Does the Cartomancer feat's Hidden Ace benefit require the imbued spell's components at the time of casting and/or imbuing?

Question

The new Cartomancer feat from The Book of Many Things (p. 49) states that "You can use a card deck as your spellcasting focus." It also has a feature, Hidden Ace, that says "when you finish a long rest, you can choose one spell from your class's spell list and imbue that spell into a card." After this you can "flourish the card and cast the spell within."

If the imbued spell has Verbal, Material, and/or Somatic components, are those components required at the time you imbue the spell, at the time you cast the spell, both, or neither? (Does the answer change if the spell has material components with a GP cost and/or material components that are consumed by the spell?)

Answer 1

At the time of casting.

Notably, the spell is not cast at the time it is imbued, rather, it is cast at the time it is flourished:

you can choose one spell from your class’s spell list and imbue that spell into a card. [...] While the card is imbued with the spell, you can use a bonus action to flourish the card and cast the spell within.

The spell is not cast until you use a bonus action to do so. And since nothing in this feature modifies the components required, all components are required at the time of casting.

Answer 2

Neither

Imbuing the card with magic doesn't require the spell to be cast, so there is no rule requiring components at that moment. And because the card is a consumable magic item, spell components are not required at the time of casting. See "Components Problem" in GcL's answer to another question for more details and implications.