The Ready Room

Rules Links: These games do not have their own pages, so the rules are linked directly:

• 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 with pieces larger than a single square

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

• Gunfight (at the Pretty Good Corral): A quick shootout game with a standard poker deck

• Pennywise: A clever change-making game from the earliest days of Cheapass Games

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

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

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.

Page Links: These games 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

• The Forest: One of several driving games listed in a blog post from 2021

• 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 games have PDF versions 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. That’s what we did!

• 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 crack three poker decks to make one Pairs deck.

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

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

• Whispers: You can make a perfectly functional Whispers deck from two poker decks.

Poker Decks on DriveThruCards: We make poker decks, should you choose to order some. We have four back designs at the moment, and we’d 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 decks feature the same card fronts, with art by Cheyenne Wright. They are printed in the US on casino-quality playing card stock, just like all of our card games from DriveThruCards.