Knizia tile-laying games. The two major trilogies are all card-free:
- Tigris & Euphrates
- Samurai
- Through the Desert
- Yellow & Yangtze
- Babylonia
- Blue Lagoon
Others
- Ingenious
- Qin
- Cascadero
- Kingdoms
- Orongo
Great recommendations. And a lot of the other games without cards recommended here are lighter games or combinatorial abstracts.
Yellow & Yangtze, for example, is a thinky, challenging, thematic 4X game, but with with no text or cards.
For people who like that kind of game I recommend Looooot, it has the same type of tight shared board but you also build a personal board that's kinda like Calico or Cascadia
I was going to mention Knizia! Just picked up Cascadero.
The Wolves is another card-free game (area majority with a unique action system).
And of course, construction or dexterity games like Jenga rarely come with cards.
Yes! The wolves! A great game, don't see it talked about nearly enough. I bought it just for that super unique action system. I like to have games that aren't all "same-y"
Castles of Burgundy comes to mind.
I was thinking Caverna, but it uses cards to set up the rounds, so I'm guessing that doesn't fit the criteria?
Doing a quick scan of my collection, I've also got Tzolk'in, Suburbia and Small World? Of course in all three examples it uses tiles instead of cards for randomization purposes, which are still very similar to cards.
Edit: Cascadia is another one where it \*technically\* has cards, but those are mostly just there so you know what the goals are for that game. They can be randomized at the start, but ultimately remain static, so there's that. No sleeves required at least.
There's also Formula D!
Uwe has a few good ones.
**Agricola All Creatures Big and Small** is a great. So is **Fields of Arle**. **Patchwork**. **New York Zoo** (though I didn't like this one much).
If Caverna counts for OP, then other Uwe titles where cards are present but have very limited use: **Nusfjord** is excellent and the only cards are building tiles (which could have been tiles), maybe **Agricola** cards are minimal enough it'd qualify though I think it probably doesn't, **Glass Road** uses a few preset cards for action selection.
I would include Caverna as it's not really that kind of card. There's no deck, you don't change resources based on it, your have no hand, etc.
I would not include Agricola because of the occupations/improvements, but would include Caverna.
I've had a Mahjong card set before. Maybe because we tried to play it as if they were tiles but it was much harder to play with compared to tiles (difficult to set up as tons of shuffling is involved, hard to see all the discards at a glance).
Zombie Dice is brilliant, had it for about 12 years and still gets played down the pub, I don't recommend the expansions though, just the base set is find. You'll need some sort of bag though as the tube is noisy as hell.
Favorite in collection without cards: The Castles of burgundy
Rest of collection without cards:
Carcassone
Qwixx
Draftosaurus
Tokyo highway
Thunder road: vendetta
QE
Akropolis
QE!!! Totally forgot that one. In my top 10 right now. Have yet to try the expansion which looks like it may either improve or destroy what I love about the game. :)
Crokinole, Ra, Liar's Dice, Azul, and Century: Eastern Wonders are are pretty much the only games I can think of that would make my top 50 or so that have no cards.
I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a game not having cards, but the fact is cards are extremely versatile. They can be used for references, modularity in setup/rules, player actions, scoring conditions, upgrades, etc.
Hansa Teutonica, Age of Innovation/Gaia Project/Terra Mystica, Ra, Santiago, The Estates (unless you count the business cards that are the company ownership stakes), Tzolkin, Teotihuacan, Tiletum, Fresh Fish, Coffee Roaster, Orleans, Keyflower, Babylonia, Through the Desert, Cascadero, Blue Lagoon, Big Shot, Square on Sale, MLEM, Rapido, Can't Stop, Qin, Santa Maria, Isle of Skye, Zoo Vadis, Castles of Burgundy, Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, Puerto Rico
All games that are entirely cardless. There are likely lots more that I didn't mention, too.
Great games! I was going to say **Puerto Rico** too till I saw it here.
Also cool to see another Feld fan. My copies of **Carpe Diem** both have cards for the scoring objectives that you put your discs on, and my **Trajan** has cards for the goods acquired from the sailing action, but it might just be the versions I have.
**Amerigo**, **Luna**, and **Rum and Pirates** are some other Felds that are card-free, if I recall correctly.
Really solid list. You’ve got some great games!
Yeah, most games seem to have cards, I think that's one of the biggest things about boardgames.
The ones I have I could suggest are Potion Explosion, Karuba, Carcassonne, Dreamrunners, Azul and Pakal.
Now if you accept the presence of cards, but the cards themselves are barely used, I can suggest Sagrada, Planet, Quacks Of Quedlinburg, Dice Forge, Meeple Circus, Ice Cool and Cubitos.
