Looking for what best card games on PC? This is a question we wouldn't have asked a few years ago, when basic ports of paper systems and some mini-games in larger games were all that was available to us.
Here are the best card games:
There are now plenty of games like Hearthstone claiming to be the best card games on PC - one of the fastest growing genres in the industry. The best card games offer players a rich and ever-changing meta, potentially limitless replayability, and accessibility—so it's not hard to see why card games have been in high demand in recent years.
This means that someone (us) has to lay out the objective truth (subjective opinion) about what are the best card games on PC 2024 (the ones we like the most). We'll look at everything from the biggest player in the genre today (you'll never guess who it is), the best paper ports, newcomers you might not have heard of, and some of the best free card games. So, let's start our list of the best card games on PC.
Marvel Midnight Suns
Part card game, part strategy, Marvel Midnight Suns explores the dark side of the Marvel Universe as the Midnight Suns resurrect your character, Hunter, to help defeat Lilith and the elder god Cthlon. Mixing RPG elements with turn-based combat, you'll be able to befriend many major Marvel characters, including Iron Man, Captain Marvel, and Doctor Strange, before leading them into battle against Lilith's forces.
You can spend the night in the abbey or explore the grounds and its many secrets, leveling up your characters and creating deeper bonds. Combat is turn-based, and cards are played as character abilities with a certain number of ability points available each turn.
marvel snap
They say lightning never strikes twice, but apparently lightning hasn't heard of Ben Broad and the Second Dinner crew. The former Hearthstone developers have created another hit card game, this time focusing on the Marvel universe and drawing on iconic comic book series such as X-Men, Spider-Man and many more.
Each game takes place in three iconic locations from the comics, and each location provides a unique effect. Your cards react not only to the state of the board in that location, but also to the location itself. Building a deck is incredibly easy, as all the archetypes are fairly simple and most games last no more than three minutes, so you always have time to jump in and out of the game.
Magic: The Gathering Arena
Magic: The Gathering Arena is one of the best digital versions of Magic to date, and Magic is arguably the best paper card game. Arena offers many of the gameplay features and formats of classic Magic, one of the most popular card games, but with the touch cues and flashy animations that many new CCG players are accustomed to seeing in games like Hearthstone.
Magic: The Gathering Arena will appeal not only to veteran Magic players who are looking for a more comfortable and convenient space to practice their craft, but also to CCG players who want more challenge and challenge than digital card games like Hearthstone can offer. The Elder Scrolls: Legends and Gwent.
Legends of Runeterra
League of Legends fans rejoice, Riot Games has a contender for the title of one of the best card games on PC.
While Legends of Runeterra is similar to other card games in many ways, including the division of maps into regions and the presence of playable champions, the abilities, effects, and keywords of Legends of Runeterra cards offer something unique to the game. To get started, check out the best Legends of Runeterra decks, as well as the full rankings of all the champions in our Legends of Runeterra tier list.
Incryption
Inscryption is a roguelike deck builder and psychological horror game built around a twisted and sinister narrative told through talking cards and mysterious opponents sitting on the other side of the table. Starting the game in a remote cabin, you gradually build a deck of forest creatures and learn the rules of the game - you can sacrifice weak cards for blood and use blood to place other, more powerful cards against your opponent.
Inscryption also doesn't focus on rules, and the story flows through the game in waves of short matches. As you work your way through the various activities, you desperately try to piece together Inscryption's fragmented and chilling narrative - laying out cards, searching video archives, pulling teeth and running through a maze of crazed computers is all part of Inscyption's unrelenting menace that makes it one of the best indie games on PC .
Slay the Spire
This grueling deck-building roguelike game forces you to climb up the titular spire while battling hordes of enemies. If you die, you will return to find that the tower has become completely different, with different enemies and obstacles. However, whether this will benefit you is another question. But the game allows you to experiment with different cards and find different relics to give your deck a new boost.
In our review of Slay the Spire, Ali mentions that "Slay the Spire's simple gameplay masks a fiendishly complex gameplay. Synergies and counters are so subtly intertwined with each other that it is often difficult to determine which is which. It can feel like one card is tearing the deck apart and a relic is haphazardly putting it back together. Your triumphant run can come to an abrupt end when a careless boss carelessly sends you to the bottom of the tower.”
