TOP 10: Deckbuilders (deck development games)

Wow ! This is a great start to the year! At the general request of the Ace Games Community, I will offer you from time to time articles like this one, which present a list of games based on the same theme or on the same mechanics. I decided to start with deckbuilders .

What are deckbuilders ? We could translate it as “pickaxe development”, even if it is definitely the English expression that predominates in French-speaking gaming communities. Deckbuilders are games where all players start the game with an identical deck of base cards . Over the course of the rounds, they will be able to develop this deck by purchasing new cards (and also by destroying the base cards), following their strategy.

Before presenting my results to you, a few words on two general principles which dictated my choices:

1-The deckbuilding mechanics must be central and essential in the game;

2-The game (or one of its versions) must still be published and offered in stores

To these fundamental principles, I added three secondary criteria which allowed me to arrive at a reduced selection:

3-The game must be offered in French;

4-Ideally played in an hour or less;

5-The game is accessible to the widest possible audience

Despite all these principles and criteria, there were still many games in the running, and I had to make some heartbreaking choices. Initially, I thought I would make a top 3; it then became a top 5, and I finally resigned myself to the idea of ​​a top 10. And it's a somewhat atypical top 10: the games are not classified by merit, but by category. I have identified 10 different categories of deckbuilders , and I present to you my favorite game in each of them. I find that it's a little more useful like that, on the one hand because classifying games by "merit" is a very (too) subjective exercise, on the other hand because it will allow this ranking to better guide you to games that might interest you.

Last remark, before starting: all the games presented here are in my personal collection, which is very well stocked, but which is also incomplete. The available versions of these games may not be exactly the same as the ones I have. Furthermore, it must be admitted that I have not played all the published deckbuilders, and it may well be that there are gems that have unfortunately been excluded from my list of achievements for this reason. That's life! It is therefore with all the humility of a well-assumed ignorance that I present to you this modest TOP 10 OF DECKBUILDERS!

Ah, what can we say about this monument, this legend! Dominion , by Donald X. Vaccharino is considered the father of all games in the genre. But you know, it's like poutine, there are always one or two pests who come to question the origin of the thing. In order not to derail the debate, I will simply say that Dominion is ONE of the games that popularized the genre. It was published in 2007, reissued in 2016, and to date has 15 expansions (and a 16th announced for 2024).

Dominion is the real deckbuilder. Authentic mechanics. The origin of everything. The One Ring of Sauron (“one deckbuilder to rule them all”)! The Big Bang. And don't be fooled by its age (17 years is almost prehistoric for a game in today's world!), I can say without too much embarrassment that, despite the appalling amount of "new" deckbuilders released every year, Dominion has yet to find its equal when it comes to simplicity and efficiency of execution. Here, no game board, no figurines, no setup that takes forever, no 75-page rulebook: just cards, cards and more cards.

In Dominion , you try to be the player who develops the most prestigious domain; this area is your deck of cards. You start the game with a deck of ten basic cards, which you will then improve by purchasing new cards in a common market located in the center of the table. Market cards are chosen at the start of each game from a wide range of possibilities offered by the game.

The goal is to find a way to buy the valuable Province cards, which cost a lot of money, but are worth a lot of points. The problem is that the prestige cards are useless; the more we add to our deck, the more it becomes cluttered with paying but useless cards. It is therefore imperative to find strategies during the game (in particular using cards available on the market) to get around this growing obstacle. When the last Province card has been purchased, presto! the game is over and the points are counted.

Once you understand how the game works, a four-player game of Dominion lasts on average 20 to 30 minutes. It's extremely effective. You can chain several games together and try new strategies each time by adapting to the available cards. And when you have gone through all the cards and all the possible layouts in the basic box, you will still have 15 expansions to keep you from getting bored, each time with new cards and new mechanics.

Dominion, by Donald X. Vaccharino

Published by Rio Grande, 2 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, 30 minutes per game.

