sweet! feedback rocks!
Will these decks be for sale? and if so, what would the price be?
I would absolutely *love* to get these into the hands of as many people as possible, but unfortunately, I think mass producing/selling these things would have too much potential to get into some sticky legal issues (I believe something messy happened with the old Gaming Etc. proxies). Of course this is a much smaller scale, so I doubt it, but I'm still a little leery. Perhaps more importantly, if I want to make these high quality, it's going to take a *ton* of work, even after all the initial digital manipulation is done. Basically with the amount of time it would take me to make a whole deck, I'd have to charge way more than I would expect anyone to be willing to pay for essentially a box of proxies.
I sort of do this already. In fact, this is how I pretty much learned how to be a competitive type 1 player.
Actually I've made a ton of proxies for playtesting myself, but I've used different methods, the one I like the most involves printing directly onto a card. I like the way mine turn out, but I'll have to give your suggestions a try too, thanks!
On that note I haven't decided yet whether I just want to make paper inserts or get the image right on the card. My playtest decks (which people who have seen them know they're pretty hot) are just paper inserts in a sleeve, and I've had many people, probably the majority of people, initially believe they're real cards (including some people who don't believe they're fake until I take them out and show them). To actually print on the card is a lot more work, and doesn't make a huge difference in sleeves, but it will make the gold borders look cleaner, and have great "wow" factor outside of the sleeve. Maybe I'll try to get a pic up of the two methods.
At the people suggesting other decks, specifically Chapin's Flash, I think it would be nice to have that deck around, as I personally feel like it's a really important part of vintage right now, even if it's not putting up crazy results. However, I want this project to be more special than just a set of playtest decks. I think it adds a sense of legitimacy to the project to only use decks that put up high numbers. I could certainly expand to Waterburies too at some date (which would be great for me, because I put up better results there), but Gen Con really is the most prestigious event. Also, even though it really doesn't affect them directly, I think it's cool to reward the people who got higher up there on results.
Alternatively though, I could change this into a "Legends of Vintage" sort of thing. The same concept, but focusing on notable players who become notorious over time, rather than a specific tournament. Ray and Stephen would obviously still be in the mix, but I could mock up a Rich Shay Control Slaver, or Dave Feinstein Fish, or *gasp* a BrassMan Gifts. This concept is certainly neat, and would allow me to make a really cool poll thread, which is always a winner. A drawback I see though is that this set of decks would be less practical from some standpoints. Playing a Menendian Burning Long deck against a David Allen 4 Trini 5/3 would be a fun match for vintage dinosaurs and fanatics like myself, but maybe not as relevant for people who aren't as familiar with vintage (though to be fair, I'd love to work my way back gen cons).
So what do you think? maybe I should rework my whole concept, but I want to do some commemoratin' for sure.
To Ray and Stephen specifically, the most important thing I need is something to stamp on your decks, like the signature in the example I showed (but I suppose it could be anything that would fit in that general area, but monochromatic as I'm going to make it gold), you could probably just make it in MS Paint, that's more or less what I did. That's all I *need need*, but I'm also going to make little bio cards describing the decks, we're talking three of four sentences ("Andrew Probasco, a twenty-one year old from Providence, Rhode Island, played a combo-control deck called Gifts Belcher. This deck controls the early game with disruption like Mana Drain to stop the opponent cold. When the time is right, the powerhouse tutor engine of Gifts Ungiven can grab a Yawgmoth's Will or Goblin Charbelcher finish them off.") I'd be happy to write them myself, but I figure the experts can do it better.
Further,I figure part of vintage is the pimp cards, it's just how we roll. Unfortunately foiling would be way too much work, and I want to keep things nice and english for playability, but if there's any specific versions of cards you want me to put in the deck (promotional cards? specific sets?) make sure you let me know. You can PM any of this stuff to me, or email at aprobasco at gmail dot com. You both know my AIM anyway.
Finally if anyone knows Nick Calcaterra's or Alex Franson's TMD name/email/AIM name, let me know!
