It’s that time of the year! Once again, we have painstakingly compiled the best playing cards for All Hallows’ Eve just for you. Behold! The Kardify Top 12: Halloween 2018 Edition! This year with enough owls, ghosts, skulls, Vikings, quirky characters and pirates 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.
Dead Soul
Brought to you by TCC Playing Card Co., Dead Soul Playing Card is a dark macabre deck featuring 52 uniquely designed cards. Beautiful back design and custom courts! Fantastic detail, intricate design, and style to bring out your dark side.
Maidens Playing Cards
From Joker and the Thief, Maidens Playing Cards is a fully custom deck inspired by Dia de Los Muertos. On the outside, the lavish tuck box features an incredible dyed creme colored paper stock, letterpressed and adorned with beautiful foil accents inside and out! Inside, the face cards tell a story through the use of symbolism and meticulously illustrated throughout. The back design is eerie yet eye-catching! The consistent design of the face and backs beautifully tie the enchanting theme of the deck together.
Bicycle Bone Riders
Still one of our favorite. 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.
Strigiformes
Strigiformes Playing Cards is a fully custom deck of playing cards featuring original illustrations of owls designed by Renee LeCompte and produced by PlayingCardDecks. The deck is fully custom with meticulously hand-illustrated courts, pips, jokers, aces, and a custom back with tarot symbology used throughout. The darker tone gives the deck an enchanting feel!
RAVN Purple Haze
A collaboration between Caroline Ravn and Stockholm17, The Ravn Purple Haze is beautiful, elegant 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 intriguing and Ace of Spades is very attractive.
Fury & Rage Knights
From Midnight Cards, Knights Playing Cards is a fully custom deck inspired by medieval knights and their most recognized style of armor and weapons. The Knights card backs feature an etched armor background and a head-to-head layout of the shield, Bull Head crest, and Battle Mace. The face cards have a metal texture with grey full-bleed coloring and the pips have a silver metallic look inlaid with Rivets.
House of the Rising Spades
From the mind of Lorenzo Gaggiotti of Stockholm17, the House of the Rising Spades is an exquisite deck inspired an esoteric realm full of mysteries built for cartomancers, cardists, magicians, collectors, dreamers, and card enthusiasts. The beautifully illustrated face cards have no standard index, particularly the spot number cards (2 to 10).
Voodoo
Voodoo Playing Cards are produced by SpielKartenShop with artwork by Sam Hayles. You will notice that he has a thing for skulls and you will see in his design a lot of inspiration from esotericism to punk, bizarre to gothic, apocalyptic to elegant and all the bizarre things and elements from our strange world. You will find a lot of symbols hidden in the artwork and references to the world of voodoo. For the cards, Sam chose to use the sepia and old paper and grungy textures because that’s the style he loves and use the most and again fitted very well with the overall theme and style of graphics!
Haunted 8’s
If you’re not already in the spirit of Halloween, then this spooky deck is certain to get you in the mood. Ghouls, Goblins, Headless horsemen, Zombies, Scarecrows, Pumpkins and more…! All packed into the October Kings Wild Shorts deck recently delivered to subscribers. A fun-filled deck brimming with artistry and ingenuity for All Hallows’ Eve. The theme, colors, spooky characters and design elements that make up Haunted 8s came together perfectly!
Ragnorak
Ragnorak is a fully custom Norse-themed deck series designed by the team at Design Imperator. The Jormungand (Dark Blue) and the Fenris (Dark Brown) Editions features fully custom pips, indices, aces, and courts. The card backs showcase Norse artwork inspired from original knotwork and wood carving designs, both set in a mirrored composition printed with metallic silver and copper inks. The meticulously hand-illustrated courts along with the darker tone of the deck highlight drama, intensity, and an epic battle!
Salt & Bones
Inspired by the life and crimes of Captain H. Every, the man behind the biggest heist in history, Salt & Bone Playing Cards from Ellusionist celebrates bad intentions by becoming the lost bounty. The narrative of the deck starts with the striking bone white tuck, an imperfect paper grain reserved for rich men and cunning thieves. The compliment black and red foil adds a touch of danger and intrigue. Inside, the fully custom pips twist and snake you towards the elusive treasure, and court cards contain the sigils of the most infamous pirates to ever live.
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.
The selection expressed in this top12 are solely those of the author.
