Kargo. Pepys, United Kingdom. Bespoke gaming deck, 53 cards + rules booklets x2. Size: 58mm x 89mm.
Deck make-up:
Stroke cards – fairway (varying distances specified thereon): drive x3, brassie x3, spoon x3, iron x3, mashie x8, mashie-niblick x4, niblick x4, holed approach x1.
Hazard cards – fairway: pulled to rough x1, sliced to rough x1, bunker x2, bad bunker x2, stream x1, lost ball x1, out of bounds x1.
Stroke cards – green: putt x10, sunk putt x2.
Hazard cards – green: missed putt x2, stymie x1.
The oddly named Kargo (a name which doesn't really yell "golf" at you) was a card game simulating a round of golf, originally released in 1931 by Gaymes / Kum-Bak Sports Toys and Games. In it, a number of cards are dealt to each player. Players in turn can then either play a "stroke" card which moves them closer to the hole, or a "hazard" card which obstructs the player to their left in some way. The "stroke" cards specify the type of club being used for the shot and the distance the ball is driven with that club. The "hazard" cards have the affected player either miss turn / s and / or require a certain club to get out of their predicament (e.g. a niblick club to get out of a bad bunker) and / or forfeit their previous shot. Play continues around the table until players are on the green (defined as 20 yards or less from the hole), then another set of "strokes" and "hazards" come into play till eventually one player wins the hole. That's the vague idea – the full instructions are linked to down the page a bit.
A nice touch is that the distances to the holes being played actually come from real courses; a list of hole distances to courses such as St. Andrews is given in the instruction booklet. According to press advertisements of the time, the game claimed scientific accuracy. I'm not sure about that! One glaring issue is that a player is often compelled to use high-loft clubs like a niblick (a modern 9-iron) when a simply driving along, heading for the green – you often even end up teeing off using such a club!
All this mention of niblicks serves to point out that this game was invented (just) before club descriptions such as "3-wood" or "5-iron" came into use. So in Kargo we have now-obscure terms like mashies, brassies and spoons in use. The pack actually includes a second booklet (aside from the rules) which explains "for the information of non-golfers the Principles of and Terms used in Golf". However, the one term from the rules I tried to look up for clarification ("pin-high") wasn't in it.
The game is mainly self-working and there isn't really too much chance for any scheming. The blurb seems to aim the game mostly at adults but it seems to me there is far too little strategy for adults to happily play too much of this and yet too many involved (and often ambiguous) directives for the younger kids.
The artwork, while pleasant enough, is strange. As you can see from the gallery below, the theme is cartoon characters taken from court cards (i.e. kings, queens and jacks) playing shots on a golf course. I'm not really sure how playing-card characters and golf exactly mesh up...
Pepys took over the game from Kum-Bak sometime around 1935, with Pepys' version being almost identical. At some later point (1938?), Pepys issued a second version. The cards – some of which were pretty spartan in the first edition – were given a spring clean, with green and yellow (i.e. grass and bunkers) being added in to the original artwork. This second version also completely rewrote the rules, giving some much-needed clarification on various sketchy points. Examples of cards from the second edition (provided you've elected to show them) and the full revised rule booklet, are included below.
At some point (probably in the fifties), I guess mainly to update the now-obsolescent names used for the clubs, Pepys completely revamped the game and re-released it under a new name, Card Golf. This had completely new artwork (this time with actual humans playing the game – all in the peg trousers of the time – with the blurb reminding us that "the illustrations do not represent any Golfer, living or dead") and the new nomenclature for the clubs. Otherwise things were much the same as before. This version of the game had a 2009 re-release, courtesy of Lagoon; this time around it was named Hole In One.
Click on any card to explore the design.
(Comments or corrections, please e-mail: Click to see e-mail address.)
Card image size, below:
Comparative images also shown (i.e. show example 2nd edition cards):
The colour schemes here are a bit strange. The various runs of cards within the pack are either in monochrome black or blue or red, or in full colour, seemingly arbitrarily. The second Pepys edition added colour to the grass and bunkers.
The two editions of Kargo came in all sorts of different packagings, including deluxe versions in padded boxes. The actual cards in the first edition, as shown here, had either red or blue backs with an intersecting golf-club design. The second edition (that's the one with the coloured-in grass and bunkers) changed the backs to a roundel containing the name of the game, in either red or green.
Rule booklet. For first edition, above.
Terms used in Golf booklet. With first edition.
Rule booklet. Revised, for second edition.