Cuttle – a MTG like game using a standard 52 card deck
pagat.com

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232 points

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7thaccount

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10 hours ago

63 comments

rpdillon ・ 7 hours ago

I'm a huge fan of card games that can be played with a regular deck of cards, and I play Cuttle with my kids somewhat regularly. It's a fast-paced game, but you do have to get over the initial learning curve of the effects. I find just printing out a piece of paper with a quick reference on it helps.

As others have alluded to in the thread, teaching people the rules is a barrier. As I looked around for a professionally printed game, I found a game that was very much like Magic the Gathering, but also just a single box of cards called Mindbug.

https://mindbug.me/

Turns out it was designed by some folks that brought Richard Garfield in near the end of its design and he ended up having some say in the final product. I've played it a couple of times and each game is only played with a random subset of the cards, so the combinatorics create a lot of replay value.

  • BiteCode_dev ・ 5 hours ago

    +1 for mindbug and its extensions. The games are quick and nervous, players only have 3 pv.

    The card effects are interesting, the illustrations illarious and the interractions a lot of fun.

    The twist of the game, the mindbug itself, is a blast of bluffing and gambling that garanties some smiles.

    Limited to 2 players but a great small box to have on all occasion of you are into that kind of stuff.

    The rules are simple so ir's easy to get in.

jerojero ・ 16 minutes ago

There's so many games that can be played with a 52 card deck, many years ago I tried to do a sort of battle game but I ended up giving up. It had to do with formations of cards but it's very difficult to create a card game that is balanced and fun!

This game seems super interesting so I'll be adding it to my ever growing collection of standard card deck games.

Thank you!

netbioserror ・ 9 hours ago

For anyone who wants a more complex game proximate to this design, there's a small production called Reinforcements (https://reinforcementscg.myshopify.com/). Non-collectible, single box.

You play a hand of up to 5 cards each turn: Adding cards to (concealed) stacked ranks of defending troops, attacking an opponent's ranks, using a card's ability. The suits have different defensive properties when arranged in a rank, and combine in interesting ways; there are also "ultimate" powers players can grab from the center by forming their ranks with particular arrangements of suits, which act as turtle-busters.

Highly recommended, quite fun, probably plays best 1v1. Definitely a lot of small rules to absorb, so it's a more complex beast. But nowhere close to the complexity of Magic.

  • imzadi ・ 7 hours ago

    If co-op games are more your speed, check out Regicide.

  • 7thaccount ・ 8 hours ago

    I'd never heard of reinforcements, but it looks awesome. Definitely will purchase.

    • phasE89 ・ 8 hours ago

      I'd never heard of astroturfing, but it looks intruguing. Definitely suspicious.

      • rpdillon ・ 7 hours ago

        > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing...If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data.

      • Bootvis ・ 8 hours ago
        ・ 5 more

        They have 300 times and 1000 times the reputation you have. Maybe dail down the paranoia.

        • phasE89 ・ 7 hours ago
          ・ 4 more

          That doesn't mean anything lol. I have over 100k karma on Reddit, and I’ve rented the account several times for various astroturfing posts for small startups. You’d be surprised how common that is. (I'm not proud of that, it was 6+ years ago. I wouldn't do it today)

          • slopeloaf ・ 6 hours ago
            ・ 2 more

            This is for a simple card game man. Recommending board games is part of the culture of the hobby. It ain’t that deep

      • 7thaccount ・ 4 hours ago

        Sorry. I just reread the comment I made and yeah that looks like some product placement or fake Amazon review.

        I can assure you it's coincidental. I posted about a game I recently discovered and then have been super stoked by people leaving their knowledge of similar games that I'm now also excited to give a go. I've recently got into card games and domino games with the kid (a few board games too) and it's all a blast. One of my favorite aspects of HN (have been on here for about a decade, but occasionally lose my account password and have to start over) is the collective knowledge of curious people who know deep stuff about nearly every topic.

7thaccount ・ 10 hours ago

*I recently stumbled upon this, but haven't had the time to play yet. It seems like it would be fun.

I've recently started learning card games that use a standard deck of playing cards and have been pleased with many of them. The advantage over trading card games is that it is MUCH cheaper and takes up a lot less space and it doesn't feel like I'm chasing an impossible goal.

  • hahamrfunnyguy ・ 9 hours ago

    A number of years ago I was at a friend's house and he wanted to play Uno but he couldn't be cause his dog got into the deck and many of the cards were damaged.

    I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the jokers.

    So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.

