Game
Legendary does a couple of interesting things with the deck-building formula. For starters, it’s cooperative, with all the players working together to defeat a supervillain, although if you defeat them you can tally points and declare a top, legendary, player. Second, the villain has a deck too, which functions as a game engine and a scenario which dictates the win and loss conditions. You’re not, as you might expect, playing as individual Marvel heroes but rather controlling them as a group with your card plays, recruiting new cards and attacking the villain’s henchmen. It’s a riot of replayability with so many different combinations out of the box, plus it’s fast and smooth with lots of options to fine-tune the challenge level to your group’s needs. There’s a whole series of Legendary games built on the same mechanical engine, including the excellent Legendary Encounters: An Alien Deck Building Game.
Dominion
Or you could start with the deck building game that started it all. Dominion wasn't only novel: it was also simple, with quick, three-step turns. All the complexity is on the cards themselves. The goal is to use the starting copper cards to buy better cards, allowing for more money and actions, working up to buying victory point cards. Strategy comes down to honing your deck into the leanest card-buying machine you can manage. With 25 card options, of which 10 got chosen for use in each game, it also has impressive replay value. Yet it's popular enough to have spawned a slew of expansions, of which Dominion: Intrigue is often considered the best.
Aeon's End
Aeon's End takes deck-building into the popular category of cooperative games. It's a smart move: deck-based games are often low on interaction, and having players work together is a solid solution. Here, you're all wizards working together to save a fantasy city from a marauding evil. And there are plenty of cards to heal and buff your fellow players, so there's plenty to think about. Its particular genius, though, is that you flip your discard pile over rather than shuffling when it's empty. This makes the order of card play critical, allowing you to set up combos for the next time you run through your deck. With other timing-based innovations and a tense random turn order, it's thrilling and challenging in equal measure. You can now choose from two sets, facing off against demons in the original box or taking on the undead in a longer, more complex campaign with the new Legacy of Gravehold.
Clank! Catacombs
Numbers are at the heart of what makes deck building work, and they're at the heart of what makes the Clank! series special. Players are adventurers seeking to loot a dungeon and escape before a dragon wakes up. The engine of each hero is their deck, which lets them move and fight, open doors and spend gold. These are just abstract numbers that you use to overcome challenges: the real game is the frantic race in and out of the dungeon. That's where all the themes and thrills are. By separating the strategy from the theme, Clank! manages to satisfy fans of both camps with a winning combination. Clank! Catacombs is the latest and greatest iteration of this series, adding more deck control, more variety and a dungeon built of randomly-drawn tiles to re-create the thrill of exploring the unknown. And for more strategic game ideas, check out the best strategy board games.
Undaunted: Normandy
Deck-building has proved a surprising proxy for warfare in several games. Undaunted is the best of them, using the flow of cards from your deck as a way to simulate casualties and command confusion on the battlefield. It's a great fit, giving players a real sense of running an infantry platoon from simple rules. Atop the deck-building strategy, there's the extra dimension of moving pieces on the map. This isn't so realistic, but it's still a ton of fun as you tussle over tiles using tactics and dice. A selection of scenarios and troop types ensures there's plenty of replay puzzling as you work the game's layers to gain the upper hand. There are two editions of the game to choose from. Undaunted: Normandy focuses on squad-level combat in France while Undaunted: North Africa moves the action to single-soldier special forces and adds rules for vehicles. For other ideas in this space, check out our list of the best war board games.
Orleans
One of the greatest pleasures of deck-building is having to work out a new plan each turn, based on what fate gave you. Bag-builder Orleans is the absolute epitome of that pleasure. Your drawn tokens represent French peasants that you must set to work on tasks of your choice. There's a dizzying array of work for them to do, from building walls to brewing beer, each of which gains you some reward. It's all about balancing rewards like new workers or special buildings now against the promise of points later. But unlike most building games, Orleans has so many routes to victory that all the options blend into a deliciously rich strategic soup.
Mage Knight
While many games add a board or two to deck-building, Mage Knight adds the whole kitchen sink. It's a sprawling, complex fantasy adventure in which you'll explore, recruit armies, and plunder dungeons. Most notable of all, it offers deep reserves of both narrative and strategy, a rarity in game design. Deck-building is the cornerstone on which the whole, huge edifice rests. Your deck, at first, represents your heroic abilities. As you explore and grow it also comes to include spells, followers, magical treasures, and a good deal more besides. With several scenarios and styles, including competitive, cooperative, and solo, Mage Knight tries to be all things to all gamers and succeeds.
If you like these, be sure to check out of picks for the overall best board games and the best board game deals.
Matt Thrower is a contributing freelance board game and video game writer for IGN. (Board, video, all sorts of games!)
