Welcome to Trick-Taking Week 2025, where I’ll be posting trick-taking related content all week. We here at The Opinionated Gamers love trick-taking games, and as I wrote two years ago, many of the writers in this group have contributed to the growth in the mechanic’s popularity in recent years.
The showpiece this year is a set of four different top 10 lists, which I assembled by gathering votes OG writers and various trick-taking designers, publishers, convention hosts, and content creators.
Today’s list is the “great hits” of the trick-taking genre. If somebody was interested in trick-taking, I’d enthusiastically recommend they check out these games. The three other lists coming this week included “hidden gems,” “most beautiful,” and “most innovative.”
The Methodology
For purposes of this project, I simply asked everybody to vote for 10 games that represented “greatest hit” trick-taking games. To be in the category, a game had to be a trick-taking game, and it had to have more than 200 ratings on BGG. (Tomorrow we’ll post a “hidden gems” article, with games less than 200 ratings.) Anybody could add to the list assuming they were going to vote for it. Each voter was offered the chance to vote for up to 10 games, and they could give one game 15 points, one game 14 points, all the way down to giving one 6 points. We all put our votes into a spreadsheet. We then added up the points for each game and picked the top 10.
We had an astonishing 31 people vote as part of the project, and 40 different games received votes.
To get on the list took a minimum of nine voters rating the game decently well. That wasn’t a rule, but rather how the breakdown naturally worked out. There’s actually great consensus towards the top of our list.
Below you’ll see designations for gold, silver, and bronze. Those represent the number of voters that put a given game in the #1, #2, and #3 spot, respectively.
The Voters
Rather than just having the Opinionated Gamers vote, I also asked trick-taking designers and publishers, plus hosts of trick-taking conventions and other trick-taking content creators. The OG has lots of trick-taking expertise, but the more the merrier. A little over half of the voters are OG members. The second largest category of participants are trick-taking designers: we had more than a dozen of them vote, and the games they made span the genre. The result is a voting pool that has an impressive set of viewpoints on trick-taking.
I asked certain voters — the designer, publisher, developer, etc. — to not vote for games on which they worked. They could still vote, but just not for their games. For example, I did not vote for Xylotar (which I designed) or Yokai Septet (some editions of which carry a ruleset for one of my games).
Without further ado, here are the “greatest hits” among trick-taking games!
HONORABLE MENTIONS (Counting Down)
18 (Two-Way Tie). American Bookshop
18 (Two-Way Tie). Bottle Imp / Flaschenteufel
17. Stick ‘Em
16. Potato Man
15. Sluff Off / Wizard Extreme / Die Sieben Siegel
14. Mü
13. Robotrick
TOP TEN
9 (Four-Way Tie). Cat in the Box – 102 points, 11 voters
Gold: 0, Silver: 1, Bronze: 0
9 (Four-Way Tie). Xylotar – 102 points, 9 voters
Gold: 0, Silver: 3, Bronze: 1
9 (Four-Way Tie). Boast or Nothing / Best of Neopolitan – 102 points, 9 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 0, Bronze: 1
9 (Four-Way Tie). Bargain Hunter – 102 points, 9 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 3, Bronze: 0
8. Schadenfreude – 109 points, 9 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 3, Bronze: 2
7. Fishing – 25 points, 12 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 2
6. Scharfe Schoten – 132 points, 12 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 0, Bronze: 1
5. Yokai Septet – 136 points, 15 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
4. Seas of Strife / Texas Showdown – 176 points, 16 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 4
3. Fellowship of the Ring – 193 points, 18 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 5
2. The Crew / The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – 216 points, 17 voters
Gold: 6, Silver: 4, Bronze: 1
1. Nokosu Dice – 252 points, 20 voters
Gold: 7, Silver: 5, Bronze: 1
Thoughts from Opinionated Gamers and Our Guests:
Chris Wray: I have several thoughts. First, what a fantastic list. If somebody was new to trick-taking, I think they’d do well to try these games before others: they represent a nice cross-section of what the genre and mechanic can do.
Second, I love how the list is a nice combination of some of the modern classics and very recent releases. Some of the games, like Sluff Off and Stick ‘Em, are decades old. Three of the games — Fellowship of the Ring, Fishing, and Xylotar — were all released within the past year!
