Cuttle – a MTG like game using a standard 52 card deck
101 comments
·January 10, 2025rpdillon
BiteCode_dev
+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.
remram
Epic Card Game is another cheaper/fast MTG alternative. The base set costs $10 and comes with 120 unique cards, enough for 4 players, constructing decks, or drafting. No lands like in MTG, no weak cards, I found it to be really fun.
The name is stupid though, impossible to search on the web or YouTube (everybody had an "epic" round of some card game), a shame.
https://www.epiccardgame.com/learn
I second Mindbug too. Also Radlands.
mdaniel
They're not doing themselves any favors with <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.epiccardga...> and I'm guessing it being so ancient is why it doesn't show up in the Play Store searches
remram
Yeah the game has been dropped by its authors at this point, but there are a lot of cards available (I ended up buying the entire collection of all packs and expansions for $100 on Amazon... though I never pull it all out) and the mobile app works (including multiplayer, simultaneous or not, and bots).
yochaigal
I'm also a huge fan of games that use a standard deck. I absolutely love Regicide for example, which can be purchased with an original deck (the art is nice) but plays with any 52-card deck.
failrate
There is also the game "Scuttle ", which is Cuttle on a deck of cards printed with the different abilities.
netbioserror
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
If co-op games are more your speed, check out Regicide.
clgeoio
+1 Regicide is a great game, difficult to master, but when playing with the same people often you learn how to play and work off each other in subtle ways.
remram
Awesome, tried it solo and it seems great, will try 2-player later.
Link to rules: https://www.regicidegame.com/how-to-play/
stevage
Thank you!! This looks awesome. Cannot wait to try.
7thaccount
I'd never heard of reinforcements, but it looks awesome. Definitely will purchase.
phasE89
[flagged]
7thaccount
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.
rpdillon
> 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
They have 300 times and 1000 times the reputation you have. Maybe dail down the paranoia.
the_jeremy
Here are the notes I wrote for myself as a magic player, to translate it into purely MTG terms. (These probably aren't enough to explain on their own, but they'll probably help MTG players who want to get the gist.)
Your opponent has 21 life and you win when your creatures have at least that much power. You can’t attack.
Setup: dealer goes second and starts with 6 cards, opponent starts with 5 cards. Hand limit of 7.
On your turn: Either play 1 card or draw 1 card
Point cards (ace - 10; ace is 1) are creatures with power equal to their point number. Face cards (and sideways 8) are enchantments. No lands or mana costs. "Playing" a card refers to casting that card or channeling that card.
Every point card has “channel - discard this card: Choose a creature with lesser value. Destroy it.” (suit matters, spades > hearts > diamonds > clubs, e.g., 8 of hearts is greater value than 8 of diamonds or any 7 but less than 8 of spades or any 9.) Note that this doesn't target.
Most point cards can be played as sorceries for an alternate effect:
Ace: wrath of God
2: disenchant OR muddle the mixture (this is the only instant and does not count toward your 1 card per turn limit. Everything else is sorcery speed)
3: regrowth
4: mind rot
5: divination
6: tranquility / back to nature
7: mind’s desire
8: sideways as enchantment - glasses of Urza
9: aura extraction*
10: none
Face cards are exclusively enchantments:
Jack: control magic**
Queen: Privileged position***
King: reduce your opponent’s life total based on the number of kings you control for as long as they remain on the battlefield: 0: 21; 1: 14; 2: 10; 3: 7; 4: 5.
Notes: The card types are pretty explicit - muddle the mixture can only counter sorceries or instants, not creatures, enchantments, or channeling. Wrath of god only kills creatures, tranquility only kills enchantments.
Rules can differ, depending on the source:
* sometimes as "reflector mage for enchantments", sometimes as "unsummon for enchantments". **sometimes as "exchange control of target creature". ***sometimes as "all permanents you control have hexproof", I.e., including itself.
wesapien
Thanks buddy, this made it a lot easier to grasp without any reading on Cuttle.
7thaccount
*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
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.
popcar2
My friend, you just rediscovered Crazy Eights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eights
madcaptenor
In fact, Uno exists because one family liked playing Crazy Eights but got tired arguing about the rules, so they started writing the rules on the cards and eventually made new cards: https://www.museumofplay.org/toys/uno/
InsideOutSanta
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.
n_plus_1_acc
Called mau mau in germany
Cthulhu_
As with other commenters, we used to play a game similar to what is now Uno with a standard deck, we call it "pesten" (bullying), but the wiki page says it's similar to the US Crazy Eights, and internationally it's known as Mau-Mau [0].
null
nlkl
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
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
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
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.
7thaccount
This actually also looks right up my alley. The recommendations on this thread are awesome. It looks like they have like 24 different small card games that fit into a tiny package. It's always hard for me to tell if I'll like it or not before playing though. I'm a lot more forgiving of short games though
freddie_mercury
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
With 6 people there is Russian go fish.
pessimizer
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.
hinkley
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
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
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
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
Like Coup or The Crew
antasvara
For those that are interested, there's an online version available: https://www.cuttle.cards/signup
splonk
There's also a bot you can play against: https://human-ai-interaction.github.io/cuttle-bot/
(Supposedly linked from that site somewhere, but I got it from the reddit thread linked elsewhere here.)
diabeetusman
The repo for the site is here: https://github.com/cuttle-cards/cuttle
ajot
This reminds me of Duel [0], which also intended to be an MTG-like with a 52 card deck.
https://web.archive.org/web/20100107192618/http://airship.ho...
specproc
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.
remram
I find that it gets really tedious when the mapping is complicated enough. Cuttle is already a little random, and you'll spend time looking up what your cards are (at least in your first games).
Unless you're willing to write on the cards of course.
specproc
We did it with paper reference, and were playing _a lot_ of Magic at the time.
Not something we ever did on the regular, but it was fun.
nvarsj
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
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
Interesting, there must be some cross overs going on back in the 70s. The mechanics are so similar to mtg.
aleph_one
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
gonzobonzo
[dead]
aleph_one
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!
jerojero
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!
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.