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Get on over to the Kickstarter project page now to help support this fantastic deck of playing cards! Quick! Only 24 HOURS to go!!! 

And as a special promotion for followers of this site only, if you pledge for a deck, you can get the PDF book for the special price of just $3.00! That’s half price!!

For those of you with your fingers on the pulse… sorry… <ZAPP!> “Fingers On The Pulse”, you will remember my post a couple of months ago about the <BOOM!> ‘Mighty Super Heroes Playing Cards’, and you may even be thinking (or at least, you should be thinking) “hasn’t she covered this before…?” And dawg nabbit you’d be right!!!! I did!!!! But <POW!!!> (ok, enough of all that…) due to a certain small company called ‘Marvel’ they had to pull the last campaign and totally re-evaluate the artwork on the whole deck…. I’ll get back to that in a moment… But for now….

<Previously in this episode…> (sorry, I know I promised… ok, that’s it for sure..) Mighty Heroic Minis Playing Cards, by TwoGeeksGaming, are a minimalist version of all your favourite super heroes from comic books, TV and big screen. When I say minimalist I mean that the artwork literally takes all the identifying features of each Hero and brings it down to the bare basics needed to recognise each one. So, no….. there’s no ‘bat’ on Batman’s chest… but it kinda *looks* like a bat… and that’s enough to let you know that it IS Batman. And there’s no big yellow ‘S’ on Superman’s chest, but it’s pretty obvious who it’s meant to be. And that’s the point…  It’s all very clever. Imagine taking a well known, well loved, iconic image and condensing it right down so that you give just the very barest of information for people to know what you are trying to put across to them. Well, these guys have done just that!! With simply oodles of super heroes! 

<Later that day..> (Sorry!!!) This is one for all the comic book nerds amongst us. Actually… no… Not even nerds… FANS..!! I personally love Spiderman. Is he in the deck….? Can YOU find him…..? The Flash?? Is he there??? Wonder Woman!!! I wonder if she’s included….!! (see what I did there..??) What IS the 4 of Clubs?????? The uncut sheet of this deck would be a fantastic addition to any kid’s bedroom wall. Imagine the fun they’d have with their friends guessing each character. That is bound to take up at least a few hours of ‘sleepover’ time. Enough for you and your spouse or partner to enjoy a wee glass or two of your favourite tipple in front of an open fire or a few episodes of The Game of Thrones.

Like I mentioned earlier, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the whole story behind the previous campaign {high drama alert, toys being thrown out of prams, etc. – stay tuned for further updates…!!!} the original deck had to be pulled due to some issues that the deck creators had with a certain multi-national company who said that the images were too closely resembling their original characters and copyrighted imagery. With this in mind, the creators went right back to the drawing board and had to bring each character and their identifying features back to the absolute bare necessities in order to maintain their theme of minimalism, and at the same time making it totally obvious who each character was meant to be.

This is a deck of cards that can not only be coveted by gamers, but also by anyone brought up with super heroes, and anyone who has that fond memory of that special hero who they always dreamed would rescue them some day…. NO…! Never mind all that actually, this is a deck for fans. Nerds. The whole Big Bang Crew. Those who appreciate those special people for who they are. For what they chose to do. Chose to be. Chose to become. Something that a heck of a lot of people these days just don’t have the bloody time or inclination to do. The Elite. The Ultimate. The bloody absolute ‘just doing what anyone else would do’ brigade (even though we know WE wouldn’t…) This deck celebrates them all.

And it’s not even *just* playing cards that are on offer…. no..!!! There’s a whole range of goodies for you to snap up and collect – yes, collect!! Remember what I keep saying about Kickstarter… this is a LOT of limited edition stuff. You won’t be buying these in Walmart or Poundstretcher or whatever the cheap shop is in your neck of the woods… but you WILL get them for a good price on Kickstarter, and you know that only a few hundred people in the whole world will have the same thing as you do. That, my friends, is limited edition. And limited edition is rare. And rare is VALUABLE. So snap these babies up. Mouse mats, bookmarks, t-shirts, fridge magnets, 3-D picture cards, and even an actual book of the artwork of the whole deck (as well as a PDF version for you to do whatever you want with – for personal use naturally) all of these great additions are available for you to pledge for as part of the Kickstarter campaign. And as the Mighty Heroic Minis Playing Cards have already reached their funding goal (bloody well done!) it means that anything that you do pledge for now will definitely be yours. <BOOOOMM!!!!!>

So, like I said earlier, for followers of this site, if you pledge for one deck you can also get the PDF book for HALF PRICE at $3.00. Just pledge, then PM the creators saying that you saw this review. Then use the PDF to print off posters for your kids bedroom wall, use them as screen savers, stickers, etc. whatever you want – just don’t go selling them on, ok..??????

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I’ve put a few questions to Steven Fields of TwoGeeksGaming about this and the last campaign, so here’s the low down on what’s been happening….

