Bread Basket
Bread Basket is a quick-playing card game of sandwiches and surprises, based loosely on the Pairs game Lunch Rush. Players take turns playing cards into a line in the middle of the table, and if you complete a sandwich, you pick it up and score points. Here are some details:
A Sandwich is two matching cards with lower cards between them, such as 7-6-3-7. If you complete a Sandwich, you score face value for the “meat” (the cards in the middle), and nothing for the “bread” (the cards on the ends). If you make an “air sandwich,” which is two matching cards with nothing between them, you score nothing, but you draw a card.
On each turn you may either play a card or draw a card.
The round ends when one player’s hand is empty, after which everyone gets one more turn. Score the points you have collected, but subtract any points that are left in your hand.
If you have a version of the rules dated before 2025, we think the new version of Bread Basket is delightfully simpler. But the deck is still the same, and now we offer three versions of the deck to delight you.
Order Bread Basket at DriveThruCards:
Bread Basket (original deck)
Dread Basket (Halloween deck)
Beard Basket (Pirate deck)
Postas Deck (another 5×11 deck, has its own page here)
PnP Files: Below are the most recent rules, and cards that you can print yourself. You can also make your own Bread Basket deck, using cards from two poker decks.
Bread Basket Rules Version 3.11 (10/29/25)
Bread Basket Cards Printable PDF
Notes about the Cards PDF: Pages 1 and 2 have eleven different card faces: you must print five copies of each. Page 3 is the card back, which is strictly optional.
Videos: Before cutting the official “How to Play” video, we also threw together a “Pitch” video, aimed more at potential publisers, on the hunt for whom we remain even today. The pitch video is somewhat obsoloete now, but we’ve included a link for the curious.
Review: Not many of our unpublished games have online reviews, but PuzzCulture gave us a nice writeup in November 2025:
Where did Bread Basket come from?
Bread Basket is a version of the Pairs game Lunch Rush, originally designed for the Lord of the Fries Pairs deck. We experimented with several different deck recipes, including the Pairs triangle, different weird triangles, and other interesting mixes, before finally settling on a simple five-of-each design. It features ten positive ranks valued 1 through 10, and one negative five. You could also play Bread Basket with a Postas deck, using the E cards as the minus fives.
By 2024 we had landed on an overdesigned little game that seemed as good as we could make it, with three different kinds of pickups (sandwiches, soup, and salads) and overcomplicated rules for card play and scoring. Then after great deliberation and another round of playtesting, we reshaped this game into what it is today.
At the moment we are searching for a pubilsher to take Bread Basket to the next level (i.e., mass-prooducing a version with better art). In the meantime we hope you’ll enjoy the versions we have!
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