Cosmic Cycles Tarot: First Impressions Deck Review

Deck Title – Cosmic Cycles Tarot
Creator – Martina Razo
Artist -  Miriam E.G.
Colourist: Miriam Higueras & Angela Luengo
Publisher - Independant
Date purchased - Kickstarter 2019

Introduction

I backed the Cosmic Cycles Tarot on Kickstarter last year and due to various issues it's taken a lot longer to arrive than the date estimated during the campaign. However, now it's here, I wanted to do a quick first impressions review, so those of you who have been considering purchasing it, can decide for yourselves. 
This deck has a kind of graphic novel feel about it, the art work is great and, as it says on the side of the box, it is a 'modernised deck' following the Rider-Waite-Smith system. All 78 cards are full colour images and I got the 250 page guidebook to go along with it. So what can you expect?

What's Good? 

• It was the images that really caught my attention in the Kickstarter campaign, especially The Fool card. There's some unique takes in this up to date version of the traditional RWS deck and there's plenty of content within each image to enable you to read the deck intuitively
• The cards are borderless and have white handwritten-style font with easy to read numbers, names and/or suit symbols uniformly positioned at the bottom of each image
• The card backs are purple and gold, as is the guidebook cover, with a half-moon planetary image. They're not reversible. The edges are not coloured or guilded
• The card stock is good thick quality with a matt finish and soft touch feel. That can make it difficult to shuffle the cards but it feels so nice, and makes them easier to photograph or film, if that's what you need. The closest comparison I'm aware of would be the Way of the Panda Tarot for cardstock (one of my favourite decks!)  
• The guidebook has a glossy cover with black and white images of each card and states the deck has a 'story-telling twist' with the court cards 're-imagined' as the characters. The information included is short, punchy and original. The guidebook size is a little bigger than the deck and so isn't contained within the box
• I received a postcard size of the High Priestess card but I think that may be a bonus from the Kickstarter campaign and may only be available for retail purchase separately

What's Not so Good?

• The box is a tuck box, again with that soft touch feel but nothing to get excited about
• The only other thing that was not great was the delays to receiving this deck but once it's in stock at your preferred retailers, it's definately worth checking out​

Stand Out Cards

It's just not possible to pick any favourite cards this early but I've picked a few cards to illustrate what you can expect to see in this deck. 

So I picked one card from each suit. As you can see there is some diversity but overall it is mainly youthful slim folks. The colour in the cards is fantastic. There's a great range of colours and some darker cards showing night scenes and shadows as well as sunshine and rainbows like in the Three of Swords and Six of Wands. I loved how the options are depicted in the Seven of Cups and apparently the King of Pentacles is inspired by George Clooney. Aren't we all? 

It was the image of The Fool card that caught my attention with this deck and although there's plenty of decks on the market with a cartoon-style interpretation of the RWS, this one really does seem more of a graphic-novel style. Each of these Major Arcana cards really tell a story just within a single image and even the more difficult messages are so well interpreted. 

Summary

So this isn't a full review of the deck, as I've only just got my hands on my copy. I'll be interested to see how well it's story-telling potential works during readings. I'm already very impressed with the level of detail and the colour within the deck so if you're interested to check it out for yourself, I'll put the links to where you can look out for it's retail release below. As always, these are not affiliate links, just there to help you find what you're looking for. 

Where can I buy it?

I don't know if the creative team will have any spare decks but here are their contact details:
Martina Razo at www.themodernizedshop.com IG:@martinasatria (US based)
Miriam E.G. at www.etsy.com/shop/nairimart IG: @nairim_art (Europe based)
IG: @cosmiccyclestarot
If you're in the UK, Little Red Tarot shows they are planning to stock as soon as this is available littleredtarot.com/product/cosmic-cycles-tarot/