Fivedeck

The Fivedeck is a special disjoint deck where the ranks in the deck don’t quite work together.

You know how in a standard deck of cards, you have nine numbers and four letters? 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 ,9 ,10, and then J, Q, K, A.

Well, what if we took this idea to an extreme?

Origin

In a way the design of this deck started out when I was introduced to the game La Bâtarde. La Bâtarde (the bastard) is a trick-taking game played with a very special deck of cards: One entirely with letter ranks and no number ranks. In each suit you have (low to high) 🐶🐱 JMF VCDR; or Dog, Cat, Juggler, Musician, Fool, Jack, Knight, Queen, King.
In certain situations, the three low ranks (FMJ) promote, such that the cards instead rank 🐶🐱 VCDR JMF (the animals are depicted as pictograms on the cards), making the lower ranks stronger.

La Bâtarde shares this “rank promotion” idea with a number of other traditional European card games. Skat promotes the Jacks, Schafkopf promotes the Jacks and the Queens, and Jass promotes just the Jack and 9 of the trump suit.

One of my earliest designs for the Fivedeck actually used the following ordering (low to high): ABCD 56789 JKLM with the intent of having a La Bâtarde-style rank switcharoo as well to put the early alphabet on top of the later alphabet. I may just return to this deck in the future.

But then I designed Spandauer. Spandauer was originally designed with the use of a Latin deck in mind.
Latin 40 card decks run A234567 JQK in all four suits.
Because Spandauer is a climbing/shedding game, I decided to move the Ace and the 2 on top, mirroring the way it works in Chinese climbers like Big 2 and Zheng Fen, making the ordering 34567 JQKA2. Five cards on either side of a gap.
Some players did find this confusing however, so I removed the 2 and added a 10 instead, making it 34567 10JQKA instead.

But wouldn’t it be nice to have a purpose-made deck? One that already bakes in this structure?

Introducing the Fivedeck

The Fivedeck runs 12345 JKLMN. Two groups of five ranks separated by a gap.

“Why does it start at J?” I hear you ask. Because I added in another optional feature: The O cards.

The O cards (while not used in Spandauer) bridge the gap between the two halves, acting as a zero for the numbers and as the letter o for the numbers.

The font I chose for the deck also has an O that looks like a zero, so it all fits quite well.

Each of the cards has between 0 and 5 pips on them indicating their point value in the games that use these. Note how the letters run backwards in point value, making them weaker the stronger they get.

The intent behind the Fivedeck (besides playing Spandauer), is to have a deck that bakes in movable ranks by making them distinct and unrelated.
It’s easy to imagine a game where the numbers are low and letters high, but reversed in the trump suit.

The O cards are all visually distinct from the other cards in order to show that they’re special in some way. Maybe one day I’ll come up with a Schafkopf style game in which all the O’s are promoted to permanent trump cards ranking about everything else, but being worth 0 points.

Where to Get This

The Fivedeck will be available on The Game Crafter in the near future.