I'd love to see a Manga/Magic deck! I'd probably snap it up...there is a Manga tarot out there, but I think it would be in Japanese or only available from Japan. Try looking at Tarot Passages' site under M for Manga and see whether there is a review.

Try Amazon or another similar site (also Aeclectic Tarot have links to an .au site that they have an affiliate programme with), they have a huge range. You sound like you would get on well with the Archeon deck .

Funny, I was browsing in a gaming shop the other week and passed the Magic cards and idly wondered if they would be any good for divination. I used to play it about 10 years ago but sold all my cards because I needed some cash. You'd probably have to do it intuitively or specify a set deck or number of cards to use, but it would be an interesting project. Using a Rider-Waite handbook and providing you know the Magic cards very well, you could possibly go through and select cards that approximate to the Major and Minor Arcana and courts, and have a particular style or effect that work well for you.

Since you are into gaming, have you tried "reading" someone using their Magic techniques? Tarot was originally a game, so there is no reason that Magic should not - if you'll pardon the pun - follow suit.

There is a game called Enochian Chess, developed by the same organisation that the RW deck sprang from, which was essentially chess as a device for anticipating and divining the real life strategies of people or bodies. As a political science student and activist, as well as someone who applies my divinations to the "mundane" world as well as my own personal activities and relationships, it would be intriguing to know whether my university games of chess, where I was always trying but failing to construct effective pincer movements, were a mere metaphor for the current state of my life beyond the ivory tower, or even the state of politics in the UK from a Conservative viewpoint. To be honest with some of our recent prime ministers at the helm, politics has become one giant game of chess, and even threatened to become triangular chess a few years ago!...

Scarily, I was playing an RPG just before 7 July last year, in which we were present at a UK terrorist attack, and we essentially had to role-play our responses as player-characters. Although we knew - outside the game - we weren't dealing with Al-Qaeda, our in-game characters assumed the worse and started probing around for links with 9-11. That was 1 July. The following Thursday ... I was there and it wasn't pretty. (I had to catch a long-distance coach so I kept going rather than stick around to take in the gory detail, but it was really eerie and the first actual time I think that I realised that I and my mates had a capacity to predict the future, even though the guy I played with and his parents were firm believers in such stuff anyway...it was kind of like being initiated into a secret society. Also we were terrified that we'd in some way caused the explosions, which made us switch to a different game pretty quickly...!!!)

I've never tried to use Magic cards for divination, but I can read certain things about someone's personality from their play style.  For example, if someone builds a very strong deck, but neglects to include flying creatures, or ways of dealing with an opponent's flying creatures, it means that they are a very direct person and either very cocky or very forgetful.  Some people play with what are called "burn" decks, which essentially are concerned with lots of high damage spells cast very cheaply and early.  I've never been able to effectively play with a burn deck, but lots of other people can.  Even before I played against them I tended to associate fire with them.  Then you have others who play with the main idea to hold the game in stasis long enough to slowly bleed their opponent.  It used to be a tactic I played, but I found it left me vulnerable after a while.  These people are the same kind who like to play a very long game of chess, and often toy with their opponent.  Now I play mostly with stomping decks.  Those are designed to have my creatures deal lots of damage repetatively.  It's contrary to everything about me though.  In reality I'm a very gentle person, not heavy handed in the least (I often fail to kill or even injure flies or mosquitos when I strike them), and in role playing games (like Morrowind or Oblivion) I generally preffer stealth based characters.  I always choose the path that avoids the direct confrontation.  One thing that's never failed to amaze me is that while my Samurai deck is very standard in it's construction, with nothing special about it in my opinion, nobody has ever beaten me when I'm using it.  People have beaten me online when I use it, but whenever I have the cards in my hands, I just know exactly how to use them.  I know how many draws it will take, roughly, before I get the cards I need.  My samurai deck seems to like me :P.

Edit:  I found a couple of Manga Tarot decks on Aeclectic :D

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/manga-lin/review.shtml

http://www.aeclectic.net/tarot/cards/manga-minetti/

I used to hate the Black Vise. Once that was out I was history. I have heard of the different kinds of decks...I never had enough cards to create my own style but as a girl I guess I liked the artwork of the cards rather than the actual game.

I never had enough money to really play Magic effectively...I know it shouldn't be about that, but I was too naive when swapping cards and the more experienced players got the better deal. Now I am too far "gone" from it to be interested...I knew I should have kept the cards...!!! The last time I played it was about four years ago in Ireland but I was still beaten hollow. I make occasional forays back into gaming but am still trying to beat Baldur's Gate II on the computer five years and two computers after I bought it. Everything is so fragmented for me that I never have enough time just to sit down and concentrate on one thing at a time unless it is a family game of Trivial Pursuits or Scrabble at Christmas.

Re: your edit: I like the Minetti better than the other one, particularly the "gender-bender" aspect; I'll have to keep my eye open for it on Amazon UK (in fact just checked and pre-ordered it ). I get everything off them or eBay, they are about half the price that they are in the shops, and buying from the States with UK money is so ridiculously cheap it is almost sinful. The Druidcraft set is about £30 over here in the shops, and £17 on eBay.uk before you even start talking about postage. I got it for $20 including shipping from an eBay seller in the US which came to £12 delivered. Peanuts. Between Oxfam and Amazon I never buy a full price book if I can help it.

Have you played Legend of the Five Rings? Last time I saw my role-playing mate we were trying to integrate me into a game of that, but due to me getting ill over the winter it fell through. Would have been interesting to see what divination we came up with then!

I've never played Legend of the Five Rings.  I preffer to stick to Magic - it came first and other card games seem a hollow knock off of it, to me.  I liked the Minetti set better too, the others looked too much like Cardcaptor Sakura.  A particularly girly anime.  Not to say I don't like the occasional girly anime of course, I just preffer the darker art style :P.  As part of my degree, I get to go to Japan next year for a couple of months to get experience teaching and to improve my Japanese.  Chances are I'll pick up a really good tarot deck while I'm there

Best of luck with finding the right cards! I'm sure I'll see you around later, but your trip sounds v cool. BTW I love your sig. I had some ...adventures with H2SO4 and tights at school, so I can relate to it!