The Cubist Republic Card Deck (KS)

[badpete69]

hahahaha  they keep coming.  Let's go with yet another minimalist deck

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1715763529/the-cubist-republic-card-deck

[Don Boyer]

Wow.  I'm looking at this deck and all I can think is, "This is about as exciting as watching paint dry..."

The Czech Republic is a beautiful land, and this deck does it ZERO justice.  They could have taken some photos of what they're describing or shown some paintings, perhaps even a few sketches or something, but no, they thought you'd enjoy reading about it instead.  It's a lot like listening to a mime perform in a radio show, or traveling to an exotic destination and spending your entire time there in the chain hotel where you booked your room.  This look is so utterly generic, it's terrible.

Oh, these are the creators of the Ho Chi Minh deck - that explains a lot...  It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it.

If you want to make a minimal deck, fine, make a minimal deck.  But when you make a deck about a topic and distill that topic to just a few sentences on the cards - it's not minimal anymore, it's just dull.

[jwats01]

Oh, these are the creators of the Ho Chi Minh deck - that explains a lot...  It doesn't excuse it, but it does explain it.

I thought they looked familiar. This new project is under a different company/project owner name.

That seems to be a trend lately. If you fail, come back under a different name to try and erase your history.

Sorry for the off topic rant!

[Don Boyer]

No, your rant was on the money, here!

I looked at their website and had to laugh.  The Ho Chi Minh deck was utterly sparse, just as this one is.  But look at where they drew their inspiration from:

http://www.culturecards.co/hochiminh/

Lovely, bright, active, vibrant images of the land and the people in what I presume is Ho Chi Minh City.  And from THAT, they get something that would look more at home in a modern-decor bachelor stockbroker's apartment?

[vmagic]

They still claim they had rave reviews on a few sites and are still printing the Ho Chi Minh deck due to some demand. Apparently they changed their account to go with their new name.

[Don Boyer]

They still claim they had rave reviews on a few sites and are still printing the Ho Chi Minh deck due to some demand. Apparently they changed their account to go with their new name.

It's not impossible that they had rave reviews, but they certainly didn't come from here, and probably not from UC, either.  These reviews were almost certainly from art or design websites.

It's similar in some ways to the Misc. Goods Co. deck.  When it first hit out radar, most of us thought little of it - it was black-and-white line work, it was impractically arranged, etc.  But it got reviews on design websites and suddenly took off like a rocket. That, plus a few design improvements, helped to make that deck a success.  But I don't think for a moment that this deck will hit that level of success, especially with all the "minimalist" competition out there at the moment.