Wicked Tarot Deck Review

It is with great reservations that I write this Tarot review at all. I finally received the Wicked Tarot deck the other day, after months of waiting, and little to no updates.

The Wicked Tarot started as Kickstarter project that launched sometime in September, and I wound up helping/ funding it, back in October 2015. Mind you, it is the end of May 2016 now. There were very few updates about the work of the deck during the time myself, and anyone else awaited their arrival, and when we did start getting these updates, it wasn't until the very end and they were being shipped out within the week,

"Tarot has never been this..wicked!"

(An actual quote from their page)

That quote alone really inspired me, and set my heart aflame when it came to the deck, and the images that were shown to represent the art of the cards blew my mind. I will always say I have a love for the darker things, and these cards knocked it out of the park! Skeletons, creatures, and spooky-cool colours, how could I not be in love?

The above are just a few of the cards, such as the Kings of the Minor Arcana, my favorite card in any deck, The Hanged Man, and Death just happens to look like a skeletal centaur. There's no way I', going to deny being smitten with such a card.

As excited as I was for them, even upon arrival and holding the deck box in my hand, I was still over the moon, however, it quickly fell into despair... Now, I don't have a fancy camera or anything, but other than cropping the photos, no adjusments have been made, and while I noticed some issues right off the bat, they became ever more clear as I laid out the cards for this post in general.

Right off the bat, after removing the shrink wrap from the cards, I noticed the edges of the deck. In the second picture you can see all the white dotting the edges. I didn't know how to explain it at first, it tends to be a look of wear and tear, at least in my case, after a long handling and shuffling of decks in general. Cards get beat up, it happens, not brand new, right out of a book they don't.

They could have been printed or cut badly, either way, it's not quality work, and upon a friend's recommendation, the people behind the project were emailed the same day the cards arrived.

Some other things to note, the card stock is light weight and the cards themselves scuff easily. I actually damaged a card lying it out for the photos. The guide booklet doesn't have much in the ways of inspiration or explanations, just the basic info about each card. Yes, the booklet is meant to be a guide, but I', the kind of person who like a bit of background to the cards, who they are, where they came from, the mindset of their creator. Hell, they even went about adding additions to the well know Celtic Cross spread without reasons as to why (see below).

The last thing I ever want to do is to complain about someones hard work. At some point, I have to believe that there was love and time invested into the art and these cards but at that same time, everything looks and feels completely rushed. The cards themselves give off more of an abandoned feel and there's certainly no means at the moment for them to be worked with. I've already thought about setting them aside, or putting them together like a giant picture and framing them, but then, there's still the issue of all the scuff marks...

So, while I love the art and the idea of these cards, I'm not happy with them in the slightest, and I actually ache for the beings in the cards themselves. Now maybe if I hear a response back from the team and something changes, my attitude will change, but until then, they're going to sit in their box and I'm going to be glad I didn't spend much more money on them or the offered Kickstarter rewards then I did.

 In all hopes though, I just received a bad deck and everyone else out there will be pleased with theirs, as well as any prints or inked guitars and everything else that was purchased between the tiers.