melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote in [community profile] tarot2012-01-03 01:40 pm

Dollar Tree tarot

Thanks to [personal profile] takemyrevolution's head's-up, I asked Santa to stick a Dollar Tree tarot deck in my Christmas stocking, and, wow.

It's not actually a bad deck - it's printed in three colors (red, yellow, black) on fairly flimsy, non-glossy cardstock, but I actually like the design that went into it, and I've been wanting a basic tarot deck that has non-pictorial pip cards.

But!

It is the weirdest deck of cards, tarot or otherwise, I have ever encountered. It has the full Major Arcana (unnumbered), and then it has suit cards numbered 1-7 and Page, knight, queen, king, and ace. If you add in the 8 'divination' cards (which go with the "mystic mat" as guides to doing a Celtic cross layout variant) it does in fact add up to the 'complete set with 78 cards' that the box promises, but, uh, not the cards I expected, and the explanatory pamphlet is... not very explanatory.

Has anyone seen a deck with those cards in it before, tarot or otherwise? I haven't. I checked Hoyle's and apparently there are some old rummy-type games (like Conquian) that use a deck of A-7 + J Q K, but even they don't have ones and aces. Is there somewhere in the world where this is the normal set of cards?

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