Where am I with these damn Stargate playing cards?

Previous design, see end of this post for latest.

This whole project would be at least a month sooner if MGM simply replied to emails even just the same day. Even next day would have been good. It is very frustrating, in some cases waiting a week, or more, for a reply.

However, I finally got (on 20th): "I have been receiving your emails however I have not been able to spend time on this at present. If you are willing to pay a $5,000 minimum guarantee (or BPS equivalent) and have liability insurance, we can grant you the license for the cards."

So, they can grant a licence. I immediately sent back the completed application and asked how I pay the $5,000. No reply since (that is two of their working days they could have replied). Not even a clue how long it will take. I don't hold out hope for a reply this evening either (they are US time zone, obviously).

$5,000 is a lot. It is about 10,000 packs of cards worth of royalties, and is not something they will refund if I don't sell that many. However, I have got to the point where I want to do this anyway. I have created these cards from the C code to make the pips and layout to the drawing of the court cards and put in a lot of my spare time on this. I'm a bit of a Stargate fan, and so if I just break even I'll be happy, and if not, it will be a bit of a folly, but entertaining and educational anyway. It may be a "sunk cost fallacy" but I'd like to see it through now. At the end of the day it is my money - some people have cars - I have MGM licence (soon) and Stargate playing cards! I rarely get to do anything even vaguely artistic (failed Art O-Level), but I hope people like what I have created.

The only advantage of the delay is I have spent time verifying things like checking gate addresses (not easy), and that the shape of the Stargate dialling glyphs are correct (also not simple), and fine tuning the layout and exact composition of the packs I have designed, etc.

The card designs are all ready. Ivory Graphics are putting together the quote for printing now - and I have decided to "tack on" a couple of other packs to make use of the volume discount. The plan is to make 1,000 Stargate packs initially (500 single packs, and 500 deluxe packs). Maybe not sending all to Amazon at once in case I find other channels by which to sell them.

The two extra "fun" packs I am tacking on are a seriously minimalist pack, and a left handed pack. Left handed just means the index is only on the right. The minimalist pack however is even more minimalist than the minim pack, having just an index character and suit in one corner, all white otherwise, white backs, and white box (apart from barcode on base). Both packs should be interesting to list on Amazon and great fun to play with (especially as I am not actually left handed).

As for the Stargate cards, I have decided the format of the two packs. Firstly, a 64 card deck with this story:-

Found in a corrupted section of the Lantian database was a reference to various common games, including playing cards. Stories of these card games no doubt inspired the early card games on Earth in the 15th Century, but some details we lost in the mists of time. For a start, Alteran playing cards have 64 cards in a deck! 

We know from the time that Jack O'Neill had the Ancient repository of knowledge downloaded in to his brain that the Ancients did, at some point, use base 8. It should be no surprise that the Alteran playing cards have 64 cards as that is "100" in base 8. Any race with a fondness for powers of two would create games using nice round numbers like 4 and 16 and 64. 

We also know from Samantha Carter, when reprogramming a Tobin mine, that any advanced civilisation needs to have invented "zero", so it should be no surprise that the cards start from a zero value. 

Once travel to and from Earth was finally established, the Atlanis Bridge Club were able to get decks of cards made up in the style of those original Alteran playing card decks to play proper Alteran card games. Sadly the database lacked details of the court cards, so we used classic 19th Century designs, but we do know they used Alteran characters and digits in the corners. This was not easy, as personal items are hard to get shipped on the Daedalus, but because of their small size an exception was made. 

Playing bridge is easy, 16 cards each and allow bids up to 16. What can be more challenging is playing other common games using Alteran playing cards.

Learning the Alteran digits and characters should not be hard.

Secondly a deluxe deck which has the same 64 card deck plus a second which has 41 gate symbols, a gate symbol name card, and some gate address cards. Making games for these extra cards is not so simple.

Dr Elizabeth Weir realised that the replicators had given away some more detail about Lantian playing cards after she had a nasty run-in with nanites invading her brain. They showed her that there are playing cards with gate symbols on them. Unfortunately it is not clear how they are used in games, yet.

I have also created Facebook and Twitter for the "Atlantis Bridge Club" so there is somewhere to discuss the cards and the games.

If you want to see the actual card designs, the decks are here. Happy to have comments on the design, whilst I wait for MGM.

So, still, I am ready to roll and get cards printed and on Amazon, just waiting yet again for MGM. So, watch this space!

P.S. After some comments on the back, how about this? (amended again, lorem ipsum text and symmetric, even though gate is not)