5 Stack Playing Cards by Jackson Robinson: Live on KS

[EndersGame]

This one is almost certain to fly under the radar, at least in the playing card industry. But here's news about a new deck by Jackson Robinson - 5 Stack Playing Cards - for just $10!



To my knowledge, no information has been released yet about which company will print these cards, or what finish they will have. But $10 is a great price - depending on what quality they turn out to be.



But there is a catch - you can only get this deck as an add-on when you support Jackson Robinson's new board game, 5 Stack, on Kickstarter, and the playing cards are never going to be available separately.



The good news is that 5 Stack is a decent game. I do a lot of board game reviews, so I was fortunate to receive a pre-release copy of the game, which I've been playing over the last few months, and we've had a lot of fun with it. You can read my detailed pictorial review of the game here:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2009315" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;



Kickstarter link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ki ... nd-chanc-0" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Disclaimer: I have no official relationship with the creator of this project, other than being a fan of lively and easy-to-play games that are highly accessible and have a broad appeal, and having had opportunity to play and enjoy a pre-release version of 5 Stack with my family and friends. And of course I like playing cards!

[EndersGame]

Here's a couple of more images that help give some idea of what the cards will look like:

[ICantShuffle]

I think it'll fund because it's Jackson Robinson, but what keeps me from taking the plunge is that I am used to other boardgame Kickstarters where it is customary to post at least draft copies of the rules and introduce the gameplay. He also hasn't sent review copies to the regular reviewers: Rahdo, Heavy Cardboard, Man vs. Meeple, et al. Not knocking him for that, but it shows he's new to the board game scene.

BTW Hi Ender from BGG.

[theCapraAegagrus]

I think it'll fund because it's Jackson Robinson, but what keeps me from taking the plunge is that I am used to other boardgame Kickstarters where it is customary to post at least draft copies of the rules and introduce the gameplay. He also hasn't sent review copies to the regular reviewers: Rahdo, Heavy Cardboard, Man vs. Meeple, et al. Not knocking him for that, but it shows he's new to the board game scene.

BTW Hi Ender from BGG.

His first go-around with this was a failure, BUT, he didn't offer the playing card deck alone. It only came in a more expensive box set.

I don't have any interest in this campaign.

[EndersGame]

His first go-around with this was a failure, BUT, he didn't offer the playing card deck alone. It only came in a more expensive box set.

Jackson is very experienced with crowdfunding custom playing cards, but the board game industry is a whole different ball game, and it's clearly a learning curve for him.

His initial attempt with this project (link) was cancelled because the price point was far too high for a game of this sort. By reducing the size of the game and producing it elsewhere, he's managed to drop the price significantly, and put it much more on par with similar games.

I like his thinking by making the deck of cards an add-on; that's a smart move. Unsurprisingly, backers are already asking whether it's possible to add on extra copies of the deck of playing cards.

[Cbkimble]

You can clearly see that Jackson has vastly expanded his creativity from just playing cards to a variety of different products. I say it's a smart move due to the playing card market and so many his reputation, mainly here at the UC.

[Bikefanatic]

I'll have to see more videos and reviews of the game. I don't think it's worth getting the game only for the deck yet.

[CBJ]

I'll have to see more videos and reviews of the game. I don't think it's worth getting the game only for the deck yet.

I played the prototype of this game at last year's 52PlusJoker convention. It's a lot of fun

[ICantShuffle]

But, how does it compare to other things that would be competing in the same market with the same level of design quality like Azul.

I don't doubt that it's a fun game, I'm on the fence about it myself, a draft copy of the rules would probably push me over one way or the other. He spends a lot of time talking about the game play experience, but doesn't provide the rules. Again, I'm not saying he's bad, or a bad designer or anything, just inexperienced in marketing in this particular industry. Campaigns that are successful generally do talk up game play, but also have play-throughs or reviews on their page, as well as draft rules. It's something boardgamers have become accustomed to in a highly competitive market.

Adding the deck of cards does help, and not offering a separate pledge is a smart move because then it assures the funds collected will go mostly towards the production of the game. It would suck to fund a game while having to do a 2500 deck print-run because you had 900 backers for a deck of cards and only 100 for the game.

