Ducale is a French playing card company that, like the Spanish Fournier brand, is a subsidiary of the Cartamundi Group. For a poker-sized deck for playing French Tarot, I recommend the Arcana Tarot Playing Cards from Dead on Paper (website url will be obvious from the name of the company). It uses French suits, although there are parallel Latin suit indices on the top right and bottom left. The court cards are indexed with K, Q, J, and P rather than R, D, C and V. The aces are decorative, but the numbered cards in the suits use pips rather than illustrations. The trumps are the Rider-Waite major arcana in Rider-Waite order, although the art is original. No indices as such on the trumps, but the ranks are noted in the top center in Roman numerals and the names of the arcana are written on the bottom center. The deck also includes two non-identical jokers as well as several more bonus cards that I understand are of interest to collectors and magicians. The MSRP is twice that of the Rider-Waite Playing Card Deck, but it can be found for less if one looks around.
thank you for this nice overview! For EU citizens, I'd note that tarot decks are not too expensive and pretty easily available on amazon. I recently bought, all from the german amazon site: a french tarot deck, an Industrie und Glück 54 card tarock deck by Piatnik for the games of the ex austrohungarian territories, the tarocco decks of bologna, piedmont and sicily , the Adler Cego tiertarock deck played around Baden and even a reasonably-ish priced reproduction of 97-card minchiate fiorentine, a game which I think some in Florence are trying to revive with those cards.
The bigger cards remind me of Tarok cards (not tarot) which is a popular game played in central europe, whick is a trick taking game and it’s pretty complex.
you prob mean the design from ex austrohungarian territories -- yeah, its a closely related design, both from around mid 19ct, both with 2 genre scenes on each trump - one went w rural ones, the other with a depiction of urban-rural or rich-poor divides; and a more-or-less this exact 'french' design was also used in germany, around Baden for Cego untill ASS Altenburger (nearly??) stopped its production (now only the one w animals on trumps is easily available for Cego). I thought I read they also share some concrete motifs in the sequence but here, I'm looking at the french and the austrian design and can't notice any exact correspondences so idk... And really the word isn't signifying something very different; tarock is just a german word for the game and cards that the french (and therefore later english speakers too) call tarot and italians tarocco. It likely came to what is now germany and to the austrohungarian territories from france too; if Thierry Depaulis is right, it would have been introduced from France around early-to-mid 18-ct. through Alsace. The game the french play with these cards is a pretty similar trick-taker too; most obvious difference is prob that while austrohungarian (and badenese) games just have the Sküs as the highest trump, but in the french (and italian) games, L'excuse cannot win any trick, but can be played to any trick, 'excusing' the player from following suit, and it then doesn't normally get captured but the player just shows it to the opponents.
Ducale is a French playing card company that, like the Spanish Fournier brand, is a subsidiary of the Cartamundi Group.
For a poker-sized deck for playing French Tarot, I recommend the Arcana Tarot Playing Cards from Dead on Paper (website url will be obvious from the name of the company). It uses French suits, although there are parallel Latin suit indices on the top right and bottom left. The court cards are indexed with K, Q, J, and P rather than R, D, C and V. The aces are decorative, but the numbered cards in the suits use pips rather than illustrations. The trumps are the Rider-Waite major arcana in Rider-Waite order, although the art is original. No indices as such on the trumps, but the ranks are noted in the top center in Roman numerals and the names of the arcana are written on the bottom center. The deck also includes two non-identical jokers as well as several more bonus cards that I understand are of interest to collectors and magicians. The MSRP is twice that of the Rider-Waite Playing Card Deck, but it can be found for less if one looks around.
Thanks for the tip! I’ll check out the Arcana deck.
thank you for this nice overview!
For EU citizens, I'd note that tarot decks are not too expensive and pretty easily available on amazon. I recently bought, all from the german amazon site: a french tarot deck, an Industrie und Glück 54 card tarock deck by Piatnik for the games of the ex austrohungarian territories, the tarocco decks of bologna, piedmont and sicily , the Adler Cego tiertarock deck played around Baden and even a reasonably-ish priced reproduction of 97-card minchiate fiorentine, a game which I think some in Florence are trying to revive with those cards.
That’s a nice haul! Our options are very limited in the states. I’d love to pick up some more decks!
The bigger cards remind me of Tarok cards (not tarot) which is a popular game played in central europe, whick is a trick taking game and it’s pretty complex.
you prob mean the design from ex austrohungarian territories -- yeah, its a closely related design, both from around mid 19ct, both with 2 genre scenes on each trump - one went w rural ones, the other with a depiction of urban-rural or rich-poor divides; and a more-or-less this exact 'french' design was also used in germany, around Baden for Cego untill ASS Altenburger (nearly??) stopped its production (now only the one w animals on trumps is easily available for Cego). I thought I read they also share some concrete motifs in the sequence but here, I'm looking at the french and the austrian design and can't notice any exact correspondences so idk...
And really the word isn't signifying something very different; tarock is just a german word for the game and cards that the french (and therefore later english speakers too) call tarot and italians tarocco. It likely came to what is now germany and to the austrohungarian territories from france too; if Thierry Depaulis is right, it would have been introduced from France around early-to-mid 18-ct. through Alsace.
The game the french play with these cards is a pretty similar trick-taker too; most obvious difference is prob that while austrohungarian (and badenese) games just have the Sküs as the highest trump, but in the french (and italian) games, L'excuse cannot win any trick, but can be played to any trick, 'excusing' the player from following suit, and it then doesn't normally get captured but the player just shows it to the opponents.