House of Tudor by Midnight Cards (KS June 6)

[hsbc]

This card was sent out in December with the most recent Euchre decks

[hsbc]

[vasta41]

[hsbc]

Oh wow, those tucks look great

[vasta41]

Silly me, thought I had first drop lol

[hsbc]

Silly me, thought I had first drop lol

I hadn't seen the new pics yet, so thanks for the post

[kevork]

I'm really liking these. Might go in for one deck, likely black.

[RandyButterfield]

Thank you for posting about the House of Tudor Decks!
I’m nervous and excited to see how this one goes. The Tucks are definitely my most
luxurious in a very long time. I’ve had the Legends hardcopy proofs on my desk for months.
They’re pretty sweet!

I’m thinking maybe a June 6th launch (Noon EDT).

Here’s the Kickstarter Preview Link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ra ... n=470f7ed1

Thanks, Randy

[hsbc]

[kevork]

I love those rigid boxes that a lot of campaigns are now using. They're easy to store, sturdy, and beautifully foiled. With that said, I'll probably only go for the standard black deck, as I'm slowly getting over needing to buy one of every color of everything.

[RandyButterfield]

The House of Tudor project is now live!



Thanks, Randy

[rousselle]

I'm in for the three gilded deck set. And, of course, I have to get the coin. And the book. Because... it's Randy! His coins are always interesting, and why shouldn't the booklet be, too?

[Bradius]

Thanks for the reminder. I am in for just the three standard decks and the booklet and coin. The gilding seemed a bit high and I might be more inclined to open a regular set. If any of you didn't get a Pollock deck earlier and are participating in this campaign, you should consider adding one as an add on.

[kevork]

[hsbc]

If any of you didn't get a Pollock deck earlier and are participating in this campaign, you should consider adding one as an add on.

He has lots of decks available as add-ons! Divination, Rome, Ireland, Jocks/Nerds, Pollock, Draconian, Slots, King of Tigers, and Wild West

[kevork]

It looks like the days of recolors may be slowly fading away especially with deck costs being so high. I wish he would go with just the black deck instead of the red but I'll still back the one deck when he relaunches.

Hey Everyone,

Thank you for your support of the House of Tudor Decks! It’s with a sad heart that I need to announce that I’ll be cancelling this project in a few minutes. I’ve done many Kickstarter projects, and there’s no way this current project will make it. Not at the current pace it’s on, and not unless I spend thousands of dollars on targeted ad campaigns (which defeats the purpose, as it would be spending money meant for printing).

Kickstarter has not been the same after Covid. Unless they’re highly geared towards the high-end collectors or have a huge following (like my Red Rising Decks last year), most projects nowadays really struggle to make it to the finish line. I thought I would give an “all-in” project one last try with the 3 Tudor Decks, Gilded Set, Book and Dealer Coin, but it’s not meant to be.

I will be relaunching a new campaign within a week! That campaign will be much simpler, and have a much lower funding goal. It will contain only the Red House of Tudor Deck and the Tudor ROSE Dealer Coin. I exhibit at a lot of shows throughout the year. The support at those shows are stronger than ever! So I’m going to gear all future Kickstarter projects for the next couple years towards trends at the shows. The biggest difference at shows is casual Playing Card buyers almost never buy a pair of one design. If they purchase two Decks or more, it’s almost always spread out over multiple designs. So my future Kickstarters will almost always focus on only one Deck per design!

And I’ll be planning to self-fund a large portion of the printing cost, so I can keep the funding goal low. It’s basically changing the goal of needing Kickstarter to mainly fund a large multi-faceted campaign, to just counting on Kickstarter to supplement a little bit of funding for a small scale 1-Deck print run. Less stress and extremely simple.

I hope you all will be back to support House of Tudor when I relaunch the Red Deck later this week!

Thanks, Randy

[vasta41]

Sad to hear this but I will certainly be there for the next launch. And every other (poker) playing card launch by Randy. The Dude abides

[GandalfPC]

If any of you didn't get a Pollock deck earlier and are participating in this campaign, you should consider adding one as an add on.

Love the Pollock decks - they were one of the first custom decks into my collection (after making my way through a pile of standard decks)

[Bradius]

Sadly, the project was cancelled. It will be launched again, but just one design next time. It looks like that is all that will be in upcoming campaigns. Thanks Randy for giving it a go.

[kevork]

Relaunched!

[hsbc]

I'm in for a deck (and an old King of Tigers deck, since I skipped those when they came out)

[Bradius]

I am in for a pair.

[Bradius]

Kickstarter is closing in a few hours if you want to get any. Total backers is less than 100 and total funding is under $4k. That is just embarrassing IMHO. I see so many hype decks, and something solid like this at a decent cost, just gets ignored. The only reason this works is Randy sells them at shows. It looks like Kickstarter is dying.

