I have a secret to tell you. I like Monopoly Deal. Not love, not champion, just like. In the crowded basement of casual card games, it earns its keep. Put it this way, given the choice between Monopoly Deal, Exploding Kittens, and UNO, Deal is getting picked every time.

Yet there is a trend quietly taking over the casual card game space where publishers are releasing meaner, nastier versions of their existing games. UNO Show 'Em No Mercy, Flip 7 with a Vengeance, and now Monopoly No Mercy are all cut from the same cloth. More take-that and suffering for the people sitting across from you. Where this trend is coming from, I genuinely have no idea.

Cruel Details

The goal hasn't changed from the original. Collect three complete property sets, build your own portfolio while raiding everyone else's, and be the first to get there. What has changed is the action cards, some of which would qualify as war crimes in certain jurisdictions, and the addition of debt chips.

Debt chips are the most radical departure from the original formula. Money flows in and out fast in Monopoly No Mercy, and there will be moments where you simply cannot cover what you owe. That is…

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I have never before given much thought to the ways in which music composition and game design are similar. Like all creative arts, both share the goal of trying to communicate and share an experience with their audience. As disciplines, music has notes and rhythms while game design has rules and mechanisms, but both are about taking those disparate ingredients and making them cohere into something whole, something that vibrates with inevitability.

Ted Mann Schaller’s Counterpoint is a must-follow cooperative trick-taker with bidding and a trump-suit. A blessing, to live to see such times as those in which I can write that sentence and assume much of the audience will understand. Each player is a member of an animal chamber trio–to-quintet, be they an iguana violinist or an armadillo pianist. Such is the quality of Brandon Campbell's illustration work here that fights will break out over who gets to be what. The cooperative nature of the game follows the template laid out by blockbuster predecessors The Crew and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game: over a series of performances, scenarios named after pieces in the chamber music canon, players attempt to complete certain challenges while also ensuring that everyone makes or exceeds their bid.

There are a few twists on the formula,…

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The pub was quiet after the lunchtime rush. It was a chilly autumn afternoon, so the hearty lunch just hit the spot. Now we were sitting there, playing a card game, with a pint each by our sides. While the meal had filled us up, we still fancied something savoury. We just needed a small snack that the two of us could share. Nothing fancy. Something simple would do. Of course, it had to be Crisps! by Shreesh Bhat from Little Dog Games with art by Sai Beppu.

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Trok is set in the universe of another game - Nidavellir. I think that's a good product and marketing strategy. This is building an intellectual property and a brand. Attract your existing fans and supporters. Nidavellir is a game about dwarfs, and Trok is the popular card game played by dwarfs in taverns in the world of Nidavellir.  The cards in the game are numbered 1 to 7, with

In the broadest possible strokes, games are created out of three or four things: what you can do, what you can’t do, what you want, and, occasionally, what you don’t want. Not every game includes something you don’t want as a category unto itself. You don’t want to end up with few resources in Catan, sure, but that’s just the inversion of what you want: resources with which to build things. I’m talking about things like running out of food in Agricola, where there is a specific punishment meted out by the rules.

In High Society, a fabulous auction game for three-to-five players by designer Reiner Knizia and recently out in a new edition from publisher Allplay, those four categories are crystal clear. That’s never a bad thing. Many of the best games provide clear, succinct definitions for each of them. High Society is a masterpiece not only because it provides ready definitions, but they work, delightfully, at cross-purposes.

The goal of High Society is, of course, to have the most points at the end of the game. There we have our first definition:

What do you want? To have the most points.

Points are accrued through the purchase of various cards, revealed from the…

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Whoever walked away from a hand of trick-taking and thought, “Hey, you know what would make this better, is if we had to guess how many tricks we would win beforehand,” has my eternal gratitude. I like to think bidding came about as a party trick. “Françoise is really good at tarot, I bet he can guess exactly how many tricks he’ll win. Guess, Françoise, guess.”

However bidding started, it has long been a cornerstone of trick-taking, and is reliably my favorite way to engage with the mechanic. Card games are inherently subject to tremendous amounts of luck, of course, but bidding shifts the balance a bit closer to skill. More skill means more agency. More agency means more investment. More investment means more fun for everyone.

Torchlit is, above all, a bidding game, though it’s a strange one. The deck is dealt out, and every player chooses a card from their hand to put face-down on the table in front of them. The numbers on those cards, which run from 0-7, correspond to a series of dungeon door tiles placed out in the center of the table in numerical order. Whichever card you put down, the matching door is where you want to end up by the end of the hand.

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Oh, there is something deliciously slimy—smarmy, even—about the game Pax Illuminaten, designed by Oliver Kiley. (BGG says that Pax Illuminaten is based on Kiley’s earlier title Emissary, a game I have not played.)

One pass of the rulebook for Pax Illuminaten had me very excited. I’m not a dedicated scholar of Pax games, having only played Pax Pamir Second Edition (although Pax Hispanica, Pax Emancipation and Pax Porfiriana are currently on deck here at Casa de Bell). I HAVE played Pax Viking Junior, although I am sure a purist would not count that one.

