The Ready Room

Newest Game: Hard Pass

You’re lost in the mountains and eating questionable things, in this silly bluffing game about cooking your family. Hard Pass is played with a standard poker deck, and we made it to celebrate the release of our Kill Doctor Lucky poker decks (see listings below). Check it out!

• Hard Pass Rules: A clever bluffing game about trying not to eat your family much

More Games

The Ready Room is filled with games so basic they don’t need their own pages. Download the PDFs below, grab the minimal components, and start playing!

• 10-Die Poker: A clever little dice game by James Ernest and Joshua Howard

• Abandon Ship: A pirates-fighting-over-treasure card game

• Barcelona:A two-player bluffing game with a poker deck, now much improved in version 2.0

• Fightopia: A pure strategy game played on a chessboard by James Ernest and Mike Selinker

• Flip: A pure strategy game using ten 6-sided dice. See also its How to Play Video

• The Forest:A driving game (like 20 Questions), introduced in a blog post from 2021

• Gunfight(at the Pretty Good Corral): A quick shootout game by James Ernest and Paul Peterson

• Pennywise: A clever change-making game from the earliest days of Cheapass Games. Play it Online!

• Queensland: A pure abstract game using checkers and a checkerboard

• Take-Back-Toe: A quaint little game, winner of Daniel Solis’ Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge

Game Page Links: These games are cool enough to have their own pages, linked below.

• Agents of the Crown: A four-player diplomatic game using a standard poker deck

• Ducks in a Bucket: A press-your-luck dice game for 2-6 players

• Fist: A chess-like game based on The Verdigris Pawn, by Alysa Wishingrad

• Prudh: A two-player abstract game with chips on a 6x6 board.

• The Verdigris Pawn: Two abstract games from the novel by Alysa Wishingrad: Fist and Hens and Chicks.

Product Links: These collections have PDF versions that you can buy from our store:

• The Cheapass Games Poker Suite: A collection of fourteen games you can play with a poker deck, most of which are not remotely like poker.

• Chief Herman’s Holiday Fun Pack: A collection of two dozen lightweight Cheapass Games, most of which need only basic components.

• Chief Herman’s Next Big Thing: A collection of twenty more games by Cheapass Games, also mostly using generic parts.

In a Pinch: Some of our other card games can be scratchbuilt with cards from multiple poker decks.

• Bread Basket: We love our clip art, but the Bread Basket deck is basically just numbers.

• Pairs: You need ten 10s, so you’ll have to break three poker decks to make one Pairs deck.

• Postas:The suits matter in Vines, but not in Holdout. You can play somePostas games with standard cards.

• Rochi: Suit doesn’t matter in the basic Rochi game, just rank, so you can probably fake your way through this one.

• Whispers: You can make a perfectly functional Whispers deck from two poker decks. Or an UNO deck!

Play Online!

• Abstract Play: You can play Fightopia, Queensland, and Take-Back-Toe at AbstractPlay, a free resource for asynchronous strategy games. They have also implemented several of our games including Tablero di Berona and Hens and Chicks.

• Down the Rathole: Hermit Crab Greg Whitehead has AI players for Pennywise, Linos, Prudh, and Hens and Chicks at his page, Down the Rathole.

Poker Decks on DriveThruCards

We have poker decks for sale, should you need one. Our newest offering is the Kill Doctor Lucky deck, available with two different back designs. It uses Israel Evans’ art from Get Lucky.

• Doctor Lucky Poker Deck, Blue Backs

• Doctor Lucky Poker Deck, Tan Backs

We also have a different set of card fronts, with art by Cheyenne Wright from our game Ricochet Poker. This version of our poker deck comes with four different backs, and we will happily add more if anyone asks.

• Artsy Suits: Simple back design featuring the suit icons

• Crab Logo (Red): Red diamond pattern with the crab logo

• Crab Logo (Blue): Blue diamond pattern with the crab logo

• Flower Deck: Floral design from the gift shop at Crab Fragment Cay

All of these poker decks are printed in the USA on casino-quality playing card stock, just like all of our card games from DriveThruCards.