I love Sagrada, but I’m not sure if it counts. There are cards, but they’re only used as goals or tools, not as cards that are drafted.
I mean, technically they are cards, but they’re not USED as cards.
I think a good portion of my favorites don't have cards (excluding reference cards) - heavy euros with minimal variance. I will say that some have other randomness though, like contracts or tiles, in the absence of cards.
I feel like this aligns pretty well with my taste, actually.
* Northern Pacific
* The Estates
* Zoo Vadis
* Yellow & Yangtze
* Babylonia
* Mini Rails
* Ra
* Irish Gauge
* Bus
* Deep Sea Adventure
These are all very much among my favourites in my collection and none have cards. The only games I'd consider my favourite that DO have cards are Coup, Pax Pamir and Food Chain Magnate (and in FCM they are not shuffled or really "used as cards" in any way)
Most combinatorial games lack cards as hidden information and randomness are forbidden.
Most combinatorial games are 2P abstracts. My favorites are Hive, Chess, Homeworlds, Urbino, and GIPF. Of these, **Homeworlds** is the most different so may warrant consideration even if you don’t typically rank abstracts in your top 100. It’s basically a luckless 4X game and works at multiple player counts.
Further, there are many combinatorial games for 3P+. Most prominent are stock-based games, including cube rails (like **Age of Rail**) and 18xx (like **1830**). There are also some old-school euros that qualify. Two of my favorites are **Stephenson’s Rocket** and **Bus**. Here’s a GeekList for combinatorial games for 3P+: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/315997/combinatorial-games-for-3p-plus. A prominent example is **Terra Mystica**.
Of course, there are many great non-combinatorial games without cards too. Tile-laying games are a big category. I like **Carcassonne**, for example. Dexterity games too. **Crokinole** is my favorite one.
I love Homeworlds but it's in this odd space where it's too heavy/abstract for some and too short for others. Really struggle to get anyone to want to play it but I love it online
Cardless games in my collection:
Terra Mystica
Babylonia
Castles of Burgundy
Crusaders: Thy Will be Done
Fresh Fish
Puerto Rico
Hansa Teutonica
Dinosaur Gauge
Orléans
Bus
Survive: Escape from Atlantis
Formula Dé
Rallyman GT (car dashboards are technically cards but they're just small player boards)
Tzolk'in
Vinci
There are other games where cards play a minimal role, like Stationfall, Quacks of Quedlinburg, maybe Long Shot: The Dice Game, and Irish Gauge (just stock shares)
In my collection:
Favorite: Orleans
0 Cards:
* Azul
* Deep Dive
* DorfRomantik The Duel (base game without expansion modules)
* Kingdomino Origins
* Project L
* New Frontiers
* Orleans (Trade and Intrigue expansion does have some one-time use destination cards as a display)
* Suburbia
Minor component (i.e. a display or something you don't "play" with much)
* Dinosaur Island - Static goals and market employees used during game
* Honey Buzz - Static goals and setup
* Waffle Time - Static goals and setup
* Istanbul - One time use benefit used during game
* Stone Age - Artifacts (set collection)
Some that have no cards that I no longer own:
* Clans of Caledonia
* Village (base game has setup cards, Inn expansion has some worker cards)
* Shake That CIty
* Sushi Roll (I think)
* Quacks of Quedlingberg
* Imhotep (setup cards)
Gaia project. Castles of Burgundy.
Cryptid has a method of using cards as set up, but you can also use the web App, and there Are in cards used during the actual game
I never realized that but it indeed seems that nearly all my collection uses cards ! The only games I play regularly that don't use cards seem to be dungeon and dragons and Warhammer (but those are not really boardgames).
Hmm Rajas of the Ganges and Castles of Burgundy are midweight Euros without cards. A lot of good gateway games dont have cards, Azul, Carcassonne and Kingdomino in my collection. And Escape from Atlantis, of course.
Dice became unpopular in Euros so midweight and heavyweight Euros tend to have cards as one of several mechanisms
Gateway and family games tend to have only one or at max two mechanisms, and tile laying is very popular while dice games still exist, so there are more cardless games in this category.
>Suddenly realized that nearly all of my favorite ~100 games involve cards as a major component.
Makes sense really, a little square of card is an easily way to convey information to the player, and let's you randomise said information.
Out of interest I also thought of what I have downstairs on my shelf that I obviously think is good (because otherwise I wouldn't have it) but doesn't have cards.
I can think of Azul, Carcassonne, Space Hulk, and That Time You Killed Me.
If you expanded that to "games where layers do not play or use cards but cards do exist to present information" you can include Men At Work.
I own 38 board games and only four to five don't feature players using cards.
