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Messages - Medicus

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1
Hi,
I just wanted to let you know, my Renaisance deck is finally done (14 months of work) and live on kickstarter. I hope you like it!
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1112236200/renaissance-playing-card-decks

Thanks
Chris

2
Hi,
Twisted and Corrupt Wonderland Decks are finally live on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1112236200/twisted-wonderland-playing-cards

I hope you like it!
Chris

Some card previews below

(If there is a moderator here, I dont want to spam the forum but I have another post in the dev section from before the campaign was online. How can I remove this?)

3
Design & Development / Twisted Wonderland Deck
« on: August 30, 2017, 04:46:40 AM »
Hi,
I would like to present you a small preview of a "before Alice in Wonderland" deck, "Twisted Wonderland",  with a manga style that has been create in a cooperation with Mistiqart (she is a professional manga artist and teacher). The deck artwork is all finished and will go live on kickstarter in a few days. We hope you like it!

Thanks
Chris

4
Thanks for the feedback Eddie. But is it possible that GW has 2 kind of card quality? When you ask them they say they produce bicycle quality cards if you order 1000 and more. Otherwise they use a digital printing for lower numbers which sounds more like what you describe with MPC quality.

But for the pereceived value of a customer, if most thing they only produce in MPC quality that would be terrible for a collectors deck.

It is not getting easier...

5
Hi,
I have been observing the kickstarter playing card market for quite a while now and since I started to hire an artist to draw me my own deck I also checked a lot of printing companies. And the more I learn about these things the more I wonder about how much influence a printing company name has on the success of a kickstarter campaign and if this is in all cases justified. Here is what I could find so far or I believe about their preceived value for a kickstarter campaign:
Most decks are produced by MPC, USPCC and EPCC/LPCC and a few by Gamblers Warehouse

USPCC seem to add most value to a campaign (see here http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=7131.0;viewresults or just check comments on campaigns and reviews on youtube for kickstarter decks). 

EPCC/LPCC seem to offer best quality when I go through this and other forums. But this doesn`t seem to translate into a higher perceived value in kickstarter campaigns compared to USPCC.

MPC seems to add a very low perceived value to a campaign. Some people even argue you can`t do fancy shuffles with their decks because of their laser cut.

Gamblers Warehouse, I couldn`t find much about them which is really a pitty considering they are one of two(the other one being MPC) companies that not only print but also do fulfilment and got some fitting mechandise. And they claim to deliver cards in USPCC quality. But since nobody knows about them I would assume they offer little in value to a kickstarter campaign. At least they are not perceived as lower quality as MPC (could be wrong here).

Real Quality and Price Points
When I now consider only price and quality and not the strength of their brand name then I would say Gamblers Warehouse offers most. USPCC quality like decks, saving costs and problems for fulfilment is at the printing facility and you can easily add merchandise to your kickstarter campaign. And it is all located in the US where most if the customers come from (easily checkable when you click on community in any kickstarter campaign).

Worst seem to be USPCC in that regard. You have to order 10% more decks for they don`t know how much decks are destroyed in the production process (but you pay 100% even though u get 90% in worst case scenario). Then you have to ship those to a fulfilment center which cost money and is increasing the complexity of your project. And all that for the same quality of Gamblers Warehouse.

Best quality and customer service seems to be with EPCC/LPCC when I read through the forum. But since they produce in Taiwan they add not only the fulfilment problem to an order but also the transport over see and different countries to it (longer lead times, possible custom problems ect.).

And then there is MPC. Same advantages as Gamblers Warehouse but their card quality is a bit lower. But for that you can print a few decks for showcasing easily.

Please note that everything here is up for discussion and please feel free to correct me or add stuff. My overall goal is to get more information to make a smart decision for my kickstarter campaign.

Thanks
Chris

6
Here is a almost finished Queen Of Spades for my deck:
http://cardsenthusiast.deviantart.com/art/Queen-of-Spades-of-Elena-Cornaro-Piscopia-686386493
Not sure how to post a image here but the link should work too.

7
Thank you Don for your detailed reply. I must say there is a lot to learn here for me and you and this forum are a great help.

