Six great climbing and shedding card games
Get rid of your cards fastest if you want to be successful.
Climbing and shedding games are a staple of American households — whether they know it or not. Few games have had the enduring impact as UNO, and while it doesn’t have all the features of a climbing and shedding game, it’s firmly in the shedding family.
Let’s define some terms. A climbing game is a card game in which play progresses around the table, and each subsequent player must play cards that ‘climb’ from the last played cards. There is a lot of variation here, but the premise remains largely set there. A shedding game is a card game in which the objective is to be the first player out of cards. Again, there is variation within the family, but that’s the premise.
UNO fits that shedding theme quite nicely. Your goal is to be out of cards before any other player. Sure, there are some classic ‘take that’ mechanics that get in the way of the goal, and those mechanics will not feature here — at least not in that way. (This is largely because, like most modern gamers, I tend to shy away from those ‘take that’ ideas. I’m not unique this way, I know.)
Haggis
One of the big climbing and shedding games, Haggis was stuck in the sad realm of out-of-print games for an extended period. First released in 2010, I first heard about this one in 2011 or 2012 (something like that), but by the time I was interested in playing it, getting your hands on a copy was a tall order. That’s no longer the case thanks to the fine folks at Portland Game Collective, who produced a stunning new edition of the game with some gorgeous card art by Sai Beppu.
All that’s tangential to the gameplay, though, which I should talk about. It’s a climbing game with a nice betting mechanic, giving you an opportunity for extra points if you shed out first. It also features bombs t o break up play, and you’ll score for the cards you take. It’s hard to really put it into a short little blurb here, but it really is a fantastic climbing game, and it’s well worth your time. But be warned — there’s a little bit of a learning curve.
Designed by Sean Ross, published by Portland Game Collective and currently available to order.
Five Three Five
Featured in my 2023 Board Game Gift Guide, Five Three Five is a climbing game in which you have the ability to do more than just play sets and runs from your hand — you can also add to other player’s melds. On your turn, you can play a maximum of three cards as a meld — one of a single, set or run. But instead of just playing new instances of those that happen to be higher-ranking (though in runs, lower-value cards are ranked higher), you can add cards to a meld, extending it further. You can also overwrite a meld, playing a higher-ranked one. Oh, and there no 6s or 10s. And if you play an 8 when adding or overwriting, the trick ends and you start again. I dunno, it’s kind of weird when you put it that way, but I promise — this is a very cool game!
Designed by Kenichi Kabuki, published by Portland Game Collective. You’ll find it at BGG as Oh! Meow! Bow!, which is the Korean edition’s name.
Scout
I mean, everybody’s heard about Scout basically now, right? I think so. That shouldn’t sway you away from this great climbing game, which, at #109, is the highest-ranked climbing game on Board Game Geek. It’s also the third-highest among games in the trick-taking-and-climbing category, with only the two iterations of The Crew ranking higher. Scout, published by Oink (see last week’s post for some of my favorite pure-fun games from that particular publisher), is a climbing game in which you can’t rearrange your hand, and you can only play cards from your hand if they’re adjacent to one another (and in the correct order for your play.) However, you can adjust your hand slightly — first at the beginning of the game, by flipping your hand one of two directions, because this game features cards with two values on each card; second, by ‘scouting’ for cards by taking them from the ends of current meld. It’s a clever twist and a good game. Is it the best pure climbing game out there? Probably not, but I like it!
Designed by Kei Kajino, published by Oink Games.
Hungry Monkey
Sometimes you need a nice, light, breezy climbing game that can work for younger, less strategic players. Hungry Monkey is one of many options for that game. In this one, you’ve got a small hand of just five cards, and you can only play sets of cards with higher ranks than ones previously played. If you can’t, you’ll draw a card blind from the deck, which may or may not provide you some relief by being eligible to be played. If it’s not, you’ll have to take all the cards in the pile into your hand. Some ranks have special abilities — 7s grant an extra turn, 8s reverse the order for the next turn, 1s can be played on anything but require you to take the cards you play over. This one also features four facedown cards that you’ll play through after you play through your hand and the cards in the deck — but you’ll want to remember the cards there, which you can manipulate and peek at with 2s and 3s.
