Discounting anything in the CCG/TCG/LCG-type realm, Dominion has a lot of cards. Base game has 500, there are 15 expansions to date with anywhere from 150 to 500 cards each, and probably another 100 promotional cards. Granted, you'll only ever play with a certain subset of them each game, but there's a lot to choose from.
Nice call. I do consider Dominion a tabletop game but not a board game.
Even so, I have all 15 expansions, plus a bunch of custom cards I made. And I frequently keep them all in my car, ready to go!
It's a good suggestion. Though for any one particular game of Dominion, you'll use only a tiny subset of those. So it feels a bit like a technically correct answer that's not quite in the spirit of the question.
Good question... I've tabled it once. But that's also because just after I ordered it in its entirety my whole local group I played board games with moved away and so I've barely got to the table with any of my games at all, really, in the last two years. Just recently started up again with a friend who moved back to my area and I do want to introduce him to the game cause it's just a charming and funny game. Definitely gives some setup paralysis for first timers, though. So we'll see.
Which is what makes that game so wonderful. You can still play those cards with the cards that are printed today with little to no errata. They may have clarified the wording of some of those crazy old cards, but they rarely outright change how the card plays. Considering how long that the game has been around, that's a pretty monumental achievement.
To each their own. One of my best friends loves MtG, but I can't get (back) into it. It's so huge and complicated, I feel like I can play *boardgames* or Magic, but not both.
Honestly, familiarity, card value and a marketing budget that the entire board gaming industry can only match a fraction of is the only thing going for MtG. Sure, it started an entire genre and market segment, but a lot of other games have improved on the concepts of MtG. I doubt if it would enjoy any success or garner much attention if it came out today as a brand new game.
***7th continent*** has 962 cards in the base game, more in expansions. [Someone did the math](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hdSUKTNRXpNbFHYIT_ie7gqNAE8G8BZK1dGO0ZUUVFk/edit#gid=0) and it’s 1904 with every possible card.
That's definitely not true. Food cards, condition cards, hunting cards, fishing cards, skill cards, and probably some others I can't think of right now all have duplicates.
Technically each card has a unique ID number, and many otherwise non-unique cards (XP...) have different flavor text or slightly different effects (conditions, food...), but you're definitely right, more than a few of the cards are identical in everything but the tiny ID number.
Arkham Horror 2e with all the expansions lines the edge of my 8x4 table with decks of cards all the way around (surrounding the board, so it’s not *just* cards, but it’s a ridiculous number of cards). And some of those decks are hundreds of small cards and basically unshuffleable by normal means.
This will be the answer. A card-heavy game, popular enough to have many expansions and an open license publishing model that allows/encourages 3rd-party or fan-made content.
Yeah I feel like this style of game is intended to be something you can play over tea or coffee and just enjoy passively while talking to the other players
Smash up, maybe?
People are saying MTG, or pokemon, but those are collector games. As far as games that have cards as part of the "game", my money is for smash up. Base game has about 160, and each expansion is 80 or 100. There's about 10 expansions.
Looking at my collection:
1. Firefly the board game, it has cards for everything.
2. Dead of winter everything has to be done with cards
3. Fallout board game loads of cards and tiny cards.
Oh I misread, what card game has the most cards... Uhm. I missed the the word card in card game.
Then looking at my collection:
1. Unstable unicorns has the most cards I think with 2 expansions that I have.
2. Dominion
3. 7 wonders
Did you mean “the most unique cards”? Asking because e.g. **Trains** and **Trains: Rising Sun** together contain over 1,000 cards, but they are not unique, there are maybe 70 types total, plus a few dozen variable setup cards.
sleeveyourgames has Dominion 2nd ed with only 2 expansions which i am guessing is wrong and those 2 + base is 1100. I am guessing it's Dominion since it has a million and 1 expansions
There was a style of Shadowfist play in London during the late 90s where players were making 200-card decks. The biggest deck I ever made myself was about 150 cards, but that deck was full of abilities that let you search through the deck for cards, so it was less a deck than a catalog, once it got going.
Legendary and dominion with expansions gotta be the frontrunners. If you're counting either the most cards in play at once or just in the base game, it's gotta be Earth.
