With all the different systems and mechanics that you can find in board gaming, you will generally see in our wonderful hobby quite a lot of debate about which is the best. Some people love the interaction which comes from social deduction, others think that’s their worse nightmare. Some are drawn to dry and tactical affairs that you get out of a Eurogame, while others find them a bit slow and plodding.
But one mechanic I have found during my years in the hobby that most tabletop enthusiasts can agree is brilliant is deckbuilding.
The joy that comes from starting with a weak or minimal set of cards which slowly moulds into something super powerful that can decimate your loved ones in front of you is unrivalled. Over the course of the game you bear witness to this deck forming and shaping itself into something unique to you, something that you have built with an engine you can be proud of.
I think it’s the most ubiquitous and crowd pleasing mechanic for this very reason, everyone from novice gamers to pro players can get a sense of satisfaction from building something from modest beginnings to world beating.
Deckbuilding is so popular that other genres have formed from it, like bag building classics such as Quacks of Quedlinburg or Wonderlands War, to dice building games like Quarriors.
In this board game starter guide though I am going to be focusing on pure card deckbuilders, a type of game with numerous examples to chose from which can cause anyone analysis paralysis if they don’t know where to start. I hope in this guide you will find lots of examples that might really speak to you or your board game group, and perhaps even take my advice on which one specific deckbuilder I would recommend above all others to start your journey into building that perfect deck.
The first deck ever built?
While deckbuilding feels almost ubiquitous with board gaming generally, as old as the hobby itself, its actually a relatively new mechanic.
It’s origins can clearly be traced in TCGs, (Trading Card Games), such as Pokemon, Magic the Gathering and Yu-Gi Oh. In these uber franchises you as the player are tasked with building a deck not within the confines of an individual game, but instead before the game, as you buy massive booster packs and hope to get the cards you need to build an amazing deck that you can challenge your friends with.
What deckbuilding offers is the ability to build this desired deck without the need to spend thousands of pounds with your fingers crossed, hoping to get the right card you need to complete your perfect deck. Instead the cards you play are usually all found within the game box, and is something you build over the course of the game through difficult tactical decisions and sometimes with a slice of luck.
Often the first deckbuilding game is cited as Starcraft: The Board Game, a 2007 release based on a video game from 1998. While it had its fans though, it wasn’t until the all encompassing Dominion came along in 2008 that deckbuilding really took hold of the tabletop.
Essentially, Dominion provided the fundamental mechanics that we think of today when describing deckbuilding. Starting with a small deck of cards, players over the course of the game will purchase new cards from a common supply to upgrade their deck, which can be drawn on future turns. Cards come in a variety of flavours, including victory, treasure and attack cards, providing different functions which you want to mix and match to create a deck with a great engine and combos to achieve the most victory points to win.
It’s the purest form of deckbuilding, and for a lot of people probably their first steps into the genre generally. It even came close to my recommendation as your starting point for this feature, as why not start where the mechanic was properly born? The main reason it isn’t? Because one of my great board gaming sins is I have never once played Dominion!
Yes you might ask how can I call myself a board gamer, let alone someone writing a list about deckbuilding games, if I haven’t played Dominion? My answer is in two parts. One, no one can play all the games. And two, from what I have read about Dominion, everything it offers has been done and improved upon by later examples of deckbuilding, games which I will be discussing in this very post. One day I would love to play it, but it just isn’t at the top of this list when I already own so many great deckbuilders, but there is no doubt about its significance in modern board gaming history.
Paul the Deckbuilder
While I controversially have not played Dominion, deckbuilders have slowly built in my board gaming collection to be the most prolific, always providing some of my best gaming memories and a mechanic I can always rely on to show new people if I don’t want them to get put off by more complex games.
Indeed I find deckbuilding the one mechanic which often takes the least amount of explaining and teaching, people seem to instinctively understand what it is they need to do and accomplish, no matter how a designer incorporates it into their game.
Some of the top 100 games out there are deckbuilders at heart. Heavy hitters like Dune: Imperium and Great Western Trail have other mechanics in their games, but it’s the deckbuilding side to them that help them really shine and turn them into some of the most loved games out there.
In Dune: Imperium you’re building a deck which helps you build alliances with the houses you need, get the resources crucial to your strategy, and wonderfully play with the world of Dune. Great Western Trail, you’re building a deck of cows, which might seem strange but takes a great amount of forethought to score the most points out of your turns.
But I would always steer from bigger games as a starting point, especially when they feature other more complex mechanics alongside it.
For smaller examples of deckbuilding, you’ve got the amazing Tag Team, which provides all the best bits of deckbuilding in 5-10 minute matches whereby you’re combining the decks of two different fighters to form an ultimate pairing. But the deckbuilding in Tag Team has you not only thinking about what cards to add to your deck, but also, where to place them, as you are never allowed to shuffle your deck.
Faeries and Magical Creatures is a 1 hour game which has a whole host of mechanics in its box, but its deckbuilding is probably where it shines brightest and incorporates its theme best, as you put wonderful creatures into your deck with a huge variety of different powers to either help you build an even better deck, or to improve on your other required skills in the game.
