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Whew. A new record for most copies bought of a single deck. Those three folks (two in this thread, one in my PMs) who asked me about onforwarding a deck: I'll be in touch once they come in.

I don't even want to try to put a number on how expensive this hobby has been for me over the last five days or so.... [MURRAY]

rfugiel wrote:Card stock: These are probably the thickest cards I’ve held. If anyone is familiar with old trading cards, they are similar to Ultra Flair in terms of thickness. 37ish cards is the same height as a deck of 54 standard bikes. Anyone who has OCD when storing decks might have a breakdown trying to put these away.

Do you have any idea how comparable this deck is to Randy's Cosmic Bowl or Lotrek's "thicker" decks?

vasta41 wrote:

rfugiel wrote:Card stock: These are probably the thickest cards I’ve held. If anyone is familiar with old trading cards, they are similar to Ultra Flair in terms of thickness. 37ish cards is the same height as a deck of 54 standard bikes. Anyone who has OCD when storing decks might have a breakdown trying to put these away.

Do you have any idea how comparable this deck is to Randy's Cosmic Bowl or Lotrek's "thicker" decks?

Unfortunately no. Never held had any of those decks before.

Based on his description of 37 cards roughly equals a 54 card Standard deck. That works out to 1.46 times a standard deck’s width.

Bradius wrote:Based on his description of 37 cards roughly equals a 54 card Standard deck. That works out to 1.46 times a standard deck’s width.

Probably the same size as the Grotesk Signature deck, then.

Edit: It would be depth, not width.

Bradius wrote:Based on his description of 37 cards roughly equals a 54 card Standard deck. That works out to 1.46 times a standard deck’s width.

Hmm that seems bigger to me but I have no math to back that up. Probably won't fit in these then but I don't know how much thicker they are.

Quick measure of the depth? of the tuck is about 1 inch. Hopefully that is more helpful.

vasta41 wrote:

Bradius wrote:Based on his description of 37 cards roughly equals a 54 card Standard deck. That works out to 1.46 times a standard deck’s width.

Hmm that seems bigger to me but I have no math to back that up. Probably won't fit in these then but I don't know how much thicker they are.

The Carat X1LE is 2.5cm thick (depth), which is almost 1 inch...the Sailor Moon decks might just fit, but won’t know for sure until I get one...will check next month when I am back in the US for the convention

Eric Lee wrote:Anyone know if the Z deck was ever released on GeekThirst?

I've asked a couple of times and they keep saying "soon."

I just checked and the Moon Deck does fit into the X1LE Carat Case. However, it is a tight fit.

Bradius wrote:I just checked and the Moon Deck does fit into the X1LE Carat Case. However, it is a tight fit.

Awesome. Thanks for letting everyone know!

I got this deck and while it looks really nice the cards are insanely thick to the point where its pretty unplayable.

JuFiN wrote:I got this deck and while it looks really nice the cards are insanely thick to the point where its pretty unplayable.

I'm sad to hear that but I'm not surprised. With all the features jam-packed into this deck I'm okay sacrificing a little playability.

A little surprised they are not sold out yet

I kind of agree with you, but this is not a deck for everyone among card collectors and especially cardists. I am also not sure how widely it is known they are on sale. The price seems reasonable. It is a Steve Minty deck. That should do it if folks know it is out there.

Yea this deck definitely isn't for everyone, a small niche, in fact, but I'm okay with that. This deck was an experiment to push boundaries and see what limitations would arise and unfortunately the handling diminished as a result. Other than that and certain other things I will nit pick at, I'm relatively with this result. Of course, things could certainly be better but it's all a process that is very intriguing to me. As some of you know, I like to continually push the envelope and not keep doing the same thing over and over and this was a prime example of that.

@ Steve, any plans to create new anime themed playing cards? One Piece? Naruto?

KT52 wrote:@ Steve, any plans to create new anime themed playing cards? One Piece? Naruto?

I would definitely buy multiple if he made some for Fairy Tale or Sword Art Online.

Someone needs to get ahold of Kohta Hirano and do a Hellsing deck. If we're going to be seeing more anime themed decks.

The artwork lends itself to an amazing deck. Like, the back design could be one of Alucard's crazy transformations with all the eyeballs.

Those are quite certainly possibilities for me to make. If you guys have other suggestions for titles that you'd like to see my tackle, I'm all ears. I'm pretty nerdy with anime stuff

Saint Seiya
Masters of the Universe
Wacky Races
The Mysterious Cities of Gold

I actually liked the Spanish version of Saint Seiya better (SoCal Bros, what?!) Caballeros del Zodiaco.