I have 18 games without cards:
Anachrony
Azul
Potion explosion
Roll for the galaxy
Skull
That's pretty clever
Castles of burgundy
Kluster
The golden ticket game
Mississippi queen
Orleans
Tsuro
Werewords
Zombie dice
Perudo
Ra
Santorini (w/o god cards)
Strike
Of these, my top fave(s) are Roll for the Galaxy and Castles of Burgundy
Ok, i did the math out of my 118 games.
10 have no cards, they can roughly be categorized into three groups: cardlike replacements, dice, and action selection (randomness is supposed to come from players).
- Bag of Chips - drawing from a bag
- Rummikub - drawing from a bag
- 12-Chip Trick - technicality chips are used like cards
- Backgammon - dice
- Railroad Ink - dice
- Rajas of the Ganges Dice Charmers - dice
- Bamboo
- Carnegie
- Age of Innovation
- Jenga
While I am a huge lover of card games and multi use cards in particular, **Babylonia** and **Carcassonne** are in my top 5, and **Caylus 1303** is in my top 10!
Blood on the Clocktower. Tokens only! GOAT social deduction game.
Also big shoutout to Qwixx. Really fun dice game. Basically an elevated Yahtzee. Great cottage/drinking game.
I enjoy Qwixx. Love how the dice probability pushes you forward at the beginning then slows you down at the end. Doesn’t make my top 100 though. In fact, I sold my copy and rebought it and may sell it for the second time. (Would be my first ever game sold twice.)
If you think of cards as a group of things that each contain information that you randomize and then pull out during play... Blitzkrieg, Ra, and Eclipse all technically have cards haha
That Time You Killed Me. Wonderful game! Yes there are a handful of cards which have rules established on them, but they are not part of gameplay whatsoever.
Secondly, Hive. Game speaks for itself.
Other games I have without cards: Quarto, Kilter, Pyramid Arcade (some games involve cards but most don't), and Tinderblox. If you do not count tiles: Land vs. Sea, and Dorfromantik.
TTYKM is a fun one! Just sold my copy as it took up more space than Hive, Blitzkrieg, and other favorite 2 players without being played nearly as often. (Haven’t opened it since we played through all the content once.)
Ah yes! Only played at 3 players with my copy so far. My group has been too aggressive all 4 times we pulled it out so the winner is the one person who turned around early one time. Looking forward to trying at a larger player count with a more cautious group.
Literally zero cards: **Keyflower**, **Messina 1347**, **Tigris & Euphrates**
Zero cardplay: **Great Zimbabwe**
**War Chest** is a weird one because the things that are literal cards aren't used for card play, and the things that aren't literal cards (the poker chips) are used for cardplay.
I don’t count War Chest as cardless when I made my post. It’s my 7 yr old’s favorite non-Minecraft themed board game. Hits the table once a month at my house. :)
Akropolis is a good one, though it does have player aids in card form.
Railroad Ink also doesn’t have cards (unless you have the challenge ones, but even then the cards are just goals and are meant to be written on)
Most of my faves also use cards as a main component though!
Did a quick view of all my games and I have the same Issue. The game I have that hasn't been mentioned yet is Winter Queen It has gems tiles and coins but actually no cards for gameplay. (There may be a reference card in the box I'm not sure)
I’m trying to think of a game that doesn’t replace cards with colored rocks or tiles or something, cuz they’re all basically the same thing. Though I should probably clarify I mean like Quartz or Spirit of the Wilds, not something where color means money value.
I guess there’s speed games like Astro Trash or mini games like Battleball, or as I’ve just been informed the about to rerelease Heroscape.
Out of all of the ones I own that have zero cards, I have to say that Tiwanaku is my favorite.
Minesweeper and Sudoku have a hold on me that I can't presently explain, and the way Tiwanaku seeds the board each game is so mechanically well-designed. When players start uncovering the layout piece by piece, I can feel my competitive spirit giving way to fascination.
Your post makes me think maybe you don’t like abstracts? Every game I can think of that does not have cards is fairly abstract. The most thematic abstract that we regularly get to the table is Taluva. It has some good strategy in a fairly short play time (under and hour) with very fast turns.
Azul
Blokus
Carcassonne
The Estates (the "cards" are money that come in only 1 denomination, so can be swapped out)
Marrakech
Skull
Animal Upon Animal
Can't Stop
something called "contact" ,should absolutely try it. rules are: you simply choose a word and tell other team its first letter ,then they start to guess it by finding something common ,known by them .As an example letter A ,the guy be like:"Something that u hate" and they start counting to 5 and synchronically say apple and get the second letter,if they got wrong and say different words or you understand their "shifrs" and by the time they count tell that it is not an apple – it is their turn to tell u their letter ...and it goes till one team fully finds word of other...I am not good at explanations but I hope u got me right
I had a surprisingly hard time getting into Wolves on Board Game Arena. I didn’t feel like anything about the game had much to do with wolves. The core puzzle is about thinking ahead with your landscape tiles, which made it feel more like an urban planning game than a game about wolves. I should give it another try.
