Randy Cottingham attended the BoardGameGeek.con 2009 in Dallas and found people enjoyed his card game. I have to admit, when Randy sent me his card game for review, I was almost overwhelmed with all of the cards I saw in the box.

The reason there are so many cards is because there are two complete regular decks of cards, along with a bonus card enhancement package. Each deck not only has the standard two Jokers, it also has one extra card to use should you want to.

We’ll start now by going over the two decks of cards and how they are a little different then the normal decks. Instead of the face cards having pictures, all the cards in the suits have the exact same theme carried on throughout the thirteen cards in the suit. Each card has the standard pip design on them, be they diamonds, spades, clubs or hearts.

There are four cards included in the bonus part of the package for each suit that explains what is on each card at a glance. Here, in a nutshell, is what is on the each of the four suits. Diamonds have the date of the month on them. The suit of Spades has different years marked on them. Each of the twelve months, plus a wild month, is on Hearts. Clubs are imprinted with the days of the week as well as the words; tomorrow, today, yesterday, last, this, and next.

The curious part of me decided to have a little creative fun with some of the cards and turned them into a sort of entertainment only “fortune telling” set. I know what day next month would be best for me to relax and catch a movie.

The bonus enhancement pack includes some point cards if you want to use that as a wild card in some games. You can up the points with the point wild card; or it can be played to lower points as well. Some cards are marked as Any 1, 2, 3 4 or 5. They could be used to remind people what is wild in a game.

This package comes with two pages of instructions that are very detailed and broken up into sections. Just pay attention to which sections you would like to work with at that time of play.

All in all I feel this is a very worthwhile card package. Don’t let the game overwhelm you; it is the equivalent of getting many games in one package. You are limited only by your imagination in how you’d like to use one or both decks of cards and bonus cards.

NOTE:
Randy Cottingham sent me the decks of cards to review. The company is IllumiNOW, Inc. What was reviewed was the PLAY4D Calendar Playing Cards. There is a patent pending.