5 Deckbuilders You Should Give A Try On Tabletop Day

Today is International Tabletop Day, a perfect excuse to break out your favorite board games and roleplaying games and throw down with friends. It’s also the perfect setting to give something new a try, perhaps a Deckbuilder even, and here are five great games to kickstart your quest.

Whether you’re a fan of comic and superhero based fare or trend towards the traditional medieval themes, there’s something you might like here. A fan of space and interstellar combat? That’s here as well. “But what about magic and sorcery!” Yep, that’s here too. Granted, this list is just a starting point though, as there are so many other deck building games out on the market today that deserve a shot, with more appearing every day.

The allure of the Deckbuilder is how it allows you to customize your deck to your playstyle. It’s a living thing though, so as the game progresses you might discover that one tactic works better than another, so you’ll seek to get rid of cards you at one point liked but no longer serve their purpose. There’s a fine line between being indecisive and exploring your options, and it’s up to players to straddle that line without ending up with cards that cater to nothing.

Deckbuilders are also card focused (for the most part), so most often they are easy to setup. You won’t have to sit there for 40 minutes setting up most Deck Builders, placing scenery, miniatures, and gems, coins, diamonds, or whatever else a game comes with. You dish out the cards, set up the deck, and start playing, allowing new players to get rolling sooner, thus keeping their attention.

These games also almost always have a cooperative mode in addition to their versus, and honestly, games are even more fun when you’re working together with others. Most of the list has plenty of expansions either already out or in the pipeline, so these won’t be one hit wonders, destined for a dusty closet.

Hit the next slide for five great Deckbuilders to celebrate International Tabletop Day!

MORE TABLETOP: 5 Tabletop Games You Should Try / 5 Tabletop Kickstarters Worth Backing / Tabletop 101: How To Play DC Deckbuilder

Dominion

Dominion is made by Rio Grande Games and has become a stalwart of tabletop shelves everywhere. Despite its initially daunting setup out of the box, the mechanics are incredibly easy to teach, and games can begin and end within 30 minutes for experienced players. In the game, you are tasked with creating your own dominion and keeping it viable as other players attempt to scrape for resources and land to build theirs. Sometimes the simple premises are better.

The game continues to be supported as well, with a myriad of expansions available. If you’re looking for something in the medieval realm with straightforward but fun mechanics, Dominion is a great choice.

You can view the official description below.

You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner.

But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn’t be proud, but your grandparents, would be delighted.

Marvel Legendary

Marvel teamed up with Upper Deck to launch the Legendary series, starting with the core set. The game includes a variety of heroes like Captain America, Wolverine, and Spider-Man for players to use as they attempt to stop the villains from escaping the board. It’s a bit to setup for a deck builder, but it also provides a great experience for 1 to 5 players.

You can view the official description below.

Legendary® is a deck-building game set in the Marvel Comics universe. To set up the game, players choose a number of hero decks from the likes of Spider-man, Hulk, Cyclops, or Wolverine, to name a few. Shuffle them together (since players use only a handful of hero decks out of the fifteen included) allowing the hero deck to vary widely in terms of what’s available. Players then choose a mastermind villain (Magneto, Loki, Dr. Doom, etc.) and stack that particular villain’s attack cards underneath it.

Next, modify the villain deck as needed based on that villain’s particular scheme. Over the course of the game, players will recruit powerful hero cards to add to their deck in order to build a stronger and more resourceful deck. Players need to build both their recruitment powers (to enlist more heroes) and their fighting ability (to combat the villains who keep popping up to cause trouble). Players recruit heroes from an array of six cards, with empty slots refilled as needed. At the start of a player’s turn, he reveals a villain and adds it to the row of villains. This row has a limited number of spaces, and if it fills up, the earliest villain to arrive escapes, possibly punishing the heroes in some way. Some villains also take an action when showing up for the first time, such as kidnapping an innocent bystander.

The villain deck also contains “master strike” cards, and whenever one of these shows up, the mastermind villain (controlled by the game) takes a bonus action. As players fight and defeat villains, they collect those cards, which will be worth points at game’s end. Players can also fight the mastermind; if a player has enough fighting power, he claims one of the attack cards beneath the mastermind, which has a particular effect on the game.

If all of these cards are claimed, the game ends and players tally their points to see who wins. If the mastermind completes his scheme, however – having a certain number of villains escape, for example, or imposing a certain number of wounds on the heroes – then the players all lose. Do you have what it takes to defeat the villains? Or, will you let them escape? Play the all new Legendary: A Marvel Deck Building game to find what the cards have in store for you.

DC Deckbuilding Game

Marvel might have beat DC to the punch here, but Cryptozoic has delivered a fantastic deck builder for DC fans and newcomers to the Deckbuilding genre alike. The game is ridiculously easy to pick up, with enough depth through a plethora of expansions to keep fans coming back. The base game is simple 1 vs 1 competitive, but you can add co-op play and other modes via expansions.

You can view the official description below.

In the DC Comics Deck-building Game, you take on the role of Batman™, Superman™, or one of their brave and heroic allies in the struggle against the forces of Super-Villainy! While you begin armed only with basic combat maneuvers, you will add new, more powerful cards to your deck as you go, with the goal of defeating as many of the DC Comics Super-Villains as you can. In the end, the player who has accumulated the most Victory Points from the cards in his or her deck wins the game!  

The Big Book Of Madness

For those looking for something a bit more lighthearted and spell oriented, Iello’s Big Book Of Madness should fit the bill. You play one of several sorcerer apprentices that are trying to imprison supernatural creatures that you accidentally released into the world. You’ll build a deck of basic and more advanced spells throughout the game, which you’ll play cooperatively with up to 5 players. The game is quick to pick up with a gorgeous art style and will be a great game to bring out for a first time playthrough.

You can view the official description below.

The Big Book of Madness is a co-operative deck-building game in which the players are magic students who must act as a team to turn all the pages of the book, then shut it by defeating the terrible monsters they’ve just freed.

Each player has their own element deck that they build during the game and use for several purposes, such as learning or casting a spell, adding a new element to their deck, destroy or healing a curse. Spells allow you to support your playmates, improve your deck, draw cards, etc. — but the monsters from the book fight back. Each comes with terrible curses that are triggered every turn unless you dispel them in time. They will make you discard elements, add madness cards to your deck, or lose spells…

If you manage to turn six pages and defeat all of the monsters, you win the game!

Star Realms

Star Realms has a high pedigree, created by two Magic Pro Tour hall of famers. It shows too, as the game mixes stylish art design with deep space combat strategy expertly. The game just supports two players out of the core box, but you can buy more sets to expand for more players. The game is addictive, but the good news is the sets are incredibly affordable, so it’s easy to get started.

You can view the official description below.

Star Realms is a spaceship combat deckbuilding game designed by Magic Pro Tour Champions and Hall of Famers Darwin Kastle and Rob Dougherty (developer and cofounder of the Ascension Deckbuilding Game). Star Realms is the winner of several awards, including the 2015 SXSW Tabletop Game of the Year award, four Golden Geek Awards for Best 2-Player Game, Best Card Game, Best Indie Game and Best Handheld Game, two Dice Tower Awards for Best Two-Player Game and Best Small Publisher, and Best Card Game: Fan Favorite at Origins 2015.

The game offers all the thrills of traditional trading card game style combat, combined with the fun of a deckbuilding game. Play powerful ships, destroy enemy bases or blast your opponent directly on your way to victory!