What are deck no no's for you?

[jema]

Tarot decks made by people with no previous exposure to tarot - at all!
'Lazy courts' as described by tarotbear (tarot of the witches comes to mind)
Robin Wood (in it's own icky category)
Too thin cardstock or those that look like they could scrape car windows in the winter.
Renaming all majors and messing with the numbering at the same time
Extra suits.
I can deal with one or two extra cards though.

As for art style, I don't really care, I work with anything from Rachel Pollack to Klimt to Cosmic tribe but I will NOT get a deck made with poser. Please at least make an effort with the art!

 

[Hathor]

Some people here may know that I truly despised, with a passion, the Gendron deck. Based on a 6 card scans, I really wanted it and thought it was beautiful. When I got it in my hands I could not get rid of it fast enough. The real people depicted in this deck was revolting to me. It made me sick. It lived in my home for a few weeks in a box hidden from my sight before I found someone who wanted it. I didn't want it anywhere near me and I was glad to be relieved from it.

Animals dressed in people clothing, and being made to mimic people just makes me cringe and shake my head furiously. Reminds me of a horrible incident in Coney Island many years back.

I do love Vampires though !

 

[cardlady22]

I don't have much that I won't pick up.
But, I'd have to go with:

shapes that are not square, rectangle or circle

horror/gore

erotic

 

[Emily]

I don't like black and White decks, I need colour. When I look at decks like the Victoria Regina and Light and Shadow, I try to image how they would look coloured.

I don't like photo decks that use real people, especially if they have been posed. Decks based on one gender don't do it for me either, I don't own any but feminist decks don't interest me, I like my decks to be gender-balanced.

Also I don't like decks with too much nudity, especially when it seems to be all female nudity. Although erotica and erotic decks are fine because they are usually balanced.

 

[merissa_88]

Vampire decks (except maybe Bohemian Gothic one day)
cats dressed as people (also!)
manga decks
deviant moon
TdM decks (2 systems are enough for me)


Although I have a habit of buying decks I was sure I'd never buy 6 months ago.

 

[nisaba]

Sugar Sweet decks - Doreen Virtue I mean you

To this I'd add dolphin decks, dragon decks, Goth/Vampire decks, unicorn decks, fairy decks and five-suited decks.

That being said, I have the Tarot of the Celtic Fairies, but only because they are *real* fairies, dark and sinister and chthonic, and about as far removed from pastel-frocked, dragonfly-winged, sanitised Victorian fairy-floss as you can possibly imagine.

And the Whispering Tarot, which has dolphins, dragons, fairies and quite possibly a unicorn all in the one deck. If anyone had told me that before I bought it, I probably would have vomited from all the saccharine, but it nonetheless somehow manages to be quite a respectable little deck which does a good job.

 

[Carla]

I agree with much of what has been said here...I say no to decks that:

*depict animals dressed up as people, doing things people would do. That totally creeps me out

*all decks with that overly perfect CG look (such as Legends of the Divine, but there are many, many more)

*photographic/collage decks

*what I call swirly decks--Lisa Hunt-style artwork, or anything that is whispy and pastelly in which everything tends to swirl together

*unrelentingly dark decks such as Dark Grimoire, et al

*unrelentingly positive decks such as The Game of You (though I have to admit I do find the deck attractive because I absolutely love bright, vivid colors and naive art style--it's just that I find these decks unhelpful for any type of reading other than, as Hunter calls it, self-soothing)

*erotic imagery. No call for it, it's just silly in a tarot

*huge, dominant borders (like Steele Wizard--why, just why?)

*LoS style multiple languages, so distracting

*must add, the wishy-washy art style of many LoS decks, like Jane Austen Tarot and so many others!

 

[velvetina]

..dare a say it? - practically every Lo Sca deck I have ever seen!

add to that anything with a bias, an agenda,

 

[Le Fanu]

- Exclusively women decks (why would you create a deck for only half the world's population?).

- Angel decks

- newly released Celtic themed one. The trend has passed.

- photographic decks with the same model donning 78 different wigs

But as for the rest, I'll go for anything. I'm fine with erotic, I'm fine with fairies, I'm fine with erotic fairies. I can also do dark in certain moments.

I think the intention of the original post was deck styles. I don't think it's fair to mention specific decks as no nos, surely?

 

[Debra]

I think the intention of the original post was deck styles. I don't think it's fair to mention specific decks as no nos, surely?

Why not. They're examples illustrating the general principles.

When I sense the commercial motive is the driving force.

I like whimsical art but am impatient with decks that trivialize tarot imagery through ignorance or laziness. An example is any deck where the artist seemed to do no more than glance at a list of card titles and said "Hey! I know what that is!" No research on tarot, no deep reflection on the archetype--just a shallow stereotype. On the other end of the spectrum, decks that force tarot imagery onto a theme for the sake of making a deck about whatever-the-heck-it-is irritate the heck out of me. The tarot of Jane Austin comes to mind.