MYTHIC playing cards soon on Kickstarter

[Jumperound]

Hello guys! Going to launch playing cards deck on Kickstarter.
Looking for your opinions and support. Thanks!

[Cardfool]

I, for one, really like the artwork!   One thing I am sure that you will hear is that you cannot run the images (i.e. Zeus' cape, Poseidon's hair) to the edges because that effectively marks the cards and thus making it unplayable.

[Justin O.]

Man, the polytheism is strong with playing cards right now.
Gotta say this is my favorite so far, love the style, love the image being pulled past the bleed. Everyone is going to tell you that is a bad idea like my friend above said, and you will lose some backers for it, but I really think it looks good on this deck and hope you keep it, I have hundreds of other decks I can use that don't do this, I don't own a single deck that does.

Would love to see more of the back, and am definitely on board when this goes live as long as you aren't planning on using makeplayingcards.com to print.

[Don Boyer]

Gotta say this is my favorite so far, love the style, love the image being pulled past the bleed. Everyone is going to tell you that is a bad idea like my friend above said, and you will lose some backers for it, but I really think it looks good on this deck and hope you keep it, I have hundreds of other decks I can use that don't do this, I don't own a single deck that does.

Well, you probably haven't seen playing cards made of moldy Swiss cheese, either.  Have you considered there's a reason for that?

When the card art extends into the bleed and it's unique on each card, the cards are identifiable from the edge of the deck and you've effectively created a marked deck.  It might look gorgeous from an artistic standpoint, but you'll never see them at a poker game played for money.

A prime example of this is the first-edition Empire deck from Lee McKenzie.  Because of all the markings on the faces that extend into the bleed, you can identify the color of every card and which cards are courts just by looking at the edge of the deck!  Not a bonus feature, really...  He fixed this faux-pas when making the Empire Bloodlines decks - there's still edge lines that go into the bleed, but they're uniform from card to card and he ditched the flags on the court card indices that extended past the cut edge.  That works - all the cards look the same from the edge, no way to tell them apart.

[Justin O.]

Gotta say this is my favorite so far, love the style, love the image being pulled past the bleed. Everyone is going to tell you that is a bad idea like my friend above said, and you will lose some backers for it, but I really think it looks good on this deck and hope you keep it, I have hundreds of other decks I can use that don't do this, I don't own a single deck that does.

Well, you probably haven't seen playing cards made of moldy Swiss cheese, either.  Have you considered there's a reason for that?

When the card art extends into the bleed and it's unique on each card, the cards are identifiable from the edge of the deck and you've effectively created a marked deck.  It might look gorgeous from an artistic standpoint, but you'll never see them at a poker game played for money.

A prime example of this is the first-edition Empire deck from Lee McKenzie.  Because of all the markings on the faces that extend into the bleed, you can identify the color of every card and which cards are courts just by looking at the edge of the deck!  Not a bonus feature, really...  He fixed this faux-pas when making the Empire Bloodlines decks - there's still edge lines that go into the bleed, but they're uniform from card to card and he ditched the flags on the court card indices that extended past the cut edge.  That works - all the cards look the same from the edge, no way to tell them apart.

I don't think anyone is going to use these for their poker games, even if they were bordered, maybe once or twice for the novelty of it, but I doubt anyone would make this their regular weekly poker deck, so I don't know if it is worth changing something that really makes the deck look good, and since this is hot on the heels of two other decks of the same theme I think it might not be a bad idea to have this dramatic difference, even if it will lose the designer some backers.. Well, several maybe... I'm hoping it will hold on it's merit as an art deck.

And I would argue that if someone made a cheese platter with 52 varieties of cheeses, even if they were all 'mouldy' types of cheeses, that people would love it, the small cross section of card collectors that also love variety cheese platters would be pretty happy.

But I see your point. My vote is for image into the bleed

[Don Boyer]

I don't think anyone is going to use these for their poker games, even if they were bordered, maybe once or twice for the novelty of it, but I doubt anyone would make this their regular weekly poker deck, so I don't know if it is worth changing something that really makes the deck look good, and since this is hot on the heels of two other decks of the same theme I think it might not be a bad idea to have this dramatic difference, even if it will lose the designer some backers.. Well, several maybe... I'm hoping it will hold on it's merit as an art deck.

And I would argue that if someone made a cheese platter with 52 varieties of cheeses, even if they were all 'mouldy' types of cheeses, that people would love it, the small cross section of card collectors that also love variety cheese platters would be pretty happy.

But I see your point. My vote is for image into the bleed

It makes for a pretty stack of cards, to be sure - just not a deck of PLAYING cards.  Even most art decks I see have either borders or identical patterns from card to card at the die line.  It's one thing if you have a deck that's got an all-black back and white backgrounds for the faces - people might complain that you can't use them for certain magic tricks, to which I say, "Big freakin' deal - magicians don't usually use heavily-custom decks and there's a zillion different decks better suited for magic anyway.  The one time it became an issue worth fussing over was when a magic company (Ellusionist) did just that for what was to be a flagship deck line (Artifice) - it was a case of a deck for magicians with a serious flaw for use by magicians.

There's not one good reason, other than cheating at cards, for having a design that allows one to identify cards in a deck by looking at the deck's edge.  Unless, of course, as I pointed out in the first sentence of this post, you're making cards, but not PLAYING cards.  Lots of people make cards every day that aren't playing cards.  Some make cards that look like playing cards, but they really can't be used in fair play, so they're not what one could consider playing cards - this would be in that category.  A magician could have some fun with them as a marked deck, perhaps, but for a card game, nope - I'd never use them.

In the end, it's up to what the artist a) wants to create and b) knows he can sell.  Having a) without b) is a formula for financial failure (or at the least, a non-starter on Kickstarter), having b) without a) is a formula for the artist's dissatisfaction - gotta have both.

[Jumperound]

Some more art

[Don Boyer]

The art is nice, but what do you personally have against curves? 

It's a common pitfall some designers fall into - in an effort to make their design more unique, they make angular pips.  The problem is that the angular pips often end up a little too difficult to tell each design apart from the others and to identify them properly on the first go.  These aren't bad, but in a hurry, I could easily mistake that club for being a spade, not realizing it until it was too late in the game.  Don't compare it to your spade - compare it to a more generic spade and you'll see what I'm talking about.  It's not just a matter of making your pips different from each other; it's a matter of making them not TOO different from the original model, the one that people have been using for the past several centuries.  It's like adding a purple light to a traffic signal - you'll have people sitting at the intersection, dumbstruck as to the meaning, and more than a few traffic accidents.

[Justin O.]

The art is nice, but what do you personally have against curves? 

I agree with Don, use more traditionally styled pips, you can keep the Aces and it shouldn't be too much trouble, but I would also recommend using a closer to the classic design on the rest of the cards and indices.

It makes for a pretty stack of cards, to be sure - just not a deck of PLAYING cards.

A deck of playing cards doesn't have to be good at being used for fair play to still be a deck of playing cards, they are all playing cards, even if many of them aren't good at it. A semantic argument maybe, but I feel it is an important distinction.

Some more art

The beigey background dulls down the whole image, I like the color variant idea as a stretch goal, but would really recommend against changing the background on the courts that muddies up the whole color pallate. Try changing the range of colors used entirely for a second deck..?