German designer Reiner Knizia, renowned for his games combining simplicity and strategy, offers us this tense and fun deckbuilder published in 2017 and recently reissued. He had the idea of ​​taking the typical deckbuilding mechanics of Dominion and integrating it into an “obstacle course” style game.

In The Race to El Dorado , you play as adventurers (like Indiana Jones, hat included!) who compete to reach the mysterious City of Gold first! (Aaaah-Ah-Ha-Ah-Ha! Estebaaaan, Ziaaaaa!) But this race will not be easy, since it will require crossing dense jungles, sneaky rivers, arid deserts and hostile mountains! Here, we don't worry about counting points: the first to arrive at El Dorado wins! On your cards! Ready? Go!

The Race to El Dorado maps feature members of our expedition and tools that will help us overcome the obstacles that block our route to El Dorado. Each symbol (machete, oar or gold coin) present on a card allows us to cross a square on the board displaying the corresponding symbol. Gold coins can also be used to buy new, more efficient cards to improve our deck and speed up our journey.

The games of El Dorado are fast, very tense and keep us in the heat of the action until the finish line. Often, victory hangs by a thread (or a card)! As the adventurers block each other on the board, we must carefully calculate our movements, and as much as possible stop in locations that force our opponents to make detours, since this wasted turn in bypassing an opponent is perhaps be the one who will make the difference between the winner and the loser!

The race to El Dorado offers a colorful modular board, made up of large tiles that are assembled to make different courses whose difficulty can vary. It's a quick game (30-45 min) and easy to learn, which is an excellent introduction to the mechanics of deckbuilding.

The Race to El Dorado , by Reiner Knizia

Published by Ravensburger, 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up, 30-60 minutes per game

In a fantastic universe with crazy humor, Clank! allows us to play as broke heroes who attempt the coup of the century by venturing into a perilous dungeon filled with treasures... and guarded by a terrible dragon!

Much like in Race to El Dorado , the symbols on our cards allow us to move around, fight evil creatures, and buy new cards. In doing so, in search of precious artifacts, we go deeper and deeper underground, for better and for worse. Attention ! certain cards generate noise (“Clank!”) which risks attracting the fury of the dragon which awakens from time to time. The deeper we venture into this deadly labyrinth, the more interesting the rewards, but we will have to make sure we have time to emerge with our treasures before being grilled by the dragon!

There are several versions and expansions of Clank! including a version “in space”. Each version incorporates some new features into the game while retaining most of its mechanics. My favorite version is Clank! Catacombs whose board is modular and changes with each game. Unfortunately, this version is not yet available in French (but it should happen soon!)

Clank! The adventurers of deckbuilding, by Paul Dennen

Published by Renegade Games, 2 to 4 players, ages 10+, 30-60 minutes per game

Aeon's End is a crowdfunding success from 2016 which now has two “Legacy” versions and more than a dozen expansions. In this cooperative deckbuilder, you play magicians responsible for defending a village against the onslaught of Nemesis, powerful and evil creatures. The games are “battle against the boss” type: you have to reduce the nemesis's life points to zero before it has time to destroy the village (or exterminate us).

Destroying a Nemesis is not easy, even for valiant magicians! To cast our powerful spells, we will have to open our Breaches, a type of tunnel through which magic circulates. A spell prepared in a Breach will not be cast until the start of the next turn, so planning is absolutely essential.

Unlike other deckbuilders, in Aeon's End , we never mix our deck of cards! When our draw pile is exhausted, we simply turn over our discard pile and continue. It is thus possible to control the order of our cards, in order to plan better synergies between the cards drawn. This allows for strategic depth that you don't often see in deckbuilders.

Each magician has an exclusive power and each Nemesis (there are several in the base box) has unique game mechanics. Add to this the variable composition of the card market in all games, and we obtain a game with almost infinite possibilities.

