A beginner's guide to the 13 Cards fandom and where to find things
13 Cards is a Russian animated series and comic about a student, Fëdor, who is one day given a magical deck of cards he can use to summon eight clones of himself based on the jacks and the kings in the deck. It was created by Fëdor Nechitailo, directed by Vanya Tale, and has music composed by Serezha Fedorov.
Because the series is in Russian, it can be a little disorienting to figure out where one can watch it, read it, and find the online community. This post is a general guide on where to find everything!
The animated series: 13 Cards
The main series is a slice of life comedy which focuses on the daily lives of Fëdor and the clones.
The series initially only existed in Russian, but the team has been working hard translating the episodes into English and Spanish. Most of season 1 is available as a dub, though to get a feel of the original voices and line delivery, I can definitely recommend the Russian version as well.
13 Cards minisodes: Joker Presents (this has no English translation so far but is integral to the lore)
The characters’ meme songs
Tip: Click on the settings (the cogwheel), then on ‘Audio track’ to switch between Spanish and English audio!
This playlist by @s0ckh3adstudios with all the most important videos that belong to the series, both translated and untranslated
The spinoff comic: Land of Kings
Land of Kings takes place after the first comic, Fëdor x9, and is a polished political comedic drama that focuses on what would happen to each clone if they were locked up in the card world and given godlike powers and a kingdom of their own making to rule over.
Currently (as of February 2026), only the first two volumes are out: Tome of Clubs and Tome of Hearts. No release date is known for the Tome of Spades and the Tome of Diamonds, and there is said to be a fifth epilogue tome that will be released after the main series is done.
If you want to read it, you can go check out @landofkingsunofficialen. They are doing an English translation of Land of Kings, and the quality of the translation is industry-grade, to the point where one could easily think this is an officially commissioned translation that was collaborated on with the publishers themselves.
Landofkingsunofficialen's table of contents
For the original Russian pages, these were posted on VK.
If you're interested in a Russian voice-acted and light-animated version of Land of Kings (which I can recommend to watch with the translation on a second screen to have the meaning and an idea of voice, movement, and music), you can find the audiovisual comic on youtube over here:
The original comic: Fëdor x9
Where it all started: the comic Fëdor made when he was a high schooler, where he summons the clones to help him with his schoolwork.
Fëdor x9 hasn't been fully translated anywhere as far as I know. The farthest translation in English I know of is over at @fedorx9. It's an old comic, but it's the root of the entire series, so I can recommend it! The VK page also has the raw pages.
A remake is in the works, but the details about its release aren't clear. A lot of the new references of the characters are their Fëdor x9 designs.
If you want supplementary material from the studio, you should head on over to VK and look at their stuff. They've been posting a lot of behind the scenes work lately! You can also search the 13 Cards tags on VK for fan artists. Telegram is another good source.
I'm less knowledgeable on the other side projects, but if you're interested, you can check some out on Studio Phoenix’s channel.
There are a few more “obscure” characters in the series who are lesser known because they didn’t appear in the main comics or animated series, or they didn't get enough spotlight in either to be properly well-known. Below are a few to clear up confusion.
Fëdor is sometimes referred to as the black joker, whereas Joker is referred to as the red joker. More on Joker here.
Fëdor also designed the four queens: Cleo, Queen of Clubs; Nicole, Queen of Diamonds; Emma, Queen of Spades; Helen, Queen of Hearts. He’s been tiptoeing between them being clones and not clones, but the current latest info says that they are clones. You can find more about them here.
If you see characters named Riccardo and Charlie, these are scrapped clones who were relocated to the CriminArt series.
If you see characters named Bom, August, Ilgiz, Mime, and Rudolf, these are characters from a series Fëdor made and abandoned where he tried to design all the cards called 54 Cards.
At the end of Fëdor x9, Fëdor designed inverse clones for each card. Rodef is one of the only surviving names from that. More on that here and here.
If you're interested in reading up more, there are several wikis, though the English one could use some work.
Here are the most important wikis:
The Russian wiki (13 Cards section)
VK is a great source of fanart and other fans. You can search around the tags there to find new stuff to enjoy.
The Land of Kings tag on VK
If you're a reader, you can check out the vibrant fanfiction scene. The Russian website Ficbook has 40 000+ fanfics, while AO3 is slowly and steadily catching up and has around 200 fanfics.
I recommend learning how to use either site's filters to find what you are looking for and to filter out what you’re not interested in; with a web browser's built-in translator, it's fairly easy to translate fics from Russian and get a pretty good idea of what they're about.
Unfortunately, on AO3, the fandom is split into two fandoms: 13 Cards and Fëdor x9, both equally large. We are appealing to staff to merge them all under one universe, but since this is tough, it may not be for the immediate future. A lot of non-Fëdor x9 fics are in the Fëdor x9 tag. If you’re a new writer, I suggest using the 13 карт | 13 cards (Cartoon) tag and abandoning the Фёдор х 9 | Fedor x9 (Webcomic) tag, only using it to browse for new fics to read, unless you’re specifically writing about the Fëdor x9 era.
You can also join Telegram, look at several of the 13 Cards tags, and find artists to follow over there. It's where most of the fandom seems to take place these days, especially the international fandom where Russian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Spanish, LatAm, English, and other fans all get together and share their art and thoughts.
Finally, a lot of talk happens through discord servers. Some are public, others are invite-only.
Ask around! Often, people are open to accepting new members, and word of mouth is the best way to find new communities to join.
If you’re like me and consuming media in another language gives you the desire to actually understand what they’re saying in their original language, you can start learning Russian. My suggestion for this is Busuu, as it gradually builds up words, vocabulary, the Cyrillic characters, and spelling while also offering audiovisual lessons. Of course, any app that has Russian available will lead to a better understanding of the language.
The series is still ongoing, which means that the fandom is bound to grow. Things can be confusing at first, but you'll settle in. Let your fandom experience grow organically. If you follow some folks here and there, you'll automatically eventually be connected to more folks, interesting meta and interpretations, and platforms where discussion is happening.
Don't be shy, and reach out! Comment, discuss, share, that kind of stuff. Communities live and thrive on positive interactions, and the best way to find one is to become one.
If anyone reading this has suggestions for extra links to add, feel free to share them!
