Eighteen cards. A wallet-sized package. Somehow, a full-fledged two-player strategy game. Circle the Wagons is one of Button Shy’s wallet game line, a publisher that has built its reputation on proving that a great game doesn’t need a big box. Designed by Steven Aramini, Danny Devine, and Paul Shortino, this tiny western-themed card game asks players to draft cards from a shared circle and build a frontier boomtown in their personal tableau. It plays in about ten to fifteen minutes, costs next to nothing, and has earned a following that far exceeds what you’d expect from something this small.
The game begins by laying all eighteen cards in a circle on the table and selecting three bonus scoring cards. Each card is divided into four quadrants, each showing one of six territory types in various colors. On your turn, you take a card from the circle and add it to your growing town grid, overlapping at least one quadrant of a card already placed. The twist is in the drafting: you must take the card directly in front of a shared marker, but you can skip ahead to a more desirable card. Every card you skip over becomes free for your opponent to claim on their turn. That single rule creates the game’s entire strategic tension.
The simplicity is the point. Within two minutes of opening the wallet, you’re playing. Within five minutes, you understand the strategy. Within fifteen, the game is over and you’re setting up again.
The Skip-or-Take Dilemma
The drafting circle is where Circle the Wagons transforms from a pleasant diversion into something seriously strategic. Every time you look at the next available card and find it mediocre, you face the same question: do you take it anyway, or skip ahead to something better knowing your opponent gets to scoop up everything you passed? A single skipped card might not matter. Three skipped cards give your opponent a massive advantage in material. Five skipped cards can end the game before it really starts.
This creates a fascinating evaluation problem. You need to assess not just how good a card is for you, but how good the cards between it and your target are for your opponent. Sometimes the best play is taking a card you barely want because the alternative gives your opponent exactly what they need. Sometimes the right move is skipping aggressively because your opponent’s tableau can’t use the intermediate cards effectively. Reading the board state and your opponent’s needs is the core skill, and it’s remarkably deep for a game played with eighteen cards.
The tile-laying aspect reinforces the drafting decisions. Because cards must overlap when placed, your town grid is constantly shrinking in some areas while growing in others. Building large contiguous groups of the same territory type scores points, and the three bonus cards reward specific patterns or combinations. Your drafting decisions are always filtered through the question of where a card will fit in your grid and which quadrants you’re willing to sacrifice. Experienced players draft not just for the quadrants they want but for the overlapping possibilities the card creates.
The three random bonus cards that change each game provide substantial variability. Some reward large groups of a single territory type. Others reward specific adjacency patterns or color distributions. The combination of bonuses shapes the entire strategic terrain of each session, making certain territories more valuable and creating different priorities every time you play. Over dozens of games, the bonus card variety prevents any single strategy from dominating.
Small Cards, Smaller Margins
The most common complaint about Circle the Wagons is a direct consequence of its greatest strength: the cards are small. Building a tableau by overlapping wallet-sized cards creates a fiddly, cramped grid that can be annoying to manage. Cards shift when you place new ones, quadrants become hard to see when they’re partially covered, and a slight bump to the table can scramble your entire town. This is the tax you pay for extreme portability, and some players find it too high.
The bonus card balance has also drawn criticism. While the variety is welcome, some combinations produce games where one player’s bonus cards synergize powerfully with the available card distribution while the other player’s bonuses are nearly impossible to score. In a longer game, this might balance out. In a ten-minute contest with only eighteen cards in the pool, a lopsided bonus setup can make the outcome feel predetermined. Most players treat this as variance to be accepted rather than a design flaw, but it can sting in a given session.
The game’s depth, while impressive for its size, does have a ceiling. After significant play, experienced players will have seen most of the meaningful strategic situations and bonus card combinations. The game doesn’t have hidden information beyond the bonus cards (all cards are visible in the circle), which means the puzzle becomes increasingly solvable as familiarity grows. This isn’t a game that will sustain hundreds of plays in the way larger strategy games can, though it’s probably not trying to.
Player count is locked at exactly two. There’s no solo variant in the base game and no way to accommodate more players. This is fine for a game designed as a two-player duel, but it limits when the game gets to the table for people whose game nights regularly involve more than two.
The Value Equation
Circle the Wagons is best understood as a game that offers extraordinary value per dollar and per minute of play time. The strategic depth relative to the component count is the highest ratio you’ll find in the hobby. Eighteen cards producing this many meaningful decisions in this short a timeframe is a genuine design achievement. If your metric for a good game includes the efficiency of the experience, this scores near the top. If your metric requires table presence, component quality, or long-term depth, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
Should You Settle Down with Circle the Wagons?
This game is ideal for players who want a portable, inexpensive two-player game with real strategic teeth. Travelers, commuters, and anyone who games in coffee shops or waiting rooms will find it invaluable. It’s also an excellent entry point for non-gamers, since the rules are simple enough to explain in a minute while the strategy is engaging enough to hold attention.
Skip it if small card components annoy you, if you need a game with visual presence on the table, or if you’re looking for a two-player game with deep long-term replayability. The game is a remarkable achievement within its constraints, but those constraints are real, and some players will bump up against them faster than others.
The Verdict on Circle the Wagons
Circle the Wagons proves that eighteen cards and a clever drafting mechanism can produce a legitimate strategic experience. The skip-or-take tension creates real decisions on every turn, the overlapping tile-laying adds spatial puzzle satisfaction, and the variable bonus cards keep the game fresh across dozens of plays. The small components are fiddly, the bonus balance can wobble, and the long-term ceiling is real. But measured against its cost and its footprint, this might be the most efficient two-player game in the hobby. It does more with less than almost anything else on the market.