I don't see this deck succeeding on too many levels to even list here... I'd strip my mental gears even attempting to go over all of them...
Wow, thanks for this wonderful almost non-functioning "critique" of my work! Sorry you'd have to strip your mental gears to try and explain what is wrong with something you think won't succeed. Very helpful. I worked pretty hard on my project. And I will thank you to stop making spurious non-comments on it. You aren't helping. And as you say, evil and wrong happens when people don't speak up about it. The internet is full of critics. But not so full of creators.
What, the other critiques weren't enough?
Kidding aside, there are several conventions people generally pay heed to when designing custom decks in order to retain a high level of functionality. You deck lacks quite a few of them. Now, in design, it's OK to break a "golden rule" or two, but you have to be doing so for a reason, not just for the hell of it, or your design won't be very appealing.
Your "digital art"... If I break out the Paint software and recreate the Mona Lisa in great and loving detail - it's still the Mona Lisa! Putting copyright issues aside, I'm doing the same job a computer scanner or photocopier can do, except I'm doing it the hard way. What's worse is that it doesn't matter how many hours I put into making a copy of someone else's work, people will still dismiss it because of a lack of originality - it's STILL someone else's work. Man-hours =/= creativity. You're not even making an effort to transform the art in any significant way as an expression of creativity - you're slavishly trying to mimic it as closely as possible.
Inventing your own pips - this is often a road to disaster. Not always, but often. Especially if the pips are NOT iconic and simple.
Pips aside, indices should be quickly and easily readable. The more elaborate a typeface you use, the more difficult it becomes to identify your cards swiftly.
Your cards - courts are two-headed, aces have pictures like courts and are not two-headed. I'm scratching my head at this.
You failed to make a proper distinction between the Zombie deck and the Vampire deck in terms of what cards belong to which deck. So I'm wondering about seeing cards that have shaded indices and cards that don't - I'm presuming they're the two different decks. So, how far are you into the design phase of this deck? All we've seen so far are a few cards - no uncut sheet, not even a tuck box, and you're creating TWO completely different decks, not just one. Lacking any real knowledge of how far you're into this, we have to guess based on the evidence available, which leads us to believe that the March 2014 delivery date is optimistic at best.
Speaking of delivering in March, have you factored in the increase in postal rates scheduled for January? Even the world's cheapest printer needs to be paid, and short-run decks have the highest per-deck costs. At your first reward that actually includes a deck, you're taking $20 in exchange for one deck of each card, a signed first-run card...AND a "framable 8x10 print". The last time I saw a creator offer me such a print, it was printed on office white paper with a basic inkjet printer. "Framable," sure, but would anyone want to frame that? But putting that aside, you're looking at a mailer that can accommodate either a tube for your poster or a flat, stiff envelope AND those two decks. This will not be cheap to deliver on. You'd need to not only pay for the postage, but you'd have to provide the packing materials and packaging to insure the decks and print arrive intact. This will leave you with a very tight if not non-existent profit margin.
You mentioned a stretch goal:
If the projected goal goes to $12,000 I will connect with the USPCC and BICYCLE companies to produce branded BICYCLE tm card decks. Most of us being knowledgable collectors and some of us being experienced deck designers, we know two things. First, BICYCLE and USPC are NOT two different companies! Bicycle is a brand name, nothing more. It's like your breakfast cereal being made by General Mills AND the Cheerios Corp., Ltd. Second, the minimum for a basic print run with USPC would be $8,000 to $10,000 for 2,500 decks. This price can increase dramatically the more customized and feature-filled the design becomes. These would be two separate print runs, so the bare-bones minimum for two decks without even having custom faces, just the backs, would be at least $16,000, probably more, leaving you very, VERY short on funds to complete the project. These facts tell people you aren't terribly knowledgable yourself about these things and that you haven't done adequate research to make up for your lack of personal experience.
And then there's the timing. There have been countless decks, both from Kickstarter and from larger companies who self-financed their work, that have covered these themes, and they've mostly done so far better than you have. The market is oversaturated with these deck themes - any attempt to delve into it again has to be such astounding work as to stand head-and-shoulders above anything that came before it, lest it be completely ignored by the market. This unfortunately does not describe your deck.
I haven't even begun to touch on all the problems this deck has. This is merely a sampling. I consult with playing card designers, helping them make their decks more functional and appealing to the market. This project, and I don't mean this with so much as a drop of vitriol, is a very amateurish attempt at making playing cards. This doesn't make you a bad person, and it doesn't mean we hate you. We're just extremely particular about cards because we're passionate about our hobby. There are so many breathtakingly beautiful projects out there, some of which have been pointed out to you - it makes it difficult to generate enthusiasm for your work. The art on your zombie deck is more original and actually has potential, but again, if it's not absolutely fantastic, it could be difficult if not impossible to get it funded.