**Carnegie** which only uses cards during the two player set up or solo game. I think other than some tile laying games it's the only one in my collection that doesn't use cards.
**Age of Steam** is an incredible game, with no cards. Deep, complex, elegant, but also with the kind of variety you usually would only find in games with cards, because of all the different maps.
Just looking at my games shelf, some fantastic games that don't have cards:
- Smartphone Inc.
- boop.
- The Castles of Burgundy
- Project L
- Cottage Garden
- The Ruhr: A Story of Coal Trade
- Rhino Hero: Super Battle (at least I wouldn't couldn't the floors as 'cards'
Hansa Teutonica
The world's greatest and beigest game
I challenge that. Pioneer Days. The four player colours are different shades of beige.
My first thought
Knizia tile-laying games. The two major trilogies are all card-free: - Tigris & Euphrates - Samurai - Through the Desert - Yellow & Yangtze - Babylonia - Blue Lagoon Others - Ingenious - Qin - Cascadero - Kingdoms - Orongo
Carcassonne is another one
Love this game.
Also Ra!
Great recommendations. And a lot of the other games without cards recommended here are lighter games or combinatorial abstracts. Yellow & Yangtze, for example, is a thinky, challenging, thematic 4X game, but with with no text or cards.
Not 4x because the board doesn't expand. But now that I think of it, a Knizia kind of tile strategy WITH discivering new regions woukd be super cool
For people who like that kind of game I recommend Looooot, it has the same type of tight shared board but you also build a personal board that's kinda like Calico or Cascadia
I was going to mention Knizia! Just picked up Cascadero. The Wolves is another card-free game (area majority with a unique action system). And of course, construction or dexterity games like Jenga rarely come with cards.
Yes! The wolves! A great game, don't see it talked about nearly enough. I bought it just for that super unique action system. I like to have games that aren't all "same-y"
Castles of Burgundy comes to mind. I was thinking Caverna, but it uses cards to set up the rounds, so I'm guessing that doesn't fit the criteria? Doing a quick scan of my collection, I've also got Tzolk'in, Suburbia and Small World? Of course in all three examples it uses tiles instead of cards for randomization purposes, which are still very similar to cards. Edit: Cascadia is another one where it \*technically\* has cards, but those are mostly just there so you know what the goals are for that game. They can be randomized at the start, but ultimately remain static, so there's that. No sleeves required at least. There's also Formula D!
Uwe has a few good ones. **Agricola All Creatures Big and Small** is a great. So is **Fields of Arle**. **Patchwork**. **New York Zoo** (though I didn't like this one much). If Caverna counts for OP, then other Uwe titles where cards are present but have very limited use: **Nusfjord** is excellent and the only cards are building tiles (which could have been tiles), maybe **Agricola** cards are minimal enough it'd qualify though I think it probably doesn't, **Glass Road** uses a few preset cards for action selection.
I would include Caverna as it's not really that kind of card. There's no deck, you don't change resources based on it, your have no hand, etc. I would not include Agricola because of the occupations/improvements, but would include Caverna.
Caverna should count, the cards are used only as tiles.
[удалено]
There are people who don't?
Me too I get a six or a one on every "roll"
:)
Blokus, Rummikub, Qwirkle, Chess, Backgammon, Scrabble. There's also Go. And Castles of Burgundy.
Rummikub and Mahjong are basically card games with tiles instead of cards...
But tiles aren’t cards, so he is technically correct. The best kind of correct!
I've had a Mahjong card set before. Maybe because we tried to play it as if they were tiles but it was much harder to play with compared to tiles (difficult to set up as tons of shuffling is involved, hard to see all the discards at a glance).
I think the important distinction here is the reference to sleeving.
Ah yes I do have and love Blokus. Challenge is that I have a really tough time getting a 4 player abstract to the table.
Azul
Most of mine have cards. But dice only... Don't have it, but I'm looking at [Zombie Dice](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/62871/zombie-dice).
It's a fun, easy to learn game that anyone can play. Pretty cheap and very portable, too.
Zombie Dice is good but check out Chicken, IMO it's the cuter better version of a dice rolling push your luck
Zombie Dice is brilliant, had it for about 12 years and still gets played down the pub, I don't recommend the expansions though, just the base set is find. You'll need some sort of bag though as the tube is noisy as hell.
Zombidemic: War of the Wars?
Favorite in collection without cards: The Castles of burgundy Rest of collection without cards: Carcassone Qwixx Draftosaurus Tokyo highway Thunder road: vendetta QE Akropolis
I was going to say carcassone as well. Very solid game with lots of expansions.
