Sunday 12 February 2023

Deck review: Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Casey Gilly and Karl James Mountford


Follow the wisdom of Buffy, Willow, Xander, Spike, and others with this beautifully illustrated tarot deck inspired by the beloved series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In every generation, there is a chosen one--explore your destiny like Buffy the Vampire Slayer with this magical and bold take on the traditional 78-card tarot deck. This set features the heroes you love, casting Buffy, Willow, Angel, Spike, Xander, Giles, and more in gorgeous original illustrations based on classic tarot iconography. Featuring both major and minor arcana, the set also includes a helpful guidebook explaining each card's meaning and simple instructions for easy readings. Packaged in a sturdy, decorative gift box, this alluring tarot deck is the perfect gift for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan or tarot enthusiast.

This deck is published by Simon & Schuster/Insight Editions in the US on the 14th of March 2023, and by Titan Books in the UK on the 16 of February 2023. You can see the unboxing and the flickthrough (part one and part two, because I talked so much, sorry!) on tiktok. 

I'm so excited to be reviewing this deck! I've really been looking forward to it. I think that Buffy as an idea, as a character, is a fantastic model for young people and especially young girls, and that's the way I'm approaching this deck.

This deck is written by Casey Gilly and illustrated by Karl James Mountford.  I have used another deck by Casey, but this is my first introduction to Karl; it will hopefully not be my last, as his style is amazing, vivid and true to life while still being obviously illustrated. The amount of detail in the drawings is unbelievable. I'll get to that when I talk about the cards. It's very obvious how much both Casey and Karl love Buffy and enjoyed working on this deck.

So! In order, then.

The box is a standard Titan box, with a lid that fits down over it from above. The cards are standard Tarot size and sit in a well inside the box. The inside of the well is patterned with the suit symbols, and there's a ribbon to help get the cards out. 


The book is a little larger and sits above the cards. The whole pack is very sturdy and would be perfectly fine thrown into a bag or pack.

(Note; there's a small cut out on each side of the lid to help with getting it off. One side of mine wasn't cut out properly, but the lid still comes off and on fine. Hopefully mine is a one-off.)

Casey has made an effort to write the book in Buffy-speak, or as close to it as she can get. The first section, about the deck in general, is called Meeting Your Chosen One; the next section, about the Major Arcana, is The 411, and the Minor Arcana is The Deets. 


As often happens in pop culture decks, the suits have been renamed to suit the theme; in this case, we have Stakes (wands), Chalices (cups), Scythes (swords) and Pentacles. I had no trouble adjusting to them as I worked through and used the deck. There's a brief description of each suit and what they mean before we get into the Major Arcana.

In the Major Arcana, each card gets two pages; one a reproduction of the card, and one a description, with the card name, the character, a description of how it fits, and both upright and reversed meanings. I often say in reviews that I love having an image of the card in the book, and these are really good ones, clear and easy to study. For the Majors the image is just a little bigger than the actual card.


In the Minors we're down to one page per card, with a small image of the card and upright and reversed meanings. The descriptions are arranged by suit, Court cards first, Stakes, Chalices, Scythes and Pentacles. 


After the meanings there's some information about preparing to read, then four spreads, three specifically Buffy-ised; Nice to Meet You, Prophecy Girl, A World Without Shrimp and Five by Five. I've tried a couple and really enjoy the insight!

(I do have a slight issue that won't matter unless you're a die hard Buffy fan; I'm putting it down at the bottom of the review so you can avoid it if you want.)

Now, the cards! These are a standard Tarot card size with a fully reversible back design. 


They're matt rather than glossy, and when I first started handling them they tended to cling together; however, a couple of hours of shuffling and handling them has loosened them up considerably and they now slide and move with perfect ease.

Karl has used a narrow colour palette, mostly purples, reds, black and white or cream. Although this sounds like it would be limiting, it works fantastically well, highlighting the important parts without blurring out the background vehicle. It's not the first deck I've seen use a limited palette, and I loved that one too, but this one is really amazing.

This is a fully illustrated deck; the Minors are pictures, NOT pips! They're the only pop culture deck I've worked with to do this; the Supernatural deck, my other narrow-palette deck, came close with a mix of pictures and pips, but so far Buffy stands alone in this.

The cards have a thin border in one of various colours. As far as I can tell, the colour of the border for any given card is random - I can't see a correspondence, but maybe there is one that I'm just not getting. 

I know that some of those frames look very similar in colour, but I promise there are differences when you handle them!

