Custom Control Deck

One of my plans for Zero Dark that should be realized, because it's broadly "affordable", is a custom Control Deck.  Of course, to play, you only need any normal deck of 54 playing cards (and it's important to me that this should remain the case).  But I see a lot of value in giving players more options via a custom deck.

This concept would include:

1. Custom art.  As well as customized suit identifiers, each face card will be a unique piece of original art, lifted out of the post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk future of the Fallen Earth.  The four suits will be aligned to the four factions in the game: Clubs are the Terran Survivors, Hearts are the Venus Observation Mission, Spades are the Martian Assistance & Support Command, and Diamonds... well, patrons will get to have a say in who the Diamonds and the fourth faction are...

2. Extra Jokers.  The custom deck will comprise four Jokers - one for each faction.  This will be part of the options to increase the game's difficulty level by switching two random cards for an additional two Jokers for more complications.

3. Help cards.  These will just have on them the kind of quick-reference tables that just keep the game ticking a littler quicker: the complications table, the robot programs, stats for the Red Force, etc.

4. Hero cards.  These will be intended to go into plastic sleeves so you can fill out the spaces with a non-permanent marker to show the current stats of your heroes.  The plan is to put six of these into a pack.

I'm putting designs for the cards together as I work on the rules and a basic version of the help and hero cards will be released for patrons to download and print.  But getting the art done for the rest of the cards will be a challenge in itself and one I hope to collaborate on with an artist.  Whether we can produce this from within Precinct Omega's own resources or whether we will have to go to Kickstarter to make it happen, I don't know yet.  But it seems like an obvious win: it gives players something cool to use in the game that is also a completely functional - and very cool-looking - sci-fi themed poker deck.  So I hope it's a product that will attract Zero Dark and Horizon Wars fans, fans of custom poker decks, and fans of quality sci-fi art and science fiction in general.  Hopefully it will also draw some new people to the game, too!

For those of you who've read the game, if there's anything that you'd like to see - particular help cards or other extras you'd like to add - let me know in the comments!

If you have a favourite sci-fi artist you think would be perfect for the project, let me know their name or share a link to their Artstation or deviantArt portfolio!