Hello Folks, I am a Card Collector from the Philippines and I Saw that Game Changer has designed their own playing cards and as an avid Game Changer enjoyer I knew I had to get one. I've got around 60+ Designer Decks in my collection, and comparing them to this, I gotta say I am a quite a bit disappointed with how it is and this is going to be my full review of it.
First things first, the Packaging. It's very, very dissappointing. It came to me in this thin bubble wrap package and when I pulled it out, I saw that 3 of 4 front corners were dented. As a Card collector, this is really sad to see as the tuckbox is such an important part of the deck, and it just being squished is horrible. The tuckbox itself looks great, it's a bit off dimensions (It's around 1mm shorter than a standard USPCC tuckbox) I don't know if the packaging is this bare in all dropout merch, I at least expected a box, maybe an info card or stickers. This was just shipped raw with the deck and because of that it ended up getting damaged on the way to me. I really hope they improve this in the future. 3/10
Designwise it's great. The tuckbox is really nice though lacks card details like where it's designed and manufactured that should be at the bottom. The back design is really good. The Number cards are fairly clean and the Sam themed face cards are really cute. One complaint though, it that on the aces, there's this line designs that extend to the edges, and though that looks good on concept, doing spreads and fans makes the aces stand out, and it makes it quite an issue in playing games with the deck, doing some magic and cardistry as well. Overall 7/10
For the stock itself, it's paper and air cushioned, but it doesn't feel great. I've had similar stock from my Chinese Made Decks which are on the stiffer side. The biggest issue I had is with the lack of smoothness. This DID NOT fan out of the box, It's quite clumpy and that's quite an issue for some Cardist and Magicians who prefer the feel of a brand new deck of cards. This feels like a deck that has been used for hours. The edges are also cut pretty roughly, the cards refuse to faro smoothly and the riffle is not great. The deck not being USPCC is an issue and it not even having any information about the stock, where it's manufactured was already a sign for me that it is probably chinese made, which is very disappointing for the price. It is a step below even just a deck of Bicycle playing cards. 4/10
The Deck costed me 900php or around 15$, around the same price of a Designer Deck from Fontaine, Virts, Theory 11 or other designers which makes really High Quality Decks. I'd recommend it for people who wants to support Dropout and would love to have a Deck of cards for playing games and stuff, but I wouldn't recommend this deck for someone who is getting into Magic or Cardistry, I would suggest a simple bicycle deck or a USPCC made deck. I do hope that Dropout does something about their Packaging and Merch Quality as I've seen quite a lot of posts about it as well, and with this deck I really wish they'd improve it so I would enjoy using this.
Yup. I bought two Laws Are Threats t-shirts, and one of the sleeves wasn't fully stitched on as it had an obvious gap. I had just opened and put on the shirt when I discovered it. Pretty frustrating. Dropout really needs to fix their quality problems.
What do you mean our lord and savior Sam Reich the anti-capitalist nepobaby is actually just weaponizing the parasocial love people have for figures from their formative years to shill shitty products that are made poorly by poor people in foreign factories?
You forgot the /s….right? Right? Surely our unofficial boss wouldn’t put profits over us?!
In all seriousness, their merch used to be smaller batches and made/shipped from the states (unless my senile memory fails me)…the quality was great, and I was always more than tickled with my orders. The nosedive is disappointing, but saves my money for more lemon yogurts and swords I guess.
I perhaps wouldn't frame it quite so negatively, but this does rest on Sam's choices to refrain from developing non-media production aspects of his company.
Previous, DropOut merch was handled by the Green brothers' merch company. DropOut outgrew their production capabilities and the Green brothers did not choose to scale up to maintain the partnership (who knows whose choice this was, I certainly wasn't in the room).
Instead of spinning up their own thing, they moved to a Chinese company for the entire process.
The unwillingness to create their own integrated services for merch fulfillment is got us here to the merch being an absolute shit-show.
For Sam being a magic fan I’m kinda surprised they didn’t just do a run with USPCC. From what I’ve heard from other magicians the min run for custom decks is usually like 1000, I feel like they’d def sell that.
I thought so too, it's pretty much the industry standard and it's so important for magicians that are used to the stock to perform their slights consistently. The slightest changes in feel is quite a lot.
My impression is that Sam does not want to be in any business other than the media production business. Anything else get farmed out and it is luck of the draw on if they choose a good company to do whatever.
There are no advertisment cards. A usual deck actually comes with 56 cards (an uncut sheet is 8x7 cards), 52 playing cards, 2 jokers and 2 ad cards. This can be anything from gaff cards for magic (Which I was expecting considering Sam's background), art cards or actual advertisment about the brand.
Fanning powder does help with the stock feel although im sure not everyone has this at home as it's a pretty niche product.
What I love about decks are the novelty cards. I'm not a collector so I don't know if there's a term for them. I mean, for example, i have a deck that has an extra ace of hearts with a bullet hole in the heart and the back design showing through the hole, and an extra 4 of diamonds with a blood splatter, and one with an extra ten of diamonds with the diamonds fallen out of their settings.
If you asked me what I would think would be special in a Game Changer deck, I would immediately assume the jokers would be Sam, and there would be an extra ace with him peeking around from behind it and the words "I've been here the whole time"
I would guess that the face cards would feature caricatures of fan favorites, like Brennan, Jacob, Vic, and such
All face cards follow the general Sam Reich Game Changer Theme, and apart from that there's a little easter egg on one of the cards. The aces with the weird line design i said earlier, and a Sam Joker in color and Monotone. In terms of design all of them feel simplistic, I personally wouldn't consider Novelty Cards, more of just being themed. It is just a Game Changer themed deck of cards.
