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Deck of the Year 2019 Nominee: Monolith

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Deck of the Year 2019 Nominee: Monolith
« on: August 11, 2019, 05:20:20 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Monolith was created by Giovanni Meroni through his design studio, Thirdway Industries.  667 backers on Kickstarter raised over €50,000 to get this project off the ground and into their hands.  The project consists of three different deck designs: White and Black were part of the original launch of the Kickstarter project, while Gold was a special version of the Black deck, 500 decks with holographic gilding, packaged in a tuck box with serial-numbered seal and gold and red metallic foil with neon inks.

Thirdway Industries website
Kickstarter project page
Kardify article on deck achieving its funding goal in under an hour
Thirdway Industries Facebook page
The three decks at Portfolio52 - account required (free) for full access
« Last Edit: August 11, 2019, 06:01:29 AM by Don Boyer »
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Re: Deck of the Year 2019 Nominee: Monolith
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2019, 11:13:31 AM »
 

PrincessTrouble

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Attaching some pics of the holographic foil version of the deck.

 

Re: Deck of the Year 2019 Nominee: Monolith
« Reply #2 on: August 14, 2019, 03:28:32 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Attaching some pics of the holographic foil version of the deck.

Lovely!  Thanks for the assist!
Card Illusionist, NYC Area
Playing Card Design & Development Consultant
Deck Tailoring: Custom Alterations for Magicians and Card Mechanics
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Re: Deck of the Year 2019 Nominee: Monolith
« Reply #3 on: August 17, 2019, 05:53:47 AM »
 

Thirdway Industries

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Thanks for nominating Monolith!  :D

I made this to be one of the craziest decks ever made, with holofoil on both sides and also holographic gilding (Gold Monolith).

A lot of pics of the decks can be found on the product pages > https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/product-category/monolith/

If you want to know more on the backstory, here is it

Part 1 - The beginning: The Universe

"At the beginning, there was just void. Infinite space, absolute cold and a timeless eternity."

The Gods of Void were there since forever. Everything was a plain, cold, dark nothing. They were powerful, but they felt something was missing.

"We created the materia out of nowhere. We made many floating spheres. Solid, liquid, gas."

The Gods of Materia created the Planets, and spreaded them into the Void. However, everything was immobile and chaotic.

"We generated energy. Heat, light and gravity."

The Gods of Energy lit the newborn Universe with Stars.

The God of Gravity created the rules for everything.

The Universe was born.

Part 2 - The creation of Life

The Gods were happy with the Universe, but it felt empty, so they asked the God of Flora to made the first attempt to create Life.

Life was complicated and frail. It needed a cooperation of all the Gods to work. No one had to prevail: otherwise it would have been to hot, too cold, too wet or too dry.

They succeeded to agree just few times. But when they did, the result was a miracle even for them.

The first living being they created was a beautiful Apple Tree.

The Goddess of Fauna was impressed by the work of her brother. But she wanted to do even a bigger miracle: a living being with a Soul.

The effort to create Souls was huge: it required even more cooperation than the Apple Tree.

It was an exausting task for all of them, but Goddess of Fauna was able to generate few, precious species they called "Firstborns". They were spreaded on Planets to populate them.

The God of Intellect was inspired and amazed by the work of his siblings. However, he was not satisfied.

He took few creatures made by his sister, and touched their forehead with a drop of his divine blood.

They were infused with a shard of intelligence - and the divine nature of the blood gave them free will.

Part 3 - Mortals and Resets

The intelligent newborns wanted more and more. And soon, they turned against their creators.

The Gods were not worried: the creatures were unable to damage them.

However, the revolt disappointed them a lot, especially when they destroyed their precious Apple Tree.

The God of Eternity, especially, was furious: he impressed a Death Mark on all the creatures, making them all Mortals.

In response, Mortals declared war to Gods. However, when they saw that kill their Creators was an impossible task, they started to destroy each other and their Planets.

The Gods tried to educate mortals several times.

Hoping the Mortals would learn from their errors, the Gods agreed to reset the planets to start from a clean slate.

The first reset was made by Goddess of Absolute Zero. She sent an Ice Age, exterminating almost all the creatures. The survivors had the task to repopulate the planet.

However, the cycle repeated itself over and over. At a certain moment of their evolution, Mortals turned against the Gods and tried to destroy everything, even themselves.

Other Gods resetted the Planets, hoping to educate mortals: The Goddess of Heat sent a rain of fire. The God of Solid a Meteor, and the Liquid Goddess a huge flood.

But everything was useless, the mortals seemed unable to learn.

One day, the Gods decided to leave.

Part 4 - The Monoliths

"Before leave forever, we taught everything to our sons. We know your kind would forgot, so we left something as our legacy. This will help you remember: your origin, your future. Maybe the whole universe."

The Gods decided to forge some Monoliths as their legacy to mortals. They placed them around the Galaxies, near to intelligent species that can understand them.

Thousands of years passed. The mortals remember just a little of the Ancient Gods.

They gave them many different names. They inspired several legends and stories. Almost everything was forgotten.

Then, the ancient Monoliths were found.

Will the mortals understand the Gods message? Will they remember?


« Last Edit: August 17, 2019, 05:54:25 AM by Thirdway Industries »
 

Re: Deck of the Year 2019 Nominee: Monolith
« Reply #4 on: August 17, 2019, 11:39:32 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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Giovanni, thanks for stopping in and talking about your deck!  That's some great background.
Card Illusionist, NYC Area
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