So I’ve been going on a weird rabbit hole about different varieties of playing card decks with stuff like different suits/number of cards usually originating from different European countries. And I’m wondering if people still use them or if they’ve died out and people just use a standard 54 card deck
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I’m asking because I’ve looked for different type of card decks online to buy but haven’t found much
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In the south west of Germany we have a different set of cards. We use it for example to play this game https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binokel and other games. I have family in the south east of Germany (Bavaria) and they use a different set but I can’t recall the name of the game.
We use “german-suited playing cards”: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-suited_playing_cards
However, here we call it “magyar kártya”, hungarian cards.
In Spain we mostly use our traditional 40 card set with 4 colorful suits (swords, cups, coins and clubs). It goes directly from 7 to the figures, skipping 8, 9 and 10.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish-suited_playing_cards
54 card decks (called French card deck here) are mostly used for poker and other casino related games.
I think similar ones are used too in Italy at least, but I’m not an expert in card decks
Yes,we have Sicilian playing cards.
There is a deck of 40 cards.The numbers go from 1-7.then there are ‘figure’ cards,3 for each suit…a king,a knight on a horse, and a lady.
There are 4 suits ..coins,cups,clubs and swords.
These cards supposedly date from the Arabic invasion of Sicily.They were certainly used extensively from Medieval times.
They are still widely used here.There are regional variations in other parts of Italy too, the Neapolitan cards are still very popular as well for example.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_playing_cards
we use the italian suits
mainly used for card games like brisicole
https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarot
If I am not mistaken in the US it’s mainly known as a divination tool but tarot is initially a game.
It’s not played a lot nowadays but it can still be played if you get the cards somehow. The most common set in France is Tarot de Marseille but there are various sets from different European countries.
The traditional German deck for all sorts of games including Germany’s most popular traditional card game Skat is 32 cards (starts at 7, no jokers) and uses the suits acorns, leaves, hearts and bells instead of diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades.
In Germany there are a variety of games that use either 32 or 48 card decks. You can play those with french decks but there are a number of original decks, usually from the south german areas.
The game [Schnapsen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schnapsen#Cards)
[Schafkopf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schafkopf)
The german decks can be the so called Bavarian deck, Altenburger deck and others.
[
German-suited playing cards](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German-suited_playing_cards) If you right-click to open the link you can find lots of information.
Tarot deck. Yes, it’s originally made for games much as the regular deck. Jeu de Tarot is actually pretty good card game.
We normally use the french suit in my part of the country.
We use a 32 card deck (A, 10, 9, 8, 7, Q, K, J) for the german national card game [Skat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skat_%28card_game%29?wprov=sfla1).
We also use a 40 card deck (A, 10, Q, K, J) which contains each card twice to play [Doppelkopf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelkopf?wprov=sfla1).
In Bavaria they play [Schafkopf](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schafkopf?wprov=sfla1) and use the same 32 card deck which you would use to play Skat. The deck is not in the french suit but in the german suit with Acorns, Leaves, Hearts and Bells instead of Clubs, Spades, Hearts and Diamonds.
In Bavaria we use the 36 card deck, destroy the 6 so we only have 32 cards and play “Schafkopf” with these cards. It’s for 4 people (or 3 if you play a variation of it)
The typical Italian deck is 40 cards just like the Spanish one mentioned by /u/artsanchezg.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_playing_cards
on this page you can find the various designs for the suits, that have slight variations (curved or straight swords for example). The cards are the same and the games are playable with any design but obviously any Italian hates playing with deck designs from other regions. I’m a Piacentine guy.
French 52 + 2 decks are quite common as well. In my area one of the most played games (a variation of the Canasta/rummy family) uses two French decks mixed together for a 108 card deck.
For our game [Jass](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jass) we use a deck of 36 with
6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A.
