Following up Zenith, the first deck in the Signature Series from Encarded, wasn't easy. Zenith was the first independently designed deck to be printed by the Expert Playing Card Company, sold out in about a day and has skyrocketed in value. I knew that it would take something special to be a worthy successor, so I've spent the last 4 months carefully crafting Chancellor.
This deck was inspired by a small part of a nearly century-old deck that I have, and I expanded on that design while incorporated many of the design features that have been part of earlier Encarded decks. If you look at Chancellor, you'll see the patterned border area of Aurum, the "shadow border" style of Tendril, the borderless concept of Zenith and the subtle pattern textures of Deco. All of this is combined into a stunning back design that is done in 4 separate metallic inks.
The courts are inspired by a rare deck from 1895 and was completely redrawn and recolored to make them a unique and special set of figures. I purposefully picked colors that you don't normally see in playing cards, and also added a very subtle corner detail to the faces that ties together the fronts and backs.
The box needed to borrow some of the ideas from Zenith, so I maintained the matte black, thick paper stock but upped the complexity of the design by using two different foils, a metallic copper and a gloss black. The copper will stand out brightly against the matte paper while the gloss black will be a more subtle design element that invites closer inspection. The box also makes use of very large scale and complex embossing to add a tactile and visual richness. I actually had to scale back the complexity of the embossing four separate times, because my initial vision for it was simply impossible to reproduce in real life.
The box will also be sealed with an extravagant copper metallic seal that features prominently in the design, with the "Chancellor Medallion" being front and center on the box and the individual numbering wrapping around to the back.
I personally think this is the best deck I've done and I can't wait to get it into the hands of collectors. Thanks for the support, and making projects like this possible!
Chancellor will be available for pre-order starting November 24th at 6pm EST. They might go fast, so I'd recommend acting fast if you want to add these to your collection.