My wishlist would be something like this:

Hellsing
Hellsing
Hellsing
Super Dimension Fortress Macross (could incorporate the offshoots/prequels as well)
Caballeros del Zodiaco
Patlabor (although, this might be an odd theme for a deck-- maybe it could just be a deck based on mechanical designs by Mamoru Oshii)
Universal Century (So, any/all of the Gundam series set in the main storyline the Universal Century)

Edit: Apparently Bandai has already done card decks for Gundam UC, might be a licensing issue there.

Edit2: Mamoru Oshii was the director, Yutaka Izubuchi did the mechanical designs. Either way, love what they created for Patlabor, Ghost in the Shell, and Izubuchi did designs for Gundam and Gasaraki as well.

Maison Ikkoku.

That's it.

One Piece. Has great characters to use as well

JuFiN wrote:One Piece. Has great characters to use as well

+1 for One Piece
Yonko, one for each suit!

steveminty wrote:If you guys have other suggestions for titles that you'd like to see my tackle, I'm all ears. I'm pretty nerdy with anime stuff

I also think Saint Seiya is perfect, although it is a bit niche. Everybody is mostly suggesting Shonen series which does make sense but I'd like to add some others. Keeping in mind that you need a lot of characters to make a deck, my suggestions would be:
Fullmetal Alchemist - Simply can't go wrong with this, the alchemy circles and symbolism alone offer plenty of possibilities
Baccano! - The 1930's aesthetic could be really interesting
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann - Colour, style and epic-ness out the wazoo
Magi: The Kingdom of Magic - Interesting character designs and a magical theme
Space Dandy - Do I even need to say more? A Dandy who is in space
Trigun - Old school space western, more characters than Cowboy Bebop
Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei - Unique pattern/texture-rich art style, sense of humour, something I would personally like to see
No Game No Life - Gorgeous popping art style, might have to do a bit of digging for enough characters but including the prequel movies helps with that, where's the second season already!?

All of these anime are also fantastic and well worth watching if you haven't already of course! I want to add too that I was a bit put off by the photograph-like texture on the background of the Sailor Moon cards, it works great on the tuck but for me it clashes with the 2D illustrations on the cards and makes it too busy.

Considering how global or niche some anime maybe, it'll be good to focus on those that are known to a wider audience. Preferably those anime who are based or have a popular manga based on them. That will help get the deck a wider audience. Even an old classic like Sailor Moon still hasn't sold out yet.

Based on that, here's my recommendations. (I'm dating myself as you will be able to tell the era these came from):

Studio Ghibli deck: Licensing may be tough there but it would be so cool to see all their main fantasy characters as the courts (have to be the more popoular ones though as I doubt most will recognize pom poko and Grave of the fireflies.)

Neon Genesis Evengelion would be another cool deck but I think it may have been done before. But this may be too niche

Robotech/Macross is a good one.

Doreamon! (not sure if there's enough main cast for 12 courts, but Doreamon can fill a few jacks , queens or kings by himself)

Ranma 1/2

Ah! Goddess.

Lone Wolf & Cub.

I'd personally struggle to call Evangelion, the most famous and important anime of all time, at the top of most every 'top/best anime' list on and off the internet, and starting point for tens of millions of anime fans to move past introductory shonen, too niche (imagine the spear of longinus embossed & foiled on the tuck, in understated simplicity, ah). And yes it has been done, multiple times over it's 20+ years of merchandise, always terribly. At least we're finally getting Rebuild 4.0 in 2020, 5 years later than planned -_-

I would prefer that Steve designs a TwoPiece deck before a One Piece deck.

Eric Lee wrote:Studio Ghibli deck: Licensing may be tough there but it would be so cool to see all their main fantasy characters as the courts (have to be the more popoular ones though as I doubt most will recognize pom poko and Grave of the fireflies.)

To the best of my knowledge Disney has the international licensing for Ghibli films. "Tough" is comically understating it.

Eric Lee wrote:Neon Genesis Evengelion would be another cool deck but I think it may have been done before. But this may be too niche

I can't speak to the breadth of its appeal in Japan (although I do distinctly recall stores in Akihabara carrying Eva merch in 2012), but as Alric points out it's up there with Ghost in the Shell and Cowboy Bebop in the canon of foreign fan faves. Tough to assess whether it'd sell better than the Moon deck; Sailor Moon is unquestionably the more "popular" series by sheer numbers but there are a lot of (male) anime fans out there who wouldn't be caught dead with anything shoujo but looooove Eva.

Eric Lee wrote:Ranma 1/2

That's... actually a very good candidate. Expansive cast, seminal '90s anime for the international fandom scene... I've never seen it myself but the market is almost certainly there.