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Here's an interesting art deck with lovely and subtle 1 way courts. Printed by WJPC, the same one who did Sunish's Bharatha 2 deck. This is definitely more for the art collectors. This is way better than the Stanbur Royal deck. Already 60+% funded.

Looks like Asian themed decks have become a popular theme recently. Now if only we can get more African and South American themed decks.

Playing cards have their roots in Europe, but we decided to make a design that is distinctly Oriental. For the last three years, we applied Korean style illustrations into playing cards which were inspired by oriental painting. Fusing two different cultures is not easy, so it took so much longer than we expected. However, through dedication and persistence we created the design we desired.

The tuck and courts. Click on the KS link to get a better look at the courts.
The back
The Aces
The pips

Artwork isn't bad, but at 18 shipped to the US for a WJPC deck, easy pass!

The back design and 4-color suits aren't good.

Hot damn that's pretty. Sold!

i like everything but the pip layouts on number cards

Price is a bit steep but it's honestly gorgeous, only thing I could complain about is the pips.

The texture of the cards reminds me of the Montenzi Lino deck (albeit this one is in a different colour range).

I understand the complaints about pips and printer, but this deck checks off ALL my boxes. Love the unique pips and layout, the 4 colors, the artwork, the aces, the EIGHT bonus cards, and the suit distinctions in the court designs. I love that the courts are all women. The ONLY thing that would have made this deck better—more visual distinction in the artwork between K, Q, and J. And I wouldn't have cried if the printer had been higher quality.

EDIT: Of course, I should note that this will be the creator's first successful KS, so I am risking my money by backing.

This is how you make an all-female deck without being a prick.

Would it really hurt the creator to make the back design 2-way..? The 4-color suits do not bother me as much as the 1-way backs do.

TwoPiece wrote:This is how you make an all-female deck without being a prick.

Would it really hurt the creator to make the back design 2-way..? The 4-color suits do not bother me as much as the 1-way backs do.

Hadn't really noticed until you mentioned it, but yeah, that center flower makes it one-way. A shame, really.

In this hyper-creative deck design/production world, this just doesn't get me excited. Perhaps TwoPiece is right. The artwork is very good. But the one-way design isn't amazing enough to get me to ignore that it is one-way. The price though is the killer for me. Not anywhere close to what I would be willing to spend. $16.50 for two delivered is too steep.

Anyway, I am glad it met its goal anyway and has the backers it needs to move forward.

This is a good example of a custom deck that wasn't intended to be a blatant, in-your-face cardistry deck, but in actuality is an excellent cardistry deck. The back design has bold, contrasting colors (doesn't have to be laid out in a severe geometric pattern) that will show well in packet displays and cut routines, as evidenced in the video. The back border is irregular at the corners and at the sides, so that will lend itself to more interesting fanning patterns and card spreads, plus the back design is twin tipped for more fanning options. The pips are laid out in a circular pattern for good effect if you do a face-up card spin, and the courts are very colorful so you should see nice pops of color during your routine. Cardistry design principles can easily be incorporated into beautiful design, and I really hope this is the trend with cardistry decks as we hopefully move away from the geometric color-blocking on the backs with bland, simplified courts that is the norm for "cardistry" decks today.

But even if you're not into cardistry, this deck is attractive enough for collectors. The tuck box is nice, and the artwork is exquisite. I really love the colorful courts with the East meets West fusion. I don't mind different colors for each of the 4 suits, I have a lot of European decks that have 4 colors and it never bothered me during card play. The back design may be one-way unfortunately, but it's subtle enough that I can live with it, plus it probably gives some utility for use in magic.

The downside is the price and printer. If you buy 2 or 4 decks, then the pricing comes down closer to the standard price for a custom deck shipped, but the single deck price is excessive. My experience is very limited with WJPC, but I got a Bharata Series 2 deck from Sunish that handled surprisingly well. The stock was excellent and the finish, while not super slippery, was at least even. However, I got feedback from a few of my friends that also got the Bharata 2 deck, and some agreed with me that the finish was smooth and even, but a couple said their decks were clumpy. China can produce a quality deck, but the question is can they produce that quality consistently through a 1000 or 2000 deck print run? EPCC/LPCC have definitively proven they cannot. I think the jury is still out with WJPC, we'll need to see a larger sample size of decks from them.

Really like this deck, but at this price and with this printer I cant back it :/

I absolutely love the court art and concept! I don't mind the backs. I wish there were more color or something to represent all of the different suits in the deck. The backs look like only the diamonds, and perhaps the clubs, factions are present.

