So, guiding your audience into doing what you want can be a challenging task, but when you get it right, it's ever so satisfying cause then they will just do the tricks for you.

So for me it starts with the approach.  When you walk up to someone to do a trick, they have no idea what to expect and are usually complacent to begin with.

I start off by changing their perceptions of how traditional magic works, that way they don't think they can trick me cause they don't know what's going to happen next.  If someone thinks you are going to take their card, put it in the middle, and then bring it to the top.  They are going to take special care to make sure that their card finds its way into the middle of the deck and you can't get it out.  However, if they don't know what to expect, they really aren't sure how to fool you. 

Example:  My opening trick always starts with letting them take a card.  Then i ask them to hand it back to me, and I very obviously "peek" at what it is then proudly announce "You card is the King of Diamonds!"  most people chuckle or get annoyed and say something like "yeah you looked at it!" 

At this point, you can set yourself up for a double lift or a top change and hand them both "their card" and the deck.  Ask them to put it in the middle.  Many people are already thrown off guard, they will just comply.  Then you can really WOW them by asking them to turn over the top card of the deck.  You didn't even have to touch the deck for the magic to happen.

I guess what I'm trying to say is "always be one step ahead of your audience, and have a backup plan."  Everyone screws up tricks all the time, and traditionally, the audience who is trying to mess with the magician isn't really the  type of audience you're looking to perform for.  You don't want to 'fool' your audience, you want to wow and amaze them.

If you're in a situation where your audience is trying to "get the better of you" then your performance -- even if you pull it off, is going to come off a little pretentious.

I hesitate to say this, but as much as I fancy the idea, I really don't think a red arcane could work.  What makes the arcane cards so beautiful - to me, is that they are pretty much a borderless deck - without any of the performance flaws that borderless decks come with due to the subtlety of the border design.  I fear that adding red to the back design would significantly diminish this feature of the cards.

It's amazing how good talent gets around.  I have a huge respect for Wen-m, I have browsed through that deviant art page more times than I can count, and absolutely love almost everything I see, so to hear that he's involved in creating a deck of cards is amazing news. 

On to the cards - the faces are stunning, keep up the good work.  The back has me a little tripped up though, I'm not sure if it's the colors, or the busy mix of theme, but something about it seems off.  It might just be that I personally dislike seeing red & green side by side, I think they clash pretty bad, just a personal opinion though.

I'm not sure if you're aiming for a one-way or two-way back design here, but the way the background shading is, if you flip one card and spread the deck, even a spectator will notice that it's out of place. 

I like the design, but I'm a performer first, collector second, and obvious one-way backs are a no-go for me.  Sorry.  Make the shading symmetrical, and I'll be sold.  Just my opinion.

If some people are selling cards for a large part of their income, then they definitely need to get a freakin job and stop screwing everyone else!

Well I could dive into a conversation about what we actually consider an honest living.  If you charge an outrageous amount of money for a non-necessity and people are willing to pay it.  Is it really a rip off? *coughAPPLEcough*

People choose to make their living in very unusual ways actually.  I read something online a few months ago about the average salary of a New York City street bum.  As an NYC resident, I'm sure Don could attest to it.  There are people in Manhattan that make $70-80K / year.  They live in a nice apartment, and every day, they dress up like a homeless person, and go wander 5th ave and central park begging for change.  If ever there was a deceitful profession...  So by comparison, I really don't think taking advantage of a seller's market and turning a deck of cards for a profit is that harmful or cruel.

Seriously? Another 250 deck release? That worked out really well last time!

No, it really didn't work out well at all, and in spite of that, I'm going to bet everyone who is upset with Theory-11 will still be there next Friday clicking order and throwing money at them. 

In all honestly it's actually quite fascinating how a mass of people will complain about the performance of something and yet still flock to it like lambs to the slaughter.

I think they shouldn't do major releases like this. It floods the servers and causes unnecessary problems.  Tell you customers that the deck will go on sale "Next week".  Then put it out there whenever you feel like it.  Sure you will have bots, and people rapidly refreshing and hitting your site, but the influx of traffic will be significantly less.  Even if when they DO go on sale, posts flood facebook and forums, it will still take a couple hours for the message to reach everyone, you inherently defeat the 'boom' of traffic problem.

And yes, of course you will have the issue of people complaining that you released them at an unfair time for the time zone they live in and it wasn't fair because not everyone had an even shot at it, but such is life.  If you want to release 250-500 at a time, you can just tell people that there will be another chance next week, and don't pick the same day/time every week.

So I didn't actually intend to purchase any of this deck.  As a collector I like the Blades series and wouldn't mind having them, but they just weren't anything special to me.  I did however order two decks of the April Fool's Deck.  But what did I get in the mail yesterday?  2 decks of Blades - Blood.  Boy was I disappointed... I guess I'll keep em (considering they are sold out), but I'm re-ordering my Pro Cardistry decks.  I WANT MY UNICORNS!

Markets go up and they go down.  If the market was in a constant rise of activity, it becomes very difficult to generate suspense or excitement about new releases.  Besides, maybe the lull is a sign that card companies noticed the influx of custom decks on the market and decided that in order to ensure success they had to take a step back and really design something worth purchasing over everything else.  Maybe.

I had a pretty solid knowledge of BASIC - as used on old TRaSh-80s and Apple II machines.  In computer history, it's nearly the equivalent of ancient Egypt, or perhaps the Dark Ages of Europe.  I'd have a good deal of catching up to do, I'm sure.

I remember the Apple IIe, with 5 1/4 floppy drives...  Yeah, you've missed an uncomfortable deal of programming, like entire paradigms.  I still say it's worth it, it's literally the most useful skill I have.  But I can understand how making that leap into a world of information can be difficult, I had the luxury of attending four years of college for it.  I can't imagine learning everything I know now without a sort of structured environment to teach it.

You hear that kids!  College is worth it!  Seriously though, anyone who thinks they can learn more on their own than they can in college is just plain wrong.  If your potential to learn is that high, a college environment will only help foster that potential into something much greater.

Now I probably sound like @NathanCanadas dad haha.

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Can I be the only one to be brutally honest with you and say that the cards are just awful...

I'm pretty sure that was the most passive/agressive and rudest way to say that.  Brutally honest huh?  What makes you think the rest of us don't like the cards?  I for one can say that all of my comments on this deck have been sincere.  You're making us all out to be liars.  I guess the point I'm trying to make is:  if you don't like the cards annd don't think they are worth being produced, we'd all love to hear your thoughts on why, but without the sass please.

I am sufficiently impressed with how this deck is improving.  I love what you've done with the faces, and the new back is pretty astounding.  I actually like the dots on the back, I think it gives it a very majestic look.  As far as the king is concerned, try using some darker greys on the ape, I think the contrast isn't strong enough.  For the ape on the back, he reminds me a little of a bad photoshop with low color resolution, but it think that's really just the yellow outline around it.  If the thin yellow outline around the ape on the back were gone, I think he would look less like a cutout and more like a really cool poster child for badass class.

Making an ISO is probably your best bet.  It will take up more drive space though.  I don't know how big your hard drive is, but ripping a DVD to .iso could run as big as 7 or 8 GB depending on the DVD.  I know you mentioned you're putting these on a laptop.  A lot of the newer laptops come with a 500GB hard drive, but if you have an older one, 250GB fills up pretty quick, especially when you're dicing it 4-8GB at a time.

Hard drive storage is irresponsibly cheap these days, I'd consider just picking up an external hard drive to store them.