Ryan Hackel's Tarotless Zarcana Deck
A Tarot-less deck for John Cooper's game, Zarcana

I had been interested in Zarcana for quite some time before I got around to trying it. The barrier for me was the Tarot deck. I decided to rework the game, to remove all Tarot references from it. This ultimately led to making a deck just for Zarcana. I felt there were people besides myself who would appreciate a Tarot-less Zarcana deck, and it would be great practice in card design.

The end result is this deck. No more discs, swords, wands, cups, trumps, or arcana. It's now all written expressly in Zarcana terms... Grow or Clone, Attack, Build, and Move. And I had to rewrite the rules so that the terminology makes sense with this Tarotless deck. Everything you'll need to know is on the cards themselves, just like Fluxx. All the art, save for one, came from WikiMedia Commons. If you've got a suggestion for better art, speak up!

If you want to use this deck, help yourself to the PDF. The cards are just right for 3"x5" index cards, but it works best if you just print the file directly onto sheets of cardstock and cut them out individually. (Be careful, though, if printing to presized cards. It is very IMPORTANT that you disable the AutoMargin that most PDF readers assign to a document before printing, which will shrink the page size by about 1/4" on each side. This is bad because then the card edges won't line up with precut card edges. If you need help with this, contact me.)

DOWNLOADS:

This deck is still a work in progress; I reserve the right to change the card appearance as I see fit. But don't worry. You can keep with the deck's development by revisiting this website. If you do download a copy of the deck, please leave the filename as is. This will help you know if your copy is the latest version.

UPDATE 04 OCT 2008: File revised to correct "wild" omitted from titles of two "Grow or Clone (Wild)" cards.

Zarcana was designed by John Cooper. Icehouse pyramids were invented by Andy Looney, and sold by Looney Labs.

Last Updated: 4 October 2008

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