But neither of these games highlight the greatest quality a deckbuilding game provides, the satisfying slow build of your deck into a new powerhouse.
If I was going to recommend my favourite deckbuilding game, it would be Moonrakers from IV Studios. In this incredible space game, you go on missions with your fellow players building not just decks but shaky alliances, hoping to complete ever more difficult missions with a deck and ship that you have built through the course of the game.
The flow of Moonrakers and particularly its deckbuilding is perfect. At first you’re deck provides you little, only the simplest missions can be completed and you will rely on other players for success. By the end, you will be going on daring suicide missions on your own with your chunky deck, amazing crew, vital new ship parts, drawing and playing cards left right and centre after building this seamless deck.
It’s a brilliant game blending deckbuilding and negotiation perfectly, but while after a few games it’s actually a fairly simple affair, it still wouldn’t be a great starting point as there is a lot to learn and is not always widely available.
Other gateway games in the deckbuilding genre always include classics like The Lost Ruins of Arnak, the Undaunted series, Star Wars the Deckbuilding Game, but like Dominion before are ones I haven’t tried (but would really love to), so I can’t recommend them.
No my recommendation in this Board Game Starter Guide is for the first time, the game that I actually started with myself for this mechanic. Its still space themed like my favourite Moonrakers, but comes in a vastly smaller box, with it being a pure deckbuilding experience like the father of it all Dominion. And if you even slightly dipped your toes into the tabletop hobby, you probably know exactly the game I am talking about…
Not Wars or Trek
My recommendation for this Board Game Starter Guide in deckbuilding could only be Star Realms. No its not the most unique choice, but its considered a classic gateway game for a reason and in this tiny box is such a brilliant, well rounded experience.
Released in 2014, Star Realms is probably tucked away into the corner of a shelf somewhere in most tabletop hobbyists homes right now, and for good reason.
Both players start of with the most basic of all basic opening decks. Using these starter decks, you can buy each turn cards from a collective pool available to you called the trade row. In the coreset the cards come in four different factions, which focus on different play styles.
The Trade Federation focuses unsurprisingly on trade and growth, The Star Empire on combat, drawing new cards and forcing opponents to discard theirs. The Machine Cult helps you trim your own deck and get rid of useless cards to enable you to more frequently draw the ones you need, and finally the brilliantly named Blob, another combat focused alien faction who can also help you manipulate the trade row.
All cards have a trade cost so on your turns you will be looking to play cards to give you the resource needed to buy new, more powerful cards, while also attacking your opponent or defending from their forces.
You also need to constantly think about what deck you’re trying to build. All the factions have great abilities and cards, so you could focus on one faction getting a little bit out of each without specialising. A decent tactic, however the more of one faction you have, the more likely it is your cards will ping off each other, making strong cards somehow even more game changing. So perhaps you specialise in one or two factions, to try and make your deck truly sing.
All of this comes in a box that you could literally fit into your coat pocket. It is truly astonishing how much game you get in such a small package. It is really easy to teach, and has a short run time that asks to be replayed again and again. It just takes everything that is good about deckbuilding and perfects it into this bitesize chunk that if you’re new to deckbuilding or the hobby more generally, it wonderfully eases you in and will likely make a fan of you.
Star Realms is just synonymous with board gaming now, it’s one of the games that was constantly recommend to me and I can see why, so while I may now just be jumping on that bandwagon, I would urge anyone with a passing interest in deckbuilding to start there.
If you prefer a bigger box game, then you can get numerous expansions for it to suit your style. Or if you’re a bit sick of all the space themes in board games, then two years after this Wise Wizard games released Hero Realms (2016), if the fantasy genre appeals to you more.
I just think having a game that you can get whip out on any occasion is always something to treasure, and Star Realms was the perfect starting point for me when getting into the hobby. With deckbuilding it showed me why it was such a beloved mechanic. It took me back to my childhood with my TCG favourites, but showed me I didn’t need to invest obscene amounts of money to still get that high of building a simple deck of cards into something super powerful.
Since Star Realms I have branched out into bigger games which perhaps does more dynamic things with the mechanic like Moonrakers, but it is always something I will have in the back pocket if I hope to make another board game fan.
Final Thoughts
I have mentioned already a lot of other deckbuilding games, so I don’t think an honourable mentions section is necessary, but I do urge you to check out the other games on this list alongside Star Realms.
Deckbuilding at its core is simple, with Dominion and Star Realms great examples of this, but has branched out amazingly into other genres and mechanics. It can be found in huge epic board games, or even in board games cousin video games, with amazing entries like Slay the Spire and Inscription. (In some cases, it’s even successfully bounced back the other way again; isn’t that right Slay the Spire!)
If you’re looking for a board game for a friend or loved one or starting your journey into this hobby, deckbuilding is one of the safest options you can find. That might sound like a backhanded compliment, but deckbuilding really can offer most gamers new and old a feeling like no other, as you see your deck build from its weak origins into something you will talk about well after the game has finished. And with Star Realms, that offers this feeling in perhaps its purest form.
About the author:
Paul Websell is a freelance contributor for Zatu who spends his time either playing board and video games or talking about them. While he’s not on social media, you can view his other blogs right here on Zatu!
