This deck is pretty much a standard among the Classic type decks, in fact I think most of them are variations of this one.  Or rather, they are all variations of the Tarot of Marseilles.  At any rate, the artwork is copied from original woodcuts, which is what gives the pictures their blunt,
rough style.

The Major Arcana are pretty much what you'd expect from this kind of deck.  Having reviewed a couple other ones already for the Collection, I didn't see much in the way of anything new or surprising.  The Strength card is strange, I can't for the life of me figure out exactly what manner of beast the person pictured in the card is trying to open the mouth of.  There are a couple other weird looking cards, I scanned them for you to see.

The Minor Arcana are unoriginal as well, only the Court Cards have any pictures at all, the numbered cards are just pictures of the number of items.  The Court Card pictures themselves remind me strongly of the court cards in the traditional bridge deck, this may be where they got the inspiration for those.

The deck is slightly smaller than standard, and handles and shuffles easily.  The suits are not named at all except for the court cards.  The suits are Cups, Wands, Swords and Pentacles.  Unlike many of the classic styled decks, the titles are all in English, as opposed to French or Italian.  Again, the Roman numerals are done in the old fashioned style rather than the subtractive method.

Basically this deck is all right but I think there are nicer looking versions of the same thing available out there.

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Review Copyright 1998 by Gina M. Pace