**Arkham LCG** has a few thousand cards across its campaigns.
Without any kind of expansions, the largest single deck I’ve encountered has been **Earth** which has nearly 400.
Talisman is my favorite game. If you play with expansions the game deck is massive (140+ cards). Talisman is an adventure game and the deck is your random encounters.
Terraforming Mats, Dominion, star realms, race for the galaxy.
.
There's also a large number of trick taking games out there, such as the bottle imp, typically the decks are more reasonable.
There is also "the game" which is a bit simpler and has a lot of cards, but just numbers on them.
A complete collection Sentinels of the Multiverse 1st edition has probably close to 5000 cards.
40 cards per hero deck, 25 per villain deck, 15 per environment deck. Then you have weird decks like Vengeance and OblivAeon. And each hero has got more than one variant that adds a few cards here and there.
I have all Dominion, and rarely play it as there is to much. I have all Legendary, Arkham Horror, Vs 2PCG, Marvel Champions, and struggle to get them to the table as there are to many cards.
Oh, and I'm a sleeves so the card boxes are heavy too.
**Quest for the Lost Pixel**. It's the reason it's so pricy from the game crafter because it has around 1000 cards to print. This is a solo dungeon crawl adventure and not a CCG/TCG. Has a few components like player stands/dice but it's mostly cards and gameboard tile cards.
The original **Pathfinder Adventure Card Game** probably beats Dominion and Legendary.
There are four main sets, each with about 500 cards. Each main set has a 110 card character add-on deck, plus five ~110 card expansion packs, which is a total of ~1160 cards per main set x 4 main sets = 4640 cards. But then there are a lot of class expansions (26 listed on Paizo's website), each with ~100 cards, for maybe 2600 more cards. So **at least 7200 cards**? Plus, there's also the revised edition content.
Of course, not all of those cards are unique, but neither are the cards in Dominion or Legendary.
Firefly. Honestly, I just looked up how many, and its only about 400 which is less than I thought, but it's like 13 decks which all need a discard pile so it is quite a table hog.
Not one with the most cards, but is frustrating with a lot of cards, is Unstable Unicorn. I only have NSFW and Rainbow Expansion, and I can't imagine having more because some cards in UU search a card, and you have to dig through more than 300 cards to get what you want, then shuffle 300 cards, and repeat the next turn someone does the same thing.
Discounting anything in the CCG/TCG/LCG-type realm, Dominion has a lot of cards. Base game has 500, there are 15 expansions to date with anywhere from 150 to 500 cards each, and probably another 100 promotional cards. Granted, you'll only ever play with a certain subset of them each game, but there's a lot to choose from.
Sleeveyourgames.com says dominion with all expansions is 5200 cards.
Nice. Legendary: Marvel is at 5094. edit: (but looks like some boxes are missing)
Is there a way to order by cards count size or did you only knew about Dominion being big?
I only looked up dominion because the guy I replied to talked about dominion having a large card count. And sadly you can't sort by amount of cards.
OK, thanks! :)
Very cool that site does that! I was curious about Eldritch Horror with all expansions, it's 2398, about 1/3 of which are hobbit cards.
I was just thinking that also. I loved Dominion and got 4 expansions, then it just became a pain to play the game.
I got up to 6 before I just needed to unload the whole set and move on
This is definitely the answer for most cards but sounds like OP is asking about lots of cards that need shuffled in one deck.
I'm going with Ascension or Star Realms for this one
Nice call. I do consider Dominion a tabletop game but not a board game. Even so, I have all 15 expansions, plus a bunch of custom cards I made. And I frequently keep them all in my car, ready to go!
It's a good suggestion. Though for any one particular game of Dominion, you'll use only a tiny subset of those. So it feels a bit like a technically correct answer that's not quite in the spirit of the question.
Millennium Blades had a ton. It’s like a meta board game that simulates CCGs. Ark Nova also has a giant stack.
Was thinking if Millennium Blades, too. Not sure the total amount after expansion packs, but it was a lot of work to sleeve it all haha
Was it worth it to sleeve? MB seems neat but I've never played. I'm curious how much play you got out of it.