    • InsideOutSanta ・ 8 hours ago

      That's interesting. I always assumed that UNO was a branded version of a very similar game we used to play as kids with a regular deck of cards (e.g. 7 is draw 2, Jack allows you to pick a color). The game is called Tschau Sepp and very commonly played in Switzerland. I just assumed other countries had their own version of it, and that UNO derived from it.

  • nlkl ・ 5 hours ago

    A bit of a shameless plug, but maybe it could be of interest. Having been through a similar journey some years ago I spent some time back then to design a variation of Knizia’s Battle Line/Schotten Totten for a standard deck:

    https://boardgamegeek.com/filepage/191552/vassal

    It is not the first such variant, but one that I felt a bit more pleased with than the other variants I found.

  • mikepurvis ・ 6 hours ago

    I tried to embark on this a few years ago, thinking particularly for cases where space is at a premium (airports) or I don't want to worry about wrecking/losing game components (camping, the beach).

    Overall I didn't find a lot that I liked, particularly in the two-player space. Everything seemed to be either Rummy-family games around set collecting, or trick-taking games that might as well have been Hearts or Euchre.

    All that to say, if you've got a few favourites, please recommend!

    • 7thaccount ・ 4 hours ago

      Solitaire based games have been big with my family recently. We sometimes do them cooperatively. If you go on YouTube, people have all kinds of newly invented ones or ones that are slight variations of another. Joker jailbreak is an example. Also Dungeon Crawl or Clear the Dungeon or something like that. I think I also watched a video for Osmosis. None of these are like Warhammer 40k exciting, but they are surprisingly fun at killing 10-15 minutes when you're waiting on your food. Even though they are 1 player games, my family and I frequently do it as a family activity or take turns. We keep a pack of playing cards in the glove compartment of the car so we never forget. I feel dumb for not learning more than a few card games as a kid.

    • glompers ・ 3 hours ago

      Packogame [0] makes a variety of games like that; I haven't played most of them but I can recommend Nut as well as Bus.

      [0] https://Perplext.com

    • freddie_mercury ・ 3 hours ago

      Two player games that can be played with a standard deck of cards:

      Haggis, Greasy Spoon, Crisps, Dickory, Vidrasso, Cupid: Tricks and Tactics, Tuhao.

    • wbl ・ 4 hours ago

      With 6 people there is Russian go fish.

hinkley ・ 7 hours ago

There’s a local pub by my old house that has a considerable collection of board games so we got to sample a lot that we or friends didn’t already own. It always amuses me when I figure out that a board or card game was obviously prototyped on a standard card deck. It didn’t happen a lot but it did happen a few times.

Four kinds of cards in 1-2 stacks? 10-13 cards of each kind? 2-4 special cards that are identical? Hmm, I wonder how this game was invented…

I do wish we would get back to games that were just played with a deck of cards though. More options for bored people at small gatherings.

  • freddie_mercury ・ 7 hours ago

    There are tons of them, mostly thanks to a renaissance in Japan starting maybe a decade ago but spreading elsewhere.

    Taylor's Trick Taking Table is a YouTube channel dedicated to them. The Portland Game Collective's Discord channel is the de facto English language home to the movement.

    Most of them are very small scale and artisanal but a few bigger publishers have also started doing more of them in the past year.

    The Tokyo Game Market has literally hundreds of new ones released every year but most don't have English and can only be bought in Japan.

    A few smaller companies like Tricky Imports and Newmill Games are importing them, though.

  • tweetle_beetle ・ 7 hours ago

    There are quite a few made in niche communities but often not very discoverable, as they aren't commercially viable and marketed. One notable exception is The Emissary[1] which had a successful retail release as For Northwood![2]. Kni54ts[3] is often held up as another very good example of the genre, making very creative use of the deck, but you can find many more browsing through the links.

    [1] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DB2YF46s0oVFUSIpR9vxoGIbhpT... [2] https://www.sideroomgames.com/product/for-northwood/ [3] https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2946002/wip-kni54ts-a-solo-...

  • butlike ・ 7 hours ago

    Couldn't you just translate the rules to a standard playing deck? Seems like a PITA, but if you dont want to go through that effort, the ruleset inventor should get compensated for their effort...

  • aloisdg ・ 7 hours ago

    Like Coup or The Crew

specproc ・ 8 hours ago

Back in the day, me and a buddy wanted to play Magic -- mainly to troll our friends -- but didn't have cards to hand.

We took a pair of normal card decks, mapped some basic decks to the cards, and we did play. Good times.

nvarsj ・ 8 hours ago

This is fascinating. It seems obvious that this game was the direct inspiration for MtG, as Richard Garfield was a huge card game fanatic, and the number of unique effects it has in common (wraths, bounce, etc.) that are so iconic in MtG.

