Looking for a card game beginning with C? Here are 27 of them — from Codenames and Cribbage to Coup and Canasta — with player counts, play times and a quick summary of how each one works.
Quick answer
There are 27 card games in this list that start with C. The best known are Codenames, Cribbage, Coup and Canasta. Scroll for the full list, or use the filters to narrow it down.
Sorted alphabetically. Filter by type, or search by name, mechanic or theme.
A rummy game built on melds of seven. Collect sets and runs, work towards a canasta (seven of a kind), and watch the discard pile — the whole game turns on who is willing to take it.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A trivia game where the cards are the answers. Guess whether an animal is heavier, longer or older than the previous one, and build a line that gets harder to place with every card.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The fill-in-the-blank party game. One player reads a black card, everyone answers with a white card, and the judge picks the worst — or best — answer. Not one for family game night.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)An Italian fishing game with a twist: build combinations on the table, then capture them with a matching card. The seven of diamonds is worth a point all by itself, and the last capture matters.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A trick-taking game where cards have no suit until you declare one. Every rank exists in every suit, but only once in the whole game — so the card you play removes it from everyone else's possibilities.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A drafting game about hoarding cats. Take rows of cards — cats, toys, food — and keep your clowder fed; the player with the happiest cats at the end wins.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The two-player card version of Settlers of Catan. Build settlements, roads and cities from cards, trade with the market, and race to ten victory points before your opponent.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A trading game built from cards. Buy cards that convert spices, chain them into better conversions, and race to buy the scoring cards before the market runs dry.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A word game with a hidden chameleon. Everyone sees a secret grid of words except one player, who has to bluff their way through the discussion; the table then votes on who did not know the word.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A lying game. Play cards face down and announce a rank; anyone can call 'cheat'. Get caught and you take the whole pile; get away with it and you are closer to empty.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The card game where cheating is the point. Get rid of your cards by any means necessary — hide them, drop them, swap them — and try not to be the one who gets caught doing it.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A time-travel card game from Looney Labs. Collect artifacts, change history with inverters, and complete your mission before someone else rewrites the timeline out from under you.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A Knizia push-your-luck game about flea circus acts. Flip cards and stop before a duplicate appears, then collect sets; the flip that completes your set is also the one that busts you.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A game of medieval role selection. Each round you draft a character — assassin, thief, architect — and use its power to build districts; the assassin can ruin a whole turn before it starts.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A two-player trick-taking game played in two halves. Win tricks to claim faction cards, then combine them for majorities; the second half lets you fight back with what you lost.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A lying game with bugs. Pass a card face down and name its creature; the receiver either calls your bluff or passes it on. Lose by collecting four of the same bug.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A reaction game with vegetables. Say the name of the card on top — unless it matches the previous one, in which case say something else. Get it wrong and the pile is yours.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A deduction game with no cards in front of you. You can see everyone's tiles but your own, so you ask questions to work out your three numbers; the logic is pure and the downtime is minimal.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The word game of two spymasters and a grid of cards. Give a one-word clue that links your agents without pointing at the assassin; the table then argues about the difference between 'animal' and 'mammal'.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A tiny set-collection game about chameleons. Take a card or take a row, and collect colours in sets — but the third colour costs you points, so every card is a small gamble.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A game of Renaissance warfare with cards instead of armies. Play mercenary cards to win provinces, and use the bishop to call a truce when the odds turn against you.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A bluffing game of influence. Everyone claims a role they may not actually have — duke, assassin, captain — and challenges fly until only one player has cards left.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A bluffing game with hidden numbers. Everyone holds a card to their forehead so only the others can see it, then bids on the total of all the cards. Bluff, or lose a life.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The ancestor of Uno. Match the top card by suit or rank, play an eight to change suit, and empty your hand first. Simple enough for a five-year-old, mean enough for adults.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The classic pub game with the pegboard. Play cards in pairs, peg points for fifteens, pairs and runs, and race to 121. Small hands, deep counting.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Ecuador's national card game, played with a 40-card Spanish deck. Capture cards to score, and call 'cuarenta' the moment you reach forty points — the hand ends immediately.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A two-player combat game played with a standard deck. Play point cards as your ships, then use face cards to attack and defend; the first player to land 21 points of damage wins.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)No games match that search. Try a game name, a mechanic like “trick-taking”, or clear the filters.
We count a game if it is played primarily with cards and its common English name begins with C. That covers three very different families: traditional games with regional rule sets rather than a single publisher, modern hobby card games sold with a rulebook, and family and party games where the deck is the whole game.
We leave out board games that happen to contain cards, tile games, and video games — with rare exceptions for digital card games that play exactly like their tabletop equivalent. Expansions are listed under their base game rather than as separate entries.
This list covers 27 card games whose common English name begins with C. The true number depends on how you count — regional variants alone would push it much higher — so we only list games with a published rule set and a name in real use.
Codenames is the best seller of the modern era, with tens of millions of copies sold. Cribbage is the older classic, and still the one you are most likely to find already on the shelf.
Yes — it is played entirely with a grid of word cards and a key card, even though it is usually sold as a party game. There is no board, no dice and no pieces.
Crazy Eights is the classic first shedding game, and Cardline: Animals works well for children who like facts — both are readable at around seven or eight years old.
A pegboard. Players move two pegs along a track to 121 points, leapfrogging each other as they score; the board is not strictly required, but it is how everyone learns the game.
For exactly two players, start with Catan Card Game, Claim and Cuttle. All of them are designed for two, so there are no house rules to negotiate before the first hand.