[EndersGame]

I don't doubt that it's a fun game, I'm on the fence about it myself, a draft copy of the rules would probably push me over one way or the other. He spends a lot of time talking about the game play experience, but doesn't provide the rules. Again, I'm not saying he's bad, or a bad designer or anything, just inexperienced in marketing in this particular industry. Campaigns that are successful generally do talk up game play, but also have play-throughs or reviews on their page, as well as draft rules. It's something boardgamers have become accustomed to in a highly competitive market.

I can help with that. I've posted of a photo I took of the draft rules at the link below - view at "original size" to read the small print. In my opinion a couple of things need polishing and clarifying, and I have already passed on some suggestions to Jackson about that. But at least it gives you a rough idea of what the instructions look like at present:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/4012393" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

For the record, I think 5 Stack would struggle to hold its own against modern game designs like Azul, which even gamers can appreciate. I would compare it more with games like Sequence, which has simple rules and a relatively high luck factor, and yet is very popular in the mass market.

[guru]

The rendering on the tuckbox bottom shows it to be printed in Taiwan (faint but readable when zoomed in). But, I feel it is a risk getting it printed in Taiwan while the game gets printed in China while shipping happens from US. The easiest way to handle it is to get all 3 (deck + game + shipping) done from China but given JR's experience, I think he would have already given it a considerable thought.

Still, I find the price of the game a bit high compared to the components it has got versus what other tabletop games offer on Kickstarter or in the aftermarket.

I've worked with the production/printing company JR is working with for this game and know that they can do both playing cards as well as high-end board games with a very competitive pricing. If you are following or backing board games on Kickstarter, then this will be a hard sell.

@EndersGame - You will know better given your experience in tabletop/board games field.

[EndersGame]

The rendering on the tuckbox bottom shows it to be printed in Taiwan (faint but readable when zoomed in).

Where the deck is printed will undoubtedly make a big difference to collectors as to whether or not these playing cards will be of interest. I don't think Jackson has revealed yet what stock is going to be used or who is going to print it, but hopefully he share that at some point soon.

As we all know, if it's going to be printed by MPC or NPCC, that lessens the appeal immediately, whereas a USPCC produced deck or Legends produced deck (if in Taiwan rather than China) is going to be much more desirable.

[sinjin7]

Jackson is trying to sell a board game here, not cards. The only reason he's making a deck available is to try to boost sales of his board game (because the cards themselves have absolutely nothing to do with game play), but he doesn't want to dilute the money he's getting for his board game with his playing cards, so he's limiting it to one deck per board game for now. Unless he decides to allow backers to add on unlimited number of playing cards (and I doubt he will because of the reason above), he's only going to produce 200, maybe 300 decks at the rate his board game campaign is going. Given that he's basically charging $10.00 per deck per person, this eliminates bigger, quality printers such as the USPCC, EPCC/LPCC, and Carta Mundi. To do a print run of under 300 decks will be incredibly expensive through these companies and $10.00 per deck won't cut it. These decks are probably going to be printed by MPC or some other low volume, low quality printer, or even some other printer in China we haven't even heard about (given Jackson proclivity to produce crap decks from China).

His other strategy is to print 1000 decks through LPCC China and then trickle out the remaining 700-800 decks sometime long after the campaign as some "extreme limited edition" to his fanboys, or dump them off to Touch of Modern. The problem with this is I don't think the deck is interesting enough as a stand alone deck. The courts are nice but are basically his standard custom courts. The back design may suitable for cards used in, or associated with, a board game, but is pretty lacking as a stand alone custom playing cards deck. It looks closer to an UNO deck than a poker deck. I also doubt Jackson is going to take the risk of footing the bill of a 1000 deck print run all by himself up front and then hope he's able to sell off his excess inventory of decks after the board game KS campaign.

The bottom line is that the 5 Stack playing cards is a deck with marginal design and probably low quality as well. That's assuming his 5 Stack board game will even fund in the first place, which is no guarantee. At the pace it's currently on, it looks dicey and he'll need some kind of mid-campaign boost.

