A few constructive criticisms. Basically, you have a decent project here - but it could be BETTER.
Drop the use of the word "minimalist." It's heavily and often inappropriately used. You'd do better identifying as an artistic deck than a minimalist one, especially since it's not really pared down to the minimum needed to really be minimalist. In some ways, you've ADDED artistic features rather than paring them away! Artistic decks are more popular these days while minimalist decks have come and gone, trend-wise.
I know you love that whole "key" thing for the indices (I can tell, it shows) - but it makes them look too much the same. The purpose of the index is for easy and fast identification of the card's suit and value. If they were all-red for the red suits and wholly different for each suit, with the suit portion of the key made larger to stand out more, then you might have a more functional concept. As it stands, it would be more difficult to play with. The same all-red idea goes for the red pips in the center of the cards - go all-red, not red mixed with black.
I wouldn't bother with a reveal joker card for this deck - it's more artistic than meant for magicians, especially as a limited edition. Make it look better and drop the reveal. Magicians tend to use more traditional faces for audiences to be familiar with them - few if any of your decks will see performance use.
Those courts are gorgeous - lovely, original artwork, but why no faces!? It doesn't go with the design at all. They're screaming out for faces, really. You did all that work making cool, original court costumes and you're going to leave out the faces? And you MUST, if you want to attract collectors and card enthusiasts, make DIFFERENT costumes/faces for each of the suits. To do less is often seen as lazy design work. Plus you've already lost many of the poker-playing enthusiasts of playing cards by not incorporating the features found in International Standard court cards that give the cards their colorful nicknames used by poker players - for example, "the man with the Ax/King of Diamonds," "suicide King/King of Hearts," "the Bedpost Queen/Queen of Spades," the one-eyed Jacks, etc. Not every deck requires these features, but often poker players seeking unique cards will look for them in a deck they're interested in and will lose interest in decks that don't have them.
That tuck box... Did you know there are collectors who will pay top-dollar for a fairly basic-looking deck if it has a kick-ass, gorgeous tuck box? That tuck is spare to the point of nearly unattractive. The design is practically plain and has no extra features to it. Not every deck requires such extra features, but it would certainly help to sell yours if the box was embossed, had metallic foil stamped on it, a custom deck seal, etc. - distinctive and attractive additional features common to many decks on Kickstarter today.
Lastly - for a deck made by MPC, those prices are kind of high. MPC is decent quality, but not best quality by far, and it's hard to justify paying that much for a lesser-quality print run. You're probably looking to make a very short print run, which is why you have it priced the way you do. Instead, you should get a better-quality printer (perhaps Expert PCC or Legends PCC) and go for a slightly larger print run - EPCC has a 1,000-deck minimum and LPCC has a 900-deck minimum, last time I checked, and per-deck costs go down the more you order. The biggest "sin" of an MPC deck is that they're impossible to faro or weave shuffle since they started laser-cutting their cards from the paper instead of using a die cutter. The edges have no beveling to them; they're perfectly flat 90-degree angles - this might sound great, but makes the cards more difficult to shuffle overall and impossible to shuffle using certain methods.
These are my ideas, based on my experience watching and participating in the market. Not taking my advice doesn't guarantee failure, by any means - but it's worth considering at least some of my ideas if you want to maximize the success of your project. I've done consulting work for a number of successful Kickstarter projects in the past.
(Read 14164 times)
