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“Play me, bluff me, beat me, tease me, but please oh please, let me win.”
These limited edition playing cards designed by Debbie Millman exhibit the poetic beauty of her bold and experimental hand-set typography.

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Another $25 per deck pledge here. $75 for uncuts.

If these are the "best" decks, i dont wanna see the rest.

Cbkimble wrote:If these are the "best" decks, i dont wanna see the rest.

Me neither.

$10,000 funding goal, ten days, and "These cards are in stock and ready to ship. Pledge now and we’ll send you yours as soon as the funding goal is met."

They are probably going to succeed, but will this be the standard model, I wonder? What if a deck doesn't fund? What happens to the decks?

I don't even get the point of crowd funding it if they're already printed? I thought the point of crowd funding was to raise capital to get the product made... In this case the whole thing is just a pre-order, but with a goal... I guess to motivate people to promote the deck? Something along the lines of... "if we don't reach this amount you don't get your deck!" But since the decks are already printed, not reaching the goal is really a lose lose situation... Unless this is flexible funding like IndieGoGo and not all or nothing like KS.

This is just embarrassing.

Sher
They explained that this is not really crowdfunding but more of a presale type thing. I agree that they could have done better with their two first decks

Thanks for the clarification, Pierre

I think I prefer the KS model better.

For now I pledged for both just based on their limited release. When I get home I will sit down and look at these decks more closely

Fancy tuck design lol

Did I miss it or did they not state who's printing these cards? And woah at the $25 price tag. It's like you're paying $10 for that MagikPak thing.

Yashi, I was wondering about the printer, too. I'd like to assume it's USPCC, since D&D's decks are usually USPCC, but one can never be certain.

So Sher

I am looking at the site and these decks. It looks like the deck is not printed. It only gets printed if this thing funds 100%. To quote them

EDIt: It does say under the Debbie project that these cards are already printed so maybe for the first 2 decks they had them done and printed first but in general it looks like print only if funds

If you’re an artist with a design for a deck of playing cards, we’d love to see them. If we like what we see, we’ll work with you to get them printed. Together we’ll create a great looking page to pre-sell the decks. If enough are sold in 30 days to reach a goal, we’ll print them. Then, you can sit back, relax and collect a handsome royalty.

It looks like they will keep selling your deck and give you some kind of royalty for each deck sold. basically they facilitate creating your deck and then they take a big cut of the profits hehe

There are two ways to participate. An artist submits a design, but then needs backers. Backers are customers who supports the overall success of a deck by pre-ordering until 100% of a goal is met. Only then will a backer be charged and does the artist’s deck get printed.

I think the curious thing with this deck is whether it is printed foil on the cards or it's just stickers. It's hard to tell with the photos though.

bhong wrote:I think the curious thing with this deck is whether it is printed foil on the cards or it's just stickers. It's hard to tell with the photos though.

What the, I didn't even notice that. I got distracted by the horrid back.

I dunno, it's more of an art deck rather than a cardistry/magic/poker deck, which is strange since it's coming from the Buck twins. In fact, both of the Deckstarter decks seem to be art decks. Fans of Art of Play / DnD / the Bucks ($$$) twins are mostly cardists & magicians, aren't they? So why would they try to release 2 artsy decks instead of 2 cardist/magician decks that would appeal to their fans? Maybe they're trying to branch out to the mainstream?

Their website is absolute crap. Who did they hire? A second grader? Some links don't work properly. Also if you want to cancel your pledge how do you do it? Also how the heck can you change your password? I looked everywhere and cannot find nothing. I am probably blind

This deck is absolutely hideous, sadly with both d&d and her following, they will still probably hit this tiny goal of theirs, id love to see them fail just for respect to the damn industry

Looks like somebody wanted to make a playing card gazpacho and threw a few decks into the blender.

volantangel wrote:This deck is absolutely hideous, sadly with both d&d and her following, they will still probably hit this tiny goal of theirs, id love to see them fail just for respect to the damn industry

I agree that i hope they fail on the same basis but I doubt they will. This is one of the first two decks and if these fail, i would have to assume, deckstarter would fail as well and i just dont see them letting that happen.

