The Dealer’s Tarot preview - A whole spread of games

Level 99 Games’ latest offering on Kickstarter is a little different from their usual fare, which is pretty impressive considering their already broad catalogue. This time, designer and company president D. Brad Talton Jr. is releasing a book of 22 different games, similar to the classic Hoyle’s Rules of Games or Dr. Knizia’s New Tactical Games with Dice and Cards, except these all utilize the traditional tarot deck rather than poker cards. 

Each of the games in The Dealer’s Tarot is themed after one of the Major Arcana and covers a pretty wide range of genres, from trick-taking to lane-battling and stock speculation to flip-and-write. There’s even a dungeon-crawler!

The games all have rules that are very neatly organized, along with images and examples, and even strategy hints to ensure players can quickly learn a game and get to playing. They also feature a special, and optional, rule that empowers the Major Arcana associated with the game. For example, in the bidding game Offerings, the associated High Priestess card forces players to score the cards they were bidding with instead of what they were bidding on. But, being a Level 99 product, a mere 22 games with a dash of thematic chaos wasn’t enough. Each game additionally includes as many as five variants to ensure a plethora of options available.

One of my favorite inclusions in this book isn’t a single game, but the acknowledgments following the rules of each one. I always love learning about what inspires people to create their games and seeing how designers iterate on another’s ideas, so I very much enjoyed seeing the callouts to other games I’ve played before.

Along with the book itself, backers can also pick from a selection of five different tarot decks that are sized as typical playing cards to make gameplay a bit more familiar. The cards shown in my images are from the Gamer Deck, but note that all the components featured (book included) are prototypes and subject to change.

Anyone interested can check out the Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/level99games/the-dealers-tarot and back the campaign, which ends October 30th.