[EndersGame]

The competition with new games on Kickstarter is pretty fierce - check out this list over on the BoardGameGeek blog that covers all the current projects. 5 Stack is in there ... somewhere:

https://boardgamegeek.com/blogpost/7806 ... -june-2018" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Board games are new territory for Jackson, and by his own admission after his first attempt at Kickstarting this game, he had a few things to learn. There are several things that board gamers typically look for in a Kickstarter project, such as a copy of the rules, and reviews by prominent reviewers, as mentioned already by ICantShuffle. Unfortunately for Jackson, the absence of some of those things from this campaign so far, will hold back some gamers who otherwise would support it.

Thanks for your post sinjin7 - I'm intrigued by your mention of "or dump them off to Touch of Modern". This is the first time I've seen Touch of Modern mentioned in connection with playing cards, which may be just be ignorance on my part. What kind of outfit is Touch of Modern, and has Jackson used them previously at all?

[sinjin7]

Thanks for your post sinjin7 - I'm intrigued by your mention of "or dump them off to Touch of Modern". This is the first time I've seen Touch of Modern mentioned in connection with playing cards, which may be just be ignorance on my part. What kind of outfit is Touch of Modern, and has Jackson used them previously at all?

Touch of Modern (ToM) is membership based commercial re-seller of primarily men's accessories. They buy up excess inventory from (often high end) companies at a steep discount and then pass the savings onto their members as an incentive for membership. Has Jackson used ToM previously at all? Here is a list off the top of my head of his decks liquidated off on ToM:

Hive decks
Fed 52 Silver Certificate decks
Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty decks
Independence decks, both Crown and Contintental
Civil war decks

To be fair, many deck producers have sold off excess stock on ToM. I refer to Jackson "dumping off" decks on ToM primarily because of the Hive deck debacle, which was the first time he ever used ToM. He printed 2000 Hive decks, but only made "1600 available for sale", which were to be sold on his KW site, with the other 400 decks allegedly reserved for trusted wholesellers he's used in the past (ToM not being one of them since he's never used them before at that point in time). The selling price was $18.00 per deck, plus shipping. This would be considered a steep price today for a 2000 print run deck, but this was back in 2014! Many people grumbled about the excessive price and it generated a fair amount of controversy, but many of his loyal supporters bought them in the pre-sale anyway. Some actually thought he would completely sell out within a couple of days, but sales were sluggish (primarily due to the over-pricing, the decks themselves were beautiful). Jackson shipped out the orders at the end of August, 2014 and people got their decks early to mid-September, 2014. By October 7, 2014, Jackson dumped excess Hive decks onto ToM, which were then sold for only $12.50 per deck, plus shipping. Jackson had to know ToM would discount the deck because it is what they do. It was just shocking how Jackson could back-stab his supporters by selling them his deck for $18.00, and then only a month later have his excess inventory sold on ToM for $12.50. This is why I referred to it as dumping off.

[PrincessTrouble]

It looks like you can add-on decks to your pledge for $10 each. If anyone is pledging for the game, I'd appreciate an add-on deck and can paypal you $10 now and shipping later when the campaign is fulfilled.

[PipChick]

looks like he's trying to stack the cards in his favor for this campaign

(sorry, I couldn't help myself )

[sinjin7]

Allowing backers to add-on decks should help "stack the deck" in his favor towards funding, but I fear it may end up biting him in the rear. He originally set $15,000.00 as the goal required to fund a board game, which didn't factor deck add-ons. But if a significant portion of the $15,000.00 now has to be diverted to produce playing cards instead, it may hinder his ability to make the board game, or cut into his profits (and we all know he hates that. . .).

So far, 70 people have pledged for tiers that include a deck of cards and he's about 50% funded as of the time of this post. Let's say that number doubles to 140 by the time this campaign ends. It's a safe bet that not everyone who pledged for a game and a deck are interested in more decks. And out of the backers that do want more than one deck, there will probably be a few that order bricks of additional decks to resell later on, but the vast majority will probably only want a few extra decks. This math still doesn't equate to Jackson needing to prints decks in the quantity required to use a quality printer.

Maybe Jackson pulls off a miracle and somehow gets his campaign to go viral to the point he blows past his funding goal so he has no issues manufacturing the board games and that he gets enough orders for deck add-ons to get close to the 1000 decks needed to use a decent printer. Worst case scenario is he barely funds at $15,000.00, but $3,500.00 of that is for playing cards. This makes him light on money for the board game based on his initial funding goal without deck add-ons, and he prints 400 of the crappiest quality decks he's produced so far.

