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To define non-standard suits, you first have to understand what standard suits are. There are many different groups of standard suit-signs in modern playing cards. What is "standard" to you depends largely on your location in the world. Here are the most commonly used:
Non-standard suits are simply "novelty" decks, usually whimsical in nature, which use a suit-system other than one of the standard ones! Unlike card game decks, such as Uno or Old Maid, playing-cards with non-standard suits are still, at heart, playing-cards. As such, they can be used to play any game you could play with a standard-suited deck (although for some games players may need to decide which suits outrank which...). Let's take a look at some examples... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Cards on Display Much of the information below is from the book Transformation Playing Cards by Albert Field (U. S. Games Systems, Inc., 1987). An excellent source of reading on the subject, the book describes and displays cards from nearly every transformation deck printed between 1800 and 1987. Card 1  Image: © 1974 DuRite Enterprises King of Marijuana - Published in 1974 by DuRite Enterprises, the Royal Flash deck is definitely a relic of its time. The suits in this drug-promoting deck are Marijuana, Peyote, Opium and Magic Mushrooms, and each jack, queen and king is partaking of the drug of their suit! To top it off, instead of a Joker, the deck has a Smoker. Card 2  Image: © 1993 H. A. Layer Queen of Not - The ZByte deck, published by ZByte Games of San Francisco, is a fascinating deck. The suits are the logical symbols Not, And, Or, and Byte. Kings and queens portray famous men and women from the world of mathematics and computers (the queen in our example is Sophie Germain, a brilliant mathematician who wrote under the name LeBlanc), and the jacks are fanciful robots. Although the deck can be used to play standard games, it comes with instructions for several intriguing games which make use of the logical suit-symbols. Card 3  Image: © 1991 Roger Spachman Eight of Pteranodons - With its suits of Triceratops, Brontosaurus, Pteranodon and Tyrannosaurus Rex, Roger Spachman's Dino Deck is a great deck for small children (or collectors!). Two "Jokersauruses" round out this clever pack. Card 4  Image: © Wm. N. Perry Queen of Stars - Stardeck, invented by William N. Perry, differs from the other decks in this exhibit in that it has five suits rather than four. Along with Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds and Spades, Perry has added a Stars suit. This opens up many possibilities for variations on existing games, such as having a hand with five of a kind without using a wild card! Card 5  Image: © 1996 Paramount Pictures, Daniel Vollmer Card 5: Ace of The Federation - This card comes from the Star Trek: The Next Generation deck by Tricorder Records of Germany. The suits are emblems representing four of the civilizations/alliances from the series: The Federation, Klingons, Cardassians and Romulans. Court cards have photographs of characters from the show, with aces depicting vessels from their respective civilizations. This deck is actually a 32-card Skat deck, but Tricorder also has a 52-card Poker/Bridge deck. Card 6  Image: © 1989 Baseball Playing Cards, Inc. Card 6: King of Gloves - Baseball Cards, by Baseball Playing Cards, Inc is a fun little deck in which the normal suits have been replaced by Bats, Balls, Bases and Gloves. The Jokers are a Manager and an Umpire. There are at least two other non-standard-suited decks in the same series, Christmas Cards and Golf Cards. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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