Lists

5 of the Best Family Card Games

Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

With our state still under a stay at home order it has been a great opportunity for me to play games with my family. My youngest daughter (11 years old) is a gamer and she loves to play games with me. Now there are many mass market card games, like Uno, that you probably already know. The games below are less commonly known and I hope that you will consider purchasing them for your family. I will give a brief overview of the game and talk about what sets it apart from other card games.

POINT SALAD

Point Salad was designed by Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin and Shawn Stankewich, and it is published by Alderac Entertainment Group. Two to six players can play the game and an average game will take 20–30 minutes. This is the newest game in the list and probably one of the easiest to teach to new players.

In Point Salad players are selecting items to put in their salad (represented by an area on the table in front of the player). Each card represents one of 6 different types of vegetables (peppers, lettuce, carrots…. etc.). On the back of each card is a scoring objective. The deck is divided into three piles with four cards in a row beneath each pile (so 12 total cards available each round). Three of the cards in each row are vegetable side up and one is scoring side up. So for each round, since there are three rows, players can choose from 9 available vegetables and 3 scoring cards. On a player’s turn they can select either two vegetable cards or one scoring card. The selected cards are put in a tableau in front of the player (visible to everyone). Once per turn a player can flip over a scoring card and turn it into a vegetable (the reverse is never possible). At the end of the game players score their tableau based on the scoring cards they collected. Some scoring cards give points in many different ways. Some for certain combos (ex. pairs of peppers & carrots), others for having the most of a certain fruit, and still others give a combination of positive and negative points for having collected certain fruits.

This game plays quickly, but what we enjoy most are the many different scoring objectives. Since the designers made the objectives personal (affecting only the player that collected it) players will each have different fruits they want to collect. This makes each game unique. Plus, it is light enough that it is fine to play at the end of a long day of Zoom meetings.

THE FOX IN THE FOREST

The Fox in the Forest is a two player only trick-taking game designed by Joshua Buergel. The game takes about 30 minutes to play, but you can easily adjust the playing time based on the number of points that the players agree on as the goal. My daughter and I usually play to 12 -14 points.

This card game is a trick-taking game much like Hearts. The deck is divided into 3 different suits of 11 cards each (so 33 cards in the deck). Each player is given a hand of 13 cards and the remaining 7 cards form the main deck. The top card from the seven card deck is flipped over and that is the decree card (basically the trump suit). On a players turn they play a card and the other player has to play a card in the same suit if possible. The highest card wins the trick. If a player does not have a card of the same suit they can play another card and if they play a decree card they will win the trick even if the decree card is lower than the card that was originally put down. Whoever wins the trick plays first for the next trick. Play continues until you have played all 13 cards from your hand.

Seems pretty simple, right? Well the designers did a couple of things that make this game really interesting to play. First, every odd numbered card has a special power written on it. So, for example, the 1 cards (swan cards) of each suit say that the player who plays the 1 card can lead the next hand even if they lost the trick. The number 3 cards (the fox) gets to switch the decree card with a card from their hand. So that player immediately takes the decree card and puts a card in its place. This changes the trump suit for the game. All of these special powers create some interesting choices for players. The second thing that they did is remove 7 cards from the game by putting them in the main deck. So you don’t know which cards are in and which are out. There is one card that allows a player to draw from the deck, but aside from that those cards remain out of the game. So this is not a perfect information game. Lastly, the end game scoring is fascinating. Each player tallies the total number of tricks won and if you were greedy and won 10 or more tricks you get zero points. If you were humble and won between 0–3 tricks (of the 13 total), then you are awarded 6 points. Their are a variety of scoring categories for people who win between more than 3 and less than 10 tricks.

The Fox in the Forest is a very entertaining little game for two people. The game manages to pack a nice bit a strategy into a 30 minute game. The scoring is awesome. It can be quiet challenging if you start with a strong hand of 13 cards to try to lose 3 or 4 tricks on purpose so that you avoid the “greedy” category. We really enjoy the game and will play it after lunch to take a break between Zoom calls.

JAIPUR

Jaipur is a 30 minute card game for 2 players designed by Sebastien Pauchon. The photo is from the original edition of the game, which I own. The publisher, Space Cowboys, released a new version of the game in 2019. The versions play the same, only the art has changed.

In Jaipur players are merchants trying to buy goods (cloth, gold, silver, etc) in hopes of reselling it for points. The game comes with a deck of cards and some circular cardboard tokens. The cards either represent the different types of goods or they represent camels. Each player starts with a hand of cards that may contain some camel cards (camels are displayed face-up on the table) and a tableau of 5 cards is placed face-up in between the players. On a player’s turn they do one of four things:

• Select one goods card and replace it with a card from the deck
• Take all of the camel cards on the tableau
• Take multiple goods cards and replace them with other cards from your hands or with camels you own.
• Sell cards by trading in sets of cards (same goods) for point tokens

So camels allow you to take multiple cards from the table without having to repopulate the market display with other goods cards from your hand. Seems a little complicated after a couple of turns it clicks. The rules are straight forward, but the strategies are very interesting. Easy to learn, hard to master. When selling cards for points a player takes a point token for each card sold. So if you look at the purple cloth cards, there are 8 cards in the deck and 7 tokens available for points. The purple point tokens are in a stack with points decreasing as the game goes on (5, 3, 3, 2, 2, 1, 1). So if player A sells two purple cards on their turn, and they are the first to do so, they would get a total of 8 points (the 5 and 3 token). While the value of points differ for each good, all of the goods have a point distribution that rewards players who sell quickly. So sell fast, right? Well, maybe. The game also offers bonus points if you sell 3, 4 or 5 matching goods at once. So do you wait and collect cards in hopes of gaining the bonus or do you sell quickly to gain the maximum points for that good? Your opponent will be watching and might try to collect the same color you were hoping to grab. This game can be quite tense.