For the shipping cost: I was wondering too why it would cost so much to ship 1000 decks to another country. But since 2 big companies gave me such numbers I believe them to be right. Add another .5 to 3$ per deck and also have to deal with customs when those decks come from lets say Taiwan, adds a lot to the whole project. Unfortunately MPC seems rather a bad fit for a quality historical deck the more I read about them. So far only gamblers warhouse seems to offer everything in terms of quality and fulfillment service. 

And interesting to hear that Legends and Experts are 2 different companies but when you deal with them it doesn´t appear so.

8
Hi Guys,
my name is Chris and I am a german youtuber. My channel has right now a bit over 18k subscribers and focuses mainly on historical and strategy pc games including card games such as Magic the Gathering and Hex. I recently got my camera working again and would now like to start a deck review series with real cards. So if you are interested to get a free deck review(or any other stuff) video on youtube for a german audience then simply send me a PM on youtube or to my email: gamereviewx@gmail.com and show me your deck. I am mainly interested in historical, fantasy and scifi stuff. All reviews are ofc for free. Simply send me the stuff and I make a video about and add a link of your website/campaign.

Thanks
Chris
https://www.youtube.com/user/ReviewGameX

9
Hi,
I am preparing a kickstarter campaign for a historical deck of playing cards and I was wondering about the production and logistic aspects. I have read many articles on the subject, this forum here is a huge help for all who want to start such projects and especially this post was an amazing big help http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=10265.0, but I am still a bit confused.

I assume that my deck is for collectors and not poker players and magicians. Therefore handling of the cards is not as important as the feel of the card and the look of the art on it. Price is always important but the higher the art quality the less important this becomes. These are at least my assumptions right now (feel free to correct them if you think differently, I am here to learn). Now as I see it there are just a few differences in the producers but which seem to have a huge impact:

Cut: So far I only could find a huge difference in laser and non laser cuts. And it seems MPC is the only company with laser cut and that those cards are terrible when it comes to special shuffle techniques. Here is a youtube video where a pro, at least for me he seems very good at this(and he does wonderful deck reviews), can`t fancy shuffle those cards because of their laser cut:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGy7G1DXqrM. So MPC seems bad for magician and poker player customers which are both not my target clients.

Stock: MPC shows how thicker stock lets less light through. This seems important to me for better contrast on each card. Also thicker cards feel heavier and so are probably perceived more valuable by the collector and it also might affect the livetime of a card. To sum this up, thicker paper seems better to me. But most producer also seem to offer a good range here.Only disadvantage of thicker stock is that magician and poker player seem to dislike it for they need to get used to.

Texture and Finish: These are different things but seem to me that they serve mainly the same purpose. Both decide how slippery a card will be. But I believe that a texture also could add a quality feeling to a historical card by giving it a less perfect smooth surface and therefore appear "older". For the finish it seems that this is a chemical put on the card to protect it. Not sure if that is the only finish technique but some cards get a chemical smell depending on their finish which some people really do not like (I got this from different youtube video comments in those decks). But since the smell will disappear after a while I am not sure how important that is. To sum this up, a rough texture together with a matte finish(no mirror effect) seem the best option for a historical deck.And most producer offer these things.

Fulfillment: Now this has nothing to do with the cards quality but it will drastically increase the price of a deck. So far I have found good producers but many of them do not offer fulfillment services. To make matters worse the transport cost to a fulfillment service are very high. For example 2 different producers estimated for me that when I get 1000 decks with them and they send them to any fulfillment service provider of my chosing that alone could cost me 1000 to 3000$. And then of course we would still have to pay the normal fulfillment costs. When I now consider a 10-20% margin for each deck and estimate that this would make 20 000 to 40 000$ on kickstarter then I am not sure this is a viable project to me anymore. So any producer I am looking for should offer fulfillment services inhouse. So far that seems only the case for MPC and gamblerswarehouse.

So after this very rough check I wonder if my best option would be to produce with MPC or gameblerswarehouse. I would highly appreciate any advice here.

