There's a lot of shouting, ranting, raving, etc. about T11's decks. I actually used to be one of you guys, lodging similar complaints. Then I got more serious about practicing magic.
T11 is first and foremost a MAGIC company, in much the same way that E is. They both have a similar format - DVDs and downloads, few to no books, focus on varying skill levels.
I had a back-and-forth via the interwebs with Zenneth Kok, a reknown working magician. His new "Project C" Bee cards won't have custom faces, as his Gold Seal New Fan Backs didn't. His reason is that his spectators might like a really attractive pack of cards with a cool back design, but that they IDENTIFY more with the standard faces, even if you simply recolor them a bit. They're familiar, they're what they play with at home, it's what they expect playing cards to look like. It's not even a matter of making the deck "plainer" so as to "not raise suspicion" among spectators. They recognize standard faces more readily than they do custom ones.
So for magicians, faces that are basically standard, maybe with a slightly improved color scheme, are perfect tools for them. We know they reprint decks, and they're even starting to admit as much with the re-release of the Sentinels (with much better handling) and the Rebels uncut sheet (which is clearly described as a "first edition printing", to be followed by a "second edition printing", etc.).
The rare stuff is the collector bait, but it's not their bread and butter - the sell at normal retail, not aftermarket prices. When they're gone, they're gone, period. The bread and butter are their "unlimited" decks which get reprinted. And their magic, of course. Since they're a magic company, and not solely a deck design house.
Nathan (and anyone else with his self-confessed problem), if you're afflicted with gotta-get-em-all-itis, that's your problem and you should seek treatment. I'm beginning to walk away from more releases than I'm buying. Not because of a lack of funds (though the costs do build up), but because there's only so many decks a person can have before they stop enjoying them all for more than the simple fact of ownership.
And, lest we forget: if you don't like it, you are NOT BEING FORCED TO BUY IT. Walk away. I've been doing it with the recent D&D releases, and I don't miss them a bit. Others as well, some of which I thought were gorgeous. The main reason why I am able to do this is that I have control over my hobby, not the other way around.
While in Florida, I came to a rather surprising conclusion. I like to perform magic. This means that I'll be using and abusing decks when "in the field", some of which won't survive the return trip. I made a point on this trip to only bring decks that are common, easily replaceable and that I had many copies of. This way, if any (or all) of the decks ended up destroyed, I wouldn't lose a lot of sleep over it. It was very liberating to me to not have that concern over my head about trashing a rare or hard-to-get deck. Granted, I love most of the attractive and rare decks that I own and don't use as much for magic, but I need to get in the habit of using those for my personal pleasure and only buying small quantities. No bricks, no half-bricks, not even three - just two.
Further, while I love most, there are some decks I have that I'm not so fond of after all. Those decks I'm happy to get rid of - and will, in the near future, as I start my return to eBay selling (I have to move those Americana decks somehow, and I had few takers here). My investment partner took half, found he couldn't sell them to save his life, then returned them to me, so I still have perhaps 11 bricks.
If you have control, it's a hobby. If the hobby has control, it's a form of addiction.
Back to the topic at hand, I think the Rebels are a sharp-looking deck. The Capitol building on the deck backs is sort of a throwback to the old Congress playing cards designs, which also had the Capitol Building. The "plain" faces to me look great with the chosen color scheme. To me, the all-black-and-white back is gorgeous. The box, while not the primary feature, really does look sharp as well - I could picture this deck being around at the post-WWI era, perhaps being dealt in a coffeehouse or the back of a speakeasy. Hell, I could envision Navy pilots playing a round in the carrier's ready room with this deck before a mission in the Pacific, circa the early 1940s. It's classy, period.
I would respectfully request that you keep this topic for comments directly about the Rebel deck, and save Silver Monarch comments for that topic, and gripes about T11's deck designs as a whole in a new topic.