But the core Pax system of historical, card-driven play with multiple end-game conditions and a closed economy is on full display with Pax Illuminaten, and I was further excited by the relatively straightforward rules and a playtime listed as 20-30 minutes per player.

A Pax game, in about 90 minutes? Sold, I said out loud to no one after that rules readthrough.

Then I got the game to the table…and I was mostly impressed. Pax Illuminaten is for a certain kind of player, especially one who likes to understand what is mostly possible in a strategy game, with ample space for a few surprises and a boatload of secondary actions.

Sorry, When…

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At this year's GAMA Expo I had the opportunity to play Symbiosis with some industry folks. I was charmed by it's artwork and card size, and delighted by the simple decision space and speedy game play. I brought home a copy and reviewed it for you. Check it out!

What is Symbiosis?

In Symbiosis players are growing and improving their pond in an attempt to earn the most points. They start with a 4 x 2 grid of face down cards, 1 of which is turned over at the beginning of the game. An additional 4 cards are turned face up in the center of the table, and serve as the market.

On your turn you select a card from the market and do one of two things:

Replace one of your face down pond cards with the card you selected from the market. Your pond card is placed face up into the market and becomes available for other players to select.

Alternatively you can take one of your face up cards and swap it with a face up market card. If you do this, you must flip one of your remaining face down cards face up.

“Why”,…

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Tabling Tableaus

I once asked W. Eric Martin at GAMA Expo, “What’s your favorite game?” He replied instantly: Innovation. I hadn’t heard of it at the time, but I quickly tracked down a copy and have since played that wild tableau-building civilization card game many, many times. It has shot up to become one of my favorite games, so keep an eye out for my review of Innovation Ultimate in the near future.

But this isn’t Innovation—though it’s close in some very interesting ways. I was handed this review copy by fellow mountaineer Justin Bell at Gen Con last year, and I went in with absolutely no context for what to expect.

To my surprise, there’s a lot here that feels reminiscent of Innovation (and even Dominion), but with enough twists to make Citizens of the Spark one of my favorite new-to-me games of 2026.

Regular readers may know that tableau building is one of my favorite mechanisms, so when a game is built around that idea, I’m already interested.

Spark Plugs

Citizens of the Spark includes 30 different citizen sets, with 7 to 10 used in a given game depending on player count. Players collect sparks, which serve as points, and the game…

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I picked up a copy of the new trick-taker Movie Tricks during my visit to SPIEL Essen 2025. It has a box cover that made at least one person in my circles wonder if the cover was generated by AI…not because of the illustrations by credited artist Eirik Belaska, but because the title, characters, explosion and car bursting out of the middle of the cover image feel so generic.

This is also to say: expectations were low for Movie Tricks. My 12-year-old thought that the game’s title was terrible, even if we all agreed that the title was pretty accurate: Movie Tricks is a trick-taking game where players take turns playing cards to the table, with each trick’s winner getting first pick of market cards that get added to their personal movie tableau.

The trick-taking is standard fare—Movie Tricks is a “must follow” game with a trump suit that may or may not change after each trick. Over the course of 10-13 tricks, players will build up their tableau to score points using a set collection mechanic (Props), a majority mechanic (Soundtracks), a simple scoring multiplier (CGI), and a slightly different set collection scoring tool with a balance component (Roles). In addition, players score based on their “Best Movie”—aligned with the highest scoring row of cards across…

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The humidity clings to your skin as neon reflections shimmer across rain-slick streets. The city is strangely alive with quiet ambition and louder dreams. Towering skylines loom above bustling districts, each corner a promise of profit, each landmark a prize waiting to be claimed. Deals are struck with uneasy confidence, plans unfold behind knowing smiles, and every move carries the weight of opportunity. In this restless urban theatre, only the sharpest minds will rise above the crowd. Welcome to Singapore Showdown by Eugene Lim from Genie Games with art by Marcus Quek.

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Maybe it's my old age catching up with me, but I don't have time for 3-hour marathons unless it's something truly special, like Hegemony. A Familiar Find caught my eye with wonderful artwork and stellar graphic design, with the box promising a fun family experience in under an hour. So when Darrington Press offered a review copy, I said yes.

You play as a fantasy familiar gathering ingredients for an adventurer. The game is apparently set in a fictional campaign world from Critical Role, although my connection to that entire media empire is a glowing 404 error. The core mechanic has you claiming one of three available card piles per turn, with players seeding those piles from their hand to set themselves up for a future turn or nudge an opponent toward something they don't want. Not every card is a gift or even face up, making the game feel like a "pick your poison" for a good portion of the time.

Familiar Territory

Winning is as straightforward as the premise. You're collecting ingredients into sets, either 2 sets of 4 or 4 sets of 2, for example. There's also an instant win condition where collecting 3 Astral Essence cards ends the game in your favor. The flip side…

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About a month ago, I received a text out of the blue from a friend I hadn’t heard from in nearly two years:

“Have you played Dark Pact by Tom Lehmann? I’ve played it twice and I think it might be the greatest deck-builder.”