  • freddie_mercury ・ 7 hours ago

    Richard Garfield had never heard of Cuttle until fairly recently

    https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/17cb47k/cuttle_...

    Magic's direct inspiration was Cosmic Encounter.

    • nvarsj ・ 7 hours ago

      Interesting, there must be some cross overs going on back in the 70s. The mechanics are so similar to mtg.

      • aleph_one ・ 3 hours ago

        I thought the same thing! I had the incredible privilege to chat with Richard and even play some Cuttle with him on the site and the way he explained it was that there must have been shared influences between himself and whoever created Cuttle

percentcer ・ 4 hours ago

If I have two Queens in play am I untargetable? (each Queen protects the other?)

EDIT: ah, was confused by the cheat sheet on cuttle.cards (https://www.cuttle.cards/img/cuttle_rules.pdf). The main page mentions the mutual-Queen-protection as a variant, which I guess cuttle.cards has adopted.

hahamrfunnyguy ・ 9 hours ago

I am having some friends over next week for dinner and we'll probably play some games afterwards. There are a ton of other games listed on the site and I am sure there are some fun ones here!

aleph_one ・ 4 hours ago

So so cool to see Cuttle on Hacker News! Cuttle is my favorite game; I’ve been playing it for about 12 years and it never gets old.

Back around 2015 I was shocked that there wasn’t a place to play online. It’s the kind of game where the appeal is immediate if you’re into this sort of thing. I was like, where the hell has this game been all my life? How had I grown up playing card games and never known about this gem?

So I did what anyone would do: I learned web development to create a site for playing Cuttle online: https://cuttle.cards

I’ve made it my mission to make it so anyone can play Cuttle anytime they want. We still have some growing to do in order to reach that point, but we have a vibrant community with weekly play sessions, a ranked leaderboard, and 5 invitational championship tournaments every year. Check it out!

Some resources for anyone who’d like to learn more: We have open play sessions on the site every Wednesday at 8:30pm EST and every Thursday at 12pm EST. Beginners are always welcome and it’s the best time to find games.

We have an active discord (https://discord.gg/tPWm6kpbmb) where you can chat with other players, find games, and dive into strategy.

Here is a printable cheat sheet you can use to make learning (and teaching) the rules easier: https://www.cuttle.cards/img/cuttle_rules.pdf

We also live stream the Cuttle tournaments on twitch: https://twitch.tv/cuttle_cards

And then upload the VODs to YouTube: https://youtube.com/@cuttle-cards2245?si=lHbXNsQX54KjLtxk

Lastly as someone else mentioned, the whole project is open source, so if you’re interested in the technical side of things, you can check out the repo here: https://github.com/cuttle-cards/cuttle

It’s very much under active development and we’re always happy to work with new contributors, so if you’re interested in contributing to a full stack pvp card game, I’ve got just the thing for you. The app is a nodejs backend built with the sailsjs backend framework and a Vue 3 SPA frontend. We use cypress for e2e testing and vitest for unit testing. The test setup is something I’m particularly proud of and I’ve found the card game context to be an enormously fruitful one for testing automation since it saves so much time developing for multi user flows.

All that is to say that Cuttle is a blast and that if playing the game or contributing to the open source application interests you, I’d be happy to answer any questions about either. I hope y’all enjoy!

CAPSLOCKSSTUCK ・ 9 hours ago

It looks interesting, but I always struggle to explain (and conversely when on the other side, to understand) the rules of card games to new players. Has anyone had success in bringing a game more complicated than Cards Against Humanity to their friend group? What did you find helpful?

  • da_chicken ・ 8 hours ago

    I've taught dozens of people to play Magic, although not in the past 10 years.

    First, if at all possible, teach only one person at a time. Teaching multiple people a new game all at once is incredibly difficult for everyone.

    Second, they need to understand the basic turn structure or play pattern if the game has one. If you can, print it out and use it as a play-aid.

    Third, play several games open-handed with pre-constructed decks. Do not introduce the deckbuilding aspects of the game right away. Make the decks simple and basic. Ideally, create one deck for each "faction" in the game.

    In Magic, Wizards made 30-card beginning decks in each of the five colors that were meant for teaching the game. This was 15 years ago or more; I doubt they still do it since Arena exists. They were all common, so nothing complicated. They were like... $10 a set or something. So you'd do the above and play a couple of games with different colors and let the new player find one they like. Then, once they feel experienced and played a game close-handed or with only one of us playing close-handed, I'd ask them which two decks they liked the best, and I'd pick two others. Then we'd each shuffle the two chosen decks together and play again. And watching a person's mind expand into what the game really was during that game was incredibly satisfying. Ideally, at the end, I'd just give them all five decks to keep.