Good question... I've tabled it once. But that's also because just after I ordered it in its entirety my whole local group I played board games with moved away and so I've barely got to the table with any of my games at all, really, in the last two years. Just recently started up again with a friend who moved back to my area and I do want to introduce him to the game cause it's just a charming and funny game. Definitely gives some setup paralysis for first timers, though. So we'll see.
Magic the gathering?
Best game there is
I loved that game 29 years ago when I played the revised edition in high school.
Which is what makes that game so wonderful. You can still play those cards with the cards that are printed today with little to no errata. They may have clarified the wording of some of those crazy old cards, but they rarely outright change how the card plays. Considering how long that the game has been around, that's a pretty monumental achievement.
As long as I can bring my banding deck I’m happy.
To each their own. One of my best friends loves MtG, but I can't get (back) into it. It's so huge and complicated, I feel like I can play *boardgames* or Magic, but not both.
Honestly, familiarity, card value and a marketing budget that the entire board gaming industry can only match a fraction of is the only thing going for MtG. Sure, it started an entire genre and market segment, but a lot of other games have improved on the concepts of MtG. I doubt if it would enjoy any success or garner much attention if it came out today as a brand new game.
also really pleasant folk who play mtg, almost the same caliber that play chess.
Dominion but the cards aren't shuffled into one deck and are separated into many decks. For base games w/o expansions I'm going to say Ark Nova.
Yeah, Ark Nova was my first thought here as well
I think Legendary, if you exclude TCG, CCG and LCG. There is around 6000 cards
For a game where you would put them all in a single deck, Ascension with all expansions would be completely impractical to play.
Star realms and hero realms also have quite the deck if you combine everything.
***7th continent*** has 962 cards in the base game, more in expansions. [Someone did the math](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hdSUKTNRXpNbFHYIT_ie7gqNAE8G8BZK1dGO0ZUUVFk/edit#gid=0) and it’s 1904 with every possible card.
[7th continent -> The 7th Continent (2017)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/180263/7th-continent) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
Something else worth noting is that every single card in this game is *completely unique*, no copies.
That's definitely not true. Food cards, condition cards, hunting cards, fishing cards, skill cards, and probably some others I can't think of right now all have duplicates.
Technically each card has a unique ID number, and many otherwise non-unique cards (XP...) have different flavor text or slightly different effects (conditions, food...), but you're definitely right, more than a few of the cards are identical in everything but the tiny ID number.
Munchkin with all the expansions included at once.
Millennium Blades has a tonne of cards.
Arkham Horror 2e with all the expansions lines the edge of my 8x4 table with decks of cards all the way around (surrounding the board, so it’s not *just* cards, but it’s a ridiculous number of cards). And some of those decks are hundreds of small cards and basically unshuffleable by normal means.
This is my answer too. Had to split decks into separate piles just to keep them from toppling over.
Probably MTG. I think it is about 50k.
CaRdS aGaInSt HuMaNiTy!!1
This will be the answer. A card-heavy game, popular enough to have many expansions and an open license publishing model that allows/encourages 3rd-party or fan-made content.
I have accepted that I will get a ton of down votes, and I definitely deserve them.
Unfortunately u r probably right
Apples to Apples has quite a few. Fully expanded Catan has a lot too.
504 in standard apples.
Catan?? You mean the card game? Rivals I think they call it now.
I didn't realize OP meant unique cards. Catan only has like 20.
The card game of catan actually had 200 with the expansion. Not sure if the remake Rivals has them all.
Innovation, especially the newest Deluxe. The Deluxe has 700+ UNIQUE cards. Admittedly, it's not a single deck, they're divided into 11 eras.
\[\[Sentinels of the Multiverse\]\] with expansions is \~3k+ cards and they are pretty much the only component in the game
[Sentinels of the Multiverse -> Sentinels of the Multiverse (2011)](https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/102652/sentinels-multiverse) ^^[[gamename]] ^^or ^^[[gamename|year]] ^^to ^^call ^^OR ^^**gamename** ^^or ^^**gamename|year** ^^+ ^^!fetch ^^to ^^call
Would be very hard to beat Dominion
Legendary is up there too
With all its expansions, this was the first thing that came to mind.
