I give them credit for being the top dogs of create the most beautiful tucks out there hands down, but not for their courts. I know they are capable of so much more than that. I support subtle changes, but those subtle changes have to be composed with the whole and not fragmented as they are. Standard courts would have not handicapped the awesome tuck. I only give them a rough time as they are one of the people I look to for standards of quality.
Capability doesn't always equate to execution. Sure, there can be changes made that would be for the better. But when time, effort, and opportunity cost comes in to play, T11 may simply not feel the necessity of spending an exponential increase in time and effort to only marginally improve a deck. After all, they're in it for the business. Their time could instead be focused on other products/future releases that will generate greater profit for them in the long run.
A great example of this are Apple products. Apple is notorious for not implementing their whole array of innovations into a single product. They instead choose to implement their arsenal of futuristic technology in numerous iterations. Many people bash on them for not making the current generation of products the best it can be; but they don't understand that it has everything to do with opportunity cost and maintaining long term market power. T11 may have spent an extra 5-10hours of work to 'perfect' the court cards. However the final result may only trigger a slightly more positive response from the niche community such as us. Their sales may have increased by 1%, or 100%, the uncertainty is the beauty of the market mechanism. In this case, it's not because T11 didnt have the potential to do better, it's because they didnt feel the need to spend the extra time and effort to improve what is already very good (Come on guys, the deck as a whole is gorgeous!) to something marginally better.
I personally disagree with the preference of standard/recoloured courts. T11 has a whole array of such examples. They got bashed consistently because of this. Custom courts is one of the deciding factors in the war between T11 and Ellusionist (fuck HOPC/D$D). They decided to make a change that would potentially take away Ellusionist's edge in this category. Much improvement is needed in future releases to achieve the level of JAQK/Seasons courts, but i think T11 did a good job (and a correct move) in the whole. Us hippies/enthusiasts/perfectionists aside, just imagine all the shit T11 would get if they had released 'yet another gorgeous tuck box but crappy recoloured courts' deck.
T11 played their cards right.
/end rant.
I disagree with a few statements in there.
Apple's success doesn't have to do with not implementing a wide array of innovations in a single product. It has to do with simple, attractive design that's easy to use and highly reliable. I often tell people that when I learned how to use Windows, I had to learn far more about the inner workings of the operating system than I really ever wanted to, whereas with Apple, I spend less time learning the operating system, more time simply using it - it's more intuitive and more reliable. This is especially true for their consumer electronics. Some people bemoan that Apple operates in a closed sandbox environment, but it also keeps their machines for the most part very stable.
I love a deck with custom courts as much as the next collector, but I also have an appreciation for a simple set of recolored standard courts. I'd be more inclined to use almost any "standard face" custom T11 deck in a magic routine than any other - as well as at a friendly poker game, because my players tend to be fussy about what they play with and standard faces keep them happy.
Subtle changes don't really cost all that much less, other than a little more of the artist's time, and yes, people will notice when someone really did a full-on good job and when someone was paid to go only so far and no further when making a custom design. Take their one true full-custom in-house design, the Sentinels, and compare them to this deck - you'll know immediately which deck went the whole nine years and which deck came closer to phoning it in. JAQK decks are great, but they're simply modifications of an existing deck design, not wholly unique and made by them alone.
When I know a deck could have been truly great and it comes up short, I find it disappointing. The Artifice Tundra deck is to me the prime example of phoning it in, and the D&D Bruce Lee deck is one of the laziest designs I've seen all year from a house that had a lot of lazy designs. This deck, though it may have it's good qualities, does come up short in that it could have been so much more. People remember great art and classic literature, while art made to meet a bottom line or books produced to a minimum literary standard tend more often than not to be forgotten. We want great, we know T11 is capable of great, so what's the deal with thinking "good enough" is just as nice?
