Presenting the Art Fighters Playing Card Company
 

For those who don't know it yet, we are going to produce playing cards! :D

You may actually wonder: "But Mark, it says 'Art Fighters'. Isn't that kind of negative, like crime fighters, who fight the crime? You don't fight the art, do you?"

Yes and no. We indeed fight for the art instead of against it, but in order to do so we also fight against the art the way it currently is. Almost every deck we will produce will have a special meaning based on the overly commercialized world of playing cards.

The decks will be sold in a Kickstarter-kind of way, in which we will take preorders and have the decks produced as soon as we reached a specific amount of orders. The preorder goals will be fairly low so that people don't have to wait for ages before they receive their decks. This however also means the decks won't be supercheap (but not superexpensive either). As always, we tend to break even.

The AFPCC website with more information is coming soon. Stay tuned!

I.Hate.You.Guys...












because now you've just put ANOTHER thing i can't ever get up for sale, right in front of me... damn it... oh well, at least i'll be able to drool over it everyday

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

I'll practically be making almost every future videos with these decks... Uhhhhhh the glory...

My mind will be having festival tonight as I sleep and dream.

I.WANT.IT.SO.BADLY.UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.* DROOL*

Note: No perverted meanings were put behind those previous words.

I'm disinclined to believe the latter statement.

WOOOOOOOOAAAAAAHHHHHHH!
Yeah!^^

Yeah! It will be amazing
Now Albert needs a trollface deck:p

Why? (I guess I forgot.) :(

my reason would be the easiest reason there is: because i don't have the proper form of payment. i can only buy stuffs like cards and gimmicks through real life exchange of money and item. and thus, making it impossible for me to actually GET anything more than a cheap item from the store

Well, you could always pay us through Western Union, though I think their service would cost more than the items unless you order quite some things at once. Easier (though WU is rather simple) would be to know someone who does actually have access to a proper form of payment and paying that person in cash yourself, I guess. Or send us a letter with cash (exchanged to Euros or exchange service costs included).

Just three options, two of which would definitely work for you, or anyone else for that matter. :)

And you can always get a junior credit card. Most of them are completely free, and you can use them at paypal with a small ammount of money, so it's relatively safe. Mine's just arrived, waiting to get my paypal validation. Then I can finally buy Interception. AHHHYEAH

I get my mother to buy things with her credit card and I give her the momey there and then, she then uses the money to pay the money that was used from her credit card.

Thanks you guys for telling me those options... but apparently... they all have one big flaw that makes my life only half as enjoyable as it should be: my parents.

The culture here states that the child must obey the parents or the guardians, and it's been drilled very deeply into my mind, and as of lately the restraints they put on me is increasing, thus making it virtually impossible to do such a thing like buying new stuffs unless they say it's OK to( and, they say No to any purchases that could possibly hinder my studies, which, in their mind, is related to magic)

I'd highly reccomend you going and getting a job, so you can manage your finances on your own.

I believe he is only 16 years old.

Good ol' cultural differences. Sometimes you'd forget that they still exist.

I could never imagine living in such a culture, at least not without doing things my parents wouldn't allow. I probably would've gone to the nearest WU bank to send some cash for downloadables so my parents would never figure (hey, that's just me.. don't actually do that).

But yeah, back when I was 16 (and even a couple of years before that), I had to work next to the study in order to make my own money, and then I could spend it on whatever too. What about you ask your parents for some magic/card-related things for your birthday or any other present-receiving day you got there? :)

If it were me I'd just call in a passing UFO and get a one way ticket to the Bahamas!

parents tend to be like that

Please tell me these decks won't be limited run

WooHoo!

Gosh, I can't wait to get my hand on these babies...

Depends on the success because usually they will indeed run in limited amounts due to the pre-order way of working (there will probably be a time that we can't gather enough pre-orders anymore). However, if a deck becomes a huge success, we could keep on running them.

Thing is that we don't want to take any risks because it would make us lose a lot of money. Now everyone basically will just pay for the production of their decks and because it goes in pretty large amounts it is not super expensive.