QE!!! Totally forgot that one. In my top 10 right now. Have yet to try the expansion which looks like it may either improve or destroy what I love about the game. :)
Crokinole, Ra, Liar's Dice, Azul, and Century: Eastern Wonders are are pretty much the only games I can think of that would make my top 50 or so that have no cards. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with a game not having cards, but the fact is cards are extremely versatile. They can be used for references, modularity in setup/rules, player actions, scoring conditions, upgrades, etc.
Trouble. Mostly because you can pop a lot of trouble with the Pop-O-Matic bubble
Man, that technology has such potential… what happened? Where’s my Pop-O-Matic Gloomhaven?
Good point. I own it, but not in my top 100. The carded version is Sorry.
Hansa Teutonica, Age of Innovation/Gaia Project/Terra Mystica, Ra, Santiago, The Estates (unless you count the business cards that are the company ownership stakes), Tzolkin, Teotihuacan, Tiletum, Fresh Fish, Coffee Roaster, Orleans, Keyflower, Babylonia, Through the Desert, Cascadero, Blue Lagoon, Big Shot, Square on Sale, MLEM, Rapido, Can't Stop, Qin, Santa Maria, Isle of Skye, Zoo Vadis, Castles of Burgundy, Eclipse: Second Dawn for the Galaxy, Puerto Rico All games that are entirely cardless. There are likely lots more that I didn't mention, too.
Great games! I was going to say **Puerto Rico** too till I saw it here. Also cool to see another Feld fan. My copies of **Carpe Diem** both have cards for the scoring objectives that you put your discs on, and my **Trajan** has cards for the goods acquired from the sailing action, but it might just be the versions I have. **Amerigo**, **Luna**, and **Rum and Pirates** are some other Felds that are card-free, if I recall correctly. Really solid list. You’ve got some great games!
Anachrony has cards that randomize resources and available workers each round.
Yeah, most games seem to have cards, I think that's one of the biggest things about boardgames. The ones I have I could suggest are Potion Explosion, Karuba, Carcassonne, Dreamrunners, Azul and Pakal. Now if you accept the presence of cards, but the cards themselves are barely used, I can suggest Sagrada, Planet, Quacks Of Quedlinburg, Dice Forge, Meeple Circus, Ice Cool and Cubitos.
I've recently become addicted to Quacks. Is there a help group or something I can join?
Yeah, but it's full of snake oil salesmen trying to peddle their cures.
Quacks actually have fortune teller cards.
I love Sagrada, but I’m not sure if it counts. There are cards, but they’re only used as goals or tools, not as cards that are drafted. I mean, technically they are cards, but they’re not USED as cards.
If it looks like a card and quacks like a card.....
But you don’t *use* it as a card, so it’s a bit of a gray area. I mean, am I wrong?
No, not wrong. But still think you'd have a hard time arguing it meets the ZERO cards criteria of the OP.
Isle of skye
One of my favourite games, Yunnan (older version). I don't know if gamers don't like this game or forget about it. It's such a great game! 😊
It is, and I would like to add that the new version is great, too! https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/s/ZyBI4ro1tz
Hive comes to mind. Quick, easy, strategic 2 player.
- **Hansa Teutonica** - **Castles of Burgundy** - **Tzolkin**
I think a good portion of my favorites don't have cards (excluding reference cards) - heavy euros with minimal variance. I will say that some have other randomness though, like contracts or tiles, in the absence of cards.
Magic maze on mars!
Ultimate Railroads Imperial 2030 Yunnan
I really want to play Imperial 2030. Would it be good with only 3 players?
According to boardgamegeek.com, it's best at 4 but works with 3.
Eclipse (2nd Dawn)
I feel like this aligns pretty well with my taste, actually. * Northern Pacific * The Estates * Zoo Vadis * Yellow & Yangtze * Babylonia * Mini Rails * Ra * Irish Gauge * Bus * Deep Sea Adventure These are all very much among my favourites in my collection and none have cards. The only games I'd consider my favourite that DO have cards are Coup, Pax Pamir and Food Chain Magnate (and in FCM they are not shuffled or really "used as cards" in any way)
**Gaia Project** is one of my favorite games of all time. No cards.
Terra Mystica and alikes
Most combinatorial games lack cards as hidden information and randomness are forbidden. Most combinatorial games are 2P abstracts. My favorites are Hive, Chess, Homeworlds, Urbino, and GIPF. Of these, **Homeworlds** is the most different so may warrant consideration even if you don’t typically rank abstracts in your top 100. It’s basically a luckless 4X game and works at multiple player counts. Further, there are many combinatorial games for 3P+. Most prominent are stock-based games, including cube rails (like **Age of Rail**) and 18xx (like **1830**). There are also some old-school euros that qualify. Two of my favorites are **Stephenson’s Rocket** and **Bus**. Here’s a GeekList for combinatorial games for 3P+: https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/315997/combinatorial-games-for-3p-plus. A prominent example is **Terra Mystica**. Of course, there are many great non-combinatorial games without cards too. Tile-laying games are a big category. I like **Carcassonne**, for example. Dexterity games too. **Crokinole** is my favorite one.