Aeon's end has several boxes (including two “Legacy” boxes) which are all independent of each other. I suggest starting with the base game to familiarize yourself with the game mechanics, since subsequent boxes generally add rules (and material ) additional.

Aeon's End, by Kevin Riley

Published by Indie Board Games, 2 to 4 players, ages 12 and up, 60 minutes per game.

If science fiction and fantasy aren't your cup of tea, perhaps Inflexibles: Normandy will capture your interest with its World War II theme. In this “duel” type deckbuilder, two players face off on the battlefields of Normandy in 1944.

Each player starts with a deck of cards representing soldiers who make up his battalions deployed on the game board. During a turn, three cards are played which allow the corresponding battalions to be activated and made to perform different actions: recognize the terrain, move, fight opposing units, call for reinforcements…

The outcome of battles is determined by the rolling of the dice, but by playing strategically, you can put yourself “on the right side” of the statistics: certain locations offer better defenses against the enemy! When a battalion suffers losses, one of the soldiers corresponding to this battalion, in our hand, our draw pile or our discard pile, is removed from the game! When all the soldiers (cards) making up this battalion have been eliminated, it is removed from the game.

Inflexibles: Normandy offers a series of twelve different scenarios of increasing complexity. Each faction has its particular objectives to accomplish in order to achieve victory (this often involves controlling key locations on the battlefield).

There are now several games in this series (all are independent and do not require owning the others): Normandy , North Africa , the Battle of Britain and finally Stalingrad (the latter is a “Legacy” type version).

Undaunted : Normandy, by David Thompson and Trevor Benjamin

Published by Osprey Games, 2 players, ages 12+, 45-60 minutes

Now we return to simplicity, the very spirit of a deckbuilder. In this sense, Star Realms , published in 2014, is a worthy heir to Dominion . In this intergalactic duel which sometimes recalls Magic the Gathering, two commanders face each other. The goal: destroy the opposing base by reducing its influence points to zero.

From our ten basic cards, you will have to acquire new spaceships, build star bases to protect yourself, attack enemy bases to maintain pressure and look for profitable synergies between our cards. There are four factions represented by colors (red, yellow, green and blue) and cards of the same faction often tend to improve each other when played in the same turn. We will therefore have every advantage in restricting our allegiances so as to be able to get the most out of our cards.

A rare thing these days, Star Realms is a tiny box that fits nicely in your pocket or suitcase, making it an interesting travel game... unless you're so addicted that you get the multiple expansions, which will probably force you to put everything in a larger box.

All in all, even if it doesn't reinvent the wheel, Star Realms is a fast and extremely efficient game, which allows us to play through the games without having to worry. What more ?

Notes: Wise Wizards has just re-released the game as a Box set , which contains the base game and some expansion modules. For fantasy fans, Hero Realms, by the same author, offers essentially the same game, with a different theme and artistic direction.

Star Realms , by Robert Dougherty

Published by Wise Wizards, 2 players, ages 8 and up, 20 minutes per game

Long-time fans of Dungeons and Dragons will recognize the fantasy theme of Shadowlands, popularized by RA Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy novels . In this vast underground world, players take on the role of families of dark elves engaged in a ruthless battle for control of key locations. Don't let yourself be put off by the somewhat unusual graphic design (everything is black and purple: the cards, the board... even the victory point tokens! I know, we're in an underground passage, it's dark, but still …) it’s an excellent game that will satisfy your evil and warlike instincts!

Tyrants of the Shadowlands combines the speed and efficiency of deckbuilding with the strategic aspect of games of conquest and territory control. Here, there are numerous interactions between players: the cards played each turn allow us to deploy troops on the field, to assassinate those of our opponents, to deploy spies, or to obtain new, more powerful cards. When a player has full control of one of the cities on the board, he begins to gain resources and victory points each turn! We must therefore try to consolidate our positions, while preventing our opponents as much as possible from accumulating too many points.

