Update to this: plan is now for cards to be printed with Cartamundi (B9, true linen, slimline). Welcome onboard ....

The original (Italian) form of tarot cards would be something rather close to (but not exactly the same as) what is now called the Tarot of Marseilles, and used for gaming. You can see the similarity between a Marseilles tarot and some regional Italian playing cards, including the characteristic layout of the curved swords and straight baton pips. The tarot deck is a modified playing card deck with the addition of a trump suit (and four court cards per ordinary suit). This trump suit has a sequence of characteristic illustrations. There are still regional Italian tarot decks produced in Bologna and Sicily that have a rather traditional appearance. But although tarot remains a very popular game in France, the older standard pattern (Tarot de Marseille) was replaced in the 1800s by a new pattern called Tarot Nouveau (or bourgeois). In tarot nouveau the suits were changed from the older Italian suits to the French (international) suits, and the pip cards are quite plain and look just like the pip cards of a standard deck of cards (but bigger). The traditional motifs of the trump suit were also replaced by rural and urban scenes that no longer make up a sequence in themselves, but now just decorate the numbered cards of that trump suit. It is very easy to find these decks in France. Decks with a similar appearance to the Tarot Nouveau but with shorter suits are available and widely used for gaming in Germany, Austria, and surrounding countries (called Tarock).

Most tarot decks that you will find in the UK and USA follow a parallel development that is based on divination and not gaming, they are descended from the Rider Waite tarot, which mainly follows the structure of the Tarot de Marseille ... the major visual difference is that the pip cards are all illustrated (what in a playing card context would be called semi-transformational illustrations), incorporating the pips into a scene. Of course as the structure of these decks are the same as Marseilles decks it is very possible to use them for gaming if you wanted to do that.

If you're interested in tarot games, you can read about the rules to several, as played in different countries in Europe, on this site:
https://www.pagat.com/tarot/frtarot.html

I found that someone was making the standard Swiss Jass cards in a classic full figure version. So I ordered some, and I can show you some pictures. Very nice, and unusual to be able to find a new edition of such full figure cards.

These cards were drawn by Jens Riedweg in Switzerland, and this is his site:

https://schweizerjass.ch/en/

The cards are a digitally redone version of a classic old pattern by Jakob Peyer. The cards are also printed in Switzerland. The full figure ones that I got don't have a tuck box, and have a smooth finish, the same sort of cardstock that you will see for say typical Altenburger or Piatnik German-suited cards. You can see he also has other Swiss cards for sale on that site, including the more typical modern double-ended ones. And amazingly, the stamps on the envelope match the cards!

I am interested in this as well. There are certainly some projects and situations where it could be better to do this sort of thing yourself. Now I am pretty sure that the famous playing card designer Jackson Robinson has posted on another forum about how he sometimes did his own tuck box assembly. I am not sure he gave any detail in what I read though. I think at one point he was also printing his own tuck boxes on his own printing press, but I got the impression he was talking about assembling tuck boxes that he had not printed, or giving advice to others to do this. Could be misremembering though. And I certainly don't remember anything about the type of glue. My instinct would be to use diluted PVA, and that you would need some sort of form (solid template) to have inside the box for the moment of gluing. But yes I would be interested to hear from others with experience.

My new project on kickstarter ...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/737088756/liber-ludorum-playing-cards

Marvin, you should definitely insist on getting a hard proof before going ahead with the print run if the colours are super critical for the project. The idea of a hard proof is exactly to avoid the situation you are describing where the print is not coming out exactly as you imagine it. The hard proof should be exactly the same as the print run. I imagine all the major printers will offer this either as standard or as an option as part of the main print run. You should be able to change things if necessary at that stage having seen the proof (though maybe not for free).

A prototype deck is a different thing produced in advance. I'd always recommend doing that as well, and MPC is a good alternative as they do offer good cards with reasonably priced ultrashort print runs.

And yes you will probably find that the colours produced by different printing companies using different printing techniques (e.g. digital, or CMYK, or pantone) may not be an exact match, especially for one-off prints where the colours are not necessarily treated as super critical. For example, you may see a noticeably lighter or darker print. For most applications they will be easily good enough, and you may not notice if you are not looking. But I appreciate there may be cases like you are describing. I wonder what makes the colours so critical in your project.

Cheers Don. Yes it's certainly an alternative take in many regards.

One point is that that Tarot de Marseille style decks were used for gaming in France until relatively recently, even after the introduction of the French suited Tarot Nouveau. And this type of traditional imagery is still found on standard Italian tarocchi decks used for gameplay. So I don't think there's anything /that/ unusual about using a traditional(ish) design for gameplay.

I think the gaming tarot market is a tiny fraction of the whole, though. Probably most people in English speaking countries don't think of tarot as a game at all. I am not sure I had come across it before I lived in France. Nevertheless, I think playability is an important design consideration, for these as much as any of my other far-out decks.

So yes, then it comes down to the trump sequence and the significance of the illustrations on each of the cards. And you are right, they are not the same as the typical Marseille illustrations. But to get there I studied a lot of historical decks, each with its own take on the indvidual illustrations/ideas and on the sequence as a whole, and this is what I came up with. I guess it's my take and some people will like it and others won't.

The court cards are the same though between divination and gaming decks. They all have king, queen (or dame in French = lady), knight (on horseback, chevalier in French), and page or jack (both called valet in French). I don't know why in the Rider-Waite deck they decided to call the jacks pages, but they did, and it has stuck in such English language divination decks.

Hopefully enough people will like it. We shall see.

I can certainly sympathise with the can't buy em all sentiment!

The latest two project updates have pictures of two joker cards. You can see them here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/737088756/pike-and-clover-playing-cards/posts/2052123

and here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/737088756/pike-and-clover-playing-cards/posts/2055779

More ...

Hi all, These are now printed ... if any of you are interested and missed the Kickstarter campaign, feel free to check out the link here:
http://www.northerndisplayers.co.uk/viceroys.html

I've attached a couple of pics of the cards.

Good stuff! I'm sure there are loads of card related tunes. Here are a couple I know off the top of my head, though I don't play either of them regularly.

Jack of Diamonds ... all about cards
Lily Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts ... not so much

I have a fender acoustic as well (just an ordinary acoustic). It's in pretty poor condition after I didn't look after it very well in some Swedish winters, but I usually keep it in an open tuning and it sounds fine ...

välkommen hit! :-)