The name of the card is printed at the bottom. Majors and Minors other than Aces have the number in Roman numerals. Aces and Court Cards have their names in full.

I've mentioned in other reviews that I'm a bit face blind, and that especially with drawings rather than pictures I have trouble sometimes identifying people. That was a problem with a grand total of two cards in this deck. Every other card was obvious either from the person or the action they were doing. I'll mention those cards again at the very end of the review, in my 'slight problem' paragraph. 

These cards shuffle really well now that they're worked loose. They're nice to handle and I'm really enjoying noticing all the little details in the artwork (the dog on the Fool! Dingos Ate my Baby poster on the Magician! Posters of people raising from their graves on the Judgement!) Seriously, I could go through every card and pick out some little detail or moment - my tarot diary will be getting much fatter just from working with this one deck.

Although I could genuinely post pictures of every single card here, I have chosen a few that will hopefully give you an overview of the deck. If you want more images, my flickthrough of the entire deck is linked above.




The deck is based on the RWS and most of the cards are direct references - but not all of them, so I'd be wary giving this to a complete beginner, especially if they were not also a Buffy fan. Ideally, you would have at least a passing knowledge of RWS and be a Buffy fan, so you can get the best out of all the cards and scenes presented here.

I love this deck so much. I'm really enjoying using it and remembering Buffy - I really must do a rewatch! Maybe that'll be this summer's project. I would love to match as many cards as possible to their episodes, as most of them - certainly most of the Minors and several Majors - are lifted straight from specific episodes and scenes. That's actually a really interesting project idea! Hmm...

Get this deck if you liked Buffy at all. You won't regret it.

Now scroll down if you want to read my (very slight, slightly spoiler-y, extremely pedantic) concerns.










As I said above, most of the Minors are very recognisably specific moments in specific episodes. Strangely, the LWB describes different scenes for several of them. I don't know if perhaps Casey and Karl were working off different drafts, if it was an attempt to give us more than one 'hook' into the card, or if I'm just overthinking - probably that last one! Let me give you examples, including the only two cards I couldn't recognise on sight.

The III of Stakes features Vampire Willow. The book talks about Xander's ill fated road trip between seasons three and four.

The V of Stakes shows Giles as a Fyarl demon. The book talks about being a hyena.

VII of Stakes is borderline; it shows Buffy facing down the First in her form in the final battle, while the book uses the famous quote from her face off with Travers in season five.

II of Chalices shows Buffy and Faith working together, while the book talks about Angel and Buffy's first meeting.

IV of Chalices shows who I think is Snyder - the face is about right, but he looks too tall - while the book references 'Going Through the Motions' from the musical episode.


VI of Chalices shows teenage Giles and Joyce from 'Band Candy' - a fantastic choice for this card! - while the book talks about snuggling with Mr Gordo.

VII of Chalices shows Ethan looking at various Hallowe'en options, while the book talks about Buffy getting distracted from studying.

VIII of Chalices shows the Winnebago escape, while the book is about Spike's 'Rest in Peace' from 'Once More with Feeling'.

II of Scythes is the other card I couldn't identify - the book says it's Riley, but given I knew him immediately in his other appearance, I'm not sure. After examining it, I think it might be Ben?



III of Pentacles features the Trio; the book talks about the Scoobies.

V of Pentacles shows two of Glory's minions, while the book says that no one epitomises the card better than Cordelia Chase.

VI of Pentacles shows Halfrek, while the book talks about Cordelia's prom dress.

VII of Pentacles shows D'Hoffryn, while the book talks about Buffy's season 6 struggles.

X of Pentacles shows Dracula, while the book talks about Anya's commercial success. (To be fair to this one, XI of Pents is also Anya, so the card may have been altered to keep from having her twice in a row.)

Now, you're thinking 'this is very picky! What's wrong with having slight differences there?' The trouble is that if a Buffy fan who knows nothing about Tarot picks these up, the differences may confuse them and lead to them abandoning the deck; vice versa, a tarot reader who knows nothing about Buffy can't link those pictures to that description in several of those cards. Hopefully not; I hope I'm being over sensitive and far too picky and no one else ever has a problem with these! But I always strive to be honest in my reviews. None of this means that I don't love the deck (because I do) or that you shouldn't buy it (because you really, really should, it's amazing). It's just a Thing I Noticed.

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Total Tarot Issue 7

Welcome to Issue 7! We've completed our Harmonious  deck and received the Golden Art Nouveau  Two of Wands.