Greetings from Nigeria

[riverboy]

Hi Everyone my name is Adim. I am a Software Engineer living in Abuja, Nigeria at the moment. I previously lived for 10 years in the United States. I went to University in New York and then worked in Denver Colorado. I eventually moved to Nigeria to start a software company and so far has been awesome.

I became a card collector randomly, in fact at the time I started I thought I was the only person that collected cards 😅. I was a huge poker player in college and played a lot but for fun post-college and I became interested in the whole art of the game and along with that decks of Cards. The first deck I ever bought for the purpose of the collection was the Playing Arts first-ever deck, found it randomly on Kickstarter and fell in love and have been collecting decks ever since.

At the moment I am in the process of creating my first ever deck (cause it has always been a goal to play a game of poker with my own deck) and in my research, I have stumbled unto amazing communities all over the internet and databases and blogs and Instagram that have way more information about custom decks than I could imagine and that how I found my way here

[the.asics.kid]

Welcome to the forum Adim.

Very cool to here that you plan on creating a deck on your own. Just recently Gakondo playing cards found their way from Rwanda into the playing cards world. I can't wait to see more decks from creators all over the world to be printed.

[riverboy]

Thanks for the warm welcome! I have gone pretty far in my designs and I will share my progress with you guys as things progress. Never knew about the deck
 from Rwanda will check that out now

[Don Boyer]

Welcome to the forum - we get fairly few posters from Africa, so it?s nice to have you here. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

[riverboy]

Thanks, Dan,

Yeah, it definitely has been super interesting venturing into the world of creating playing cards and I have so much respect for people who do this frequently or as a business. I do have questions and probably will ask in more appropriate parts of the forum or PM you. Thanks for the warm welcome.

I imagine you rarely get people from Africa on here, at least in Nigeria we have different card games that do not use the traditional suit system with court cards which I believe is historical of french origin? and in Nigeria, we were also colonized by the British so we absorbed more British culture than French 😆. Anyway, that's just a little random history. Its picking up though due to games like poker becoming more popular.

[Don Boyer]

Thanks, Dan,

Yeah, it definitely has been super interesting venturing into the world of creating playing cards and I have so much respect for people who do this frequently or as a business. I do have questions and probably will ask in more appropriate parts of the forum or PM you. Thanks for the warm welcome.

I imagine you rarely get people from Africa on here, at least in Nigeria we have different card games that do not use the traditional suit system with court cards which I believe is historical of french origin? and in Nigeria, we were also colonized by the British so we absorbed more British culture than French 😆. Anyway, that's just a little random history. Its picking up though due to games like poker becoming more popular.

No, we don't get many Africans here at all.

British decks actually originated from France - they were imported to the UK through the port city of Rouen.  France had two different general styles of playing cards: Parisian and Rouen.  Parisian was the more attractive and artistic of the two but was reserved mostly for use in-country, while the Rouen designs were simpler and cruder, printed specifically for export to other countries.  Ironically, it was this Rouen design that eventually evolved into what we now call the International Standard deck of cards.

So, if you're not using an International Standard deck there, tell us about what kind of cards you are using...

[riverboy]

Ah!

An example of a card game we have is "Whot!" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whot! Similar but different to the  Rouen play cards in that it has four suits ( but they are Square, circle, star, and triangle) then there are also no court cards and the numbers go up to 14. This is the most popular one, but we have other local card games.

That being said the deck i'm basing my custom deck on the International standard we all know today and most of the people in this forum are used to. I am a poker player so it only came naturally to create a custom deck based on the international standard but with a Nigerian twist. Attached is a mockup of what I'm working on, there is more to come.

It is basically a deck of cards, where all the court cards of all the suits are tribal leaders of the four major tribes in Nigeria. So each court card is different and unique. I am trying to give it the traditional french feel with a twist, so you can use it for any games you already play with a typical bicycle deck for example. Tryin go keep the user experience as familiar as possible while being unique in its art. Also going for a collectible item so the tuck box will have multiple foils and the cards will be printed by USPCC for longevity. This is a passion project for me, but I hope other people like it too