Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Rapid Fire Review: All The King's Men 18th Century Playing Cards

"Annnd coming out from the left wing, a strange and what would appear to be out of place review of non-wargaming material..."

Ah, but you see, that would be completely incorrect.  Yes, a slightly out of the blue sort of blog post, but I need to get back into the swing of things somehow.

Last weekend I drove the 1,800 kms down to Fredericksburg, Virginia, USA to attend HistoriCon 2012 and came back across the border with a lot less money and a lot more toys.  One of the items I purchased was a deck of playing cards.  Playing cards? What kind of connection do they have with wargaming?  Well, its a rather simple answer, not all rulesets employ a IgoUgo system or even dice for that matter (read: Malifaux).

So, wandering around the dealer hall at HistoriCon, I dropped by Ken Cliffe's booth All the King's Men.  Ken is a friend of a friend and I had not meet him until the event itself.  My "mentor and patron" Dave Hoyt of much ado about nothing blogging fame is a good friend of Ken and usually helps him out with running his booth at the major historical wargaming conventions (Cold Wars, Fall-In and HistoriCon).  Ken is a transplanted Canadian and was born in my hometown of the GTA.  Anyway, All The King's Men produces a line of drop-dead fantastic 54mm War of 1812 figures and terrain.  He is actually expanding into the Napoleonic range.  Not that I need another scale or project... but very tempting is his wares.

His ruleset (All the King's Men) uses a card deck system to activate units and while he has another FANTASTIC set of War of 1812 themed playing cards that include historical tidbits and interesting facts, I think the real jewel in the rough are these 18th Century replica cards.


Anyway, on to the rapid fire review of the cards themselves.  They cost 10$ a set and come in a nice canvas bag.  Printed on what I would imagine to be paper that would have been used in the 18th Century, they are very high quality and very professionally done.


I'm not exactly sure what I can use these for (other then Ken's ruleset of course), but its a nice little addition to my collection and lets face it, Cons are terrible for spur of the moment purchases...


These cards will fit in quite nicely with my 18th Century ImagiNation project and are just darn cool to have.

Would I buy these cards again if I had to order them online from ATKM?  You are damn sure I would do such a thing.  Not only is it supporting a small company, but they are also just plan neat.

If you want to order yourself a set, they can be purchased from All the King's Men and if you have any interest at all in historical things or know someone who does, they make perfect stocking stuffers. 

No comments:

Post a Comment