In the western part of the country, we use the French suits ♥️♦️♣️♠️, but in the northeastern parts, we use colours we call “German”, but they aren’t used in that form elsewhere: [Bells, Roses, Acorns, Shields](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss-suited_playing_cards). The numbers are 6-9, Banner, Under (“bottom” or “lower”), Ober (“top” or “upper”), König (“King”), Ass (“ace”, but the picture is actually a number 2)
In the two valleys were Troccas / Troggu is still alive, they use [a variant of the Tarot de Marseille](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_1JJ_Tarot)with the following, and in some variants, those in parentheses are removed:
Cups: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, (7, 8, 9, 10), Knave, Knight, Queen, King
Coins: the same
Swords: (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,) 7, 8, 9, 10, Knave, Knight, Queen, King
Staves: the same
Trump cards from I to XXI: the Magician, Juno, the Empress, the Emperor, Jupiter, the Lovers, the Chariot, Justice, the Hermit, the Wheel of Fortune, Force, the Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, the Devil (to some people just “Number 15”), the House of God, the Star, the Moon, the Sun, Judgement, Za Warudo! plus Nr. 0 the Fool.
According to a rabbit hole I once fell into, Heart and Bells both evolved from Cups, Diamond and Roses from Coins, Acorns and Clubs from Staves and Shields and Spades from Swords. And these in turn from chinese depictions of single coins, strings of 10 coins, bundles of 10 strings and one more that I can’t remember.
Not much of a card player myself, but for piquet card games (32 cards) such as [Manille](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manille), my grandparents used a 52 card deck. They then manually removed all cards 2 to 6 before shuffling up to play.
I’m from Moldova and the “French cards” (FC) were the only one.
Then I moved in Italy and they practically use only the “Neapolitan cards” (the spanish and italian users wrote about them). They see the FC as only used in Poker and magic tricks.
Honestly, I find the neapolitan cards really boring.
Their games are stupid and mostly determined by chance. E.g. Based on the game, cards change their values, so you need to remember them for each game(A 4 won’t always beat a 3). To that add that to win, you need to collect points, and again, every game have its kind of points which you have to remember and count at the end of each game 🤦 About the chance, since the victory is based on n° of points, the only way to win is to obviously assure the cards and combos with most points, but obviously, to do so, you need to be lucky and draw the strongest cards. There isn’t much thinking about it 🤷. The design of the cards is cool tough 😬
I really missed playing with FC, the most famous game in Moldova is “Durak”.
A wonderful game based more on your skill than chance (obviously, there will always be a little chance involved when playing cards). No wonder that the name of the game “Durak” is “idiot” in russian 😂 (Who looses become the durak of the game 😂). But the game was played with 36 cards (from 6 to A).
I’m aware you can get other kinds of decks here – such as 32 cards, etc., but a lot of the time you see the usual 54 cards (Ace to King, then two Jokers.)
Admittedly, seeing “R, D, V” on the cards where it should say “K, Q, J” throws me off a bit haha
There are a number of card games here that are the same as back home, but once in a while there are odd variations that I come across, which sometimes feel like you’re playing a completely different game. I was *really* happy to learn that Snap is pretty much the same here, though.
In France, we have a 32 card deck (using the same suits, but ranging only from 7 to A), which is used to play the quite popular game [Belote](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belote).
We also have a special deck of card to play [Tarot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Tarot). The deck contains 78 cards: same colors of suits, but with an added figure, the Knight (*Cavalier* in French), between the Jack and the Queen, as well as 22 trump cards ranging from 1 to 21 with an additional one non-numbered (the Fool). The cards are also taller than the standard 54 card deck.
Other than the normal 54 card deck we also use a 54 card deck for Tarok (which is composed of Jack, Horse, Queen and King in all suits, 1-4 in red suits, 7-10 in black suits and a trump suit with cards I-XXI and a fool (škis), which counts as the XXII).
In the Littoral region, where I am from we also use the Italian card deck (40 cards, 1-7, jack, horse, king in each suit – coins, cups, clubs and swords). Games of briškula (briscola), tršet (tresette) and škopa (scopa) are played.
I don’t know about the northeastern part of the country though. A game called Šnops (schnappsen) is played there, but I dont know what cards are used for it. Maybe someone from that part of the country will provide more info about it.
Usually we use 54 card deck but there are some games where you use only some of the cards, like [*Marjapussi*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marjapussi).
We use the same type of deck that’s popular in the English-speaking world (which I think are the French cards), but for a lot of games we use 40 cards instead of 52, we get rid of the 8, 9 and 10 of each suit.