loading . . . Flip Through Dead Channels, and Bring Back the Guillotine Everyone has room for one more card game on their shelves, right? Or perhaps in a coat pocket? In any case, I like writing about card games, so here's another round-up of new and new-again designs coming to market.
▪️ Dead Channels is a new trick-taking game from Daniel Newman of New Mill Industries that combines three design elements. First, you want to win exactly two tricks with four players and exactly three with three. Second, the cards are dual-indexed, so they have different values depending on whether you splay them left or right.
Third and most importantly, the game has an oscillating "must follow"/"must not follow" system. Initially, players must follow suit, if possible, while their cards are splayed to the right — but when a player can't follow suit, the rule switches to "must not follow" and everyone must splay their cards left. (In this situation, the highest card played wins the trick, with later-played cards breaking the tie.) When a player can't _not_ follow, the next trick switches to "must follow" and players splay to the right once again.
Every trick you're off from the target number earns you a point, which is bad.
▪️ Ren Multamäki of Dragon Dawn Productions is crowdfunding two card games labeled as "trick-takers", but purists will object to that term.
Quantum Tricks is for 3-5 players, and you'll have three tricks under way at all times. On a turn, you can play to a trick as long as you follow suit, even if you've already played to that trick. Alternatively, you can start a trick with a new suit. The third option is to reveal a card that can't be played in either of the first two ways — which will be possible since the deck has five suits — then play it face-down on a trick as "space debris".
When a trick contains four cards, it resolves, with the highest card* winning the trick and debris being "scored" by whoever played it. (*The 1 beats the 11, and the 2 beats the 10, while the 0 removes the highest card currently in that trick.) When all cards have been played, whoever has claimed the most tricks scores 0 points for those tricks, while everyone else scores 1 point per trick. Each debris is worth -1 point, but you might consider taking trash if another trick would destroy your score.
Additionally, if anyone collects exactly five tricks, they score 5 points and no one else scores for their tricks. Play hands equal to the player count.
▪️ The other game is 15th Stamp, and it features cards numbered 1-7 in eight suits, with the game accommodating 3-7 players.
On a turn, play a card of your choice to the table. When the sum of all played cards equals 15 or higher, resolve the "trick". Whichever suit has the highest sum wins the trick, with whoever played the highest card in that suit placing it face up in front of themselves while everyone else places their played cards in this suit face down; all other cards are discarded.
Resolve one final trick after someone runs out of cards, then score points: 2 for each face-up card, and 1 for each face-down card. Play multiple rounds until someone hits 20+ points.
▪️ In August 2026, Capstone Games will release All Mine!, a new edition of Arve D. Fühler's 2014 trick-taking game Scharfe Schoten. (Gameplay is the same in both titles, despite having separate BGG game listings.)
In the game, each card shows its suit on the back, and all four suits are ranked in strength, with one card in each suit being designated a supertrump, outranking everything else.
Once you look at your hand, you decide which color you think you'll take the most cards of and which color will be least present in what you've collected. You score points based on how well you make these predictions, and if you make both, you receive a bonus equal to the difference between the number of cards in those two colors.
▪️ Another older card game coming back to market is Paul Peterson's Guillotine, which has had players laughing about beheadings since its debut in 1998. Apparently Avalon Hill sensed something in the air and thought it would be a good time to bring this game back to market, with a retail release date of August 1, 2026.
The game plays out over three rounds, with nobles being dealt out in a line in front of the guillotine at the start of a round. Each player has a hand of action cards, and on a turn you optionally play one action card, then collect the head of whoever is at the front of the line. Nobles are worth a varied number of points, and several have special effects that will manipulate the execution line.
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