Italian Sicilian Scopa Playing Cards by Modiano

Good

So well made. They are really slick. It's better to play over a tablecloth, not a smooth surface.

We received these good quality, Italian Scopa cards quickly and carefully packaged. We'd just returned from a semester in Italy with my husband's students and had sometimes seen folks there playing. I ordered 4 decks as stocking stuffers for our card game-loving family (since I didn't think to buy them while there), as I thought they'd make more authentic and fun little gifts than many of the kitschy tourist souvenirs we often saw. A FEW THINGS TO NOTE: These are ITALIAN, not American (and not intended to be) so try not to be put off by negative reviews because the cards are smaller, don't have numbers on them or don't shuffle as easily the "normal" way. They're just as they're supposed to be for Scopa (and there are other ways to shuffle). Also, the card with the eagle and logo on it is one of the "ace" cards which makes the 40th card in the deck. We didn't realize this at first so thought we were missing a card. Finally, the deck only came with Italian instructions, but there are many easy to follow videos and instructions for this game online which we found helpful in clarifying scoring and strategy (even if yours happens to come with English instructions). We're still brand new at this, but find it lots of fun and are looking forward to learning Briscola. Our family's going to love these!

Although I was surprised to see that these seem to be made out of plastic instead of paper like I’m used to play with, the plastic makes them easy to use by pool. You don’t have to worry about them getting wet/damaged.

Nice cards, as expected

A fun European card game! I took away one star because of their size. Smaller than a standard deck. I will look for bigger decks in the future. The instructions are in Italian, but there are many YouTube videos to teach you how to play. I strongly suggest buying two decks to extend play, or possibly more if you have many players. Great gift idea.

These are exactly what my friend’s dad was looking for

We chose the Siciliane Scopa deck because we found the card values easier to identify from the pictures than on some other decks--there are no numbers printed on the cards. The cards are a bit narrower than standard US cards. The deck does include cards printed with the rules for Scopa and Briscola. The only improvement I would make would be to include 2 - 4 additional cards to assist in scoring. In particular, cards that show the values used to compute the Primiera would be helpful for newer players. Scopa can be played with regular US cards (just remove the 8's, 9's, and 10's), but it's much more fun to use a real, colorful Scopa deck.