Wooden-eye: thanks, glad you like it! As for your questions:
"Pip minors" vs "no minors": ooh boy, have I gone back and forth on this one. I have had a couple ideas for different vehicles etc for the 1-10 minors (and I may borrow that idea for the Aces), but right now I'm leaning against doing it for a couple reasons:
1) I just don't like decks that do abstract minors as much as ones that do full (or even simplified) illustrations. I don't find them useful for reading, and I find them kind of boring aesthetically, so my instinct is to drop them from my deck entirely (unless the Kickstarter does awesomely and I get enough money to do scenes for the minors
).
2) while looking at the US Games website, I saw that they don't actually accept decks that have "pip minors"--but they do accept oracle decks. So, that's another strike against doing something I'm not enthusiastic for.
Of course, some people aren't interested in major-only decks--even if the minors are mostly abstract or glorified pips, they still want all 78 cards. And a non-standard deck size will mean a non-standard box size, which might be a problem when it's time to print them. So we'll see if I change my mind again before I launch the KS.
As for your other question: the first artist who did really awesome work for me sometimes drops out of contact--one time when he did it I needed cards for a show, so I went back to DeviantArt, showed what I had, and said essentially, "If you can do similar work for x amount of money, let me know!" I got several responses, tried a couple, and chose one. My original artist got back in touch later, but I'm still working with the second artist as well--there's plenty of work to go around, and their styles are similar enough that people that look at them blown up on the wall can't always tell which pieces are done by a different artist.
If the KS is successful I may go back to DeviantArt for a third or fourth artist as everyone's schedule permits, but I'll continue to be very choosey.
The two artists don't communicate with each other (as far as I know)--I just work with each one individually on different cards. It's worked out find so far, though that's with only doing a few cards a year--we'll see how things go if production speeds up after the KS is funded!
Good luck with your own Kickstarter, btw--make sure to post here!