New deck: Alchemy playing cards/Would love feedbacks!!

[alchemy_playingcards]

HI! Im densha tattoo, a tattoo artist living in France.
I designed a deck over the last months, and got the prototypes made by Cartamundi.
Id love to hear what you think. Very open to suggestions and feedbacks.
Note that the deck will be entirely black and gold!

[the.asics.kid]

To be honest, after reading the title of the thread I expected something totally different. Alchemy is something ancient and I would have expected and loved to see a deck that has a very intricate and old, antique style to it. But alchemy is definitely about development, transformation, evolution so you nailed that.

For me - I'm no expert, just a collector that blobs out his two cents - it needs something to stick out of the crowd though. Your back design is good and true to the theme but It lacks excitement and depth. I feel like the Philosopher's stone could need some more details. Something that let's it look more three dimensional/plastic.
The courts, while custom and featuring some nice details, are still a bid bland. The colour palette doesn't help to bring excitement, imo.
Overall a nice and good deck with a theme that makes me want to like it more but as for now not my cup of tea.

[alchemy_playingcards]

thanks for the reply and your feedback, really appreciate. Im gonna take this in account and try to rework them.
But its true, its more of a contemporary version than and Antic one.
And again, the whole deck should be black and gold, its was just not possible to achieve that with the prototypes.

[the.asics.kid]

Most definitely welcome.

For the part with the black and gold, I've read it but wasn't sure what to make of it. Will it be gold metallic ink or my guess is cold foil since, you wanna go with Cartamundi? Or did you just use Cartamundi for prototypes and go with another printer? Does it mean everything what is white in the prototypes will be gold? Some mockups/renders would be good, especially if you wanna run a kickstarter campaign.

[Don Boyer]

thanks for the reply and your feedback, really appreciate. Im gonna take this in account and try to rework them.
But its true, its more of a contemporary version than and Antic one.
And again, the whole deck should be black and gold, its was just not possible to achieve that with the prototypes.

I'm in agreement in that it's a basically nice design, but there's not a lot here to really make this design stand out above the herd.  It looks very modern, while "alchemy" to me can mentally evoke something more ancient.  There's nothing wrong with a modern design, per se, but you really want to make this deck something special - what isn't already out there?  What can you bring to this deck that no one else has?  What direction can you take this design that has never been done before?

Everyone remembers the name of the first team to reach the summit at Mount Everest.  Few people will remember the second team, or the third.  Absolutely no one remembers the 8,426th team.  So if you're planning to climb Everest and you aren't the first, you'd better bring something unique to your attempt if you want it to be remembered - and if you're planning to make a modern deck of cards and you aren't the first (trust me, you're far from it), how can you it do better than anyone else before you?

BTW: if you want to see a REALLY special modern deck that better evoke "alchemy" than your design?  Look for Sentinels by Theory11, printed by USPC.  That design was modern and ancient all at the same time, and it absolutely rocked.  Use that for inspiration, but go in a DIFFERENT direction, somewhere no one else has, if you really want to grab eyeballs and raise dollars.