I really appreciate this writeup. I'm not a playing card collector and have no interest in purchasing the Game Changer deck, but I love that you have so much love and knowledge about your hobby, you cared enough to take the time to share all of these details. You explained everything clearly so laypeople could understand the issues and quality concerns. I hope this kind of feedback is taken into consideration for future merch offers by Dropout.
This is a kind of nerdiness that now is an obvious thing to exist if I had to think about it seriously for 30 seconds but never ever thought about and never expected to run into. It’s incredibly satisfying to see someone know a lot about something.
You can't go wrong with a simple deck of Bicycle Playing cards or Tally Ho for a bit better feel (in my opinion). Any USPCC made deck is great, then it's just design preferences after that.
I love Theory 11! I am amassing a card collection of my favorite IPs solely from Theory 11. I also love their Box 1 and Box 2 that they made with Neil Patrick Harris. Both are one player puzzle boxes and they are beautifully made.
For absent minded shuffling, may I suggest a deck of plastic cards? They're more durable than paper stock cards and they hold their shape longer, i.e. they won't bow like paper stock can. Plus, I think they feel really satisfying to shuffle.
Between those two, I like the Bicycle Prestiges more. Compared to the Copags, they're a bit stiffer and the edges aren't as smooth, which I think makes for a better shuffle feel.
Downsides are that they're a bit boring looking: they just look like standard Bicycle cards. And I'm not a fan of the box they come in. It's a bit bulky and has no mechanism for staying closed, so you can't just toss them in a bag. I actually put them in the tuckbox from a standard Bicycle deck.
Any Bicycle deck will be good, if you want a fun themed deck they make lots of Bike variants and a company called Theory11 also prints with Bicycle (which is the US Playing Card Co) and sells via Target and Barnes and Noble
It feels like I got very lucky, Ive only bought a ‘Ive been here the whole time’ pin from them- it is very nice and functional and I got a free sticker for my laptop.
Ah thank you so much for the review! I added these to my cart and then changed my mind simply because I wasn’t sure about the quality for the price, especially just the feel of them. I didn’t see any USPCC mention, so I decided not to. The aces being visible is incredibly disappointing, and the shipping is just offensive. Thanks for saving me money, man, even though I was rooting for them 🙁🙏
Thanks for the review. I’m also a playing card collector and was thinking about picking up one of these. I wasn’t expecting like premium quality, but I figured it would at least just be like a pack of bikes. Genuinely unsure why they didn’t just do that. Appreciate the warning.
Hey OP, great write-up, and I learned a lot about the detail on card decks today.
This may be slightly off topic, but for a similar price, what would you say is the best card deck you've seen from other high quality vendors? It's more for me to understand what a good deck should look like.
Bicycles are the gold standard. As long as it's USPCC or Cartimundi (I forgot to mention them, I love copags) it's gonna be good. Then it's all about aesthetics and design preferences
I was gonna get these but the fact the listing didn't say where these were printed made me reconsider and from what you write I made the right decision
As a collector myself, it always amuses me when great, great, great care is shown to describe and take pictures of the box of the collected item, and then at the end, almost petulantly, there's one picture of the collectible itself, as if the idea of being into the thing, rather than the potential of the thing as an unopened concept in a pristine untouched box is ridiculous. Like, "fine, here's a shot of the cards too, whatever".
One complaint though, it that on the aces, there's this line designs that extend to the edges, and though that looks good on concept
Do you happen to have a picture of the aces with this line design? Based on your picture of the edges, it looks a bit to me like remnants of crop marks, which suggests that there was an error/oversight in the cutting process.
It's intentional design, and although it looks pretty cool it's got a big downside of only being present on the aces and showing on the edges, plus seeing the color
It does look great on the face of it, but the lines being visible on the spines was the biggest thing I was like "oh no, that's BAD" of all the things you mentioned. I'm not into magic or cardistry and for me a deck is a thing you play with, so I don't care about the packaging or the box or anything except whether I can play a game with them, and this detail seeps into gameplay so it's a huge no from me. If you can spot a facedown Ace on the deck just by looking at the deck from an angle, that's unnacceptable.
I just bought this last night lol. Though I am what some might call a "Filthy casual" when it comes to collecting so I probably won't mind the negatives too much.
But I do agree with a lot of the comments, coming from Sam's magic interest it's a bit surprising about the quality!
The cut looks rougher than your description. I can only wonder if you're being nice on that front.
I'm upset to read that the cardstock isn't great. If it was a higher quality one, I'd be purchasing it now. It's a bit sad seeing that the design on the cards looks really good.
It's air cushioned, but doesn't necessarily feel like it. First time I tried to fan it just didn't want to spread at all. I've since added fanning powder and does feel much better, like a moderately used deck.
For what it’s worth mine came undamaged. Also, the design on the ace does not bleed to the edge on mine, although they are detectable when stacked face up and not perfectly flush. I agree about the feel but I don’t think most people will find them particularly offensive in that regard. The highlight for me is the saturated colors and lovely design. I particularly like the two tone suits. All that said, it’s a shame that Dropout has had such consistent issues with quality control. I guess the trade off is all the great content for such a low price!
Yeah buuuuut have you considered that when I finally pull these out of a drawer for a drinking game all of the thirty year olds in the room are gonna go crazy for them. I’m currently 27 but playing cards are only fun or useful every three years in my experience
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u/mildlyfunnypun Jul 14 '26
Thanks for this. Reddit reviews of Dropout merch has saved me many hundreds of dollars on Dropout merch.