Meeple Playing Cards

[Lukeout]

Hey Everyone, I wanted to share new playing cards decks here that I worked on with my friend Jordan Martin. It’s not an art-centered deck - it’s more about the collision of two of our passions.

To be honest, we didn’t make this deck to appeal to playing card collectors even though we both love what is being done in the medium. Instead, we made this deck primarily to appeal to people who share our passion for board games and who also like playing cards. We expect these cards to be used for traditional games by the purchaser, as opposed to static collecting or magic.

For the design, we chose the iconic shape of the “meeple.” If you don’t know what the meeple is, it’s basically a wooden game piece that is used in lots of board games sometimes with slight variations. It’s sort of the European version of a “pawn.”

Because the meeple is so simple in form, we wanted to keep the imagery in the deck iconographic and clean. Since I expect this deck to be used to play games (by most purchasers), it needs to be uncluttered and easy to read at a glance. It has to fan well, stack well in solitaire games, and be easy to recognize across the table for games like Hold ‘Em poker. It also needs to be very meeple-ee while capturing the traditions of playing cards. After tons of tinkering, this is what we ended up with, I’d love to hear your thoughts!

We are planning on launching the deck early in January on Kickstarter.

Thanks,

[sprouts1115]

It's a good start.  I can see how it would be difficult to have a "2-way" for the courts.  I like the oversized suit in the Meeple.  You might want to make the Jack slightly different.  Maybe you could swap the queen image for the Jack without the dress.  The queen could have a different crown to make her more feminine.  I like the subdued top right corner badge.  I can see the Catan symbolism.  Your back of the card looks however looks cluttered unless it's used in your game.  It is "2-way" but could be better.   I'm interested in what your pips are going look like.   

[chach]

Now this is a cool deck that I'd like to see more of.  Simplistic, easy on the eyes design and it appeals to collectors from two different yet similar hobbies.   Thumbs up in my book.

[Lukeout]

Sprouts, your "Power to the Meeple" image got me laughing immediately. Well done!

I'll get the pips out shortly (Jordan has left for the day). They are all meeple shaped with the suits cut out of them.

Good feedback on the back. We wanted to keep it dense so white spots/dust wouldn't show up when printing - plus most card backs are dense. But I can see where the denseness here is different as it's not delicate line-work, but blocky... blocks..

[Don Boyer]

In a traditional deck, the court cards have different "headgear"/crowns.  It makes them easier to distinguish from each other.  Yours are nearly the same, particularly the jacks and kings.  Jacks have flat crowns, queens have "swoopy" crowns like you gave them, and kings have crowns with more points than the queens.

You could make two-headed courts if you wanted.  Place a Meeple in each non-index corner, size it just right, you're good to go.

I like the back; just insure that everything's adequately symmetrical.  I like what you did with the edge - is that intended to be some kind of cribbage marker or something?  It's an interesting idea.  You can use it as a counter with a Meeple as a marker.

[Lukeout]

In a traditional deck, the court cards have different "headgear"/crowns.  It makes them easier to distinguish from each other.  Yours are nearly the same, particularly the jacks and kings.  Jacks have flat crowns, queens have "swoopy" crowns like you gave them, and kings have crowns with more points than the queens.

I like what you did with the edge - is that intended to be some kind of cribbage marker or something?  It's an interesting idea.  You can use it as a counter with a Meeple as a marker.

Good point (ha!) on the crowns. Maybe we'll see if we can do some tweaking on those, particularly the Jacks and Points for the kings. We probably wouldn't go with different crows for different suits due to the subject matter. When Meeples appear in games, they often come in identical shapes, but different colors for each player (so you would have all the Red Meeples, and I would have a matching set of Green ones for example).

The Marker around the outside of the card back is called a "victory point tracker" This motif appears on tons of board games. Similar to cribbage, it marks a players progress, when the game ends, the player who's marker is furthest along when the game ends wins. Here's some examples on game boards.

I really appreciate the feedback, super helpful.

[Don Boyer]

In a traditional deck, the court cards have different "headgear"/crowns.  It makes them easier to distinguish from each other.  Yours are nearly the same, particularly the jacks and kings.  Jacks have flat crowns, queens have "swoopy" crowns like you gave them, and kings have crowns with more points than the queens.

I like what you did with the edge - is that intended to be some kind of cribbage marker or something?  It's an interesting idea.  You can use it as a counter with a Meeple as a marker.

Good point (ha!) on the crowns. Maybe we'll see if we can do some tweaking on those, particularly the Jacks and Points for the kings. We probably wouldn't go with different crows for different suits due to the subject matter. When Meeples appear in games, they often come in identical shapes, but different colors for each player (so you would have all the Red Meeples, and I would have a matching set of Green ones for example).

The Marker around the outside of the card back is called a "victory point tracker" This motif appears on tons of board games. Similar to cribbage, it marks a players progress, when the game ends, the player who's marker is furthest along when the game ends wins. Here's some examples on game boards.

