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Hello United Cardist,

I would like to know, what is the worst playing cards design you ever see or you have?
Weird color match? super thick/unbalanced white border? Small font? too complicated design?

The 1st/Riderback collab.

Mostly because there was no design.

Can't really think of any 1 deck which stands out as worst overall as I've erased them from memory, but here's a couple of things which I dislike:

No unity in the theme and/or colors of the deck. The courts and/or faces don't match up with the back and tuck. Worst offender would be many of the T11 decks with awesome tucks but standard courts with not even a recoloring of the courts to match the tuck.

A good example a mismatch for me is the recent Lake River Stream deck. (viewtopic.php?f=8&t=22146)
The backs didn't match the tuck nor the faces at all, imo.

Another personal turnoff for me is having the art on the faces crammed into the card and most of the details get lost. Here's a good example of that : https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/39 ... ying-cards

The only deck that I own that actively annoys me is the Emily Sleight Nebula deck. The backs are great but I didn't realise the courts were Daniel Schneider style friends and family. I despise them. I have no idea why anyone would want to force their personal coterie of freaks and weirdos onto others. Just a huge narcissistic lack of self awareness I guess. It's like buying a photo album with someone else's holiday snaps already in there. Creepy as hell.

In terms of other decks I won't buy, the AI designed decks that have been popping up recently all look terrible. You can tell with a glance the weren't designed with any artistic thought. They all look the same, like some blue/green Turkish rug, and the inconsistencies make them look amateurish. Trying to sell the mistakes as unique and unusual artefacts to be admired is also ridiculous.

I don't really buy slightly modified decks anymore. Standard courts with different colourways or the classic sunglasses and holding a vegetable or musical instrument or something vaguely to do with the theme of the deck is tired and lazy. I do have some decks like that but see no need to add any more to my collection.

And on a more personal level, I don't buy gilded decks. Nothing against it, can look quite good but just don't think it's worth the extra cost and too many decks just slap it on without really adding anything to the design of the deck.

Pretty much anything ever produced by Merz67.

Most of the truly terrible designs that one sees can be spotted on Kickstarter, and they typically don't fund because they are objectively awful.

There was one that I recall that was, on the one hand, terrible, but it was also "camp." Are you familiar with that term? I'm not clear if that's just a US expression or more generally embraced throughout the English-speaking world, but it refers to things that are so bad they're good. The movie "The Room" is held up as one of the most fascinating trainwrecks of a movie to watch (I've never watched it myself, but I do enjoy a good campy movie from time to time.) For me, one such camp deck was The Derp Deck, which never funded because it was so bad, but I think it would have been kinda cool to have, even so. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/in ... c?ref=card.

Check out the conversation about meme-based decks here: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=12898

Some designs are too busy for my tastes (Aurora by CPC, for example) or are "okay" but really not as well executed as they could have been (Gothique by Black Box), but these certainly don't qualify as "worst." There's also a deck that I really wanted to like that had great illustrations... but the illustrations of the courts were so small on the cards that they were overwhelmed by the white space, and they turned out to be repeating courts. That probably ranks low on my list more because of how much potential the deck had versus the final results.

Perform a search here for "Terrible design" and I think you'll find many, many threads that highlight some of the worst-designed decks you're likely to see. But, in more than one case, it's more a matter of taste than being objectively bad. Still....

I honestly thought that recent "F*ck You" deck was horrendous. No idea how that funded.

I was truly bummed when the Ravens deck ended up being repeating cards across the four suits. Made me more mindful of keeping an eye out for that on art decks in the future.

Ah I should have also mentioned just about anything created by Elite Playing Cards. One of those where the renders always looked great but the decks themselves always came out real muddy and disappointing.

kevork wrote: ↑Thu May 11, 2023 7:01 pm I honestly thought that recent "F*ck You" deck was horrendous. No idea how that funded.

Dafuq? It did fund? Well, then it has my vote, too.

Worst for me was a black stock deck with red and blue featured based on the suit - with the blue so dark that you can’t really see it - and the red bright enough to make sure you know that wasn’t some artistic choice - just ruined. It sits hidden behind a deck worth being seen, where it shall remain, until the end of time.

Always get a prototype printed before you order up a few thousand decks.

After reading some of the posts, I've managed to think of 2 that I would put as worst design.

1) Anything by Hartsoe (do a search on KS)
2) Criss Angel's Mindfreak deck.