The aces are consistent with the theme and colors. The jokers and extra cards are beautiful.

I like the tuck art. It is hard to tell from the pictures but it appear to be lacking any embossing. I understand every tuck cannot have foil, but I feel like in this environment, tucks just don't really stand out without one or the other.

I could live with the pip and index colors, however the pip layout is meh. These colors are perhaps a bit stark on plain white stock. Perhaps some other designs with the pips would have made them less shocking. An antique paper or some other scroll work to tie them in.

Overall, verdict for me is... unsure. With so many other projects already backed, the mongol set launched the same day and the NPCCD decks being launched tonight, I'll have to see what I have left near the end of the project.

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This deck does a lot of things right for me as well, and in general i think the art is pretty good, but not quite excellent.

What puzzles me is: why does "a design that is distinctly Oriental" feature entirely white court figures? (Ok, maybe a few could be borderline asian... but definitely not most)

So they "studied Korean traditional drawings, patterns, weapons, and clothings..." and then put them all on a bunch of white women? WTF?

I'm not buying the "Fusing two different cultures" argument either. It all just looks wrong to me.

th4mo wrote:What puzzles me is: why does "a design that is distinctly Oriental" feature entirely white court figures? (Ok, maybe a few could be borderline asian... but definitely not most)

So they "studied Korean traditional drawings, patterns, weapons, and clothings..." and then put them all on a bunch of white women? WTF?

The suggestion that anime characters are "drawn white" if they aren't uniformly black-haired and black-eyed is an old canard. It seems much more likely to me that the illustrator intended these to be read as modern, trendy Korean women, who - through the magic of modern chemistry! - can and do sport every hair color in this deck. (The JoS and JoD do have light-colored eyes - a trait that artists in the genre frequently give to mixed-race characters - but they could also be read as ethnic Koreans wearing fashionable colored contacts.)

A cursory Google image search for the term "manhwa" will give you pages of characters intended to be Korean, drawn by Koreans, who look very much like the women here. In the absence of any of the exaggerated "exotic" features - long pointy noses, enormous round eyes - that the style typically uses to denote foreigners, it's fair to assume that these are the same.

I upped my pledge so I will have a couple decks to trade, if anybody here likes the deck but not the price tag. Make me an offer after fulfillment, if you're interested.

A quick note.....WJPC offers different card stocks European, Asian etc.) and finishes or varnishes, at least this is what I have seen and experienced. I did pay a premium for their special imported finish/varnish as an after application on the sheets once printed. Even the tuckbox stock used was different than their regular ones.

If you see any decks coming from WJPC, please don't assume it will have the same finish or card stock as that of Bharata v2 or Kalevala deck. Don't want you to feel disappointed, just in case it could not match your expectations - and remember that they have different options available at varied price points.

By the way, this deck looks good, I might be in.

I appreciate the response Merle, especially since no one else seems to have an opinion. While i've never hear of "manhwa", I am not unfamiliar with anime (and when I say anime, I am not being specific about country of origin, though I assume most of what I have seen was from Japan). A "cursory" search, which I made at your suggestion, shows me images that look very much like anime, even though I did see links to articles insisting they are not the same thing. Maybe it's just my western eyes. in any case, while I can see your point, those images I saw do look a BIT more "stylized" than the art on these cards, and I did see a lot of the "long pointy noses, enormous round eyes" that you mentioned, so I'm not sure what to make of that. So maybe a cursory search is not enough to fully understand. In any case, I'm not trying to provoke some racist discussion about ethnic features. It's just my opinion that these cards look "weird". But that's just an observation, and I'm not trying to sway people either way (while it seems like perhaps you are). I would not be unhappy at all to see this project succeed. However, if you have to explain why they look the way they do by invoking the magic of modern chemistry!, then I would argue that you are actually supporting my point, since by that rationale (if you're going to invoke chemical modifications) anyone can look like anything!

Thanks for the discussion!

Merlebird wrote:

th4mo wrote:What puzzles me is: why does "a design that is distinctly Oriental" feature entirely white court figures? (Ok, maybe a few could be borderline asian... but definitely not most)

So they "studied Korean traditional drawings, patterns, weapons, and clothings..." and then put them all on a bunch of white women? WTF?

The suggestion that anime characters are "drawn white" if they aren't uniformly black-haired and black-eyed is an old canard. It seems much more likely to me that the illustrator intended these to be read as modern, trendy Korean women, who - through the magic of modern chemistry! - can and do sport every hair color in this deck. (The JoS and JoD do have light-colored eyes - a trait that artists in the genre frequently give to mixed-race characters - but they could also be read as ethnic Koreans wearing fashionable colored contacts.)