[Strag]

Agree that Kickstarter is dying, and they have only themselves to blame. The number of scame and undelivered funded projects has caused many of us to no longer back. I'm backing this one, but only because I trust Randy. If Kickstarter actually policed their projects, they would still be doing well.

[Fenrir]

Kickstarter is closing in a few hours if you want to get any. Total backers is less than 100 and total funding is under $4k. That is just embarrassing IMHO. I see so many hype decks, and something solid like this at a decent cost, just gets ignored. The only reason this works is Randy sells them at shows. It looks like Kickstarter is dying.

I think there is a shift in the playing cards market. Lots of people are leaving and some are upset about prior campaign fulfillments. Randy always fulfills as he says but maybe people are fatigued.

[STLBluesNut]

i am not sure if i agree that KS is dying. there are many projects i see still funding. out of 179 projects i have backed, i have had one that has not fulfilled. there may be another as it is one year past delivery. maybe i have been lucky. perhaps i have been more discerning or my pickiness has kept me away from scams and bad campaigns. for this deck, i feel like it is very lackluster in design. the pictures of the tuck look like a plain glossy tuck that has been in and out of someone's pocket for a year. these renaissance style courts arent impactful on top of one way courts being less desired overall. the pillars, arch and indices being in only the top 2 corners is just not a good looking design in my eyes. not good for playing, magic or collecting for the art. the backs are the same, plain. i think this is a bad campaign to try and make a case for KS dying.

i can agree with folks being fatigued. i have seen multiple comments of folks saying they just arent buying as many for multiple reasons. speaking for myself, after 5 years and hundreds of decks, i am way more selective on decks i buy now. after seeing probably thousands of decks at this point, not as many catch my interest. my collection is over 500 now and i dont buy multiple copies and have stopped buying every color offered long ago. couple that with pricing on decks, and shipping, that has really gone up over the past couple of years and so many decks on the market and i am buying less overall. quite a bit.

edit/addition: just looking at the new posts on topics this morning and not a single deck would i be interested in at all. this deck, art of play eames, egg tart, any oath deck, villa beluno, sepal, old world and imported. all of them have either, or both, poor design/art and/or pricing/structure problems for me. these have nothing to do with the KS aspect of my post but just a current sample of what is on offer. a pretty poor showing imo for one reason or another. on the current first page, at the time of writing this, 3 out of 29 decks on this page have i had interest in or bought. i realize that this post is likely more of a reflection on my tastes and opinions rather than the playing card industry. however, i think it could still point towards just an oversaturation of decks. there is only so much money to go around and if everyone is only interested in 3-6 decks out of 30 that isnt a whole lot going towards any one deck/designer, with obvious exceptions.

there are a lot of analytics that could be done as to the ''why'' and more numbers that could be studied and considered but here are some numbers on KS currently.
21 playing card decks
6 funding currently
2 over 10k- Caesar and onda v2
4 under 6k
0 have i pledged on
i think this has much more to do with the quality of design of what is on offer, pricing and fatigue rather than KS as a platform. dragon & rabbit should be killing it. imo, the best deck art by far on KS right now is sitting at 8.5k, 1.3k short because they are $25 per deck and $12 shipping. ridiculous.

[shunterino]

I don't think KS is dying at all and it's a very odd suggestion to make. This deck doesn't have a very broad appeal, that's all.

And it's easy to see why. The backs are fairly bland and consist of a geometric pattern that doesn't really suit the theme even though the individual components are of the time period, the courts are reproductions of famous oil paintings but in a flat digital manner done one way so they feel like a souvenir deck and the tucks don't come across particularly Tudorish.

Not that it's a bad deck, just nothing to make it stand out or feel special. I think they got the attention I would expect for a deck like this.

[GandalfPC]

Dragon & Rabbit suffers from the cost of each deck being so high and having only pair tiers with no add-ons, and this one might just be a matter of the design being too abrupt a change for many - the single orientation framed look can be tough to swallow

Like the Gatsby deck, it may just be the subject matter doesn’t have the current collector cross over at the moment (though a bunch of fancy artwork and embossed foiled tucks can go a long way to getting people to make the leap, thats not here - at least not in the regard that it transcends the subject)

[Adamthinks]

I wouldn't draw any conclusion about the market based on this deck. It's definitely cooled a bit in general since the height during the pandemic, but there are still tons of decks funding well. I know a lot of people on this forum are big Randy fans, but looking at the funding for most of his campaigns ( outside of Red Rising), he hasn't had strong support. The Irish deck didn't fund well either. Divination juuuust barely crossed the funding line. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of his work, and this deck in particular feels kind of bland. I like the courts a lot, I just don't like how they're framed, the back design, or the tuck.

[GandalfPC]

I think its important for such decks to exist - to really please some people often you do miss the mass market, and I would think if he wanted to go for the mass market he would have changed to more “pop” decks by now. Artists do their art often without desire to take the easy road.