Top12: Playing Card Decks for Halloween 2016

It's that time of the year again! We have painstakingly compiled the best playing cards for All Hallows' Eve just for you. Behold! The Kardify Top 12: Halloween 2016 Edition! This year with enough ghosts, skulls, quirky characters, more skulls and a dragon to keep your spine tingling through the night. If you have one that we haven't discovered. Do feel free to share.

Note that the selection expressed in this top 12 are solely those of the author and the list is in no particular order.

Sleepy Hollow

Over a year in the making, the Legend of Sleepy Hollow Playing Cards were conceived by playing card designer Derek McKee and masterfully illustrated in France by J.C. Desevre. This incredibly intricate and detailed deck of playing cards depicts artwork and characters from the popular Sleepy Hollow legend including Ichabod Crane & the Headless Horseman.

Memento Mori

Inspired by Memento Mori, where imagery of a skull represents the short-lived nature of all things material and a reminder of our mortality. As such, the Memento Mori deck features a unique low-poly design skull on the tuck and the card backs. The Ace, Joker and courts are very stylized and modern-looking, consistent with the overall theme of the deck. The unique design and eye-catching colors will enhance displays and card flourishes.

Bicycle Bone Riders

A collaboration between Art of Play and Bicycle, these fun new limited edition Halloween-themed playing cards are inspired by Bicycle's classic Rider Back design, the Bone Riders feature fun illustrations of bike-riding skeletons, fanciful jack o'lantern's, flying bats, and ornate pumpkin vines entangling it all together. Each deck includes two specialty Jokers, a unique Ace of Spades and one blank-face and one double-back card. Packaged inside a festive tuck box featuring premium matte card stock with embossed typography.

Halloween

Penguin Magic has teamed up with Natalia Silva to bring you this cute deck. Natalia has put her creative spin on the holiday by creating the ENTIRE deck from the ground up. Each card face has a unique piece of Halloween-themed art ranging from bats to skeletons to candy corn. The diptych Jokers combine together to form one beautiful piece of art, while the back design perfectly captures the mood of the season.

RAVN

A collaboration between Caroline Ravn and Stockholm17, Ravn Playing Cards is beautiful, simple and at the same time attractive. The deck was designed to keep the classic look. The faces are quite standard, with improvised hands and the faces of the Jacks, Queens and Kings. The jokers are elegant and intriguing and Ace of Spades is very attractive.

Grotesk Macabre

From the mind of Lotrek, Grotesk Macabre is a unique deck of playing cards featuring death and darkness combined with the elegance of the Baroque and Gothic style art. This deck is much darker and edgier than his previous releases. This deck combines the death theme with the heavy elegance of baroque and the pointy, flamboyant Gothic art. Lotrek wanted to create an unsettling feeling without being vulgar or gross.

PIFF

Illustrated by UK artist Claire Blackledge, this unique deck was exclusively created for Piff the Magic Dragon! This unique deck features custom pips and indices, custom back, custom courts and redesigned tuck box, Die-Cut Harbin Table Playing Cards, and totally unique Gaff Cards for a special Piff magic trick.

Superior: Skull & Bones- Phantom Edition

An updated version of Expert's Skull & Bones designed by Jackson Robinson with new back design, a new ace of spades and a new set of jokers. The cards printed on the popular Classic finish. The center pendants of the card are stamped in hot silver foil and the detail on the borders are done in Spot UV. The tuck features a heavy duty soft touch stock that is stamped with silver foil, black foil and also uses Spot UV and embossing.

Tenebre Zucca

An Orange edition of the extremely limited run of a new signature series playing card deck by 4PM DESIGNS. The Zucca is the next edition to the popular TENEBRE series Inspired by the Italian Gothic artwork. Printed by Legends Playing Card Co.

Bone & Ebon

From NoirArts and meticulously hand-illustrated by Noah Whippie, the decks reads like a 54-page occult manuscript steeped in otherworldly dark aesthetics. With an intense focus on Gothic surrealism. The glyphs or "letters" that was used in the designs are stylized, a unique phonetic alphabet - to add character and subtext to the art. Both decks feature accents of artwork made by applying of metallic silver and golden ink.

Odd Bods

The Odd Bods Playing Cards is a brilliant deck illustrated by Jonathan Burton. Produced by Art of Play, the Odd Bods Playing Cards feature amusing characters, quirky illustrations, and playful imagery. The deck has been hand illustrated in a beautifully nostalgic style and designed to have the look of ‘aged’ Victorian lithographs. Every image proves its own quirk and oddity, but is never ostentatious-- Odd Bods are the epitome of refined indulgence. Packaged in a gorgeous gold-foil embossed tuck box.

Muertos

Muertos is an original set of playing cards designed by Steve Minty. It is independently crafted and honors the holiday that celebrates life and death; Dia De Los Muertos. The Muertos deck takes the classic aesthetics of Dia De Los Muertos and is updated with the tradition of playing and my experiences growing up. It depicts the social classes and history of the culture while simultaneously giving off a contemporary elegant luxurious feel.

The selection expressed in this top12 are solely those of the author. Images for Sleepy Hollow from whisperingimps.com,, Memento Mori from murphysmagic.com, Grotesk Macabre and Bone & Ebon from kickstarter, Superior: Skull & Bones from conjuringarts.org, Tenebre Zucca from legendsplayingcards.com, and Halloween, RAVN, PIFF and Muertos by Anthony Ingrassia.