I really appreciate the feedback, super helpful.

You need not worry about crown for different suits - they're actually pretty much the same from suit to suit.  Presented in an iconic fashion, they'd be identical on your Meeples.

An idea - take one of your ad cards (assuming you will have ad cards) and design it to be folded in half and torn.  Print it so that each half can be used as a marker - a marker that fits into the deck box.  Or use a whole card for a single marker.

[Lukeout]

Jordan did some tweaking of the crowns today. He's also working on a more "ornate" Ace of Spades. Here's the updated Crowns...

[Utterfool]

My god it's full of stars.

How can I not buy these.
Being the avid board gamer that I am. You had me at "meeple"

One thing I would love to see though.
As you said yourself meeple look the same for each player only the color changes. I would like to see this deck with a different color for each suit.
 This isn't unheard of in decks and we have seen a couple decks designed that way over the last year. I think here it would fit with the theme well.

[Lukeout]

I'm curious what other folks think about 4-color decks. I have friends who love them, and others who can't stand them (a lot of solitaire games use the red/black divide). I could go either way, but for a mash-up of "classic playing card motifs" and "something else" it seems like 2-color makes more sense.

going to need to mull this one over...

[Don Boyer]

I'm curious what other folks think about 4-color decks. I have friends who love them, and others who can't stand them (a lot of solitaire games use the red/black divide). I could go either way, but for a mash-up of "classic playing card motifs" and "something else" it seems like 2-color makes more sense.

going to need to mull this one over...

Visually, when playing games like poker, it can be easier for someone with failing vision to tell apart the suits if they're all different colors.  The problem is that for other popular games, like solitaire, two suit colors are really mandatory to play unless you like confusion.

When I've seen people wanting to make a four-color deck, I usually suggest a compromise.  I recommend creating two contrasting shades of two colors - for example, If you use the traditional red and black, you might use black for spades, red for hearts, gray for clubs and pink for diamonds.  They're distinguishable, but also easily associated together.  Alternate choices might include blue and sky blue for the blacks, or indigo and standard blue.

[GBAllison]

I'm curious what other folks think about 4-color decks.

Four-color decks are an automatic pass for me.  Count me in the hate-em group.

I don't mind the one-way backs, and very much prefer the one-way courts.  They fit the theme.

Love the alternate-color decks.

And love, absolutely LOVE the Suicide King. :-)  I'm hoping there are other surprises as well (one-eyed dots for the J of spades, J of hearts, and the K of diamonds?  And maybe an axe of some kind for the K of diamonds Man With An Axe?  Gives the poker players a handle for some of the more popular wild-card conventions.)

I expect this deck to be used to play games (by most purchasers), it needs to be uncluttered and easy to read at a glance. It has to fan well, stack well in solitaire games, and be easy to recognize across the table for games like Hold ‘Em poker.

I think you hit the nail on the head: The deck should be playable.  Uncluttered.  Easy to read at a glance.  Agree that you don't need different crowns for different suits.  The changes you made to the Queen are great. I recognize her immediately.  And the more-pointy crown on the King helps, too.  Still, the Jack ... maybe the Jack could have an upraised arm (or two?  Nah, one is enough :-).

[CrankUP]

Awww I like these.

Great contrast from all these skull...and dark themed decks.

[Lukeout]

Awww I like these.

Great contrast from all these skull...and dark themed decks.

Thanks CrankUP - I'm a fan of clean design for function and ornate design for beauty. Playing cards can go either way for me as they are both, but there are certainly a lot of "ornate" options already. I like who playing cards are a lens to look at other topics through - if you look at an ornate topic (like the Chinese Opera), they you'll get an ornate deck. If you look at the meeple through that lens, I think the final version needs to be clean and bold.

[Don Boyer]

Look at what I found - an ingenious way to create a points counter using two playing cards...

http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/card-fabrique.html

This would be great to use your extra cards for, assuming they aren't spoken for yet!

[Lukeout]

Look at what I found - an ingenious way to create a points counter using two playing cards...

http://www.wopc.co.uk/usa/card-fabrique.html

This would be great to use your extra cards for, assuming they aren't spoken for yet!

Dan, those are crazy cool. Thanks for the tip! I was planning on publishing some game rules on the extra cards (a game I designed that's a twist on "chase the Ace") - but I think these may go over even better! Time for a backer poll....

[Lukeout]

I forgot - we added an interesting add-on to the Meeple Campaign and I'm curious what you all think. These are vinyl stickers of the royalty that folks can use as those "family stickers" you see on cars. I have a set on my laptop right now, they are pretty slick.

I just didn't think the "coin" thing would work very well, and the designer Jordan can create these at any quantity (a good bit of hand labor, but he enjoys it).

Please excuse the prices and stuff on the image, Jordan made a single image for me to use in the update.