CARD GAME REVIVALS & RECREATIONS
The Flowerdew Press has reinvented a number of card games with new or altered packs that change the probabilities behind the rules of those games.
The Game of Rainbow
A lost classic, invented a century ago by Robert Crawford Johnson - the game of rainbow uses the logic of colour mixing to create an exciting happy families-style game where component cards can belong to more than one set!. The Flowerdew Press version completes the set of the original with a missing colour, and has new easy-to-learn rules, and also instruction for playing a unique form of patience with the set.
*Bonus - play a Hanafuda variant with the set for endless fun.
The Game of Alice
De La Rue co=operated with Lewis Carrol to make a game based on Alice in Wonderland, as a happy families variant. The Flowerdew Press has added a second set of cards from Through the Looking-glass, and created a new game for the pack based on the Japanese Hanafuda game.
Mephisto
In 1890, the mathematician Martin Gall invented a pack of cards for exhausting the possible sequences of beads of red and black, presumably inspired by his research into the probability space of roulette (for which he had literally just written the book). The Flowerdew Press has recreated the original set with English translations and card indexes for easier playing, and invented a trick-taking game Mephisto to play with the cards..
Bonus - you can play roulette with the cards by picking one at random!
Punchinello Vampire
A strange, completely lost, game invented to capitalise on the success of the ballet of the same name from 1823, which in turn was written to capitalise on the vampire craze of the 1820s. The ballet did, in fact, have no vampires, and neither do the cards.The set of 36 face cards is complemented by cards 1-9 from the Rowley pack, to make an experimental pack of 72 cards. Several games have been designed to make use of the pack, but the audience is welcome to invent one of their own.