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Abstraction – 2 Players with a Deck of Cards.

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Abstraction – 2 players with a deck of cards.

Game Information

Players
2 - 2
There Will Be Games

I sometimes wonder why I pay out for designer board games when I could just be playing with a deck of cards. No really. I appreciate card games cannot tell stories, and some mechanics like area control, or resource engine building you will struggle to get out 4 suits of numbers, but for anything involving set collection or winning quick rounds give me the cards. 

Particularly when it comes to designer card games, I like Lost Cities, Red7, Lords of Scotland etc, but I think the games below are as good, perhaps better.

Some preliminary thoughts;

  • I recommend getting a show off deck of cards. Most of these decks done by companies like Jocu or Riffle Shuffle, or Art of Play are for cardisry and magic, but they do look so good. Components make or break many games. Adding a good deck will raise your interest in card games.

Riffle shuffle deck court cardsJocu playing cards

So much better looking than many designer games, never mind card decks

 

  • I’m in the never play for money camp (see this link before playing against strangers: 10 Levels of Sleight of Hand), but others only play for money. Money does provide a tangible value to any points in a game, and does raise the stakes in one’s mind.
  • I recommend a tumbler of scotch, or a coctail as long as its suitably refined. A tweed jacket also wouldn't go a miss.
  • If you think card games of luck, play for money against someone who is good.

 

Right now, I have one opponent most of the time, so here’s my top 5 two player games with a deck (or two) of cards:

1. Bezique

A point trick taker from France. Stack and shuffle two decks A – 7 with Aces and Tens ranked above the court cards. Deal each player 8, play tricks with a trumph card flipped from the top of the deck at the end of the deal. You don’t need to follow suit on a trick (I am assuming everyone knows what trick taking is).

The kicker is each time you win a trick, you earn the right to play a set(meld) from your hand, giving you two ways to get points in this game, and trade-offs galore. 10 points are earned for capturing 10s and aces in tricks and a lot more points are gain for laying 4s of a kind or marriages or bezique’s (Queen of spaces having an affair with the jack of diamonds).

Bezique cover from Boardgame geek images

Having to trade off melding sets vs spending your best cards winning suits is great game play, the double deck balances the deal a bit meaning blow outs are rare. This game has really got its hooks in me, I love working the draw probabilities and deciding when to gamble on future draws or cut my losses and play out my hand. For the last 8 tricks the rules change adn you must follow suit and try to win if you can. So the game enforces some longer term strategy on top of the medium term trade offs. Famously this was Chuchill's favourite game.

2. Cribbage

I’ve played cribbage for several years, it’s an old English pub game, and some pubs have tables with cribbage scoring boards fixed to the tables.

boardgamegeek cribbage image

Deal 6 to each player, with each player discarding two cards to the dealers ‘crib’. The game has three rounds, one of card play, two of pure scoring. First players alternate playing a card, adding the running total until you hit 31 and reset if there are any cards remaining. You score points if you play the card that hits 15, or 31, or a pair, or a sequence. The strategy is in goading your opponent into laying cards you can then add to, gaining a score. The second round, both players score their hands using a turn up card if they wish, making as many 15s, runs, or sets in as many combinations as they can. Then the dealer repeats this with the crib.

This is a game that chucks points at you, the skill is in getting even more, rinsing every last drop. Understanding probabilities, and learning your opponent’s tendencies is fairly key.  The only downside is there is a fairly strong first dealer advantage. You play to 121 points, with dealers alternating, but getting that first crib does give one player a notable head start all things being equal. You can bid points for first deal to even it up though.

3. Canasta

A complex two decker game of rummy from Uruguay. Stack and shuffle two decks with jokers and deal 15 cards to two players. Draw two discard one on your turn, and lay down as many sets as you can. First out gets 100 bonus points and ends the round. A Canasta is a set of 7 cards, and you need two canasta to earn the right to go out.

Where canasta steps above basic rummy games is in how the discard pile works. You can draw off the deck, or the discard pile. But if you take the top card off the discard pile, you must combine it into a set straight away, and you pick up every card beneath it. This is therefore a game of big brass balls. Are you gonna pick up 6 useless cards, or perhaps 10 to get 2 cards you want from that pile? Perhaps we have both discarded enough cards to make whole sets just from the discard pile? Games are often won or lost spectacularly on someone picking up a thick deck in the mid game.

Twos and jacks are wild cards for sets, and twos and black threes can lock or freeze the discard pile making it harder to pick up, and there is plenty of interplay around what to discard and when. Other than perhaps Mahjong, Canasta is peak rummy.

4. Gin Rummy

Having said Canasta is peak rummy, Gin Rummy is still a strong contender.

Gin rummy is a purist’s rummy, the game distilled down to push your luck and discard watching. You have a 10 card hand, draw one, discard one. When you have less than 10 card value not grouped in sets or runs in your hand (the deadwood), knock and end the round for scoring. Pretty simple stuff, your score is your deadwood minus theirs with a 25 point bonus if you had no deadwood, and a 25 point bonus if your opponent knocked and you’ve less dead wood than them. It is a very tense game as you don't know when your opponent is going to slam on the breaks vaulting you through the car window.

Gin is a bit suceptable to a badly shuffled deck and hands can end very quickly, but when it fires it fires. A good game for poker faces and over reading discards.

5. Sixty Six / Schnapsen

Paradoxically this might be the best game on the list. However I’ve only played it once, and I won 7 nil, so my opponent wouldn’t play again. Sixty Six is a point trick taker with set collection and very similar to bezique. But where Bezique uses two decks and many sets, Sixty six uses a single deck stripped below 9 and the only sets you score for are suit marriages.

schnaps!