Steven Fields – Thank you very much for having us on your website. We are both fans and avid readers as well.

iCollectPlayingCards – Thank you Steve, we’re big fans of your work too :) Ok, so first things first. My readers will recognise this deck as having been on Kickstarter before – I’ve had many comments about it – remind everyone why you pulled the project the first time round, and what is different about this new campaign?

Steven – We ultimately decided to pull the first campaign because Marvel had an issue with some of the specific cards that were in our deck. Once those cards were removed from the deck to satisfy their issues, it left us with a fairly large gap to try and fill in a short period of time. So instead of scrambling and possibly putting in artwork that might not be up to our standards, we pulled the campaign to rethink and retool it so we could come back even stronger. This new deck has 50% all new artwork. We took in some of the critiques from the backers on the first campaign (larger pip/numbers/suits) and added those into the deck, the overall card design has been updated and streamlined for a better playing experience.

iCPC – The whole minimalist imagery of this deck is something that people seem to really go for. Was it difficult to decide which elements of each Hero to use without going overboard and ‘giving too much away’?

Steven – Yes, that is the one thing where we had to walk a fine line for both the Figures and the Elements. There had to be enough detail in the art so the viewer knew what they were looking at, but at the same time not be massively detailed that it was an out and out copy. From the start, we wanted all the art to be our own interpretations of characters. Our own unique perspective and twist, but still staying true to whatever character we were trying to convey.

iCPC –  How did you decide on which Heroes to use? Were they personal favourites? Is there anyone that has been left out that you’ve now kicked yourselves over…?

Steven – We knew we wanted to do 50% Heroes and 50% Villains. That was a nice balance for us. Then we just kind of chose characters we liked and made sure that if it was a particular hero that we would also put in their villain. We tried to do that the best we could. At the same time we had to make sure we used characters that most people would know if they looked at it long enough. Couldn’t use completely obscure characters that made people scratch their heads and say “Who is that?”

I don’t think I have a personal favorite, but I am partial to the Element artwork a bit more than the Figures. For me they posed a challenge to put things in from a character that gave you a general feel for them. So some of the that art we could put little hidden gems into them.

As for what was left out… well, all the Marvel stuff. I thought there were some beautiful pieces in there. Really was bummed out and almost made me give up on the whole project.

iCPC – Which particular Hero was the biggest pain in the a$$ to draw? Maybe they are easily recognisable, but you just couldn’t quite get the whole imagery right without being too detailed…

Steven – They all had their own challenges that we had to get just right or they wouldn’t work or be recognizable enough. Some characters we just couldn’t get right as figures… so we went to the element art for them. Some didn’t work no matter how hard we tried. But I will keep those to myself. I never give up and maybe you will see those characters in a future deck.

iCPC – Who are you most annoyed about not being able to include, due to the issues with Marvel?

Steven – I have always been an Iron Man fan since I was a kid. I had some really cool pieces of him and some of the Avengers as well. But it is what it is. Can’t hold a grudge about it. The art will always be there… if only for myself.

iCPC – You’ve backed an absolute LOAD of playing card projects on Kickstarter. Do you have a favourite deck? Who is your favourite designer and why? And are there any decks that you wished you had backed but didn’t and are regretting it now….?

Steven – I back a lot of other decks because some are absolutely gorgeous. Truly great pieces of art. They just so happen to be small and on playing cards. But that doesn’t make them any less beautiful than something you would see in a gallery. So I don’t mind spending some extra money to get stuff I like. I really love Giovanni Meroni’s (Thirdway Industries) work. Both his Delirium and Omnia decks are truly amazing. I also think Steve Minty is a great artist. His Olympia deck is awesome.
There are always going to be decks that I wished I had gotten but missed out. Some of the ones from Jackson Robinson come to mind. Federal 42 I beat myself up about. Hive 2 by Brendan Hong I missed out on.

iCPC – TwoGeeksGaming are planning many different decks for future release – no spoilers being given here, but I’m really excited about these :) – do you already have any of these ‘in the bag’? and if so, when can we expect to see the next installments? Do you have a particular time-frame in mind?

Steven –  Actually… I will give you & your viewers the scoop on our next deck. It will be “Mini Impossible – Spies & Secret Agents”. It will be part of our SMArt Series playing cards… like Mini Heroic Minis are and will be that same minimalist style art. Same feel, just with a different theme. We will put it up on Kickstarter sometime around February/March. Same time that Mighty Heroic Minis ships to the backers. After that we have 2 other decks almost completed that are very different from our current stuff. Some beautiful looking decks, but different in style, tone, and artwork.

iCPC – Sounds like we’ve a good few decks to look forward to then. All the very best with those, and many congratulations on the success of the Mighty Heroic Minis deck :) Thanks for chatting with us Steve.

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If you’d like to get your hands on a deck or two of the Mighty Heroic Minis playing cards, or indeed any of the other cool stuff there is on offer, just get on over to the Kickstarter project page and make you pledge by clicking HERE.

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