    • stevage ・ 6 hours ago

      > First, if at all possible, teach only one person at a time. Teaching multiple people a new game all at once is incredibly difficult for everyone.

      Interesting observation! I haven't had this experience at all. I've taught lots of board games to people, usually to multiple at once. The thing I find tricky is when you have some people who have played before and they keep interjecting with details that either aren't relevant yet, or I was planning to mention at a better time in the explanation.

      A group of all newbs is much easier.

  • popcar2 ・ 9 hours ago

    If you're playing with a friend group that has zero experience with card/board games, you need to ease them into the hobby with a game that's quick to explain and get into. If anything takes more than 10 minutes to explain then people generally give up.

    I had success getting friends to play games like Codenames, Fauna, Mountains of Madness, and Mysterium. There's a website called BoardGameGeek that gives each game a "weight" rating signifying how complex it is. Anything under 2/5 complexity should be easy enough for anybody.

    • 7thaccount ・ 8 hours ago

      I've had really good success with Monopoly Deal. Even if you hate regular monopoly (like me), I highly recommend.

      Rules are very simple, yet the strategy is deeper. You essentially want to get 3 property sets, but there are all kinds of action cards that allow you to steal properties or sets, negate actions, charge people rent money...etc. Nobody gets upset either as a typical game takes like 10-20 minutes. You can play like 2-6 players iirc.

    • stevage ・ 6 hours ago

      One of my favourite categories of game is the ones that can be taught in one minute, yet has interesting gameplay. Santorini, Quaridor and Orbito are all this category.

  • snarf21 ・ 8 hours ago

    I think it is a function of building up the concepts.

    You might teach someone how to play Hearts which is pretty rules light. But once they understand that, other trick taking games already have a head start.

    Another approach is to start with something where the rules are things on the cards so you learn them as you go. Sushi Go would be a good example of something like this and pretty approachable to start out.

    Another good suggestion is something like No Thanks! Over time, people start to see that a new game doesn't have to be onerous. Slowly learning concepts like drafting and discards and tricks and whatever, makes it easy to introduce further games because it becomes "This is just like Game X but with new rule Y."

pessimizer ・ 7 hours ago

Just a note for people who are fascinated by the idea of sometimes skipping proprietary games that require specialized, expensive, and often irreplaceable equipment: Other than pagat, and David Parlett's page (https://www.parlettgames.uk/), we can observe that the master has already given us two gifts.

New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards and Dice Games Properly Explained by Reiner Knizia

Two of the books I'd take to prison.

jonny_eh ・ 7 hours ago

Looks fun, but all the special effects seem like they'd be hard to remember. I wonder if there's a simpler variation that requires fewer rules to remember.

  • stevage ・ 6 hours ago

    Games like this become much easier with a quick reference printed out.

m463 ・ 6 hours ago

what a great website.

I was recently taught a card game, and when I searched for it I could not find it anywhere. Now I can probably find it.

erganemic ・ 6 hours ago

I wish I knew more interesting games that could be played with a standard deck. My wife and I travel a lot and there's something I find deeply appealing about being able to walk into any gas station, corner shop, or airport store anywhere in the world and come out with a dependency-free way of entertaining yourself (or even making friends!), and I feel like I don't know enough games that take advantage of that.

That being said, I do have a few standbys:

Bullshit's a favorite for semi-large groups: https://www.pagat.com/beating/cheat.html

Egyptian Ratscrew is my pick for 3-5 players (although I'd caution it against playing it in quiet public spaces): https://waste.org/~oliviax/cards/ratscrew.html

Lastly, Duel 52 is a recent favorite for just my wife and I to play, and very much in the vein of Cuttle: http://juddmadden.com/duel52/

  • Agree2468 ・ 6 hours ago

    My Ukrainian roommate taught me Durak, it's a good complement to ERS if the people you're with aren't as slap-happy as that game require.

luxuryballs ・ 8 hours ago

tap your opponents web server, they cannot untap it during their untap step

russellbeattie ・ 5 hours ago

I always wonder about the math in these more complex card games, and whether it would be possible to calculate like it is in poker. Specifically, is the game fair for all players starting from a random set of cards? For example in Cuttle, if you get two Kings in your hand, do the chances of winning shift slightly, or skyrocket?

I guess this is why play testing when creating new games can take a long time - both for enjoyment and fairness.

TheSpiceIsLife ・ 5 hours ago

There’s also the unrelated Cuttle by Toby

https://cuttle.xyz/

For creating SVG files for CNC cutting.

I dabbled with it when it was posted here some time ago, definitely much easier to use for its intended purpose than a fully featured app like Inkscape etc.

I believe he frequents these parts.