2017 Decks of the Year - OFFICIAL - Winners Announced!

[vasta41]

Out of curiosity is the Apothecary eligible for this? I'm not sure how two part projects are treated since the first two were completed in 2017 but the full project itself is not yet released.

I don't see why Insights and Ponderings wouldn't be eligible..?

[ecNate]

All decks from Princess threads at PCF are now added and more. A total of 389 decks currently.
https://www.portfolio52.com/profile/10383/collection

Alex - I think you are thinking of prior years when there was an award for deck series, but since that doesn't exist and those were delivered then certainly Apothecary decks released in 2017 would be eligible.

[sinjin7]

Here are the decks in the brick I will be donating to this contest:

Mana Sybil Livida - unique cigarette style tuck box
Mana Silver Oracle - still one of the most beautiful decks in my collection
Ace Fulton's Casino Midnight Fuel Ltd Edition - numbered 258/2500 and autographed by Brad Fulton
Branded Black Book Manifesto - unique typography deck
Bharata - gold gilded edges
Mechanic - animation in the back design
Bicycle Core - from the notorious Kickstarter campaign
BRuT - an Uusi deck, enough said
Blue Tune - Aloys deck limited to 2500
Boardwalk Papers - Blue Crown and EPCC collaboration
Gold Rarebit - gold foiled cards
Unicorn Emerald Edition - printed with 3D display technology

All decks are brand new.

[Merlebird]

How long does it usually take to tabulate the votes/draw prizes? (I hope you don't have to vote a whole slate to be eligible, because if you do I'm out of luck )

[vasta41]

As always thanks to all how participate in this contest, especially the donators and mods for tallying. I can't wait to see the results! I'd also like to propose a new voting category that I believe is completely necessary: "Best Bicycle-Branded Deck." IMO there are other small changes I would propose but adding that category is atop my list and has been for years. Would be nice to see that added to 2018!

[Räpylätassu]

What is the situation with the vote counting? Can we expect results this weekend?

Oh and I like vastas idea of the Best Bicycle branded deck!

[rousselle]

Vote counting should be completed this coming weekend, with results announced by around Tuesday, hopefully.

[DeckAwards]

Results are all tabulated. I spent the past hour and a half going through every category and creating the post here to announce the winners. And then, when I went to upload the Excel spreadsheet file as an attachment... UC decided to log me out and make me log back in. I lost all my work on the post.

Sigh.

I'm going to call it a night. I'll re-type the post tomorrow.

At least I don't have to retabulate the vote totals!

[Bradius]

Mike needs to double your salary.

[Merlebird]

UC decided to log me out and make me log back in. I lost all my work on the post.

Sigh.

I've only been here a month and a half and that's already happened to me - conservatively speaking - eleventy hojillion times. Somebody who's able to poke around in the guts of this forum system should see if there's a sitewide setting for duration before timeout.

Also, it breaks when you try to post something containing em-dashes or emoji, but that probably only bothers me.

[Räpylätassu]

15 people to get prices, 16 prices + 10 vouchers from JPGames. How we are going to do this? Do people who have not voted get in on the prices, some get two?

And congrats to all the winners!

[DeckAwards]

Hi, everybody! Official winners are posted above! viewtopic.php?f=81&t=11181&p=126467#p126475

A few notes on the results:

* For the sake of determining winners, any deck that only received one vote in a given category did not receive an award placement for that category. Thus, there were a few categories where one or two decks totally cleaned up (for example, Pipmen World in the Best Uncut category), but there were still a few other decks that received one vote each. No other deck received two votes or more. Thus, that category has only one decisive winner, rather than one first place winner and multiple decks tied for second that only received one vote each.

* I have no idea how he keeps doing it, but if we were running the contest this year they way we did last year, HFMJ would have ended up in first place again, hands down. Great job, dude!

* Instead, I took all of the people who voted (except for yours truly) and assigned each of them a playing card. Shuffled the cards eight or night times, with a few cuts thrown in, and then laid them down in order, thereby randomizing the list of participants. These folks can choose, in order (see link above for the deck winners and the voting participants), from the prizes offered by our wonderful sponsors. This is the first year that we have more prizes than participants, largely because of timing, I suspect. Too bad, too, because there are quite a lot of awesome prizes.