Hungry Monkey is a nice little game that won’t tax you particularly. The scope of decisions you can make is intentionally slim, but you’ll still feel like the cards you play matter, too.
Designed by Erik Andersson Sundén, who also designed the very cool Whirling Witchcraft, and published by HeidelBÄR games, who provided a review copy to Don’t Eat the Meeples.
Spring Cleaning
A caveat: I haven’t played Spring Cleaning in person. It’s available on Board Game Arena, though, and it’s currently up for preorder at one of my favorite small publishers, New Mill Industries. This climbing game also features a hand you can’t rearrange — a not too uncommon theme these days — but it provides an interesting opportunity for manipulation. While you can’t move the cards, you can place cards on offer and draw cards for offer any time you can’t follow a meld. That offer can be used by yourself, or it can be used by other players, but only when you’re following another player, never when you’re leading. You can follow with melds that are stronger in rank or by one card (a 3/4 beats a 2/3, for example) or with melds that are one card larger (a 2/3/4 beats a 7/8 or an 8/8, again, as an example), so you’ll find yourself wanting to hold back in an effort to retain a very good meld in-hand — or maybe you’ll play weaker cards so you can bring together cards in your hand. This is one of my favorite climbing games I’ve played recently, and I’ll recommend it unreservedly. But given I haven’t played it in person, maybe the cards are razor sharp or smell funny. So take it with a (very small) grain of salt.
Designed by Jonathan Cox (of JonGetsGames fame) and published by New Mill Industries, from whom you can preorder the game ahead of a late August release.
Honorable Mention: Crisps
I try to feature games that you can purchase here, as a general rule. Sometimes they might be difficult to purchase, or they might be out of print. But theoretically, you could obtain a physical version of the games I talk about. This is the rare exception. Crisps is a two-player climbing and shedding game in which the cards are unsuited. It hasn’t been published, but it is available on Board Game Arena, where I’ve played it a lot.
In Crisps, there’s a deck of cards remaining after players have been dealt cards. One of those cards will be turned face-up. The player who wins the trick by virtue of the other player passing, will choose between the face-up card and the top card of the deck, which they’ll add to their hand. The other player gets the remaining of those two options. Because the cards are unsuited, Crisps features a surprising amount of tension in that card draw, as it increases the probability that you’ll get something useful from either draw — and so, too, will your opponent. I’m constantly passing in Crisps to try to build up a strong hand as a result, sometimes going a bit too far and losing an opportunity to win a round. It’s a very cool game. Please, publishers — pick this one up. (I know one or two publishers subscribe to this newsletter. Maybe you want this one. Or maybe the designer, Shreesh Bhat, has something up their sleeve or a deal in the works. I dunno!)
Designed by Shreesh Bhat, designer of the very cool trick-taker Aurum, as well as several other unpublished games.
Hey, thanks for reading to the end! I hope one of these games interested you in some way. I’m firmly of the belief that card games hold an incredible amount of potential because of their limitations. Adopting the mechanics of a tried-and-true approach, like trick-taking and climbing-shedding, give us a lot to think about as players. It gives designers a toolkit to use in innovation. It connects us to our gaming past. I could go on, but I will save you the trouble of continuing to listen.
As always, if you do share this with a friend, you have my appreciation. You have double the appreciation if you share with an enemy. That’s very brave. You’re the best.
Next week: Ooh, I don’t know. Six games to play at the beach? Ten games that Quark from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine could have at his bar? 18 more great trick-taking games? You’ll just have to wait and see! (And I better get writing. I’ll be away from a computer for basically all of next week. It’s a scary prospect.)