One last thing I was wondering is some of the relationships of these companies. For example gameblerswarehouse produce their own cards inhouse but work together with USPCC and I can order with gamblerswarehouse USPCC produced cards. Also Legends and Expertplayingcards seem to be one and the same company located in Taiwan. But why have 2 names then? I must admit the whole card producing industry seems very confusing to me.

Thanks all
Chris

10
Thank you both for your feedback. Seems when it comes to card production I still have a lot to learn.

And thank you Don for your discussion on the aging effects. You have some very good points. I will discuss those with my artist.

Thanks
Chris

11
Hi,

my name is Chris and I plan to create a custom playing card deck for kickstarter (please excuse my bad english, I am from Germany). My vision is to bring a historical deck to live that represents interesting figures from the renaissance time period in Europe. Each facecard represents a figure and will give hints about his accomplishments. For exmaple the card in the attachement shows Galileo Galilei. His contribution to history could be seen in the use of this telescope to advance our understanding of the solar system which also could be seen as a key element of the renaissance where reason and observation were emerging. So the card contains the figure, the telescope and some of his discoveries.

I plan to lay out most if not all of the cards in this way. Please note that this card is a first version. I am no artist at all but I was lucky enough to find an amazing artist for this project. She has a professional background in drawing and learnt even at the university level about drawing in the renaissance style. In my non artist opinion she quite well used newly developed painting techniques from the renaissance with her own style. For example we can see in the card the clever use of light to create an impression of distance (just imagen the head of Galileo without light and shadow effects, he would look more 2d than 3d and therefore not realistic). An expert could propably explain it much better than me and find a lot more here to point out. But for me everything that makes a painting more realistic, through light, use of proportions or any other means, represents the art style of the renaissance.
That being said, I believe the card needs a bit change since I would like the figure in the focus at all time. Right now the eye wanders first and most of the time to the middle 2 objects. But this was only a first draft to get some ideas.

One or two words more about the card style. I decided that I want the card have an aging effect, when you zoom in you can see imperfections on the pips and corner of the card. I feel that this gives a historical deck a fitting touch. Another thing to point out is that I read a lot here about what card fans expect from a deck. And one thing I see very often is that all the cards must be functional meaning the pips and facecards must be recognizable on a glance so one can easily play poker with it. So my artist stayed as close as possible to the originial pips but added her personal touch to it. I espacially would like to point out that the spades symbol is even incorporated in the background if you check on the right top corner. But I think we might have to do some minor changes here since that spades there and the other 2 corners look different (in shape and 2d/3d effect). But I like the general idea of this to make cards easier to recognize.

So but now I need your help. I would like to make this project a success so that I can not only realize this deck but also start a historical deck series. So your feedback would be invaluable to me. Be as critical as you like. I rather have my feelings hurt now than not selling any decks later.

One more thing, I am not sure yet where to produce the deck and what materials to use. Right now I hear and see a lot about the bicycle card company. I talked to them and they offer 1000 deck production runs in typical bicycle deck quality. But this quality seems...and now I need to be careful....not too special. They use 300gsm card stock which basically is fine. But you could put a lighter under it and see the light shine through. While when you do this with a 330gsm card stock it is light tight. (check out the videos about it by MPC http://www.makeplayingcards.com/pops/card-types.html). As I see it right now, for a deck that focuses on the look of its art work 330gsm seems the way to go since it would give better contrast on each card.

Another point to consider is that the more a card weighs the easier it is to handle (at least that is what some card magicians tell me). But this is maybe not an important point at all in a collectors deck. 

My last consideration is the delivery process. I have seen many kickstarter campaigns that fail to deliver on time or all the stuff the promised. And very often it seems this is because the have a too complicated delivering process (for example they use a producer for their deck and another one for a certain reward and then use a third guy to do the logistic). Not only does this normally add cost to the project and the deck itself it also is way too prone to problems. But now, when using USPCC I actually have no way to avoid this since they don´t offer fulfillment services.

The problem now is that USPCC produced decks seem to have an advantage in terms of card fans trust them. But other companies such as MPC offer, at least as I see it from their website, higher card quality and combine the production and fulfillment process under one roof so it would cost less and is less likely to have problems in the delivery. So I am now a bit torn here. Do you guys have any advice?

Thank you all for your help
Chris

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