Though I know your intentions are better than most companies, I just worry that with magiciansthegathering producing videos, having a tutorial service, and now decks, pretty soon it will just be another commercial magic site, intentionally or not

To be honest, that's what's also been bugging my mind; although Mark did give me some justification to settle me down, I forgot what it was... :S

It's okay if people start calling us commercial, but as soon as they call us "another commercial magic site" they don't really know what we are doing.

There are quite some factors that make a seller 'commercial', one of the most important ones being (overly) hyping products and trying to gain as many customers as possible for the sake of selling those products and making (a lot of) profit. This often includes getting on other websites in order to promote those products, and setting up affiliate and/or partner programs. We don't do any of this, for the reason we don't care a bit about the money. This is also why our very best/trademark effects are kept much more of a secret and underground (in a non-marketing kind of way).

Instead, we care about the art and try to do everything to make the art something special again, what it was supposed to be. We are 100% against free magic tutorials and public exposure, and we make extremely cheap exposure videos and tutorials so that people learn not everything is free or supposed to be free in this world. Also, we have our customers come to us instead that we go to them and we don't put anything down their throats. And we don't make actual trailers for our effects but make full performance videos instead, and we can make the prices of whatever we sell as low as possible, once again for the fact we don't care about the money.

That being said, yes, we will sell the playing cards in a much more commercial way, but 1) playing cards aren't magic and 2) most, if not all of the decks we will produce should make people realize that the way the art commercialized over the past years is absolutely ridiculous.

Take uncut sheets, for instance. You pay eight to fifteen times more for a deck which you cannot even use and if you start collecting them, you can't list them or hang all of them on your wall because they take too much space. Then to realize the decks were only produced half way through, uncut sheets are much cheaper to make than actual cut and boxed decks of playing cards. This is one of those odd, overly hyped, commercial things of the past few years.

So I hope that clears things up. Thank you for the concern though. ^_^

heh, i don't understand uncut sheets. Looking forward to the art fighters though.. will there be a preview picture soon?

The first sample decks came in! :D

Miracles 1st Editions from Germany are definitely da bomb (yet not very affordable since only five of those decks will be released on the market so I won't bother you with those in the rest of this post). Our Compass deck from the UK is great too, and Miracles 2nd Editions from the same company have been printed far too dark due to a misunderstanding, but this will be corrected and should be all fine soon. ;)

Although the cards are by no means USPCC'ish, they definitely have their pros and cons over USPCC cards. I think it is very worth adjusting your handlings to them or at least to practice as much with those cards as with your regular Bicycle cards. Faro shuffles may be a b*tch with them, just being very honest, yet palming has never felt this good before since these decks adjust much more to your hands than any other deck on the market. I guess that's a great thing, but in some cases it may be something to really get used to. ^_^

decks from germany! cool!^^

Awesome. I palm way more than I farrow, so that's a big plus for moi! :D

how good is the stock Mark? are they stiff? or are they soft? what about the finish? does it provide friction to the cards? or does it let the card smoothly flow?

just curious

Can I bathe with them, do they hurricane well, what sort of flavour are they and do they look good under ultra-violet?!! Can't wait to see 'em :p

We changed plans quite dramatically.

The Compass decks will be printed in the USA by the United States Playing Card Company and will be available for pre-orders soon. At the same time the Miracles 1st Editions (the expensive ones from Germany) will be released. Miracles 2nd Editions (the affordable ones) will probably be printed by the USPCC too, but those decks won't be available till sometime in 2012.

This means all decks do have USPCC quality and handlings, if not better in case of the 1st Edition Miracles. The Compass deck will be printed on Bicycle stock and will have Air-Cushion Finish.

The website should be up soon.

Wow cant wait to get some and play around with it :D

You must be the luckiest guy around too! People who live close to us can get a discount if they come pick up their orders. ^_^

Ha dat ga ik zeker doen lol .:p

You bet i do that lol.

It took a while but... the site is fully done and open for (pre-)orders!! :D
http://afpcc.com

Haha! That's brilliant Mark, I love the designs and everything on the "About" page

Ha nice Mark great job i really like the Miracles .

Pre-ordered mine!!!! OMG people start buying so it can be sold more quickly so I can get my decks!!! :mad:

Im not gonna order i gonna take them by myself by Mark if i know when he have the time :D

You will have to order nonetheless since these decks are pre-orders only (only shipping would be cheaper for you though). ;)