Third, I must make the case for two games that I think deserve to be here that are not. First, Aurum, which I reviewed two years ago, is an exceptional design, blending several mechanics and a beautiful production to make for a great trick-taking experience. I also love Voodoo Prince, that Reiner Knizia classic that always delights new enthusiasts of trick-taking mechanic.
Fourth and finally, while I’m honored that Xylotar made the list, I’ll admit that it is a bit awkward that that happened, to the point when I saw that it got in via a tie I thought about voting for another game to keep it off the list. I will note, for what it is worth, that many of the votes for it came from my fellow OG-ers and less from my fellow trick-taking designers. There’s a likely reason for that: the OG-ers are notorious deduction game lovers, and Xylotar is (or at least tries to be) as much a deduction game as a trick-taking game.
Joe Huber: I too have several thoughts. I would _NOT_ suggest to someone new to trick-taking that they try these games before others; there are some fine games on this list, and five that I would steer folks far away from. (I would point new players towards public domain games such as Hearts, Spades, Pitch, or Bridge, FWIW.) I fear that – as is often the case – my real love for trick taking games is largely orthogonal to the modern interest in trick-taking games, such that for most it’s best to ignore me and pay attention to the list above.
Larry: This is a very interesting list with some great games on it. I have to admit to being a bit shocked that Nokosu Dice not only finished on top, but did so fairly convincingly. Not that I think it’s a bad game–quite the contrary. I’ve played it a few times and I really like it and think it’s very clever. I just didn’t realize it was so well thought of in the community. If you’d asked me before the voting to predict the results, I probably would have come up with a dozen other games as more likely winners. But congratulations to its designer Yusuke Matsumoto and I’m happy that one of my favorites earned the top spot.
My top vote went to Bridge, which is not only my favorite trick-taking game by a wide margin, but one of my all-time favorite games of any category. Chris didn’t forbid us from voting for “traditional” games, but he didn’t particularly encourage it either and I think the voting reflects that. I contend that Bridge is just as much a “designer” game as any other title on this list, since we actually know who the designer was and a great deal about how the game was created. But I recognize mine was an outlier vote.
After Bridge, my ballot listed Bargain Hunter, Bottle Imp, Texas Showdown, The Crew, and Nokosu Dice. Definitely some older games, but I played a lot more trick-takers 20 years ago than I do now, mostly due to the makeup of my gaming groups. Was Sticht, Fox in the Forest, Xylotar, and Potato Man filled out the rest of my top 10, with James Miller’s excellent Control Nut just missing out. So half of the games I voted for made the group’s top 10, which two others got honorable mentions. I’ve played Scharfe Schoten (another game I was a bit surprised did so well–I didn’t think it was that well remembered) and Cat in the Box and like them both; they probably make my top 15. I need to play Fishing some more to finalize my feelings for it, but it also would probably have gotten a vote if our ballots were larger. The rest of the top 10 were games I haven’t had the chance to try yet, but I now have extra incentive to do so!
Dale: I agree with Huber in the sense that I’d not give this list to a newbie. Learn the basics with Spades, Euchre, Pitch, etc… then once you figure that out, come back here to be amazed. For people who know Trick-taking, this is a great list. Though there is some recency bias, The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring – the trick taking game and Fishing have really captured my attention in the past year. TLotR-TFotR-TTG is a really neat take on the cooperative trick taking genre, and one that I have really enjoyed playing through a few times. Fishing is a truly imaginative game with the super interesting deck-building aspect that is so hard to master the timing of. Of the whole list, Boast or Nothing is the one which really has never done well for me – but that’s the power of lists like these – not every game is going to be for every gamer.
Craig: Echoing the sentiments of Joe and Dale, I would encourage those new to trick taking games to spend some time exploring traditional examples like Hearts, Spades, Pitch, Euchre, etc. I suspect most of the voters cut our teeth playing many of these and more. I think if more voters cast ballots as Larry did, a few more traditional examples might have made an appearance on the list
I also think the list as a whole is suffering from some recency bias. While there has been a trick taking renaissance over the last few years, it feels as though it is obscuring a lot of older titles that deserve more consideration. A few of those titles show up, but I think several were overlooked in favor of newer, shinier, and more different titles. I play a fair amount of trick taking games and while there have been some really interesting newer releases, there are a lot of times when I’d rather go back and explore older titles or play some of the traditional favorites. Sheepshead or Five Hundred anyone?