Monster train
Monster Train is a roguelike with deckbuilding in the same vein as Slay The Spire. There are five demon clans to choose from, each with their own theme and playstyle; you choose two of them to form your deck, one main clan and one minor. Hell has frozen over and it's your job to deliver the last burning Feast to the depths of hell, fighting heavenly soldiers along the way. Your train has three floors, and the precious Feast is at the very top - you must defend it from attacking angels, who rise one floor higher each round until you destroy them, adding an element of tower defense to every battle.
Between encounters, you can decide which way to steer your train, allowing you to choose the path with the best bonuses for your strategy. You can also upgrade and duplicate your cards in search of a killer combo. There's even fast-paced, real-time competitive multiplayer if you're up for the challenge.
Gwen: The Witcher Card
Despite our mission to save the world in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, we couldn't stop taverns and gambling tables playing the country's favorite card game. It might have been pretty deep for an in-game distraction back then, but the full-blown Gwent: The Witcher Card Game swallowed up our free time again.
This free PC game is the best CCG game for Sapkowski fans, with many more spells, units and special abilities than Geralt's third adventure. As a result, the game will take much longer to master as you battle your friends in best-of-three rounds of Gwent or compete in ranked or random matches. You can't expect Gwent to be as complex as other card games, but there's still a lot of depth here.
Eternal
Dire Wolf Digital is one of the best card game creators in the business, and their sequel The Elder Scrolls: Legends sits gloriously between the tactical complexity of Magic and the accessible and rewarding mechanics of the free-to-play card game Hearthstone.
Mid-round play has become more volatile with the addition of mana cards and "instant" cards that can interrupt your opponent's well-thought-out chain of commands and ruin their carefully laid plans. While Eternal has a very similar aesthetic to Blizzard's Hearthstone, it is perhaps a little more generous with its free packs, making it one of the most popular games in the world.
Hearthstone
Cream of the crop, top of the stack and one of the friendliest free card games. This list of the best card games would probably not exist without Hearthstone, as it kick-started the genre after years of passive popularity and quickly became one of the most played games in the world.
But why is she so good? Simplicity, flow, and regular card expansions. Anyone can pick up Hearthstone and play it and it will make sense to them. Maybe they won't fully understand what they're doing or make the best tactical moves, but the fun of you dragging your men across the sandy battlefield, watching them collide with each other and big, friendly numbers pop up, will be instant. Thanks to this, the game will work on almost all devices, including tablets and phones.
Perhaps best of all, there is a thriving competitive community. Playing catch-up with him isn't an easy task after so many set releases (which is why we've compiled a list of the best Hearthstone decks for new players), but Blizzard is looking at ways to make the fight easier for new players. If you use your gold wisely and get daily rewards, even if you're not particularly good at the game, it's free to play. Definitely one of the best on the list of the best card games on PC.
The new Hearthstone Battlegrounds mode transforms the card game into a refreshingly addictive auto-battler. If you're wondering how to play Hearthstone Battlegrounds or which Hearthstone Battlegrounds heroes to play as, we've got you covered.
Loop hero
The Lich has plunged the world and all its inhabitants into an endless cycle of chaos - looping itself back into a vicious chain of torment every day. As a brave hero, you must collect a deck of cards to help fight the monsters plaguing the area. If you manage to complete enough cycles, you can fight the boss and begin to slowly rebuild the world.
While on paper Loop Hero has just as much in common with RPG games, the number of decks you'll have to build to play through is very high. As different areas are unlocked, new classes are unlocked that radically change the way you play the game. Each new card also unlocks brand new card combinations, giving you an extra boost when it comes to defeating some of Loop Hero's most powerful enemies.
Ascension
If you ever thought the best card games in 2024 were all pretty similar, guess again: Ascension is more of a deck-building game than a card battler. But what, you ask, is a deck-building game? Deck building games are a subgenre of card games where each player starts with an identical deck and then a line of cards that they can purchase using the various resources generated by those starting cards. These cards are then sent to the discard pile, which is shuffled into the deck when the player runs out of cards. You start each turn with five cards and discard any you don't use - usually not all the cards - at the end of the turn.
It's a completely different focus, in which the strategic deck-building part of the game takes center stage, but the core issues like card sequencing and resource consumption remain the same. Ascension is one of the best card games on PC if you're someone who likes to play combo decks with big single turns. Beautiful art, regular updates and very fast games make it a great option for passing the time. It's also one of the few true deck-building games and one of the best on the list of the best card games on PC in 2024.
Kards
Many of the card games on this list revolve around mythical creatures and beasts, but the WWII game Kards is very different. The 1939 Games CCG instead focuses on the conflict surrounding World War II. You play as one of the participating nations, using tanks, aircraft and artillery based on their resources, and fight against the liveries of other players.