Thank you very much to our prize sponsors, our voting participants, and Congratulations to our winners!

2017 was an amazing year for custom playing cards, and 2018 is shaping up to be similarly spectacular.

[Räpylätassu]

As there are more pickers than berries, if my tier remains unchosen, I will either do some sort of free giveaway for it or just give it to someone, haven't decided yet. Anyways, no matter what happends, somebody is going to get it.

[Thedissident001]

I’m not seeing my submission in the list?

[th4mo]

Congratulations to all of the winners, and thanks to everyone who participated! I'm stunned that there weren't more people voting, especially with all of the amazing prizes offered up by our generous members.

I think that maybe the sheer number of eligible decks every year makes voting a pretty daunting task for a lot of people. My take is that people want to give each deck the consideration it deserves, instead of haphazardly voting for the first deck that comes to mind, and I believe this itself is a good thing.

Having all (most?) of this year's decks listed on Portfolio 52 was a HUGE help to me, and I really appreciated the people who took the time to do that! Thank You!
However, I still had to dig around in most cases to remind myself what these decks looked like on the inside, since P52 for the most part just shows tuck boxes.

My suggestion for next year, to try to get more people involved, would be to encourage "nominees" in each category, like they do with the Oscars. What I propose is that there should be a new forum topic for each award category. Then, anyone who wanted to nominate a deck for "Best Gaff Card" (for example) could post that deck as a nominee (and include an image of the gaff card) as a reminder to everyone else of how great that deck/card was. I wouldn't be opposed to creators nominating their own decks "for your consideration" in appropriate categories. This would help lazy people (like me) who don't want to go back and try to find every gaff card from every deck from the last year. There may be some decks that I wasn't interested in otherwise, and didn't buy, so I never saw their gaff card, but it turns out the gaff card was AMAZING! I hope you get what I'm trying to say with this example. Unlike my Oscars example, actual voting would not be limited to nominated decks only, and people should still be able to vote for any deck they want on their ballots.

It's my hope that this would also result in a little bit more appreciation and (maybe some wins) for some of the great "smaller" decks out there, instead of one or two "giants" sweeping all the categories.

What do you all think of this? It's not like people weren't able to do this before (no rules against it), but it hasn't happened. Maybe if we encourage this for next year, it will get some of the less active UC members more involved and actually voting.

[th4mo]

Next, I have a bone to pick with these results!

How the F does Gemini win:

Best AoS,
Best Back,
Best Courts,
Best jokers,
Best Gaff Card,
2nd (tie) best colors,
2nd best pips,
2nd best Crowdfunding,
and 3rd Best Flourishing ,


And NOTwin Best Deck Overall?

It came in 2nd behind a deck (Golden Oath) that only appeared in 3 other categories (best innovation, 2nd best tuck, 2nd best back)?

Granted, Lotrek's tucks are out of this world (and he didn't even win that category), but the artwork on the courts, apart from the foil, is very close to standard.

Are you people really that bedazzled by shiny shiny Foil?

I can't wait until the Foil Fontaines are released and some heads explode around here...


But seriously, Congrats again, to both Lorenzo AND Lotrek! You guys are amazing!

[DeckAwards]

I’m not seeing my submission in the list?

Hi, there.

I just checked both my PM box here and at my "real" account, and I don't see any messages from you in either box. If you'd like to forward me your choices, I'll be happy to add you to the list of participants, but it's probably a bit unfair at this point to re-tabulate the results.

Did anybody else send me a ballot and not see their names listed in the list of participants? That would be a real shame if our PM system is having problems.

Please advise!

[Thedissident001]

Hi,

I sent to Deckawards and CC’d Mike, but it isn’t appearing in my “sent messages” despite being told the message had sent.

I’m honestly not after a prize and am more dismayed by the amount of wasted time I invested in deciding my choices for each category.

I will dig out my handwritten list and send later, more as a question of personal interest in how I would have done than anything else.

Thanks,
Greg

[Bradius]

We might try Survey monkey next year so it can easily tabulate the results, but that probably means wwe need a list of decks to choose from. Just a thought.

Congrats to all the winners and those that took the time to vote.

