I've been going to a board game meetup every other Saturday for a couple months, which has about 25 attendees each time. As such, I've been getting exposed to 3-5 new games each session, which is pretty awesome, and have played lots of the games listed here in that time. Thus far, my favorites have been the card games, probably because of my background in MtG: particularly RftG and Dominion, although I've enjoyed most of what I've played. (As an aside, I'll probably buy a copy of San Juan before either of those, even though it's not as deep/good, just because I think it's a good gateway for my kids/my wife into the other two.)
A silly game we played on my last session was a light, "bidding" game, called
Felix: The Cat in the Sack. Let me say up front, I'm not advocating you go out and buy this game. It was pretty meh - neither bad, nor good - but what struck me about this game is that you could probably just play it with a regular deck of cards and some pocket change. Simply assign roles, like King = big dog, Jack = little dog, and use coins for mice, and some of the # cards for cats. I'm curious if there are other games out there that could be "mapped" like this? Seems like being able to play a bunch of different games with the same deck would be a huge feature for travelling.
I don't have any experience with Euchre, Spades, Bridge, Rummy, yada yada yada, so I'm wondering: Are there games that a person like me, who loves TCGs, RftG, Dominion, Spectromancer, etc, can play with a regular poker deck, and experience the dame kind of strategic depth/fun? (PS: Don't say poker.)