It does look nice, but I won't be backing. It's the no-alcohol-or-tobacco-decks thing.
I'm a big concerned about those edges - if you look under the indices in that spiral fan, you can see something that printed into the bleed on some of the cards. Hopefully those are ads or jokers. The thing of it is, though, if you follow the curve to the right, in the out-of-focus area there appears to be more cards printed into the bleed. Optical illusion?
Don,
Sometimes certain decks require you to step out of the guidelines of "designing only for magicians". This deck definitely has courts that bleed out to the edges. The courts are gorgeous and I felt like they needed room to breathe instead of being trapped inside borders
No, I understand this. I was only speaking my own personal preferences. Overall it's actually a very attractive deck, even if it isn't my cup of tea.
The issue with courts in the bleed area has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with practical design for whatever purpose the deck is used for. If you have some cards printed into the bleed (in this case, the courts) and some cards that aren't, those that are in the bleed have a much better chance to be spotted from the edge of the deck, meaning that as a player I can identify when court cards are being dealt out. In most games, that's valuable intel that would imbalance the odds.
A prime example of this in action is Lee McKenzie's original "Empire" deck. It was a very lovely deck, but I can really only use it for solitaire. There's a middle-of-the-side banner that's red or black based on the card's suit color and there are banners at the indices for the Aces and the court cards, also color-matched to suit color. Because all those banners print into the bleed area, I can detect when high cards are about to be dealt by simply sitting in front of the dealer and observing the top edge of the deck. It's worse when the deck is sitting stationary on the table, like in a game of rummy - no movement and prominent placement leaves no chance of concealment. With practice, I might even be able to tell you the next card's color.
Doesn't mean the deck isn't absolutely beautiful. It just means it's a little less practical for every application except perhaps cardistry. Poker players wouldn't touch a deck like that with a ten-foot pole - to them, it's essentially a marked deck.