10 Awesome Deck Building Card Games You Can Play Right Now

Deck building is an endlessly engaging and often surprising component of many popular board and card games. There’s so much variability to this type of tabletop gameplay, and whether you’re playing a classic of the genre or trying out the latest and greatest title that utilizes this mechanic, you and your game night group are sure to have a blast. In the list below you’ll find just a few of our favorite deck building card games that you should try out for yourself now.

1. Clank! A Deck-Building Adventure

Deck building meets classic dungeon crawling in Clank!, an engaging card and board game that just about everyone will enjoy. Delve underground, seek treasure, and defeat enemies to claim loot. Spend cards from your deck to move or fight, and avoid the dragon at all costs. If you escape the dungeon before the game ends, you’ll tally up the points on your artifact and loot tokens, then add that value to the points on your cards plus your remaining gold. If you take too many risks, your opponents can win just by surviving.

2. Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game

The Rebel Alliance’s fight against the Galactic Empire is the perfect setup for a two-player card game duel. You and your opponent will start a round of Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game with a handful of basic characters, ships, and bases. As the game progresses, you’ll add more powerful allies to your deck, unlock interesting card combos, and hopefully manage to destroy three of your opponent’s bases. Iconic faces from the original trilogy like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader bring unique, thematic effects to the table. 

3. The Quest for El Dorado

In The Quest for El Dorado, you’ll need to assemble a team of explorers, sailors, and other travellers to help you cross different types of terrain in the South American jungle. Your goal is to reach the Lost City of Gold before the other players. Each round you can buy cards from the market to make your deck stronger and give you more options for traversing the map. The game also offers a variety of board layouts to make the journey easier or more difficult, depending on your preference.

4. Dune Imperium: Uprising

Dune Imperium: Uprising mixes elements of deck building card games with worker placement board games to great effect. Every round you’ll send your team of agents to different locations that are either on Arrakis or related to the Landsraad. Then, you’ll reveal the remaining cards in your hand and spend your persuasion points on a new card for your deck. You can also remove weaker cards from your deck thanks to the power of the Bene Gesserit. As you continue to amass spice and gain ground on the four influence tracks, your turns will get even more active and exciting.

5. Dominion

No deck building card game list would be complete without the classic, genre-defining title Dominion. This endlessly customizable entry first hit shelves in 2008, and has been popular with tabletop gaming enthusiasts ever since. The goal is simple: end the game with the most victory points in your deck. Unfortunately, these victory points don’t do anything during the game itself, so you’ll need to mix in some interesting treasure and action cards instead. With the release of Dominion Rising Sun, there are now sixteen different expansions that help guarantee a different experience every time you sit down to play.

6. Trains

Trains is an easy-to-learn board game that mixes the best elements of the acclaimed Ticket to Ride series with deck building gameplay. It’s your job as a railroad manager to link together the best transportation network in Japan, and to do so, you’ll need to lay rails, set up signals, and build stations. Unlike other deck builders, you won’t need the aid of additional cards to trash the waste cards in your hand. Instead, you can simply spend a turn to get rid of them.

7. Shards of Infinity

Unlike most other deck building games, Shards of Infinity allows players to upgrade the worst cards in their possession gather than just adding more powerful ones to their deck. However, spending time on this mastery point system might be costly. If your opponent can reduce your health to zero before you reach thirty mastery, then it’s game over. Some cards also allow you to play them as soon as you buy them, which also flips the standard deck building formula on its head. The theme is great, and the strategic combinations feel endless.

8. Star Realms

In Star Realms, two players compete to determine whose authority and spaceships hold sway over the galaxy. Your bases and outposts will remain in play and give you fixed effects, while you’ll instead play and discard your ships each round. Trading for better cards has its merits, but you may also want to consider focusing on combat to prevent your opponent from reducing your authority score. Your strategy will change completely from game to game, which means replay value is quite high.

9. Aeon’s End (2nd Edition)

If you’re looking for a deck building board game that focuses on player cooperation rather than competition, Aeon’s End is a great pick. Players team up to hold back the hordes of a horrifying nemesis monster from the deep. When it’s your turn, you’ll spend gems to pick up new additions for your deck and cast spells to deal damage. Unlike other deck builders, you won’t need to reshuffle your deck. When you’re out of cards, instead simply take your discard pile and flip it over.

10. Ascension: Ten Year Anniversary Edition

The classic deck building card game Ascension is a great solo gaming experience that never gets old. Each round the players will attack monsters using strength cards and purchase upgrades that appear in later turns. Constructs apply status effects that trigger each round, and cards from the same faction also offer interesting combinations when you play them together. The anniversary edition brings some significant upgrades to the card art, as well as a new play mat.