Theory 11 Cards

After I finished playing Neil Patrick Harris' BoxOne, I received an auto-reply email from NPH promoting his deck of cards from Theory 11, and the challenge puzzle attached to it. Eventually, I broke down and went to the site to see what would appeal to me. Once I got started, I decided on getting three decks - Provision, Animal Kingdom and NPH. Provision was designed as a tribute to Philadelphia. Animal Kingdom has fairly simple artwork, but the fact the company donates $1 to the World Wildlife Federation was a plus. NPH worked with a Theory 11 artist to design his cards, which are largely traditional. All three decks have the same card stock and finish. The backs have the same artwork as the boxes. They're all popular with card magicians and cardistry artists. $9.95 each. But, to get them to Japan cost another $10. So, $40 for the three decks. I can get a deck in Japan for $10 as well, but the paper quality for Japanese decks is just "average."


(Animal Kingdom cards)


(Provision cards)


(NPH cards)

The Provision deck does come with one "gaffe" card, which has two backs, one of a different color. NPH has two "eye" jokers, the challenge card and an "instruction card." There are a few little touches on some of the face cards that can be used for card reveals (like one queen holding a scroll with 3 "upright" and 3 reversed pips (for revealing a Three, or a Six). But, I haven't noticed anything else more blatant, like one card actually holding a different card in its hand).

But, I really got the NPH deck specifically for the puzzle. It starts out with the challenge and instruction cards. From here, everything switches to an online site. After playing BoxOne, the NPH Cards aren't that difficult. I did resort to taking hints from the Chris Ramsay video, but I still managed to get the solutions on my own, and in fact I figured out a few of the puzzles much faster than Chris did. If you've already played BoxOne, you can probably complete the NPH Cards game in a couple hours. After that, there's no real replay value to the challenge, but you still have the cards for endless hours of solitaire or poker.

I recommend the Theory 11 decks for the feel and paper quality. I'd also recommend the NPH deck if you like Escape Room games, but keep in mind that it's not all that hard. I'm not going to give the solution here - I'll leave that to anyone wanting to solve it themselves (note, the deck came out in 2016, and there are solutions on youtube).