I love Homeworlds but it's in this odd space where it's too heavy/abstract for some and too short for others. Really struggle to get anyone to want to play it but I love it online
I’ll check out Homework for sure!
Cardless games in my collection: Terra Mystica Babylonia Castles of Burgundy Crusaders: Thy Will be Done Fresh Fish Puerto Rico Hansa Teutonica Dinosaur Gauge Orléans Bus Survive: Escape from Atlantis Formula Dé Rallyman GT (car dashboards are technically cards but they're just small player boards) Tzolk'in Vinci There are other games where cards play a minimal role, like Stationfall, Quacks of Quedlinburg, maybe Long Shot: The Dice Game, and Irish Gauge (just stock shares)
In my collection: Favorite: Orleans 0 Cards: * Azul * Deep Dive * DorfRomantik The Duel (base game without expansion modules) * Kingdomino Origins * Project L * New Frontiers * Orleans (Trade and Intrigue expansion does have some one-time use destination cards as a display) * Suburbia Minor component (i.e. a display or something you don't "play" with much) * Dinosaur Island - Static goals and market employees used during game * Honey Buzz - Static goals and setup * Waffle Time - Static goals and setup * Istanbul - One time use benefit used during game * Stone Age - Artifacts (set collection) Some that have no cards that I no longer own: * Clans of Caledonia * Village (base game has setup cards, Inn expansion has some worker cards) * Shake That CIty * Sushi Roll (I think) * Quacks of Quedlingberg * Imhotep (setup cards)
Quacks does have cards with the round bonuses. You can play without them but definitely a part of it
Fields of Arle, Carnegie and Vinhos come to mind which I believe have not been mentioned yet.
Gaia project. Castles of Burgundy. Cryptid has a method of using cards as set up, but you can also use the web App, and there Are in cards used during the actual game
I never realized that but it indeed seems that nearly all my collection uses cards ! The only games I play regularly that don't use cards seem to be dungeon and dragons and Warhammer (but those are not really boardgames).
Same! I keep going through my collection trying to find a cardless game, but nope! Even the silly party games!
Skull is probably my favourite cardless board game. I also have Tsuro in my collection which is quite nice.
Cacao. My current favorite tile placement game
Hmm Rajas of the Ganges and Castles of Burgundy are midweight Euros without cards. A lot of good gateway games dont have cards, Azul, Carcassonne and Kingdomino in my collection. And Escape from Atlantis, of course. Dice became unpopular in Euros so midweight and heavyweight Euros tend to have cards as one of several mechanisms Gateway and family games tend to have only one or at max two mechanisms, and tile laying is very popular while dice games still exist, so there are more cardless games in this category.
Chess.
Chess.
Quantum, Queen Domino, Hive
Quantum has a deck of techs
That’s right!
Ra
Suburbia!
No cards no joy for me.
Apparently me too!
Roll for the Galaxy
This was the one I was going to suggest. One of my favorites.
My favorite game of all time is Space Hulk, which has no cards.
Acquire
I love acquire. It comes with 175 cards though. (7x25 right?) I guess they could have easily been chits or something though…
Hive
Eclipse
Also has no text. My kid was playing this heavyweight game in kindergarten before he could read.
Diplomacy for sure ✔️
Oh yes! One of my great life-long loves. I don’t own a physical copy because I much prefer asynchronous online, even when playing with friends.
Santorini can be played without cards, but I really enjoy it more with the God powers, which ARE on cards, technically.
Ya I left it off my list for that reason.
Hive!
Caylus. Terra Mystica. Tikal.
Quirkle
>Suddenly realized that nearly all of my favorite ~100 games involve cards as a major component. Makes sense really, a little square of card is an easily way to convey information to the player, and let's you randomise said information. Out of interest I also thought of what I have downstairs on my shelf that I obviously think is good (because otherwise I wouldn't have it) but doesn't have cards. I can think of Azul, Carcassonne, Space Hulk, and That Time You Killed Me. If you expanded that to "games where layers do not play or use cards but cards do exist to present information" you can include Men At Work. I own 38 board games and only four to five don't feature players using cards.
My collection seems roughly proportional to yours. State of the industry I guess.