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Trick-Taking Week 2025: Top 10 Greatest Hits
Welcome to Trick-Taking Week 2025, where I’ll be posting trick-taking related content all week. We here at The Opinionated Gamers love trick-taking games, and as I wrote two years ago, many of the writers in this group have contributed to the growth in the mechanic’s popularity in recent years.
The showpiece this year is a set of four different top 10 lists, which I assembled by gathering votes OG writers and various trick-taking designers, publishers, convention hosts, and content creators.
Today’s list is the “great hits” of the trick-taking genre. If somebody was interested in trick-taking, I’d enthusiastically recommend they check out these games. The three other lists coming this week included “hidden gems,” “most beautiful,” and “most innovative.”
The Methodology
For purposes of this project, I simply asked everybody to vote for 10 games that represented “greatest hit” trick-taking games. To be in the category, a game had to be a trick-taking game, and it had to have more than 200 ratings on BGG. (Tomorrow we’ll post a “hidden gems” article, with games less than 200 ratings.) Anybody could add to the list assuming they were going to vote for it. Each voter was offered the chance to vote for up to 10 games, and they could give one game 15 points, one game 14 points, all the way down to giving one 6 points. We all put our votes into a spreadsheet. We then added up the points for each game and picked the top 10.
We had an astonishing 31 people vote as part of the project, and 40 different games received votes.
To get on the list took a minimum of nine voters rating the game decently well. That wasn’t a rule, but rather how the breakdown naturally worked out. There’s actually great consensus towards the top of our list.
Below you’ll see designations for gold, silver, and bronze. Those represent the number of voters that put a given game in the #1, #2, and #3 spot, respectively.
The Voters
Rather than just having the Opinionated Gamers vote, I also asked trick-taking designers and publishers, plus hosts of trick-taking conventions and other trick-taking content creators. The OG has lots of trick-taking expertise, but the more the merrier. A little over half of the voters are OG members. The second largest category of participants are trick-taking designers: we had more than a dozen of them vote, and the games they made span the genre. The result is a voting pool that has an impressive set of viewpoints on trick-taking.
I asked certain voters — the designer, publisher, developer, etc. — to not vote for games on which they worked. They could still vote, but just not for their games. For example, I did not vote for Xylotar (which I designed) or Yokai Septet (some editions of which carry a ruleset for one of my games).
Without further ado, here are the “greatest hits” among trick-taking games!
HONORABLE MENTIONS (Counting Down)
18 (Two-Way Tie). American Bookshop
18 (Two-Way Tie). Bottle Imp / Flaschenteufel
17. Stick ‘Em
16. Potato Man
15. Sluff Off / Wizard Extreme / Die Sieben Siegel
14. Mü
13. Robotrick
TOP TEN
9 (Four-Way Tie). Cat in the Box – 102 points, 11 voters
Gold: 0, Silver: 1, Bronze: 0
9 (Four-Way Tie). Xylotar – 102 points, 9 voters
Gold: 0, Silver: 3, Bronze: 1
9 (Four-Way Tie). Boast or Nothing / Best of Neopolitan – 102 points, 9 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 0, Bronze: 1
9 (Four-Way Tie). Bargain Hunter – 102 points, 9 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 3, Bronze: 0
8. Schadenfreude – 109 points, 9 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 3, Bronze: 2
7. Fishing – 25 points, 12 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 2
6. Scharfe Schoten – 132 points, 12 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 0, Bronze: 1
5. Yokai Septet – 136 points, 15 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
4. Seas of Strife / Texas Showdown – 176 points, 16 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 4
3. Fellowship of the Ring – 193 points, 18 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 5
2. The Crew / The Crew: Mission Deep Sea – 216 points, 17 voters
Gold: 6, Silver: 4, Bronze: 1
1. Nokosu Dice – 252 points, 20 voters
Gold: 7, Silver: 5, Bronze: 1
Thoughts from Opinionated Gamers and Our Guests:
Chris Wray: I have several thoughts. First, what a fantastic list. If somebody was new to trick-taking, I think they’d do well to try these games before others: they represent a nice cross-section of what the genre and mechanic can do.
Second, I love how the list is a nice combination of some of the modern classics and very recent releases. Some of the games, like Sluff Off and Stick ‘Em, are decades old. Three of the games — Fellowship of the Ring, Fishing, and Xylotar — were all released within the past year!
