First Look: ROYAL LINES Playing Cards by Greg Wanko

Launching this Friday on Kickstarter, the ROYAL LINES Playing Cards is a fun and vibrant deck of cards designed by Greg Wanko. The design of the ROYAL LINES deck is well thought out, from the hierarchy to the traditional playing card motifs. Greg explained,

A good deck balances form and function. Filling every card face with embellishments or some uninspired stock photo (like the kind of deck you find in a museum gift shop) weakens the deck because it breaks down the structure. The highest cards should be the most exciting and the lower cards need to play second fiddle. The aces are both low and high so they should be somewhere in the middle in terms of the artwork. These sort of basic ideas about hierarchy and classic playing card motifs are what drove the design of Royal Lines.

About a year ago Greg started drafting the deck in his free time. He started looking at the history and various styles of playing cards and did lots and lots of sketching. Greg said,

My intention was to create a deck that maintains all the playable characteristics of the classic deck but free of the restrictions in production and printing that were present when those designs took shape. The designs themselves are a mixture of rigid forms and colorful patterns. Each suit of royals has a set of common lines that I started from. Patterned segments then expand outward from these lines to form each court.

Strong lines define the custom-illustrated court cards, each with their own distinct traits.

Some people think the original courts represent famous historical figures, while other magisteria exists about the Black Moria and the Suicide King. I wanted to replicate that sort of depth of meaning with my courts by leaving them tethered together, but not overtly connected. Royal Lines for me, is going back to the basics and creating a fun and vibrant deck of cards to be played with first and admired later.

This fully custom deck will be printed by Legends Playing Card Co and will go live Friday, 10 February 12PM Central. Early bird reward tiers are available!