A cursory Google image search for the term "manhwa" will give you pages of characters intended to be Korean, drawn by Koreans, who look very much like the women here. In the absence of any of the exaggerated "exotic" features - long pointy noses, enormous round eyes - that the style typically uses to denote foreigners, it's fair to assume that these are the same.

I upped my pledge so I will have a couple decks to trade, if anybody here likes the deck but not the price tag. Make me an offer after fulfillment, if you're interested.

Magic Tapp wrote:The texture of the cards reminds me of the Montenzi Lino deck (albeit this one is in a different colour range).

I thought that also.


I like these a lot, but the price it too much for me.

Well, well, well. You learn something new everyday (or every so often). Turns out 4 of the extra cards were to help make the deck playable for a game called Tichu. (That explains the 4 different colours.) Some of the backers spotted it or read it on Boardgamegeek and brought it up to the creators' attention. Here's the response by the designers. I'm impressed by how they handled it and how quickly they responded. Something sorely lacking these days.

This is the official position of Full Custom 52 regarding copyright issue with Mirage deck and Tichu Deck.

We had spoken of this issue with an official Korean agent of Fata Morgana. This is their response:

It is completely legal to create a Tichu friendly decks under the follwoing conditions.

1. Do not use the name ‘Tichu’.

2. Do not include rule book or instructions for Tichu rules.

3. Do not use exact same artwork.

As we mentioned, the four animals on the special cards are very commonly used material for oriental writing or drawing. It is not fair if we can not use those materials because it was already used in the Tichu deck.

A few years ago, an Italian company released ‘Tichu Deck’ with better artwork but without permission from Fata Morgana. They used the name Tichu and included the rule book in the package. Those were violations of copyright laws and Fata Morgana asked them to pay copyright fee. The Italian company is still paying a fee of about $0.10 per deck.

this is a different situation however. We desired to create an oriental style deck and attempted to use the best material for it. If the same composition of the deck is the issue, we will add some more cards which could also represent Asian culture.

Long ago in Asia, people believed in imaginary animals like Dragons and phoenix. There are more animals such as the white tiger and snake turtle.

We will include these cards in a pack to make complete set as representative of Asian animal gods.

While I will not be picking up this specific deck (I appreciate the art and design work that went into it; it's just not quite my thing), I am very pleased to see the project creators appear to be well informed, deliberate, thoughtful, and responsive. That speaks volumes, and it's the kind of thing that can make me back a project even when I'm on the fence, if only because I want to reward those attributes.

rousselle wrote:While I will not be picking up this specific deck (I appreciate the art and design work that went into it; it's just not quite my thing), I am very pleased to see the project creators appear to be well informed, deliberate, thoughtful, and responsive. That speaks volumes, and it's the kind of thing that can make me back a project even when I'm on the fence, if only because I want to reward those attributes.

+1 to what he said ^ lol

Some valiant legionnaire of the United States Postal Service braved subzero temperatures to deliver these to me today. Some notes:

• The decks were sent in a padded envelope rather than a solid-walled box. For one or two decks that might be sufficient, but I got four decks and one got a bit dinged up. I would definitely tell this creator to spring for better shipping supplies next time.
• The tuck is matte and has a sort of soft touch to it, and the visual contrast of the three-color design is quite striking, but aside from the custom stamp-cut seal there's no bells or whistles (no interior printing, embossing, foiling, etc.).
• The flap of the tuck likes to stick a bit, but the cards themselves come out and go in smoothly - which I was a bit surprised by, seeing as there's 62(!) of them. I don't have a carat case to check, but I suspect this deck might be too thick for a standard-sized one.
• The illustrations came out beautifully. Fine linework, delicate gradients, intricate patterns in the courts' clothing... the level of tiny detail that's still visible, at this scale, has to be seen to be believed.
• The green used for the clubs is a bit darker in person than it looks on my phone screen. In low light, at a glance, it can read as almost black. The blue of the diamonds is a hair darker, too, but still a bright, medium blue, definitely not mistakable for black even at very low light.
• The finish of the cards feels... normal to me? They glide against each other pretty smoothly. But I handle my cards very little and when I try it looks more or less like this, so my opinion isn't by any means informed.
• I don't remember if they mentioned this during the campaign, but at some point they did rework that center flower to make the back design two-way:

I have two of these available to trade with anyone who might be interested.

