I didn't really feel anything for the purple deck, I'm planning to buy the blue LTD next time I order from them, but the white is, to me, very interesting. Or was, until someone mentioned that they had the Madison courts. I must confess, I haven't bought any of his decks, they just don't resonate with me, and since I buy decks to open, play with and admire them, the Madison courts is a definitive dealbreaker for me. It's not that they are in any way bad or ugly, far from it, they look really nice. What bums me is that he left one unchanged, and that looks kinda strange to me.
So, I went from considering buying a DVD with stuff that I will probably not use, or twelve purple decks, to get that awesome looking white, to: What, Madison courts? No thanks.
I must say, it feels rather good, having decisions made for me like that. It lets me concentrate on the stuff I really want.
The one "unchanged" court is actually changed. Around the neckline is the name of Madison's child (I forget if it's a son or a daughter) and the face itself is left standard as sort of a placeholder seeing as how it's still an infant. I initially thought the same as you did until it was pointed out to me.
The thing of it is, some custom courts modeled after people can be gorgeous - the prime example of this being the Whiteknuckle deck. But often, it's trying to shoehorn your friends and family into caricature-like images that fit on goofily-dressed court cards - let's face it, someone should have called the fashion police on the standard court designs a LOOOOONG time ago. It feels exactly like that - shoehorned in, not a natural fit. Whiteknuckle avoided this by going in a bold direction, giving his courts real clothing in period style, giving the faces themselves a real sense of depth. Not all the others were quite as successful.
It was interesting when David Blaine did it, then others started doing it - didn't Lawrence Sullivan do it on the Legends? Now it's a little overdone in my opinion, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with the existing courts on the LTD decks - they were standard, but it fit the design and the colorations were clean and elegant. Now you can't tell if it's an LTD deck, a Madison deck or the bastard child of the two. It really doesn't feel like part of the LTD series, much the same as how the Artifice Tundra doesn't feel like an Artifice deck to me. It, too, tried to be two different things at once and didn't really excel at being either.
I compare it to what people have been telling me about Windows 8. It's an OS for a desktop/laptop AND it's an OS for a tablet, but it doesn't do a terribly good job of being either all that well. Another apt comparison would be working with real tools and working with a multitool. A multitool tries to be many different tools in a single package, but you'd never see a handyman using one unless it was an emergency and he didn't have his real tools handy. They're great things to have in a pinch, but you wouldn't want to be working with one all day as a replacement for the contents of a proper toolbox.
Ah, yes, sorry about that. I should have said: Left one of the faces unchanged. I think it's a son. I understand what he did and why. Maybe he went through hundreds of different versions of that Jack, from representing his mother-in-law to representing his own thoughts about what his child would look like in twenty years, to finally find that this was the best thing to do with the Jack, after maybe hundreds of hours of work on that Jack alone. And I think he's made a good job on his decks, they look kinda cool and interesting. And he sure knows more about decks, cards and magic than I ever will.
I'm a complete newbie when it comes to decks, I have about fourteen decks in my "collection". I feel that I have to go with what I like, in terms of colors, courts, pips, theme and execution. If there is something that I don't like about a deck, and that dislike exceeds the amount of like I feel for that deck, I won't buy it.
I have considered buying the marked Madison deck, despite the courts, because it would be cool to have a marked deck, and I don't have any borderless deck, so I'm not totally against it.
If this white LTD was $7.99 i would buy one in a heartbeat, again, despite the courts. But, as of now, with at least $29 for a DVD to get it, nah. Maybe with the standard LTD courts.
What I don't understand is why such a subtle Purple color change? For a back design that is mostly Gray and less color, there is very little difference to Blue. No one has mentioned anything about that either.
Yeah, why the minimal change? It will be interesting to see comparison pictures these coming weeks, see how big the difference is.