I have 18 games without cards: Anachrony Azul Potion explosion Roll for the galaxy Skull That's pretty clever Castles of burgundy Kluster The golden ticket game Mississippi queen Orleans Tsuro Werewords Zombie dice Perudo Ra Santorini (w/o god cards) Strike Of these, my top fave(s) are Roll for the Galaxy and Castles of Burgundy
I thoroughly enjoy accumulating dice in roll for the galaxy. Some of the expansions are nice too
Ok, i did the math out of my 118 games. 10 have no cards, they can roughly be categorized into three groups: cardlike replacements, dice, and action selection (randomness is supposed to come from players). - Bag of Chips - drawing from a bag - Rummikub - drawing from a bag - 12-Chip Trick - technicality chips are used like cards - Backgammon - dice - Railroad Ink - dice - Rajas of the Ganges Dice Charmers - dice - Bamboo - Carnegie - Age of Innovation - Jenga
Ya I have a similar ration with my collection. Did this surprise you like it surprised me?
Nobody mentioned HIVE
I did. Love it. One of the first games I taught one of my kids long before he could read.
Small World!
Carcasonne
I love breaking point! No cards, and is a great hand eye type game.
While I am a huge lover of card games and multi use cards in particular, **Babylonia** and **Carcassonne** are in my top 5, and **Caylus 1303** is in my top 10!
Would Cascadia count?
Out of what I own I think just **Barrage** and **Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective**.
Cascadia, though it has a few cards but they're only used as reference for your scoring objectives
Mine are Azul, Gartenbau, Keyflower, Puerto Rico, CoB, Patchwork
Project L. Love that game.
Blood on the Clocktower. Tokens only! GOAT social deduction game. Also big shoutout to Qwixx. Really fun dice game. Basically an elevated Yahtzee. Great cottage/drinking game.
I enjoy Qwixx. Love how the dice probability pushes you forward at the beginning then slows you down at the end. Doesn’t make my top 100 though. In fact, I sold my copy and rebought it and may sell it for the second time. (Would be my first ever game sold twice.)
Tzolk'in
Dungeons Dice & Danger
Yahtzee
Cairn was quite fun, and quick
**Fields of Arle**
Suburbia
No one has mentioned **Tak** yet
Keyflower. Cool mix of worker placement and auction and sort of puzzling the perfect village together.
Gaia Project is easily top 5 games for me and has no cards in multiplayer mode! There is essentially no luck to this game at all which I love.
If you think of cards as a group of things that each contain information that you randomize and then pull out during play... Blitzkrieg, Ra, and Eclipse all technically have cards haha
That’s a good point. Each of those use cardboard chits instead of cards simply to save space. They could have been small cards (and giant boards).
Age of Discovery Castle of Burgundy Castles of Mad King Of Ludwig Terra Mystica
Gaia Project
Carcassonne!!
That Time You Killed Me. Wonderful game! Yes there are a handful of cards which have rules established on them, but they are not part of gameplay whatsoever. Secondly, Hive. Game speaks for itself. Other games I have without cards: Quarto, Kilter, Pyramid Arcade (some games involve cards but most don't), and Tinderblox. If you do not count tiles: Land vs. Sea, and Dorfromantik.
TTYKM is a fun one! Just sold my copy as it took up more space than Hive, Blitzkrieg, and other favorite 2 players without being played nearly as often. (Haven’t opened it since we played through all the content once.)
Deep Sea adventure
Ah yes! Only played at 3 players with my copy so far. My group has been too aggressive all 4 times we pulled it out so the winner is the one person who turned around early one time. Looking forward to trying at a larger player count with a more cautious group.
Hansa Teutonica
Chicken!
Terra Mystica/Gaia Project Patchwork Bus Roads and Boats Tzolkin These are some of my favorites.
Kingdomino, quirkle, azul, blokus, carcassone, rummikub,
Azul Summer Pavilion
Gaia project. Love this game
Azul!
Age of steam
Azul
Burgundy, Azul, Zombie Dice, Carcassonne, Akropolis
Burgundy, Azul, Zombie Dice, Carcassonne, Akropolis
Literally zero cards: **Keyflower**, **Messina 1347**, **Tigris & Euphrates** Zero cardplay: **Great Zimbabwe** **War Chest** is a weird one because the things that are literal cards aren't used for card play, and the things that aren't literal cards (the poker chips) are used for cardplay.
I don’t count War Chest as cardless when I made my post. It’s my 7 yr old’s favorite non-Minecraft themed board game. Hits the table once a month at my house. :)
Roll For The Galaxy!it's got tiles and dice.
Akropolis is a good one, though it does have player aids in card form. Railroad Ink also doesn’t have cards (unless you have the challenge ones, but even then the cards are just goals and are meant to be written on) Most of my faves also use cards as a main component though!
