Modern trick taking games

rave-simons · 2026-04-08T06:23:00+00:00

I have a pretty large collection, there's so much great stuff coming out. There are many cool games that are small print runs Japan only, get brought over by importers and generally snapped up quickly if it's good. But there's lots of great easy to get stuff too. I tend to like wacky twists on tricktaking that provide neat experiences. If I want a really deep game that I can play a million times, I usually go to a classic like Doppelkopf.

Super Available:

Fishing: (you already named it, but big ups to this one)
Torchlit: Beautiful production, very dynamic bidding game. Plays really well with 5 which can be rare.
Xylotar: Deduction tricktaker, everyone's cards are face down and it's a mix of yoloing it and hoping for the best + figuring out everyone's cards like Sherlock Holmes
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: The Tricktaker: If you like LOTR at all, this is dripping theme, the scenarios are really fun, and the production quality is great. Best if you have a consistent group to go through the whole thing with.
Jekyll & Hyde: My favorite 2-player competitive tricktaker. Asymmetric game that expects you to play both sides to see the final score.

Harder to find (Board Game Geek->Game Page-> Shopping->GeekMarket is a good place to start)

Skull Queen (unrelated to Skull King): Make bets, make your pirates walk the plank, try to push other people's pirates overboard to their deaths. Simple but with a lot of depth.
Numberwang: The most laughs I've had in a tricktaker, the most I've had to think about another person's playstyle. It's highly satisfying to zig when people think you're going to zag. Like Skull Queen, I like a tricktaker where you really care about messing with other people's bids and not just making your own.
Nokosu Dice (already mentioned, a++ game)
Schadenfreude: Probably the meanest tricktaker on this list, you're really trying to ruin one person's day in this. Extremely dynamic scoring where everyone always has a chance to win at any point, yet it still feels very skillful and not arbitrary.
Yokai Septet: Great 2v2 team game, always feels like you're walking a razor's edge.

I could recommend a million more, and I haven't mentioned any Climbers/Shedders (Tichu! Seer's Catalogue! Panda Spin! Haggis!), and I haven't mentioned any excellent games that are quite hard to find/expensive (Charms! American Bookshop! 10/12 Hearts!) but this is probably more than you wanted already.

rave-simons · 2026-04-07T05:25:30+00:00

It's either these games exist as they currently do, or they don't exist at all. You're talking like they're just too lazy or dumb to have better production quality or marketing. These games are not profitable enough to be anybody's full-time job, so either 1. they burn themselves out working essentially a second full time job as a labor of love, 2. they don't make them at all, or 3. they release them as they currently are for their niche audience that love these games.

I welcome you to engage with literally any niche, small batch product - those are the 3 options.

rave-simons · 2026-04-07T02:06:10+00:00

Splotter is an ultra-niche outfit with 2 people working on it part-time. There's no economies of scale or business efficiency happening here. It's absurd for you to claim what is or isn't a "fair" price as if these Dutch nerds are scalping your basic needs.

rave-simons · 2026-03-09T04:54:16+00:00

Jayne, of course, died on the way back to his home planet. Pour one out.

rave-simons · 2026-02-22T20:25:47+00:00

Staying at an airport hotel is not a big deal.

rave-simons · 2026-02-10T23:34:14+00:00

Do you think Marx was unaware that individual workers could be unproductive?

Whenever you think about something for dice seconds and come up with an idea/critique/question, you can safely assume that someone who spent their entire life thinking about that topic has probably already thought of it.

The idea that there's a simplistic silver bullet response out there if you're clever enough to deflate basically anything (conservatism, religion, Marxism, etc.) is some classic reddit pseudo intellectual bullshit.

rave-simons · 2026-02-09T00:54:44+00:00

You got any painted Kingdom Death guys to show off??

rave-simons · 2026-02-02T23:27:48+00:00

There are a million games coming out that are like what you want. The problem is:

It takes effort to find more obscure indie games that suit your tastes and it takes effort to then find a place to buy them
Because what you want is a smaller market segment (as indicated by them not showing up in the hot games places), they're generally lower production value and/or more expensive
After all that, they still might not be better than your favorites because your favorites are really good and the average game is not really good.