Schnapsen is possibly derrived from schnaps!

With a very short deck and a hand of only 6 cards this is a much tighter game than Bezique. You score for capturing court cards, aces and tens, but have to memorise your score as you go with first to reach 66 getting one game point for the round. If you win by more than 33 points you get two game points, if you win every trick you get 3. One final wrinkle is you can lock the draw pile, by declaring that you can win with just what is in your hand. If you fail your opponent gets bonus points.

By allowing you to lock the deck sixty six adds a great gambling dimension to a really tight trick taker. This is a sharp game that I’d like to play a lot more of. Schnapsen is very similar to sixty six but with an even smaller deck and some differences in the play once the deck has been closed.

What do you think are the best two player card games? I might follow this up with some 3-4 player games when I am allowed to play them again.

There Will Be Games

Photos

Abstraction – 2 players with a deck of cards.
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quozl's Avatar
quozl replied the topic: #321504 31 Mar 2021 12:55
Thanks for the recommendations! BTW, which decks are those in the pictures? They look great!
RobertB's Avatar
RobertB replied the topic: #321507 31 Mar 2021 13:33
I recommend cribbage. The rules are nuts, in a good way. Nothing else is quite like it - it's not trick taking, it doesn't exactly have melds, and it isn't rummy.

My brother and I used to play klaberjass when we weren't playing cribbage. It's kinda sorta pinochle flavored.

I'd also recommend springing for a paperback Hoyle's. Maybe buy two, and throw one in your bugout bag if you already have an emergency deck of cards. "The world's coming to an end. Let's learn how to play three-handed pinochle!" :)
jason10mm's Avatar
jason10mm replied the topic: #321508 31 Mar 2021 14:06
It is kinda interesting, I don't think I've EVER played a 2 player card game, at least not one that wasn't just a board game with cards like Ascension or Lost Cities. I've rarely played any 3-4+ player card games either, other than poker, blackjack, and many many rounds of asshole or el presidente in college. I wonder if there is a cultural divide between folks who play card games (and maybe stuff like bunco) and those who branched off into rpgs and board games, even if both perhaps started with children's games. Ostensibly the same basic leisure activity but I'd wager there is an ocean between most members of each camp.

Hard to ignore that a deck of cards in your back pocket makes card games about 10000% more accessible to most of the world compared to a box of cardboard and meeples and plastic minis as well.
Shellhead's Avatar
Shellhead replied the topic: #321510 31 Mar 2021 15:03
Thanks to Boy Scout Camp, I went through a phase where I was very interested in card games that involved low stakes gambling. At scout camp, we played for candy. But in junior high, I once organized a poker game with several classmates where everybody had to put in $10 to get their stacks of poker chips. The parents of our host didn't see the buy-in and thought that we were just playing for fun. I got busy with life while in high school, but did occasionally play some low stakes card games in my college dorm. One of my friends did the same while in med school, so there were a few more card nights while I was in my early 20s. Scout camp was a year before I got into role-playing games, but the rest of this was concurrent with some heavy years of rpgs and early Ameritrash. When I later came back to cards, it was strictly for CCGs.

Several years ago, I bought the full Badger deck. Ten suits of cards ranging from 0 to 20, plus 11 face cards per suit. So there are normal cards like the 10 of diamonds and exotic cards like the monster of moons or the 15 of flowers. Some day, I would like to figure out a way to use that full 320 card deck in a conventional-style card game. I mean, I suppose you could just play poker with the Badger deck, but all the probabilities would be out of whack, and certain hands should gain or lose value relative to play with a normal deck of 52.
DukeofChutney's Avatar
DukeofChutney replied the topic: #321527 31 Mar 2021 17:51

quozl wrote: Thanks for the recommendations! BTW, which decks are those in the pictures? They look great!


www.jocu.cards/?v=79cba1185463

www.riffleshuffle.com/collections/playin...hur-carmine-cavalier

The prices are slightly criminal, but if you use them a lot they justify it
DukeofChutney's Avatar
DukeofChutney replied the topic: #321529 31 Mar 2021 17:55

RobertB wrote: I recommend cribbage. The rules are nuts, in a good way. Nothing else is quite like it - it's not trick taking, it doesn't exactly have melds, and it isn't rummy.

My brother and I used to play klaberjass when we weren't playing cribbage. It's kinda sorta pinochle flavored.

I'd also recommend springing for a paperback Hoyle's. Maybe buy two, and throw one in your bugout bag if you already have an emergency deck of cards. "The world's coming to an end. Let's learn how to play three-handed pinochle!" :)


I've been playing Klaber for the past week, it might have made this list had i not written it a few weeks ago. Also been looking at Jo-Jotte. I've been using David Parlett's Penguin book but you can get an Ebook Hoyle here; www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53881 . Its an old one, but it has most of the common all fours family in it.
Cranberries's Avatar
Cranberries replied the topic: #321583 01 Apr 2021 14:17
Those custom cards might be Jocu's "Green Man--Winter" deck.

www.jocu.cards/product/the-green-man-spring?v=7516fd43adaa

A moment's Googling revealed this custom Beowulf themed deck:

kingswildproject.com/collections/beowulf/products/beowulf



I wish all game art was this good:

Shellhead's Avatar
Shellhead replied the topic: #321588 01 Apr 2021 14:56
I bought this Ultimate deck a few years back. Premium quality cards with different art on each card: