I'm thinking of passing on this one...just not too into it. What are your thoughts on this deck?
Much the same as yours I'm guessing. The backs are so busy and the cards have an almost cut and paste, postage stamp kind of feel.
The flow of the deck is off in terms of courts representatives. It's the queens, the queens. They stab at me with their wrongness. Should be the queens of the kings in my opinion. The back is over busy, they're tossing in shit just to do it at that point, not about presidents it becomes just stuff. The tuck has more images of Lady Liberty on it than it does anything else, there weren't many presidents who had much to do with her I think President Cleveland presided over the dedication ceremony. (Enough Fes, this isn't about Lady Liberty.) The Flag is a flag, not a sports banner, yet it has a sports banner stylized approach which is eh in my opinion and doesn't flow well with the other iconography. With so much to choose from that is purely presidential, it makes me think this deck was thrown together from ideas of "Oh that says patriot" instead of "That makes sense it's about presidents." there is a difference. The tucks and card backs don't make presidential sense to me, they do make patriotic sense.
Am I the only one who thinks an Elephant tuck and a Donkey tuck should have different decks in them? I'm not a very good tuck collector, although sometimes I do it. Vikings CfC are cool as hell tucks. These ones aren't so much.
So now that I've gotten that bit off my chest haha. I really like the design of the court cards frame. That's quite pleasant. Again I wish it was more presidential but I get it, at this point, no research other than a few pictures, okay. Toss the flag on it and lay down some tiles. This WORKS, it's got a great feel. I like it! (unfortunately the courts choices do not.)
Number cards, eh, not so much. Why ditch the frame? Those presidents don't get the same respect from the designer? I don't understand the change. Let the indices report to the users what a cards rank is, if you must include pips on the number cards for presidents, work it into mosaic tiles on the frame in my opinion. After all, you did keep the tile flag on the number cards. Ditch the frame on all the presidents or keep the frame on all the presidents. Some with, some without... not a good move.
I'll stop here, could go on but yea. I'll pass on all versions of this tuck and the deck inside them.