[theCapraAegagrus]

looks like he's trying to stack the cards in his favor for this campaign

(sorry, I couldn't help myself )

This might be the least-cringeworthy pun you have ever delivered.

I just thought you should know.

[MagikFingerz]

looks like he's trying to stack the cards in his favor for this campaign

(sorry, I couldn't help myself )

This might be the least-cringeworthy pun you have ever delivered.

I just thought you should know.

And the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day...

[Bradius]

Nah, the Grinch just used his daily grinchiness on a more deserving person today.

[PipChick]

looks like he's trying to stack the cards in his favor for this campaign

(sorry, I couldn't help myself )

This might be the least-cringeworthy pun you have ever delivered.

I just thought you should know.

oh, wow, I've never been more flattered



*having finally earned the smallest shred of respect and approval from rando internet strangers, her pathetic life was now complete and she floated off into the sunset on the proverbial cloud 9 of total bliss & fulfilled self worth"

And the Grinch's heart grew three sizes that day...

And then – the true meaning of Christmas came through... Thank you twopiece for blessing us all with the gift of love in the true spirit of UC

[guru]

I've worked with the production/printing company JR is working with for this game and know that they can do both playing cards as well as high-end board games with a very competitive pricing.

Seems like JR is printing the deck and the board game with the production/printing company I mentioned above. They are definitely good but very few people know about this factory in China. Big and renowned companies use their services on and off Kickstarter.

Screen Shot 2018-06-24 at 8.05.33 PM.png (27.47 KiB) Viewed 4144 times

[EndersGame]

Are there any decks already published known to have been printed by Long Pack Games?

[theCapraAegagrus]

Are there any decks already published known to have been printed by Long Pack Games?

I know that there are, but off the top of my head I can't remember any specific decks.

[ICantShuffle]

I have a few board games printed by Long Pack, IIRC. There's a world of difference between the attention to quality in a deck of playing cards vs cards for a board game, though, and board games now it's not uncommon to have 400+ cards printed for each copy of a game-- which would be cost prohibitive to print on what card players would consider "good" stock. So, I don't know that it would be a good frame of reference.

From my experience with their games, though, the component quality is definitely not bad, but I have seen games with misaligned printing on the cards-- again something that would be more noticeable and be a playability issue with poker cards, but with board games as long as the information on them (artwork, rules text/flavor text) is all there it doesn't detract from gameplay.

[Bradius]

The game and decks didn't fund on Kickstarter. Even with the decks, it wasn't enough.

[CBJ]

It's really a shame. It's a great game.

Unfortunately, Jackson made zero updates and zero posts/promotion since launch. Hard to gain momentum if you don't push on the gas.


Jay

[Casual Pixels]

It's really a shame. It's a great game.

Unfortunately, Jackson made zero updates and zero posts/promotion since launch. Hard to gain momentum if you don't push on the gas.

Hard to say if the early successes made him assume that all he needed to do is show up.

It is too bad. I backed the game not because it was him but because it looked fine on its own. The deck was a bonus but not the reason I backed.

[ICantShuffle]

If JR wants this game to fund he needs to do more than take a couple pictures of it and make a lot of claims about "qualia" of playing it.

Post rules, reviews, a game play video maybe, since it sounds like this game has made rounds and people have played it.

It's not like a deck of cards where the printer is largely going to determine quality/handling, and the focus is on the artwork-- i.e. all you really need are some good pictures to sell decks and give basic information like printer, finish, cut, etc.

Referring back to my original post, at his price point with or without the deck of cards he's approaching some really meaty, popular games' playing field with some high quality components, compelling design and artwork. Existing games like Azul, Photosynthesis, Santorini, Istanbul, Splendor, Sagrada, Twilight Struggle (okay, maybe not as beautiful, but definitely A+ gameplay), Pandemic, Terraforming Mars (can be had now for about $45~$50 new and sealed), Patchwork, Codenames, too many to name really. For around the same pledge amount I've been able to get some really rad games already in very recent history: Dreamscape, The Estates, Endeavor: Age of Sail, Star Realms: Frontiers, Dual Powers and Lincoln.