Normally I'm a big Lo Scarabeo fan, but this deck is a failure in so many ways I'm embarassed for them and at the same time perturbed that I wasted money buying it.
Fortunately
my friend gave me her copy (about the only gift from her that I've ever almost turned down), but I agree that the deck is a failure in so many ways. Looking through what was my friend's deck when I was looking through it, some of the punched holes started falling out of the cards. And the join of the paper on the side of the top of the box is already starting to separate.
This looks like the artwork was chosen, then stamped out with the 8 shape, sort of fit as best possible. Have you seen those casino card decks with the holes in the middle? The holes aren't always punched in a proper place and this looks like what happened here.
They should have just not punched holes in it, it still would have been infinity shaped.
The Wheel of Fortune is about the only card that works with the holes. Originally I thought the Devil also worked, but upon closer inspection, the real eyes don't line up with the holes. If you're going to do an infinity shaped deck, give the artist a template to use to incorporate the holes into the picture instead of cutting the finished art into an infinity shape and punching holes in it! I can't believe that the fine folks at LoS printed out a test copy of this deck, actually looked through it and thought the idea was so well executed that they could go ahead and release the deck. There's no way this deck was sent through a QA process....
Yes, it's the holes.
I have just seen this in my local shop. The box didn't look too big actually. Quite manageable but the shape won't work for me. I was angry with myself at being talked into buying the Heart Tarot when that came out and I felt it was sort of ok but the shape really ruined the deck for me and I got rid of it. Same here. The artwork is actually quite interesting.
This could only be a novelty.
Yes, it's most definitely the holes! As with most LoS decks, they've taken some of the images into new and different/interesting places (that they then mess up with the holes):
- the black and white tigers in the Chariot who are more interested in attacking each other than in moving the chariot forward. (But with that big hole in his torso, the Charioteer looks completely ineffectual.)
- balancing light and dark in Justice (you almost don't see the ball of darkness thanks to the hole)
- the Devil as a woman drawing the dead to her from around the edges card
- the hand coming out of the sky in the Tower to rip it off its floating rock
- the rising Sun as an egg yolk
- there are lots of interesting Minors, but I won't go into those
Is it hard to shuffle? It really does seem like an odd shape for a deck, though having another look at the images on google of the cards, I think I may add this to my collection, its more interesting at second glance than I thought. (I have no right to complain anyways, I have a playing card deck shaped like a rabbit!)
I can shuffle some big decks, but I'm only able to shuffle this one from the side, interlacing the top half of the 8
I do hope LoS realizes the error of their ways and release a standard (rectangular) version of this deck. THAT I would use. This is a novelty that's just going to gather dust.
Rodney
