Looking for a card game beginning with M? Here are 31 of them — from Magic: The Gathering and Munchkin to Monopoly Deal and Mao — with player counts, play times and a quick summary of how each one works.
Quick answer
There are 31 card games in this list that start with M. The best known are Magic: The Gathering, Munchkin, Monopoly Deal and Mao. 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 light city-building game of cards and dice. Roll dice to trigger your buildings, collect coins and race to finish four landmarks. What you buy decides which rolls pay you, so every card is a small bet on the dice.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The original collectible card game and still the biggest. Build a 60-card deck from five colors of mana, then duel to drop your opponent from 20 life to zero with creatures, spells and combos. Half the game is deck building; the other half is outthinking the person across the table.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A pizzeria card game with a memory twist. Play ingredient cards onto a shared pile, then fulfil orders from memory; remember what is already in the oven and you bake more pizzas than anyone else.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A two-player card game about building mandalas together. Cards go into shared mandalas that either player can claim, so every card you play is both an offer and a threat. Quiet, tense and very replayable.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A Filipino trick-taking game for four players in partnerships. The ten of each suit — the manille — is the highest card, and bidding decides trump. Win the tricks holding the valuable cards and you take the pot.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A shedding game where the rules are secret. Nobody explains them; you learn by being penalised for breaking them. Empty your hand first to win, and try not to be the person who asks what the rules are.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A cooperative Living Card Game. Choose a Marvel hero, build their 40-card deck and team up to stop a villain's scheme before it completes. Each hero flips between hero and alter-ego form, and every scenario plays differently.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Marvel's three-minute digital card game. Twelve-card decks, six turns and three locations; win two of the three locations and you win the match. Tiny decks and fast matches made it one of the most played card games on mobile.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A bluffing game where nobody is sure who they are. Role cards are shuffled and swapped under the table, then players claim a power — and anyone can challenge. Memory, lying and chaos in equal parts.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The German ancestor of Uno. Match the top card by suit or rank, use action cards to skip, reverse or make others draw, and shout “Mau” when you are down to one card. Fast, simple and played everywhere in Germany.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)An Irish cousin of Spoil Five. Five cards each, win three tricks to take the pot, and the five of trumps beats everything on the table. Old, sharp and best with five players.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A gentle drafting game about watching nature. Draft cards from a shared market to build a meadow of plants and animals, scoring for habitat chains and variety. Pretty, calm and quietly competitive.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The matching-pairs game every child learns first. Lay the cards face down, flip two at a time and keep the pairs you match, remembering what you have already seen. Also called Concentration or Pairs.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Mahjong without the tiles. A dedicated card deck replaces the tiles, and players race to complete a fourteen-card hand of sets and runs. All the puzzle of mahjong, none of the table-shuffling.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A French racing game of 1,000 kilometres. Play distance cards to move, hazards to stop your rivals and safety cards to protect yourself; the first player to reach exactly 1,000 km wins. Cruel and wonderfully petty.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A card game about card games. In real time you open packs and trade to build a collection, then compete in tournaments with a deck that mimics a fictional TCG. Loud, heavy and unlike anything else.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A two-player duel with a nasty twist: each player starts with three mindbugs that can steal an opponent's creature the moment it appears. Ten-card decks keep games fast, and every play is a bluff about what you can steal.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A worker-placement game in a mint tin. Place workers to buy plans and build them, spending mints as currency; the most points after the last plan is built wins. Fifteen minutes, tiny box, real decisions.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Two games share the name. The old French trick-taking game is for three or four players; the modern children's version is an Old Maid variant where the Mistigri — a cat card — is the card nobody wants to be left holding.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A Polish trick-taking game of the quota-whist family. Bid how many tricks you will take, then try to hit the target exactly; missing it costs you. The name means “miserable”, which tells you how the scoring feels.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Knizia's auction classic. Buy and sell paintings by five artists over four seasons, and remember that an artist is only worth what the table pays for them. Bluffing, valuation and one perfect sale.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Charades with a deck of names. In round one you describe the cards, in round two you use a single word, and in round three you act them out silently. The same deck gets funnier every round.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The card-game version of Monopoly, and the one most families actually finish. Collect properties, charge rent and swap cards; the first player to complete three full property sets wins. Most games take about 15 minutes.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)The street con, included for honesty. Three cards, one queen and a shuffle you are invited to follow. You will not win — the game is built so that you cannot — but it is the most famous card game starting with M that nobody should play.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A two-player game about foraging for mushrooms. Walk a path of forest cards, pick mushrooms and cook sets for points; the friend who takes the card you needed is the whole game.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A dense card game about making art. Every card can be a work, a material, a tool or a task, and you must choose one use while your opponents get the leftovers. Small deck, big decisions.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A modern trick-taking game with bidding, trump and partnerships. The top bidder names trump and picks a partner, then everyone fights over tricks. More negotiation than most trick-takers, and much louder.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A parody dungeon crawl in card form. Kick open doors, fight monsters, collect loot and stab your friends in the back on the way to level 10. The first player to reach level 10 wins — and the rest of the table will do everything to stop them.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A Spanish game for two teams of two, played with a 40-card Spanish deck. Partners signal their hands with gestures, then bid across four rounds — grande, chica, pares and juego — to win chips. The signals are half the fun.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)Rummy with a murder mystery on top. Collect evidence and melds while the Ripper card stalks the table, and try not to be holding it when the case closes. The first of a whole series of themed rummy variants.
Rules & background (opens in a new tab)A deck builder where you upgrade cards instead of adding them. Transparent cards stack into stronger actions, and you push your luck to grow the most valuable vale before the deck runs dry.
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 M. 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 31 card games whose common English name begins with M. 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.
Magic: The Gathering is the biggest by player base, revenue and tournament scene. For a casual table, Munchkin and Monopoly Deal are the ones most likely to already be in someone's cupboard.
Memory is the classic first card game. Mau-Mau and Monopoly Deal are easy to teach to early readers, and Mille Bornes is a good step up once children can read the hazard cards.
No — Monopoly is a board game. Monopoly Deal is a separate card game that reuses the property names and finishes in about 15 minutes, which is why people often search for it as “Monopoly card game”.
Mau-Mau. It is the German shedding game Uno was built on: match by suit or rank, play action cards, and shout when you have one card left.
Mao. New players are not told the rules and learn only by being penalised for breaking them — which is either the best or the worst game-night idea, depending on your friends.
For exactly two players, start with Magic: The Gathering, Mandala, Marvel Snap, Mindbug and Morels. All of them are designed for two, so there are no house rules to negotiate before the first hand.
Memory and Mistigri are the lightest entries in this list — short rules, quick rounds and easy to teach to a child who can read numbers and suits.