First off, thanks Merle for the review - I unfortunately had to pass on this deck at the time for a couple different reasons - main one being due to too much cash monies already being drained into other projects simultaneously and I wasn't really feelin' like taking on the risk of backing a first-time creator either... I also wasn't super crazy about the circular orientation of the pip placement (or actually, the design of the pips very much at all as they didn't seem to match the same level of sophistication as the style of the the courts or the back... ), but that's really just nitpicking (or nitpipking...?? lol) and overall, it really is a pretty great deck - maybe even DOTYs 'Best Rookie' 2019 great lol

I'm also really glad to see they tweaked the back to make it two-way - that's awesome and it looks great

So I'd totally be interested in one of your spares; unfortunately, I don't believe I really have anything I honestly think you'd be interested in for a trade, but maybe I could buy it off ya? Let's talk about it! I'mma send you a PM later

And secondly,

Merlebird wrote:

• The finish of the cards feels... normal to me? They glide against each other pretty smoothly. But I handle my cards very little and when I try it looks more or less like this, so my opinion isn't by any means informed.

that video was so triggering and made me super uncomfortable... thanks lmao

Merlebird wrote:Some valiant legionnaire of the United States Postal Service braved subzero temperatures to deliver these to me today. Some notes:

• The decks were sent in a padded envelope rather than a solid-walled box. For one or two decks that might be sufficient, but I got four decks and one got a bit dinged up. I would definitely tell this creator to spring for better shipping supplies next time
• The flap of the tuck likes to stick a bit, but the cards themselves come out and go in smoothly - which I was a bit surprised by, seeing as there's 62(!) of them. I don't have a carat case to check, but I suspect this deck might be too thick for a standard-sized one.

I hate when creators think that a padded envelope will protect a deck from the barbaric handling of the postal carriers ...I always use a box when shipping decks.

As for the Carat X1 , it has an internal thickness of 2.2cm or .866 inch (a little less than 7/8”)...hope that helps.

Received mine yesterday and Merle is right on the money with his review. A stellar deck of cards with amazing artwork and so many bonus cards! I was very leery of these guys especially since their first deck was canceled and was quite different than this one, but they've impressed me with the quality and quick turnaround.

I am not crazy about pip placement and colors either, but the court and extra card art was so good that I had to get these. Looking forward to receiving mine. I got 2 actually, one to surprise my son with.

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Merlebird wrote:But I handle my cards very little and when I try it looks more or less like this, so my opinion isn't by any means informed.

Gawdammit what have you done....my eyes, my brain!! (cries in elvish)

I got my 4 decks in a padded envelope as well, but luckily none were damaged. Merlebird pretty much summed up the deck very accurately. My tucks are very hard to open because it seems the soft touch material sticks to each other, so the flap doesn't want to come out. When I first pulled out this deck, my first thought was, "Damn, these cards must be thick!" But then I realized there are 4 Jokers and 6 additional art cards which accounted for the thick feel. I have some reservations about the finish, though. The cards are slippery enough, but they don't fan evenly fresh out of the box. I'm still in the process of breaking these in so hopefully they'll even out eventually.

I, too, appreciate the effort they made to make the back design 2-way. I don't mind the pip layout, they make for some nice face-up card spins. I don't mind 4 colored suits, either. The best aspect of this deck are the gorgeous court cards. Excellent artwork and beautiful colors, and I like the East-West duality of the courts. These are early front-runners for Best Court Cards for the 2019 DoTY contest. Overall I am very happy these are in my collection.

I got my 2 decks today. I can say I like them very much. The art on the courts and the extra cards is fantastic. I really like the dual court design. The colors on these cards is top notch as well.

The tuck has a really interesting look and feel. I have other decks that are a matte finish but these are different. It almost feels like there is some kind of rubber coating on the tuck. I know there isn't but that's the only way I can describe it. Embossing would have really made this tuck shine.

There are only 2 downsides to this deck for me, but I knew what they were going in. The pip layout. I wish it were different, but it is the lesser of the 2 drawbacks and not a killer. However, I still just have some sort of mental block with the 4 color suits. I know it matches the theme. If there were ever a deck where 4 color suits were fitting, it seems to be this one. However, when I look at the cards or fan them, it just doesn't feel right.

Seeing as those 2 items are very subjective and personal opinion, I cannot recommend enough this deck if you like this kind of art. If you missed the campaign on this one, you won't be sorry picking up this deck if you can find it aftermarket. I almost passed it up because of the 4 color suits, but in the last days of the campaign I had to grab it becuase of the excellent art and it is even better in hand.

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