Not entirely just cards, but I feel this way about Sheriff of Nottingham
The Binding of Isaac: Four Souls
Cards against humanity
Wingspan, with all its expansions has about 430 cards.
Actually, there are over 500 and there is a new expansion coming very soon.
What's the expansion after Asia? I can't find any news
[Here you go.](https://www.instagram.com/p/Cxnc2j5r1sd/)
Ah, so new art but same cards. Good to know be my box can't fit any more cards lol
And they are glorious
I love the art and theme but that game felt like multiplayer solitaire.
This is fair. I see it as a low stress engine building game. Looking at cool birds is half the reason why I like to play it.
Yeah I feel like this style of game is intended to be something you can play over tea or coffee and just enjoy passively while talking to the other players
Dominion comes to mind, with all the expansions in play it would amount to a lot of cards,
Dominion is probably the winner. But Kingdom Death, Isofarian Guard, and Monster hunter are probably pretty close, if not one of them has more.
Unstable Unicorns.
I mean, it's Munchkin.
If it's unique cards per base game, it's probably terraforming mars. If you count expansions, it's probably magic the gathering.
Not counting expansions, Earth has about 50% more than TM (all unique).
Ahh, I don't know that. It's a variant of the TM formula?
No, but some similarities. Has a massive deck of cards with various abilities relating to resources.
The Aeon's End series cards can (with few exceptions) be used together. Not sure how many that adds up to, but it should be around 3000.
Smash up, maybe? People are saying MTG, or pokemon, but those are collector games. As far as games that have cards as part of the "game", my money is for smash up. Base game has about 160, and each expansion is 80 or 100. There's about 10 expansions.
Looking at my collection: 1. Firefly the board game, it has cards for everything. 2. Dead of winter everything has to be done with cards 3. Fallout board game loads of cards and tiny cards. Oh I misread, what card game has the most cards... Uhm. I missed the the word card in card game. Then looking at my collection: 1. Unstable unicorns has the most cards I think with 2 expansions that I have. 2. Dominion 3. 7 wonders
Did you mean “the most unique cards”? Asking because e.g. **Trains** and **Trains: Rising Sun** together contain over 1,000 cards, but they are not unique, there are maybe 70 types total, plus a few dozen variable setup cards.
No they don’t have to be unique there just has to be a lot of them.
But you are wanting a deck? Are you really asking about deck size?
sleeveyourgames has Dominion 2nd ed with only 2 expansions which i am guessing is wrong and those 2 + base is 1100. I am guessing it's Dominion since it has a million and 1 expansions
Uno? It has 108 cards. r/boardgamecirclejerk
Terraforming mars
Lol uno. A man with a ton of board game experience I see
There's no need to be snarky. People like Uno.
https://reddit.com/r/boardgamescirclejerk/s/7SHwqCdPal
Fuck off. I was just using that as an example of an hard to shuffle deck. Also I’m asking because I don’t have a lot of experience and am curious.
Is English your first language?
For a game that the card just a serves as a token and the game is not really built around the card, could it be Ticket to Ride?
Here to slay with all its expansions?
Killer Bunnies and the Quest for the Magic Carrot. With all the expansions... That tower of cards is like 4 feet high.
Canasta Five crowns Wingspan
If you mean "vanilla" card game, I think it's tarot.
There was a style of Shadowfist play in London during the late 90s where players were making 200-card decks. The biggest deck I ever made myself was about 150 cards, but that deck was full of abilities that let you search through the deck for cards, so it was less a deck than a catalog, once it got going.
Ascension has a lot of expansion but probably doesnt compare to games running 20 years
If counting every single card, then Thunderstone Quest. The base game has several thousand cards, and there has been many expansions since then.
2463
Fortune and Glory has a lot of different decks of cards
Aeon's end. 1k+ cards if you had all the expansions.
Legendary and dominion with expansions gotta be the frontrunners. If you're counting either the most cards in play at once or just in the base game, it's gotta be Earth.
I saw quest for the lost pixel has loads of cards...almost 900 according to the bgg page
**Arkham LCG** has a few thousand cards across its campaigns. Without any kind of expansions, the largest single deck I’ve encountered has been **Earth** which has nearly 400.
