Airship Playing Cards Head to Kickstarter October 20

The Lighter Than Air Deck, a 56-card set of airship playing cards from AirshipAdvocate.com, goes live on Kickstarter on October 20, 2026. The deck combines original artwork with historical trivia, and its four suits represent the four main types of lighter-than-air (LTA) aircraft. Each of the 52 standard cards presents trivia about balloon and airship history.

This is the first such project from AirshipAdvocate.com, which also manages the Airship Advocates Facebook group with over 30,000 members. AirshipAdvocate.com started as a personal project to bring LTA history to life in a form anyone could share and enjoy. A deck of cards seemed like a great way to achieve that.

The people and aircraft behind the biggest achievements in LTA flight seem largely forgotten by the mainstream. Each card’s facts were chosen to make the reader wonder at what else they don’t know. Most people know about the Hindenburg disaster, but little else, and the real successes in this field deserve more than to be a footnote to tragedy. This deck provides a playful introduction to what many are missing.

Each Suit Is a Different Lighter-Than-Air Aircraft

All four suits rest on the same principle: lighter-than-air aircraft rise because they use a gas that is less dense than the surrounding air. Airships, unlike balloons, are powered and steerable. They are classified by how much of their shape comes from a rigid structure. Each of the four main types gets its own suit:

Hearts are for balloons, which have no engines and drift with the wind.
Clubs are for blimps, or non-rigid airships. Their envelope (the gas-filled hull) holds its shape through internal gas pressure alone.
Diamonds are for semi-rigid airships, which combine a pressurized envelope with a partial structure such as a keel.
Spades are for rigid airships, including zeppelins. An internal framework gives these aircraft their entire shape.

The standard pip symbols are worked into each suit’s aircraft symbol. Each suit features the people and aircraft that best exemplify its type. One of the deck’s two informational insert cards defines all four categories.

Innovators, Champions and Record-Setters on the Face Cards

Eighteen cards carry full illustrations: the four aces, the 12 court cards and the two jokers. Professional illustrators created all of the artwork, and no AI was used.

The illustrated cards follow the same pattern in every suit. The jack shows an innovator, the queen a prominent aircraft, the king a champion and the ace a record-setter, all drawn from that suit’s aircraft type. Each card pairs its subject with facts about that person or aircraft. The court cards keep the traditional double-ended rotational symmetry of a standard deck.

The card backs use a cloud motif with the four aircraft-type symbols, a large zeppelin and a propeller at the center. Every back also carries the AirshipAdvocate.com address as a starting point for anyone who wants to discover more.

Multiple-Choice Trivia on the Number Cards

The number cards work as a quiz. Along one edge, each card provides facts followed up by a question in blue or orange text depending on the suit color. The multiple-choice answers run along the opposite edge, and the letter of the correct answer appears in the same color as the question. Some cards also include a short note under the answers with additional detail. This allows players to quiz family and friends between hands.

The trivia doesn’t get in the way of normal play. The cards are standard poker size, 2.5 × 3.5 in (64 × 89 mm), with standard corner indices, so any game you’d play with an ordinary deck works with this one.

A Penny-Farthing Airship on the Jokers

On both jokers, the joker pedals a patchwork blimp built on a penny-farthing bicycle through the clouds, trailing a thank-you message. The message is for Dave Fowler, penny-farthing owner, playing card collector, LTA enthusiast and member of the Airship Advocates group who was an instrumental contributor to the project. His support is the reason this deck exists. He didn’t ask for anything in return except to see it finished, so putting the thank-you on the jokers was an easy decision.

Printed in the USA by Shuffled Ink

Shuffled Ink, a family-owned card manufacturer headquartered in Winter Garden, Florida, will print the deck. They were chosen for three reasons: quality comparable to major brands, minimum orders a small creator can afford, and much faster production times.

All decks use black-core cardstock with a linen finish. The black core is an opaque inner layer that keeps the cards from being read through from the back. The linen finish is a lightly textured surface that helps cards fan and spring cleanly.

The standard deck uses 300 gsm stock (gsm means grams per square meter, a measure of paper weight). The premium deck steps up to 310 gsm and comes in a tuck box with embossing, foil and printing on the inside. Both versions contain the same 56 cards and the same artwork.

Kickstarter Campaign Details

The campaign runs for 21 days. The pricing will be announced at launch. The lowest price goes to early bird backers, and that tier is limited in availability.

Kickstarter projects are funded all-or-nothing, so backers are charged only if the campaign reaches its goal. Production takes three to five weeks after the campaign closes and the funds clear. The campaign page will include a firm delivery estimate. The deck will ship within the U.S. and internationally, with shipping charged separately based on destination.

You can sign up on the Lighter Than Air Deck pre-launch page to be notified when the campaign goes live.

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