What is a deck building board game?
Before we share our top 10 deck building board games with you, it might be useful to explain what a deck builder actually is. In a deck building game, everyone starts with a deck, or a stack of cards. These are often cards with money, victory points or actions on them. At the start of your turn you take a number of cards (usually 5 or 6) and use those cards to perform actions, the most important of which is the action 'buy new cards'. During the game you will try to improve your deck by buying more expensive cards with better actions, more money or more victory points. You place the cards you have played on your discard pile and when your deck of cards is empty, you shuffle the discard pile to form a new deck. That's how a deck building board game works!
Dominion
Dominion is kind of the mother of all deck building board games. Donald Fortunately, because we are also not tired of Dominion for a long time! Due to the enormous amount of cards (especially with all the expansions), every game is different. Curious which extension adds what exactly? And do you want to know which Dominion expansion is the most fun? Check our Dominion page for the answers to all these questions.
Aeon's End Legacy
Aeon's End Legacy game is a cooperative deck building game. So you play against the game together. And it is therefore a legacy game, which means that new game elements and rules are added during the game and that things change permanently in the game. Of course, we won't reveal what is in the mysterious boxes. In Aeon's End Legacy you work with money cards (diamonds) and spell cards with which you cast spells to damage the enemy. The nice twist about this deck builder is that you don't shuffle your discard pile, but turn it over to form your new deck. This allows you to influence which cards should come first. Useful!
Clank
Clank is a deck building game with a racing element. The players descend into a dragon's lair, steal an artifact there and try to get back up as quickly as possible. Sounds simple, but there is a catch with Clank : you only win if you manage to uncover the most valuable treasures. Do you stay longer in the dragon's lair to steal more expensive artifacts, but at the risk of waking the dragon with too much noise or a wrong step? Or do you grab the first thing you find and shoot back up as quickly as possible, with the risk that the other players have collected more? Clank is a wonderful thematic deck builder with awesome expansions.
Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle
Potterheads, take note, because we have the perfect deck building board game for you: Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle . Granted, not all Harry Potter games are a hit, but Hogwarts Battle certainly is! In this cooperative board game you go through the 7 books per game. You play your favorite character and of course fight together against our great friend Voldemort. But before you get to Vollie, you first have to defeat a lot of other bad guys. Finished with the 7 parts of Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle ? Then you simply start again or add one of the expansions to the game!
Dale of Merchants Collection
Dale of Merchants is a deck building card game with the cutest animals ever. This game is all about building your market stalls. If you manage to build a market stall with 8 different columns, you have immediately won the game. So you don't have to count points with this deck builder! Of all the Dale of Merchants games, the Dale of Merchants collection is by far our favorite. That's because this box is so much more complete. There is a lot of game material included, such as characters and other bonuses. As a result, no two games are the same!