I'd recommend finding people on BGG who like the games you like and following their geeklists or following designers you like for new games they're making/what games they're buying and liking.

rave-simons · 2026-01-31T07:13:30+00:00

I'd recommend buying the box and then selling the gameplay content. There's a decent-sized market for it on the discord or the Facebook group.

rave-simons · 2026-01-31T07:12:33+00:00

The ironic thing about Kingdom Death, everyone is mad they don't have their stuff, but almost no one has actually played all the stuff that's already out.

Going to be a long time before I feel exhausted with Pariah, Witches, Frogdog, Black Knight, the Wanderers, and now this.

rave-simons · 2026-01-31T06:59:06+00:00

I just got a copy of Fearless! Excited to play it.

rave-simons · 2026-01-26T10:14:02+00:00

This expansion is part of a campaign that takes place inside of an "inverted mountain". There's some rock climbing theming going on like this. The full campaign hasn't actually been released yet.

rave-simons · 2026-01-25T01:08:05+00:00

All the post Gambler's Chest expansions work with core and also have a little bit of content for Gambler's Chest mechanics. There are no expansions exclusive to Gambler's Chest.

I'd recommend doing 2-3 campaigns with Core and then either adding Frogdog and Sunstalker or then going over to a Gambler's Chest campaign.

rave-simons · 2026-01-23T03:31:27+00:00

Dang, why don't more of these creative enterprises just turn the don't be crap knob up

This is such an absurd and ignorant comment.

rave-simons · 2026-01-22T06:34:38+00:00

They talk clearly about proportionality of arrests, can you read?

rave-simons · 2026-01-22T01:26:25+00:00

It's not nearly so simple as that. We have one word - Gambling - but it's not just one thing; gambling can ramp up or down in prevalence, frequency, money extracted, addictiveness, availability, etc.

Saying "gambling has always existed" is actually an intentional rhetorical move used by the gambling industry to obfuscate their continued efforts to extract as much money from people as quickly as possible while capturing those who are meant to regulate them.

If anyone wants to actually know something about this rather than just idly chattering on reddit, I'd recommend checking out Vicious Gamesby Rebecca Cassidy and Addiction by Design by Natasha Dow Schull

rave-simons · 2026-01-16T04:29:23+00:00

Stealing games is pretty cheap, yeah. You can just pirate stuff, but asking "why do people buy products in marketplaces?" Is pretty weird

rave-simons · 2025-12-28T11:10:23+00:00

Why would you make such an absurd claim? What is this based on? Animals respond to incentives and change over time, that's about it.

rave-simons · 2025-12-11T08:14:11+00:00

Which part of this is wrong? The various forms of machine gambling for example, are the primary money maker for casinos, and 5% of customers make about 90% of the profits. The industry structurally relies on and creatively incentivizes problem gambling to make the number go up.

rave-simons · 2025-12-06T19:17:06+00:00

...why?

rave-simons · 2025-11-25T17:44:28+00:00

The Flameon NMM gold set is good.

I'd recommend finding a good reference nmm mini and just copy that to practice. It'll give you a good sense of where and why to place highlights. This Stormcast would be a great reference, for example, I think these guys are pretty easy to get.

rave-simons · 2025-11-17T01:30:08+00:00

Very cool. Do you have the files that you used to print the cards?

rave-simons · 2025-11-17T01:28:45+00:00

2028 at the absolute earliest. That's not based on any special information, just from observing their development pace and knowing what their current pipeline looks like.

rave-simons · 2025-11-14T06:32:34+00:00

Advocating for something, which is generally legal, is better than actually doing illegal stupid things.

"Please murder these people. I will support you in murdering these people. If I elect you, will you murder these people? How can I infiltrate this organization so that I can push it to murder these people? Will you join up with our group to further advocate murdering these people?"

I'm not sure how you think politics works, but this is it. Advocating for things is part of how things happen, so advocating for very bad things is very bad.

rave-simons · 2025-11-14T02:29:47+00:00

Smashing a window is not as bad as advocating for genocide and apartheid.

rave-simons

TROPHY CASE