I watched a little of the DVD. The woman pretty much talks at about 100 miles an hour, without taking a breath. There are some interesting pointers - dispelling all of the 'old wives tales' about sleeping with the cards, keeping them in a wooden box etc etc.
I feel that I have given this deck a bit of a tough ride.
It is not really my cup of tea, but as I was scanning the cards for here this afternoon, I was impressed by how alike the illustrations were to the originals, in terms of scale and detail - in some of the cards, anyway. I imagine that it was not a project that had a high budget, and if that is true, then I would say they did a good enough job. There are a few cards that I actually think are ok and the colouring of them all, in general is good.
The other thing that I liked about this version was that the there was an equal balance of men and women in the courts. All of the pages are female. Also, I read so many times that people become frustrated with decks that have 'perfect' people and perfect bodies in it. Without being rude and saying the models in this deck are not attractive, I would go as far as saying that they look to be 'average people', so if you want a deck with down to earth characters, then that is one of the 'pro's' of this deck. Having said that, the deck does not comprise people of different ethnic origin or skin colour, which is a shame.
But yes, I could do without the keywords. I think it would be difficult to cut them away since they take up so much of the card. However, I wonder if it would be possible to cover them up or paint over them. As a training deck, you could then write in whatever you wanted since there seems to be enough space.
Just wanted to give the deck a bit more of a fair chance. As you said, Gregory, there are many worse decks out there and this one has hit some of it's goals and targets. On that subject, is there any samples of the Charmed deck on the web as I searched and couldn't find any more than the box. Would like to see it now, since I am curious.
LB
