About a month or so ago, I discovered an interesting deck of cards and I've been a bit obsessed with it ever since. It's called The Decktet. It's a little hard to explain what it's like. It has a very unique structure which you can read about the here but I'll give you an overview:

• There are 36 cards and 6 suits
• The cards are ranked with Ace (1), 2-9, and Crown.
• Cards of rank 2-9 have two suits each and suits are not repeated
• Aces and Crowns only have one suit
• Each card has a picture and a name (very much like Tarot)
• There is also an extended deck -- one of those cards has no suit, while the others have three.

The cards themselves are colorful and unique. Just take a look. Click to embiggen.

The icons just below the rank is the suits that card belongs to. Yeah, those aren't the suits you are used to -- instead they are suns, moons, waves, leaves, wyrms, and knots.

Like our standard deck of 52 cards, The Decktet isn't for one game but a system to build other games on. The characteristics of this unique deck leads to some interesting possibilities in games that would be hard or impossible to make in a standard 52-card deck.

All the games I've tried have been solitaire games or solitaire variants of other games. I've been playing some solo games to get a feel for the deck and I've been very happy with it. The games I've tried is:

• Jacynth -- an area control game, with the areas designated by the suits on the cards. This will probably be the game I'll try first as a multi-player.
• Adaman -- an interesting take on solitaire. Try to assert influence over people in power. This is very tough to beat.
• Quincunx -- A really interesting tableau game but with somewhat difficult scoring. But once you get used to the scoring, it's fun and a bit of brain-burner.

So how do you get this crazy deck of cards? Probably the easiest way is The Game Crafter. I actually ordered mine from ArtsCow which may be cheaper if you get on their free shipping deals. That said, I've heard Game Crafter's quality is better. I have also saw them listed at DriveThruCards but I don't know anything about the quality there either.

More to come on the Decktet front.