Third, I must make the case for two games that I think deserve to be here that are not. First, Aurum, which I reviewed two years ago, is an exceptional design, blending several mechanics and a beautiful production to make for a great trick-taking experience. I also love Voodoo Prince, that Reiner Knizia classic that always delights new enthusiasts of trick-taking mechanic.
Fourth and finally, while I’m honored that Xylotar made the list, I’ll admit that it is a bit awkward that that happened, to the point when I saw that it got in via a tie I thought about voting for another game to keep it off the list. I will note, for what it is worth, that many of the votes for it came from my fellow OG-ers and less from my fellow trick-taking designers. There’s a likely reason for that: the OG-ers are notorious deduction game lovers, and Xylotar is (or at least tries to be) as much a deduction game as a trick-taking game.
Joe Huber: I too have several thoughts. I would _NOT_ suggest to someone new to trick-taking that they try these games before others; there are some fine games on this list, and five that I would steer folks far away from. (I would point new players towards public domain games such as Hearts, Spades, Pitch, or Bridge, FWIW.) I fear that – as is often the case – my real love for trick taking games is largely orthogonal to the modern interest in trick-taking games, such that for most it’s best to ignore me and pay attention to the list above.
Larry: This is a very interesting list with some great games on it. I have to admit to being a bit shocked that Nokosu Dice not only finished on top, but did so fairly convincingly. Not that I think it’s a bad game–quite the contrary. I’ve played it a few times and I really like it and think it’s very clever. I just didn’t realize it was so well thought of in the community. If you’d asked me before the voting to predict the results, I probably would have come up with a dozen other games as more likely winners. But congratulations to its designer Yusuke Matsumoto and I’m happy that one of my favorites earned the top spot.
My top vote went to Bridge, which is not only my favorite trick-taking game by a wide margin, but one of my all-time favorite games of any category. Chris didn’t forbid us from voting for “traditional” games, but he didn’t particularly encourage it either and I think the voting reflects that. I contend that Bridge is just as much a “designer” game as any other title on this list, since we actually know who the designer was and a great deal about how the game was created. But I recognize mine was an outlier vote.
After Bridge, my ballot listed Bargain Hunter, Bottle Imp, Texas Showdown, The Crew, and Nokosu Dice. Definitely some older games, but I played a lot more trick-takers 20 years ago than I do now, mostly due to the makeup of my gaming groups. Was Sticht, Fox in the Forest, Xylotar, and Potato Man filled out the rest of my top 10, with James Miller’s excellent Control Nut just missing out. So half of the games I voted for made the group’s top 10, which two others got honorable mentions. I’ve played Scharfe Schoten (another game I was a bit surprised did so well–I didn’t think it was that well remembered) and Cat in the Box and like them both; they probably make my top 15. I need to play Fishing some more to finalize my feelings for it, but it also would probably have gotten a vote if our ballots were larger. The rest of the top 10 were games I haven’t had the chance to try yet, but I now have extra incentive to do so!
Dale: I agree with Huber in the sense that I’d not give this list to a newbie. Learn the basics with Spades, Euchre, Pitch, etc… then once you figure that out, come back here to be amazed. For people who know Trick-taking, this is a great list. Though there is some recency bias, The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring – the trick taking game and Fishing have really captured my attention in the past year. TLotR-TFotR-TTG is a really neat take on the cooperative trick taking genre, and one that I have really enjoyed playing through a few times. Fishing is a truly imaginative game with the super interesting deck-building aspect that is so hard to master the timing of. Of the whole list, Boast or Nothing is the one which really has never done well for me – but that’s the power of lists like these – not every game is going to be for every gamer.
Craig: Echoing the sentiments of Joe and Dale, I would encourage those new to trick taking games to spend some time exploring traditional examples like Hearts, Spades, Pitch, Euchre, etc. I suspect most of the voters cut our teeth playing many of these and more. I think if more voters cast ballots as Larry did, a few more traditional examples might have made an appearance on the list
I also think the list as a whole is suffering from some recency bias. While there has been a trick taking renaissance over the last few years, it feels as though it is obscuring a lot of older titles that deserve more consideration. A few of those titles show up, but I think several were overlooked in favor of newer, shinier, and more different titles. I play a fair amount of trick taking games and while there have been some really interesting newer releases, there are a lot of times when I’d rather go back and explore older titles or play some of the traditional favorites. Sheepshead or Five Hundred anyone?
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