Well it says something if Dan/Dave has to pledge almost $100 on their own site right ? And well that makes it slightly under 10% of the total as it stands now.

And dont you love it that they barely show any of the cards ? Its like they are selling this purely on reputation. Oh wait.. they are.

It says something that someone can create a few good decks and then just ride that success. To me, youre only as good as your last deck.

IDK, It seems to me that the rest of the graphic design world has taken notice of KS and collectable cards and want in. To me this looks like a rushed effort to cash in on the success of the likes of Robinson, Carpenter, Tomlinson, Chelko, Chin, Ovdiyenko Etc.

Would I pay $12 for it on kickstarter? Yes. But kickstarter's price tag is so low it lets me impulse buy. Sometimes I will just back a deck if I am bored... but $25? That's almost 4 decks from Ellusionist! Or a magic trick from Penguin. I guess I didn't realize some of you card collectors are loaded.

Lol I wish. I have found myself considering a career change to fund my habit!

Cbkimble wrote:It says something that someone can create a few good decks and then just ride that success. To me, youre only as good as your last deck.

I think the Bucks are known primarily for their magic and cardistry skills rather than their ability to create good decks, so I'd think they're relying more on their success and reputation as magicians and cardists more than their reputation for putting out well designed decks. Eh, I dunno.

Sher wrote:

Cbkimble wrote:It says something that someone can create a few good decks and then just ride that success. To me, youre only as good as your last deck.

I think the Bucks are known primarily for their magic and cardistry skills rather than their ability to create good decks, so I'd think they're relying more on their success and reputation as magicians and cardists more than their reputation for putting out well designed decks. Eh, I dunno.

This and the Smoke&Mirrors.

volantangel wrote:Well it says something if Dan/Dave has to pledge almost $100 on their own site right ? And well that makes it slightly under 10% of the total as it stands now.

And dont you love it that they barely show any of the cards ? Its like they are selling this purely on reputation. Oh wait.. they are.

Damn! That does say something if 12-15% of the sales are to the Buck twins themselves. I guess somebody has to buy them or this is all going to just be an epic #FAIL

The fact is that as of right now this particular deck isn't doing half as well as the other one, but they show that there is only "9 days left" in the campaign. That means at the current rate - they have sold - I'm not kidding - 30 decks, they will have MAYBE orders for about 200-250 of them, and nowhere near the campaign goal. Of course, D$D will find somebody to buy them so it doesn't crash and burn in the first month - well - ten days, I'm willing to bet.

I got a plaintive sounding email message a short while ago telling me to run get them before they run out (of the 970 decks out of 1000 they have for sale). They need to quit with the Kickstarter and crowd funding comparisons and admit that this is nothing but a presale of existing merchandise, period. I guess that might not be the case in the future, but for these two it sure tells me a lot if they can't even sell but 30 of those decks by now!

I'll give them our highest award: (and rate this totally morbid launch attempt at - and I don't even know why I'm giving them 1/2)

These two deckstarter decks look not bad but that price... I can't !

Do one thing and do it well.... seems D&D have been spreading themselves pretty thin between this, and ArtOfPlay... and weren't they supposed to be making a movie? How's that going?

Two problems I see here:

The price of these, when compared in terms of design vs value to the offerings of the past year, is too high.

Second is that design, even when from talented and innovative people, cannot wholesale be applied to playing cards. Playing cards are not posters, book covers, product labels, or anything else. They are a special class of product and have many requirements that mesh together to make a successful end product.

While some of this could just be my personal opinion, it appears that these problems are being reflected, as even with the significant market power behind this venture the uptake is quite sluggish so far.

Well said, Paul! It might just be your opinion, but I share it and I'm pretty sure we're not the only ones.

Playing cards have certain rules and traditions that SHOULD be followed as often as possible. They CAN be broken, but it needs to be justified. If a deck can't follow these rules/traditions without justification, you're usually better off choosing a different medium.

If I'm seeing the outer packaging for these Deckstarter decks correctly, it takes up about twice the space of a normal deck. Don't know about other collectors, but my deck storage space is limited, and I certainly won't be making room for this fat package design.