A grain of salt must accompany these words as they travel down your gullet. The sender of that text is an avid Lehmann-head. He loves Winter Court, a novel sentence in the English language. He is constantly trying to bust out New Frontiers at parties. He carries a complete set of Dice Realms at all times, just in case the mood strikes.

I get it. I will never play another game as much as I have already played Race for the Galaxy. It would be untrue to deny that Lehmann’s spell has won me over from time to time. I would not go so far as to call myself a disciple, though. I find most of Lehmann’s games too dry. They are mathematically precise in a way that suggests an awe-inspiring understanding of the numbers behind the fun, but they are often that at the expense of, well, the fun. It has never before occurred to me that Lehmann and Reiner Knizia can be thought of as opposite sides of the same…

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Crispy Core

I love Arkham Horror: The Card Game. It’s probably one of my “desert island” games, thanks to the sheer amount of content and replayability. The game has evolved into an entire franchise, aptly named the “Arkham Files,” expanding into video games, novellas, tabletop RPGs, and even comic books published by powerhouse Dark Horse Comics.

Last year, the game’s storyline concluded with a great calamity in The Sinking City campaign, leading into the “soft reset” in 2026 with Chapter 2. Not only does this create a fresh launching point for a new storyline, but it also gives new players an ideal place to jump in.

Fantasy Flight’s vision for Arkham Horror breaks down into a “legacy environment,” in which all existing and past content can be used alongside future content, and a “current environment.” The current environment has a smaller card pool, and future campaigns are structured around mechanics in that evolving meta, though what exactly that will look like, we’ll have to wait and see. Presumably, this is meant to reset deckbuilding to a more even playing field. With so much existing content, it’s easy to build an overpowered deck and breeze through what should be a challenging experience.

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From the rulebook:

“Welcome to Yellowstone Park, the home of many wild animals. Impressive geysers spray their hot fountains into the blue sky. The players go on a trip through the park, which is shown on the game board. Each player has a hand of animal cards with different colors and numbers. During the game the players try to put their cards down as skillfully as possible on the game board to avoid penalty points.”

Yellowstone Park is played on a 7x7 grid laid on top of an illustrated overhead view of the titular park. The rows are numbered from 1 to 7 in ascending order, starting from the lowest row and moving upwards. There is a score track running along the left side of the grid. Each player’s score marker begins at the number 5 spot on this track.

There is also a deck of 56 Animal cards. Each card is one of four colors (red, green, yellow, blue) and one of seven numbers (1 through 7). For each number, there are two copies of that number + color pair (two copies of green 1, for instance). Every card features a cartoonish image of an animal, but these illustrations are unimportant for the purposes of the gameplay.

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The Fox in the Forest predates the contemporary trick-taking craze by a few years. It was an early harbinger of what was to come, of the deluge with which we have subsequently been blessed, and it proved successful. Successful enough that now, almost a decade after its initial release, Joshua Buergel’s two-player trick-taking game is getting the Deluxe treatment.

For those who’ve never played, The Fox in the Forest distinguishes itself from the bulk of trick-takers in two ways. Way the first: all of the odd-numbered cards in this non-traditional deck have special powers that trigger when played. Normally, I try not to get bogged down in the weeds when reviewing a game, but I do think the powers here are illustrative: The 1 in each suit lets you lead the next trick even if you lose, the 3 lets you change the trump suit, the 5 lets you draw one of the cards that weren’t dealt that round before discarding any card from your hand, the 7 is worth a point for whoever wins it, the 9 is always considered a trump card, and the 11 forces your opponent’s highest card in the same suit.

If you are at all familiar with the ebb and flow of trick-taking games, you can imagine well the sorts of shenanigans…

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I can sense the future. I sense that Soothsayers is going to be one of my favourite new-to-me games in 2026. I had not heard of the game prior to playing it. The theme and the art are a little quirky. The backstory is mumbo jumbo to me. However the gameplay completely took me by surprise. I would say there is nothing particularly ground breaking, yet the whole package just works amazingly

When I say spoiler-free, I mean up to the point when you start your first game. That means by then you will have opened the first mission box and you will see what's inside. If that's fine by you, come join me to take a look at what's in Regicide Legacy, the legacy game version of the amazing cooperative card game Regicide from Badgers from Mars, New Zealand. I'm a big fan of Regicide 

I struggled with The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - Trick-Taking Game. For all the inventiveness on display, as passionate a love letter to trick-taking as it was, Bryan Bornmueller’s commercial triumph left me cold. Too often, I said, that cooperative card game would leave players in the lurch, handing them combinations of characters and cards that were not winnable. Unlike its close cousin The Crew, something like half the hands in TLotR:TFotR-TTG proved unwinnable from the jump, save for an act of providence. I don’t want cooperative games to be easy, but I do want continuous losing to feel like a skill issue rather than RNG.

That’s the long and the short of it, anyway. And for what it’s worth, my criticisms of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - Trick-Taking Game are almost exactly the same as my criticisms of the first game. Critical decisions are made without crucial information. A lot of hands are dead from the jump and there’s nothing you can do about it. A few of the chapters here even sharpen my criticisms. It would be easy to get bogged down in an even more negative review, to dig into all the ways in which I continue to think Bornmueller’s game doesn’t work.

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