Nations have special strengths that match their actual capabilities in the 1940s, such as America's manufacturing power surpassing other countries. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Kards, aside from the gameplay, is the artwork on the cards, which is taken from books, posters, comics, magazines, and more, giving it a real sense of history.
Griftlands
While nominally a roguelike RPG, Griftlands uses cards instead of everything from speech skills and combat moves to currency and character traits. As you explore Klei Entertainment's charismatic sci-fi world, you'll use diplomacy and combat cards to deal with bar fights, highway robberies, and sly deals. With each meeting, you will receive new cards, expanding your capabilities.
stacklands
Is it a roguelike? Is this a survival game? Is this a city building game? Yes. Yes, all together. Stacklands takes core gameplay outlines from many different genres and boils them down to a deceptively simple card matching and stacking game.
You start with a few cards on the board—food, materials, and villagers—and you need to put them together to keep people fed while they work to gather resources. Every day you'll have new items to efficiently stack on the board - livestock, money, housing, expansion, expeditions and even waves of hostile monsters - and after the first couple of game weeks you'll be fine unless your board is full a chaotic mixture of perfectly symbiotic piles and half-finished, non-functional piles. The campaign only takes about six hours to complete, so Stacklands is a great card game on the list of the best card games on PC in 2024 that can be completed in a weekend.
Card shark
In Card Shark, your ability to disguise your actions and deceive your opponents is much more important than your ability to play cards. Climb the social ladder as you work your way up from the local card parlors to the table of the king himself. Master the trickery technique, learn how to swap decks, mark cards and make fake shuffles to outdo your opponents.
Ancient Enemy
Gray Alien Games has been mixing solitaire and card battles for several years now with exciting results, and Ancient Enemy is no exception. Turn-based combat is mixed with solitaire, but there's also a full skill tree and inventory system for players to take any route they want in a world engulfed in disaster.
The Solitaire Conspiracy
Speaking of solitaire, Mike Bithell's latest game may be one of the shortest here, but it's gripping from start to finish! You are tasked with playing solitaire simulations as you plan your team of spies ahead of dangerous missions, both in the main campaign and skirmish mode. They must be dangerous, the music playing in the background is so annoying!
Each of the face cards also has a unique action that helps you by swapping some of the cards. You can probably guess where the story is going, and the main game itself isn't very long, but the recent free update of Return of the Merry adds a little more to keep you busy.
Wingspan
For all bird watchers! If you don't immediately giggle at the mere mention of "crested" (now I'm sure), then you'll love this book, a hybrid of a board game and a card game.
Wingspan is a game about becoming a bird watcher and researcher who must create the best habitat for native birds. This is a somewhat relaxing game with beautiful illustrations of different types of birds. The board game version is arguably better because you can build a tower out of the blocks, but the digital version is much more reasonable for those on a budget (board games are expensive!).
Balato
Balatro is the Pac-Man of card games. It's easy to understand, but gets more complex as you progress. Borrowing elements of poker, you must make certain hands from the cards you choose to earn chips and multipliers. Don't worry if you don't know anything about poker, the game has a cheat sheet you can always refer to.
As you progress in Balatro, you earn money which can be spent on tarot cards, planet cards, jokers and vouchers. All you need to know is that these items can be easily combined to create card synergies that will allow you to rack up massive amounts of points. Every time you lose in Balatro, you can simply start a new run as if nothing happened.
Moonstone Island
Moonstone Island is a delightful and unique combination of genres reminiscent of Stardew Valley: life simulation, farming, dating, creature collecting and deck building.
While you're exploring the open world, collecting monsters and resources, growing and harvesting crops, you're also building your deck for challenging dungeon battles. In the game's turn-based combat system, your cards are your attacks and buffs, so making the right choices can be the difference between success and failure.
wildfrost
A combination of Hearthstone and Slay the Spire, this deck-building RPG is a delightfully frosty card game with a delightful art style and unique mechanics. By choosing a leader for your Wildfrost march, you combine creature cards and attack buffs to create deadly moves against your opponent. Instead of a countdown timer between turns, the game adds a dynamic counter system to each card so you can plan your next move and fend off your opponent's attacks.
As you travel across a snowy landscape, you rescue creatures and find hidden treasures to build your deck. Between turns, you can upgrade your cards and expand the Snowdell hub to get better starting cards.
We've played the last card, which means the lot has been drawn for you: our list of the best card games on PC 2024 is complete. Be sure to check out best strategies on pc.
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