A great trick-taking game doesn’t need a thousand rules, it needs one twist that rewires your instincts. Clay and I sit down to debrief three modern trick-taking card games and what they teach us about design, tension, and the weird joy of trying to lose on purpose. If you love classic card games but keep chasing that “one more hand” feeling, this is a tight grab bag of ideas you can steal for your next game night.

We start with Fives, a clever must-follow trick taker from Taiki Shinzawa and CMYK’s Magenta line, where every card can secretly become a magenta five and scoring is a balancing act to finish as close to 25 as possible without busting. From there we jump to Gachapon Trick, the most off-the-wall of the bunch, blending trick taking with set collection and an actual in-game economy where winning a trick forces you to buy cards and leftover money can swing the score. It’s the kind of board game that makes you rethink what a “good” card even is.

We wrap with Rebel Princess, a Hearts-inspired trick-taking game where princes equal penalties, the frog is a nasty surprise, and each round adds a twist plus princess abilities that can either make the game feel fresh or make you miss the clean elegance of the original. Along the way we talk about what makes modern trick takers work, why some added powers create tracking fatigue, and which of these games we’re most excited to play again. If you enjoy trick-taking games, Hearts, set collection card games, or small-box board games with big decisions, you’ll find a new lead here.

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