Tyrants of the Underdark , by Peter Lee, Rodney Thompson and Andrew Veen

Published by Gale Force Nine, 2 to 4 players, ages 14+, 60 minutes per game

John D. Clair, who notably gave us the excellent Space Base and the delirious Cubitos , launched with Mystic Vale what he calls the Card Crafting System or, if you prefer, the Card Crafting System . This is an original variation of deckbuilding where, rather than constantly buying new cards to add to our draw pile, we rather modify existing cards by adding bonuses and effects to make them more and more powerful. . It's really well thought out (but if you hate protective sleeves, you'll be in for a lot of trauma)!

In Mystic Vale , we play as clans of druids who must fight against the corruption that is attacking their forest. To achieve this, we will need to evolve our cards to generate more and more resources, thus allowing us to acquire the most powerful improvements (those which generate victory points) and Val cards (which are VALUE points, the Are you punching? Boudoum Pischhhhh!). Depending on the number of players, there are a set number of victory points available; when the bank is exhausted, the game ends and we count our points!

At the start, many of our cards are completely blank, while others generate a little mana (used to purchase upgrades). When you buy an improvement, you insert it into the pocket of one of the cards played this turn! Each card has three upgrade slots (top, center, bottom). The only constraints: you cannot stack improvements (two at the top, for example) and you can never remove them once purchased. You will therefore have to choose wisely, seeking to create interesting combos or synergies on the cards you make.

To top it off, Mystic Vale also incorporates a risk-taking mechanic ( Push your luck ) a bit like that found in games like Charlatans of Belcastel . Rather than drawing a fixed number of cards each turn, we draw until we have accumulated three Decline symbols (a red tree, present on several starting cards and on certain improvements). From then on, you can choose to continue drawing OR to stop. Taking the risk to continue can pay off (more resources to buy better improvements!), but also fatal, because at the fourth Decline symbol, all our cards are automatically discarded and we lose our turn!

Mystic Vale is an original and successful variant that certainly has its place in any deckbuilder's collection. Personally, I prefer playing it with two people, because the games are faster and it's easier to know what our opponent is doing. The card making system is great, but it also comes with a small annoyance: at the end of each game, you have to deconstruct all the cards by removing the upgrades from the protective sleeves. Mystic Vale has received, over the years, eight or nine expansions to add diversity to your games (but there is already a lot of content in the base box). Additionally, an “Essential Edition” was released in 2020 and includes the base game and three expansions.

Mystic Vale , by John D. Clair

Published by AEG, 2 to 4 players, ages 14 and up, 30 to 45 minutes per game

Well, I'll tell you a secret: I don't really like the “Legacy” games. I played Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and 2, and when I finished, something in me was deeply shocked to find myself with a completely useless game box (you can't play it again once the campaign is over). I said to myself: “never again!” » But it must be said that game designers have learned from their mistakes and that many “Legacy” games now allow you to reset the hardware or continue playing with all the content discovered during the campaign. Harry Potter: Battle at Hogwarts fortunately falls into the latter category.

In this fairly classic cooperative deckbuilder, players embody their favorite characters from JK Rowling's saga (Harry, Hermione, Ron and... Neville? Who would want to play Neville?) who must thwart the plans of the infamous Slytherins and, eventually, defeat "the dude that we can't pronounce the name of” (yes yes, I read the Outaouais translation). The game offers seven chapters which roughly correspond to the different books in the series. Each new chapter includes additional maps, more bad guys to beat up and also new game mechanics (and more difficulty, too!)

Each character starts with unique starting cards that direct them towards certain strategies (combat, resources/card purchases, allies, healing, etc.). Players must then develop their deck of cards while coordinating in a way that fits well together. complement each other, which is the very spirit of a cooperative game. To win, you have to succeed in defeating all the villains in each chapter (and believe me, some of them are VERY naughty!) The only stain on the board for me: the more the chapters progress, the more cards there are... and sometimes, early in the game, bad luck causes the market to become cluttered with cards that are way too expensive, giving the frustrating feeling that you just can't win. However, this is a problem that can easily be resolved with one or two “house rules” to improve the composition of the market.

