This is the continuation of 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 from OG writers and various trick-taking designers, publishers, convention hosts, and content creators.
Today’s list is the “hidden gems” of the trick-taking genre. If somebody wanted to look at the “deeper cuts” in trick-taking, I’d enthusiastically recommend they check out these games. I posted a greatest hits list yesterday. The two other lists coming this week included “most beautiful” and “most innovative.”
The Methodology
For the purposes of this project, I simply asked everybody to vote for 10 games that represented “hidden gems” among trick-taking games. To be in the category, a game had to be a trick-taking game, and it had to have less than 200 ratings on BGG. (The “greatest hits” category was for those games above 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, though only 22 submitted votes for the “hidden gems” list, and 38 different games received votes.
To get on the list took a minimum of seven 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 spots, 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. Week wide, 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.
Without further ado, here are the “hidden gems” of trick-taking games!
HONORABLE MENTIONS (Counting Down)
15 (Tie). Hameln Cave*
15 (Tie). Agency
14. Trick and Trade
13. Torchlit
12. Tezuma Master
11. Somnia
TOP TEN
10. Luz – 82 points, 7 voters*
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
9. VIVO – 86 points, 8 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 0, Bronze: 0
8. Shut the Books – 90 points, 8 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
7. Kbernestich – 96 points, 8 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 2, Bronze: 2
6. Dog Tag Trick – 101 points, 9 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 0, Bronze: 2
5. Savage Bowl – 107 points, 8 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 3, Bronze: 1
4. Kakapo: Buddy & Party – 124 points, 10 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 2, Bronze: 3
3. The Green Fivura / Fives – 128 points, 12 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
2. The Six of VIII – 130 points, 11 voters
Gold: 3, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
1. Short Zoot Suit – 132 points, 13 voters
Gold: 0, Silver: 3, Bronze: 2
*For the reader’s convenience, I will note that Hameln Cave was largely remade as Sail, which would have qualified for the “greatest hits” list. LUZ is a remade of luz, and it has been gaining steam in popularity in recent weeks, but as of this writing, is still not over 200 BGG ratings.
Thoughts from Opinionated Gamers and Our Guests:
Chris Wray: So many of the games on this list are my favorite. The Six of VIII (which I reviewed last year) is one of the most intricate marriages (pun intended) of theme and mechanics I’ve seen in trick-taking. Short Zoot Suit joins a small set of astonishingly good games — like Nokosu Dice or Twinkle Starship — that reward making what I call “mid-hand bids.” And Kakapo is a fascinating — and I mean that word — twist on both a trick-taking game and a polyominoes game.
The real winner of this list is Daniel Newman and his publishing house, New Mill Industries, who has been printing critically-acclaimed trick-taking in small batches. Of the 16 games above, I believe he has put five of them out, and he designed Agency. I’ll be highlighting a couple of New Mill titles later this week, including Agency, which is as innovative as it is engaging.
In terms of omissions, I need to point to Seven Prophecies (also by New Mill), which is one of my 20 favorite trick-taking games, and one of my favorites of the “lane games.”
Joe Huber: Many years ago, I realized that – for me – a _lot_ of trick taking games were nothing more than YATTCG (yet another trick taking card game – and yes, I did study compilers in college). All of the games from this list that I have played have something to recommend them, but I’m not certain that any will in the long term rise above YATTCG for me. That said, currently luz and The Green Fivura are above that bar for me, so they might be exceptions.
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Trick-Taking Week 2025: Top 10 Hidden Gems
This is the continuation of 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 from OG writers and various trick-taking designers, publishers, convention hosts, and content creators.
Today’s list is the “hidden gems” of the trick-taking genre. If somebody wanted to look at the “deeper cuts” in trick-taking, I’d enthusiastically recommend they check out these games. I posted a greatest hits list yesterday. The two other lists coming this week included “most beautiful” and “most innovative.”
The Methodology
For the purposes of this project, I simply asked everybody to vote for 10 games that represented “hidden gems” among trick-taking games. To be in the category, a game had to be a trick-taking game, and it had to have less than 200 ratings on BGG. (The “greatest hits” category was for those games above 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, though only 22 submitted votes for the “hidden gems” list, and 38 different games received votes.
To get on the list took a minimum of seven 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 spots, 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. Week wide, 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.
Without further ado, here are the “hidden gems” of trick-taking games!
HONORABLE MENTIONS (Counting Down)
15 (Tie). Hameln Cave*
15 (Tie). Agency
14. Trick and Trade
13. Torchlit
12. Tezuma Master
11. Somnia
TOP TEN
10. Luz – 82 points, 7 voters*
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
9. VIVO – 86 points, 8 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 0, Bronze: 0
8. Shut the Books – 90 points, 8 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
7. Kbernestich – 96 points, 8 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 2, Bronze: 2
6. Dog Tag Trick – 101 points, 9 voters
Gold: 1, Silver: 0, Bronze: 2
5. Savage Bowl – 107 points, 8 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 3, Bronze: 1
4. Kakapo: Buddy & Party – 124 points, 10 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 2, Bronze: 3
3. The Green Fivura / Fives – 128 points, 12 voters
Gold: 2, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
2. The Six of VIII – 130 points, 11 voters
Gold: 3, Silver: 1, Bronze: 1
1. Short Zoot Suit – 132 points, 13 voters
Gold: 0, Silver: 3, Bronze: 2
*For the reader’s convenience, I will note that Hameln Cave was largely remade as Sail, which would have qualified for the “greatest hits” list. LUZ is a remade of luz, and it has been gaining steam in popularity in recent weeks, but as of this writing, is still not over 200 BGG ratings.
Thoughts from Opinionated Gamers and Our Guests:
Chris Wray: So many of the games on this list are my favorite. The Six of VIII (which I reviewed last year) is one of the most intricate marriages (pun intended) of theme and mechanics I’ve seen in trick-taking. Short Zoot Suit joins a small set of astonishingly good games — like Nokosu Dice or Twinkle Starship — that reward making what I call “mid-hand bids.” And Kakapo is a fascinating — and I mean that word — twist on both a trick-taking game and a polyominoes game.
The real winner of this list is Daniel Newman and his publishing house, New Mill Industries, who has been printing critically-acclaimed trick-taking in small batches. Of the 16 games above, I believe he has put five of them out, and he designed Agency. I’ll be highlighting a couple of New Mill titles later this week, including Agency, which is as innovative as it is engaging.
In terms of omissions, I need to point to Seven Prophecies (also by New Mill), which is one of my 20 favorite trick-taking games, and one of my favorites of the “lane games.”
Joe Huber: Many years ago, I realized that – for me – a _lot_ of trick taking games were nothing more than YATTCG (yet another trick taking card game – and yes, I did study compilers in college). All of the games from this list that I have played have something to recommend them, but I’m not certain that any will in the long term rise above YATTCG for me. That said, currently luz and The Green Fivura are above that bar for me, so they might be exceptions.
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