This is a fantastic little economic trading game for two players. Very few rules, but the game play is amazing! This has quickly become one of our favorite 2 player games.

NO THANKS!

No Thanks! was designed over 15 years ago and has been reprinted several times. I have included a photo of the most recent edition. No Thanks! is for 3–7 players and was designed by Thorsten Grimmler.

This game offers a deck of 32 cards (numbered 3–35) and a bag of black plastic chips. Players receive 11 chips to start and nine cards are secretly removed from the deck of cards. The game begins by flipping over the top card of the deck. Each card has a number on it and that is the number of points it is worth. However, this is a game where lowest score wins so points are bad.

On a turn players must decided either to take the card on the table or pass by placing a black chip on it. Cards will be offered and players will go around and around placing chips on them. If you decide take the card you get all the chips on it. Players will be forced to take cards eventually to get more chips. Not only do the black chips help you pass on future cards but they also reduce your points at the end of the game (each chip reduces the point total on the cards by one point). So Player A at the end of the game with the 22 and 30 card would have 52 points, but they would reduce that by the number of chips they have at the end of the game (if Player A had 10 chips they would have a final score of 42). Remember lowest score wins.

So why would you take a card?

1. You are out of chips and you have no choice.
2. The card has lots of chips on it making it valuable.
3. The card number in question is consecutive to another card you have.

If a player can link a card just acquired to a card they already have you only score the lowest of the two consecutive numbers. So if I have the 24 and the 26 card in front of me and I grab the 25 card I would then be able to link all three cards. The three cards (24, 25, and 26) would only be worth 24 points. That is huge and fantastic, but remember at the start of the game nine cards were removed from the deck. So players are never sure which cards are in the deck. Players can take a card in hopes of linking it on a future turn, but they could be stuck with that card in the end. So fun!

This is a game of pushing your luck and trying to outguess your opponent. Those black chips are held in secret and it get hard to remember (especially with a lot of players) just how many chips everyone has left. This game takes less than 5 minutes to explain and is a great warm-up before you play a longer/deeper game.

PARADE

Parade is for 2–6 players and was designed by Naoki Homma. It takes about 30–45 minutes to play, depending on the number of players.

This and Jaipur are my favorite games on the list, but if I was forced to pick one it would be Parade (if only for the fact that Parade can play up to 6 players).

The deck of cards in Parade is inspired by Alice in Wonderland, each of the card suits has a picture of one of the characters from that beloved novel. There are 6 suits in the deck and each suit is made up of 11 cards (numbered 0–10). At the beginning of the game each player is dealt 5 cards that are only seen by that player. The deck is then placed in the middle of the table and 6 cards are placed face-up in a line next to the deck (the so-called parade).

On a player’s turn they choose one card from their hand and place it at the end of the parade. Depending on the card that is played the player might need to remove some cards from the parade. The player will need to remove cards from the parade if:

1. First determine if you need to remove cards from the parade. If the number on the card that is placed is greater than the number of the cards in the parade, then no card needs to be removed. So in the first round Player A plays a red 8 “mad hatter” card, no cards need to be removed because the parade begins with a length of 6 cards. The red 8 is left on the parade (now 7 cards long) and that player’s turn is done.
2. If the card played is equal to or lower than then length of the number of cards in the parade, then the player might need to take cards. The player counts the cards up to the number played along the parade from the end (farthest away from the deck). So if I played a 2 blue “Alice” card I would count and ignore the first two cards in the parade.
3. The remaining cards in the parade are part of the removal zone.
4. Players will then take all cards that match their suit and/or have a number that is equal to or lower than the number they played. So if you play a 2 blue “Alice” card in turn one, ignore the first 2 cards in the parade. Then look at the 4 remaining cards and take any blue cards and any 0,1, or 2 cards in that group.

Seems complicated but the rule book lays everything out nicely. The parade keeps getting longer until players are forced to take cards from it. Taking cards is bad. Like No Thanks!, Parade is a game where the lowest score wins.

All cards that a player takes during a round are placed face up in front of them in groups of matching suits. The cards are worth points equal to the number printed on them.

However, there is one last cool mechanic that makes this game shine. At the end of the game players compare how many cards they collected of each suit. The player with the most cards of that suit gets to turn them all over and those cards are worth only one point each. So if a player had collected the numbers 4, 7, 8 and 10 of blue (Alice) that would be worth 29 points, but if that player had more blue cards than anyone else those cards would only be worth 4 points. This creates a fantastic dynamic where players who grab a high numbered card of a certain color start to want to grab as many of those cards as possible. That can easily lead to a race between a couple of players to get the most of a suit. Very fun. My daughter loves this game (as do I).

This is easy to play and has some really nice strategic moments. It takes the longest to play, but it is also the deepest game on this list.

I hope that this list has been helpful. Please feel free to leave a response below with the name of your favorite family card game.