In short, if you are a fan of Harry Potter and cooperative board games, Battle at Hogwarts is a must-have of the genre and should be part of your collection. You can replay the campaign as many times as you want, and two expansions have been released to add even more content.

Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle , by Forest-Pruzan Creative, Kami Mandell and Andrew Wolf

Published by USAopoly, 2 to 4 players, ages 11 and up, 30 to 60 minutes per game

I couldn't see myself finishing this “top-10” without presenting you with a game that stands out a little from other deckbuilders in its scale and complexity, but which is nevertheless one of my favorite games of all time. It's perhaps not the most flashy or fashionable game (there are no 175 plastic figurines, no resounding crowdfunding campaigns to release a 48th expansion ... ), but, in my little gamer heart , it is perfect. Classic. Elegant. Original. Timeless. Simple and complex all at the same time. It's Concordia (I play with the Concordia Venus version which is more complete).

In Concordia , we are traders from the Roman Empire competing to expand our trade network across one of the great empire's regions. The players all start the game with an identical hand of cards representing characters from Roman society. On our turn, it's simple: we play ONE of the cards from our hand and we do the action associated with the character represented on it. For example, we can move our agents around the board, build trading posts, sell and buy goods, buy new cards, etc. As the rounds go by, we therefore have fewer and fewer cards in hand (and fewer and fewer possibilities for actions). To recover our cards, we must play the Tribune, which allows us to regain control of all our discarded cards. The game ends when a player has built all of his trading posts, or when all of the market cards have been purchased.

You may have guessed, Concordia is not a “classic” deckbuilder where you play and buy lots of cards; it includes, among other things, an important dimension of resource management, economic development and territorial control. But the heart of this game is the cards you have in your hands and, above all, the way in which you will develop this hand thanks to new Character cards. Because the points we score come directly from the cards we will have in our possession at the end of the game. Indeed, each card is associated with a god from the Roman pantheon (Venus, Minerva, Mars, Mercury, etc.). Each god has its sphere of influence and rewards (in points) your achievements in ONE of the strategic facets of the game. example, Venus gives you points for each province where you have built at least two trading posts. Do you have three cards associated with Venus at the end of the game? Multiply your points by three! For their part, Saturn encourages you to spread out into as many provinces as possible, Mercury rewards variety in the resources you produce, Vesta celebrates thrifters who stack sesterces, etc. It is therefore essential to carefully choose your strategy based on the cards/gods that we integrate into our game.

One last thing that makes Concordia original : we can play in teams (2v2 or 2v2v2)! It's extremely rare for a game of this type to offer such a variation, and it's also very interesting (and difficult) on a strategic level: when we do an action, our playing partner can follow and do the same action. his side. The team members' points are added up at the end of the game. Not only must we carefully plan our personal strategy, but we must also organize ourselves so that our partner can benefit from our actions effectively. It really is quite a puzzle!

The latest edition of Concordia merges the base game and its Venus expansion . There are also several other expansions: Solitaria offers a single-player mode, Salsa integrates new cities producing salt (a “wild card” resource), not to mention the multiple additional region boards that can be purchased to add diversity and additional challenges depending on the number of players.

What more can be said ? I love this game.

Concordia Venus , by Mac Gerdts

Published by Rio Grande, 2 to 6 players, ages 14 and up, 60 to 120 minutes per game

Conclusion

What an adventure this first top 10 is! It's a really more difficult exercise than it seems, and I already know that I will be criticized (rightly!) for not having included this or that game which would undoubtedly deserve to be included. appear there. Mea Culpa! I have personally had to discard several games that I love, either because they are difficult to find or because they did not meet some of the selection criteria that I had initially set for myself. But you have to choose carefully… because a top 350 is clearly less useful than a top 10!

-Mast