2018 DotY nominee: CARTOMANCER POKER by Alain Benoit

[Don Boyer]

Alain Benoit, who hails from South Florida, is a newcomer to playing card design - Cartomancer Poker is his first deck design to be released, crowdfunded on Kickstarter - he raised nearly $19,000 with a goal of $15,000.  It was printed by the US Playing Card Company.  It's a very unique deck in that it fully incorporates themes of cartomancy into the design - cartomancy being the use of playing cards for fortune telling.  Having achieved a stretch goal of $16,500, a 32-page booklet was created by Benoit that accompanies each deck and explains the divination uses and meanings of each of the cards.

{The artist's website for the deck release}

{Kickstarter project page}

{article on Max Playing Cards}

{artist profile on Kickstarter}

[CartomancerCards]

The Cartomancer Poker Deck is kind of unique. Inspired by the illustrated tarot, French cartomancy, transformation playing cards, analytical psychology, art, surrealism, symbolism, fingerprints, and vintage prints, it's kind of hard to compare with other decks.

Even though it uses the existing structure of a standard deck of cards, it’s drastically different from your conventional deck: most cards are only one way; pip cards are fully illustrated and all different; court cards are very different from standard Jacks, Queens and Kings; each card has a meaning, etc.

I’m interested in knowing your thoughts about how and where you see this deck in the industry.

[Don Boyer]

The Cartomancer Poker Deck is kind of unique. Inspired by the illustrated tarot, French cartomancy, transformation playing cards, analytical psychology, art, surrealism, symbolism, fingerprints, and vintage prints, it's kind of hard to compare with other decks.

Even though it uses the existing structure of a standard deck of cards, it’s drastically different from your conventional deck: most cards are only one way; pip cards are fully illustrated and all different; court cards are very different from standard Jacks, Queens and Kings; each card has a meaning, etc.

I’m interested in knowing your thoughts about how and where you see this deck in the industry.

There have been similar decks made over the years in terms of using a standard 52-card deck for cartomancy.  One that comes readily to mind is the classic Gypsy Witch deck, which has had a few publishers over the years - it was once published by USPC, but I think it's currently made by US Games Systems.  It's based on the divination system of Mlle. LeNormand - but the artwork is a bit more pedestrian when compared with your work!

I'd say you've managed to combine elements of a divination deck with those of a semi-transformation deck.  A transformation deck is one where the pips are "re-purposed" to create little works of art on each of the number cards.  The difference between a transformation deck and a semi-transformation deck is that transformation decks will use the pips in their original arrangement - in essence, you could draw the art on a standard deck with standard pip placements - while a semi-transformation deck allows for the artist to re-arrange the pips to whatever configuration suits the art being created.

There's a big demand for custom, artistic decks these days, and yours is one of the more unique entries in that category.  It also fits in nicely with the popular Victorian aesthetic of steampunk, though lacking the actual steampunk elements themselves.  In and of itself, that's not a bad thing - often I find that efforts at making steampunk add up to little more than slapping a few gears and dials on something vaguely Victorian-looking and calling it "steampunk," whereas your deck has a much more Victorian vibe to it, more authentic in a way, though certainly not something from mainstream Victorian design!