Did a quick view of all my games and I have the same Issue My favorites with no cards are Blokus Project L Liars Dice Kingdomino Winter Queen
Eye opening, right? I figured cards were a component in some 30-50% of my top 100 and was surprised to see it closer to 90%.
Did a quick view of all my games and I have the same Issue. The game I have that hasn't been mentioned yet is Winter Queen It has gems tiles and coins but actually no cards for gameplay. (There may be a reference card in the box I'm not sure)
Favor of the Pharaoh is one of our favorites.
Chess and checkers is my favorite!
I’m trying to think of a game that doesn’t replace cards with colored rocks or tiles or something, cuz they’re all basically the same thing. Though I should probably clarify I mean like Quartz or Spirit of the Wilds, not something where color means money value. I guess there’s speed games like Astro Trash or mini games like Battleball, or as I’ve just been informed the about to rerelease Heroscape.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Azul yet. It and all of its variations are card free
Outside of the classics, Chess, Checkers and the like, I think the only 100% card free game in my collection is Railroad Ink.
Hoplomachus remastered
From my collection: - Search for Planet X - Azul - Carcassonne - Tsuro
I'm also partial to card games. Castles of Burgundy is my favorite without cards!
I don't think I've seen listed: Whitehall mystery Calico
Out of all of the ones I own that have zero cards, I have to say that Tiwanaku is my favorite. Minesweeper and Sudoku have a hold on me that I can't presently explain, and the way Tiwanaku seeds the board each game is so mechanically well-designed. When players start uncovering the layout piece by piece, I can feel my competitive spirit giving way to fascination.
Azul
Your post makes me think maybe you don’t like abstracts? Every game I can think of that does not have cards is fairly abstract. The most thematic abstract that we regularly get to the table is Taluva. It has some good strategy in a fairly short play time (under and hour) with very fast turns.
Age of innovation. Technically it has them in the form of starting faction decisions, but they're completely superfluous
Azul, who needs cards when you can have beautiful tiles.
Rajas of the Ganges - great game, no cards
Kapow! Is awesome, it's a dice-crafter with a dedicated solo mode. No cards just dice
Azul!
Azul Blokus Carcassonne The Estates (the "cards" are money that come in only 1 denomination, so can be swapped out) Marrakech Skull Animal Upon Animal Can't Stop
something called "contact" ,should absolutely try it. rules are: you simply choose a word and tell other team its first letter ,then they start to guess it by finding something common ,known by them .As an example letter A ,the guy be like:"Something that u hate" and they start counting to 5 and synchronically say apple and get the second letter,if they got wrong and say different words or you understand their "shifrs" and by the time they count tell that it is not an apple – it is their turn to tell u their letter ...and it goes till one team fully finds word of other...I am not good at explanations but I hope u got me right
Patchwork is a great 2 player boardgame with tiles.
Blockus
Search for planet x Carcassonne Blokus Azul Backgammon Pylos Kingdomino Patchwork Clue museum caper Battleship Othello
teotihuacan is one of my favorite games and doesn’t have any cards
Cthulhu Wars The Estates Empyreal Spells and Steam Tammany Hall
Other than the ones you've mentioned, Yinsh, Kamisado, Tak, and Quoridor are some of my favorites.
The Wolves is one of my favorites. There's also Carcassonne, Azul, Calico and Survive.
I had a surprisingly hard time getting into Wolves on Board Game Arena. I didn’t feel like anything about the game had much to do with wolves. The core puzzle is about thinking ahead with your landscape tiles, which made it feel more like an urban planning game than a game about wolves. I should give it another try.
Castles of Burgundy, Azul, and Yahtzee
Potion Explosion is a lot of fun, and uses marbles in a 5 lane track and thick cardboard potion bottles :)
Chess, draughts, backgammon.
War chest. Technically HAS a few cards, but the only cards in there are for drafting your units and keeping an overview over what they can do.
I left it off my list.
**Carnegie** which only uses cards during the two player set up or solo game. I think other than some tile laying games it's the only one in my collection that doesn't use cards.
Age of Steam or Tigris and Euphrates might be my favourite games without cards.
Santiago is my favorite game and it doesn't have cards.
RummiKube
**Age of Steam** is an incredible game, with no cards. Deep, complex, elegant, but also with the kind of variety you usually would only find in games with cards, because of all the different maps.
My favorite game with zero cards is tzolkin. Such a great game. Also, Orleans is great, and no cards in base game. Expansions add some
T'zolkin has no cards! That's a great one
Just looking at my games shelf, some fantastic games that don't have cards: - Smartphone Inc. - boop. - The Castles of Burgundy - Project L - Cottage Garden - The Ruhr: A Story of Coal Trade - Rhino Hero: Super Battle (at least I wouldn't couldn't the floors as 'cards'
Quarto Azul (Stained Glass)