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- Verified Buyer
The Hanson-Roberts Tarot is probably my favorite deck of all time, and the reason? Because it's engaging. The artwork has a more modern feel, and there's a wealth of detail in each drawing. The characters are very fairy tale-esque, but far from being obnoxious. The cards are sunny, friendly, and smiling when the card calls for it. They are also heart-wrenching at times -- the 10 of Swords and 5 of Pentacles, which are always difficult cards to uncover in a reading, have a sense of sorrow and desolation that is equal to the sense of buoyancy found in other cards. This is a charming deck, but not entirely happy-go-lucky, so people who've heard the rumor that this deck is too cheerful should forego those rumors entirely.This Rider-Waite clone retains much of the original detail from the traditional RW deck down to things like the animals carved into the thrones of the court cards and the color of the horse that certain characters are riding in the Minor Arcana. As anyone who's familiar with the intuitive approach to reading tarot can attest, these details are important to readers, and it's good to see so many of them remain in this deck. The artist has taken liberties with a one or two cards in ways that change the way they might be intuitively interpreted -- the 3 of Pentacles, for example, is normally a card depicting a builder and a few architects collaborating with each other on the design of a cathedral being built, and in the HR deck, we only see the builder working alone, which takes away from the "collaboration by way of cooperation" feeling that the original RW deck gives that card. But these deviations are rare, and what's depicted in the card doesn't take away from the traditional meaning, if that's how you still wish to interpret it. You might just have to tell yourself you're looking at a more "zoomed in" perspective.For those who say the colors are pastel or washed out, I have to disagree. The colors in this deck are very vivid; however, the illustrations are colored with what appears to be colored pencil or prismacolor, and that pencil-like texture comes through on some of the cards (and of course, this isn't a bad thing...it's lovely to see that the entire card has been hand-drawn and hand-colored by the artist). The color representation on the cardboard box for this deck is a little misleading, because it looks like someone decided to amp up the saturation on those images. Compared to the deck, does that make the box seem intense and the deck comparatively washed out? Maybe. But to say this deck is not vividly colored is exaggerating the issue, in my opinion.The cards are smaller in dimension than most tarot decks, something more akin to playing card dimensons (though with 78 cards to a deck, it is obviously a thicker stack of cards than your average playing deck). The cards are a little stiff to start, but they break in quickly. There's a soft glossy sheen on the cards that isn't distracting, doesn't make the cards stick together, and doesn't add to individual card thickness. The back design of the card is a little busy for my tastes, but the loveliness of the images themselves make up for that very nuanced complaint.I really love this deck, and I can't recommend it enough. Modern take an classical images that give them depth and an emotional quality that's more accessible, especially for new students of the tarot. A fantastic (and my favorite) alternative to traditional Rider-Waite decks.
