At the beginning of this year, U.S Games launched a mass production of Playing Marseille by Ryan Edward, the author of Maybe Lenormand. Before this, his limited handmade version was in the market, but it was really costly. So this year, the company decided to make an affordable one with some adjustments.
Basic Info
Box size: 13.8x11x2.5cm
Card size: 5.7x8.9cm
Card stock: Grey core paper
Instruction booklet of 56 pages
Review
Packing: the packing design follows Maybe Lenormand's model, which divides the cards into two piles. This design is fitful for the Lenormand (after all, we only use 36 cards). However, although it is convenient to place the instruction manual, taking it out and putting it back in 2 piles can be a bit uncomfortable . If you plan to use this deck for a long time, you need to prepare your a small bag.
Instruction manual: the 56 page manual is recommended to read. It summarizes the reading skills, such as the position, action and gaze. The author also gives his own interesting analysis. The pip cards is studied using cartomantic methods: first two colors (red and black), then each suit (diamonds, clubs, spades, hearts), and then the numbers. It is worth noting that the author changed Page to Jack, which is typical for playing cards. At the same time, because Ryan used to study with Camelia Elias, he followed the idea of Camelia in interpreting the numbers.
Features: the biggest feature of this suit is matching the pip cards with the playing cards. So is the Keymaster Tarot, which will be played soon this year. It is really refreshing among the market, but this has also become its biggest shortcoming, because as we all know, although the French suit comes from the latin suit (which then become the pip cards), it is still slightly different when it comes to the reading, and it is often confusing for Tarot newbies. After I learned cartomancy, I found that although there is a connection between playing cards and tarot, we still need to be careful.
Color: we can clearly see the coloring trace, I assume it is watercolor. Sometimes the color protrudes the borders, maybe he did this to imitate the stencil coloring effect. To be honest I am not a big fan of this style, but in his Instagram there is an early version of the deck, which looks good with the chosen colors and I also commented in his post.
Compared with the early version on the Instagram, I prefer it to the handmade version and the mass production version. The handmade version is hand colored, and the image doesn't seem to be clean. The mass production version has been slightly improved, but the use of dark colors can be overwhelming sometimes, such as the La Papesse card.
Design: The trump cards are designed following the type I Marseille Tarot. We can clearly see that by observing the lower part of the World and the cloak, the blindfold Cupid, the face of the Moon, the private parts of the Fool, etc.
The pip cards are mainly designed in the style of playing cards. For example, each queen has a flower in her hand, and the design of the King of hearts, stabbing himself with sword is also an imitation of the British playing card pattern. However, compared with the first draft, what we see now is closer to the tarot rather than playing cards. I'm looking forward to him actually designing a set of cards which will look awesome.
Summary
I don't really recommend this deck to the beginners of Marseille Tarot because it is a mixed system. The playing card system is similar to the Marseille pip system, but still they can't be treated as the same thing. However, if you have trained yourself using Marseille Tarot and you are also learning playing card cartomancy, this deck can be really interesting.
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