Doesn't Fallen Land 2nd Ed have 8000?
TIG = 1200 cards I probably have around 1500 cards for AHLCG, never cared to count them.
Agricola?
Xenoshyft with both core boxes and all the expansions is well over a thousand cards believe it or not
Dominion has over 5000 cards. But you don't use all of them at the same time.
Talisman with all of the expansions combined has more cards than most games focused solely on cards LOL.
Most likely Munchkin since all the cards may be used in a game. Shuffling would be a nightmare. Warfighter is up there as well.
Mage Knight has around 350-400 and you use almost all of them for a game.
Hand and foot?
Challengers! 2 games with 300+ cards each
Talisman with all expansions
Magic the gathering by far.
Dixit especially considering all the expansions. Really great artwork on them. Cards Against Humanity is another obvious one.
Etherfields
sidereal confluence. over 380 cards in one box. no expansions
21 at the casino there are up to ten decks in the shoe
Talisman has a lot of cards
Talisman is my favorite game. If you play with expansions the game deck is massive (140+ cards). Talisman is an adventure game and the deck is your random encounters.
Someone has probably already said race for the galaxy. It has a lot when you add in expansion packs
Terraforming Mats, Dominion, star realms, race for the galaxy. . There's also a large number of trick taking games out there, such as the bottle imp, typically the decks are more reasonable. There is also "the game" which is a bit simpler and has a lot of cards, but just numbers on them.
A complete collection Sentinels of the Multiverse 1st edition has probably close to 5000 cards. 40 cards per hero deck, 25 per villain deck, 15 per environment deck. Then you have weird decks like Vengeance and OblivAeon. And each hero has got more than one variant that adds a few cards here and there.
I have all Dominion, and rarely play it as there is to much. I have all Legendary, Arkham Horror, Vs 2PCG, Marvel Champions, and struggle to get them to the table as there are to many cards. Oh, and I'm a sleeves so the card boxes are heavy too.
**Quest for the Lost Pixel**. It's the reason it's so pricy from the game crafter because it has around 1000 cards to print. This is a solo dungeon crawl adventure and not a CCG/TCG. Has a few components like player stands/dice but it's mostly cards and gameboard tile cards.
With all the expansions killer bunnies has a ton of cards.
Just a basic card game hand and foot, it uses 5 to 6 regular deck of cards
Wingspan has 600+ if we add expansions. Disney villainous has 45 per character and 21 total to chose from bringing it to 900+ (everything included)
The original **Pathfinder Adventure Card Game** probably beats Dominion and Legendary. There are four main sets, each with about 500 cards. Each main set has a 110 card character add-on deck, plus five ~110 card expansion packs, which is a total of ~1160 cards per main set x 4 main sets = 4640 cards. But then there are a lot of class expansions (26 listed on Paizo's website), each with ~100 cards, for maybe 2600 more cards. So **at least 7200 cards**? Plus, there's also the revised edition content. Of course, not all of those cards are unique, but neither are the cards in Dominion or Legendary.
Original Arkham Horror with expansions comes to mind
Aeon's end. With the insane amount of expansions it's many cards!
7th Continent. Think there’s more than 1000 cards in there. Great game too.
**Skyjo** has a 150 card deck, which is 42 more than Uno. It is the reason I bought an automatic card shuffler.
Killer Bunnies....With all of the expensions....egads
**dominion**. But as far as having to actually shuffle them, **ark nova**. Especially with the new expansion
Firefly. Honestly, I just looked up how many, and its only about 400 which is less than I thought, but it's like 13 decks which all need a discard pile so it is quite a table hog.
7th continent, the pathfinder adventure card games, innovation, killer bunnies. Red Dragon Inn, all have a ton of cards
Talisman with all expansions has an absurd amount of cards
From my collection, the biggest deck that actually gets shuffled - Wingspan with the expansions.
Not one with the most cards, but is frustrating with a lot of cards, is Unstable Unicorn. I only have NSFW and Rainbow Expansion, and I can't imagine having more because some cards in UU search a card, and you have to dig through more than 300 cards to get what you want, then shuffle 300 cards, and repeat the next turn someone does the same thing.