A trick-taking game in the Cosmere is a fun idea, and Brotherwise Games has decided to do exactly that. Shards of Creation, designed by Brotherwise's product development lead Hayden Dillard, is a 2-4 player card game that turns eight of Brandon Sanderson's sixteen Shards of Adonalsium into competing suits. Players collect investiture from Honor, Odium, Cultivation, Ruin and four others as they take tricks across a 30-minute game. Retail release lands 24 June 2026 at $24.99.
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See how it worksWhat makes this one interesting is the suit asymmetry. Most trick-takers use four bland suits and let the play do the heavy lifting. Shards of Creation gives every suit a unique character built from the lore, so taking tricks for Preservation feels different from chasing Dominion. Per ICv2 the win condition is locking down enough Shards in one sphere of influence, which should reward decisive bidding rather than card-counting maths. Closer in feel to The Crew or Skull King than Tichu, in other words. Illustrations come from Medusa Dollmaker and reportedly include the first canonical depictions of Devotion and Dominion, the sort of detail Sanderson's hardcore fans will pore over.
Brotherwise has been steadily building a Cosmere games line since the Mistborn Deckbuilding Game, with the Cosmere RPG Stormlight Starter Set picking up a 2026 Origins Award nomination and a strategy game, Stormlight: War for Roshar, due on Kickstarter in autumn. Shards of Creation is the lightweight entry in that family, designed to slot into a Stormlight reading group or pull non-gamer Sanderson fans onto the table.
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Find events near youThirty minutes, two to four players, accessible mechanics with chunky theme. A great filler for any group that has a Sanderson reader in the mix.
Sources: ICv2 | Brotherwise Games | Invested in the Cosmere | Dragonsteel Books