[sms69x]

Congratulations to all winners!
And a special thanks to the people that put the contest together!

Now, just a small detail: if I remember correctly Virtuoso FW17 was only delivered in january of 2018, so that would make it ineligible, right?

[JacksandJokers]

Another year over & another great set of results for the UC Deck of the year contest.

Many thanks once again to all the designers, organizers & prize donators who we could not have this contest without and a huge congratulations to all the winners.

I think this year Lotrek's Golden Oath was bound to come up trumps, however I am a little surprised that it didn't score 1st place in more categories, and in reply to th4mo's question, YES, we do easily get bedazzled by shiny foil!

I'm even more surprised that I'm in 1st place for the randomized prize draw although I think I did fairly well with my votes this year.
Let me know when we're ready to start choosing prizes & I'll get the ball rolling.

[rousselle]

Let me know when we're ready to start choosing prizes & I'll get the ball rolling.

Go for it! (I meant to PM you to that effect, but there were a lot of loose ends I was trying to tie up yesterday, obviously.)

[rousselle]

Now, just a small detail: if I remember correctly Virtuoso FW17 was only delivered in january of 2018, so that would make it ineligible, right?

Was it? I must confess that I've never pursued obtaining any of the Virts, so I have no idea when it was shipped. Obviously, it received a bit of attention from our voters. Can anyone here verify if they received this deck before 2018? Anyone? Bueller?

[Cbkimble]

Congrats to all the winners!!!

[JacksandJokers]

Now, just a small detail: if I remember correctly Virtuoso FW17 was only delivered in january of 2018, so that would make it ineligible, right?

Was it? I must confess that I've never pursued obtaining any of the Virts, so I have no idea when it was shipped. Obviously, it received a bit of attention from our voters. Can anyone here verify if they received this deck before 2018? Anyone? Bueller?

I purchased a couple of Virts FW17 from CPC in their sale recently.
Their website states they have had them in stock since Tuesday 19 December, 2017.

[JacksandJokers]

Let me know when we're ready to start choosing prizes & I'll get the ball rolling.

Go for it! (I meant to PM you to that effect, but there were a lot of loose ends I was trying to tie up yesterday, obviously.)

Thanks Rousselle.

It has to be the Lotrek decks for me, Many thanks.

Joeblow you're next

[guru]

Congrats to all the winners!!!

Sorry but I thought I mentioned it earlier and it looks like I didn't.

I'll be including the 100% handcrafted (hand-painted, lacquered cards and wooden box) Playing card deck in my prize.

[joeblow]

Congratulations to the winners. Some fantastic decks were released in 2017. Our voting is top heavy but there are another 10 to 20 artists who create great decks each year.

Thanks so much for the organizers. The portfolio52 page was very helpful.

Thanks to the sponsors. Very generous, great for this little community and the extra incentive helps make this vote interesting.

I'm going to go with Sunish's guru tier. Sunish is quickly moving up the ranks of our favourite creators here.

[theCapraAegagrus]

I’ll keep this brief because I logged in on my phone. Thanks to Joe (above) for messaging me about this. I really didn’t expect to win anything lol. Thank you to all of the organizers, all of the voters, and most importantly all of the great artists who crafted the decks.

I have to claim Lorenzo’s Stockholm17 prize.

[shermjack]

Thanks to the organizers and all those behind the scenes to make this work! Congrats to the winners as well!

I guess I should have put a little more effort and at least sent something in as the turn out was quite low and I apologize to the organizers, but I was too busy this year with other stuff to be able to go through all the decks and pick one for each category. Though it seems that I really didn't have to pick something for each category...oh well.

Anyways, to take Th4mo's idea of nominating decks for the categories one step further, maybe we could create a topic for each of the categories and throughout the year, people can put down what they think should be chosen for each category. This way, at the end of the year, we will have a 'short list' of decks, cards or whatever it is we are voting on, thus making it much easier to vote and hopefully have more participation (including myself ). Just a thought.

I guess I should also name the 6 decks included in my Half Brick Case...they will be:

Bicycle WSOP China, EPCS Bicycle Blue Rider Back, Lu Bu of the Three Kingdoms, Hidden King White & Yellow and Blue Royal Bee (Metalluxe)