Artifice Deck
Cards do not make the performer. I don't care how fancy your deck is, if you suck then your performance won't be helped by having a nice looking custom deck. That being said, with a proper understanding of your character, a custom deck can really add a nice detail to the performance. A darker character with a darker deck is congruent.
I've always wanted an elegant deck. There's a lot of designs that I enjoy (Propaganda, Arcane, Shadow Masters, Centurions, Split Spades, Smoke & Mirrors V3, etc) but none of them have really struck me as truly elegant.
But elegant is the only word I can think of to describe the Artifice deck. The back is a nice balance of black, blue and silver. The faces are white, with the hearts and diamonds being slightly darker than standard Bicycles. The court cards are what really caught me, though. Not content with simply re-coloring the standar designs, all the court cards have been redone. The faces and weapons/flowers are basically the same, but the colors and clothing have all been redone. The colors are dark green, dark blue and dark red. The designs are simplified, but still pay homage to the original designs we're so familiar with. The Jokers are of a gambler character holding a card behind his back. One is a reveal, and it's subtle as you would expect from a custom deck these days.
This is also my first encounter with Ellusionist's new 'Performance Coating.' I'm not exactly an expert on the difference between finishes on cards, but I have handled a fairly wide variety of cards. These are by far the slickest I have felt out of the box. If I do a fan and don't keep a firm grip half the cards will slide right out due to the lack of friction between them. Laying the deck on my palm and simply moving my hand back and forth
leaves the top card almost motionless with the bottom half or so sliding around freely.
They Faro, fan and spread with ease.
Of course, the back is borderless which causes some difficulty with reversed card effects. However, I've done some testing on that front (I do several effects with cards reversed in the deck so this is kind of important to me) and I've come to the conclusion that most effects will not be hurt by this design. Even when the deck is split in half, half up half down, as long as the cards are not beveled away from the spectator the sides all look grey. You will, however, have to have very solid technique to hide a card reversed near the top. Which is somewhat of a bummer for me, because I'm working on an effect where for a significant amount of time there are two cards reversed near the top. But it's do-able.
I don't know the price point these will sell at, but I will definitely be trying to pick up many of them.
Cards do not make the performer. I don't care how fancy your deck is, if you suck then your performance won't be helped by having a nice looking custom deck. That being said, with a proper understanding of your character, a custom deck can really add a nice detail to the performance. A darker character with a darker deck is congruent.
I've always wanted an elegant deck. There's a lot of designs that I enjoy (Propaganda, Arcane, Shadow Masters, Centurions, Split Spades, Smoke & Mirrors V3, etc) but none of them have really struck me as truly elegant.
But elegant is the only word I can think of to describe the Artifice deck. The back is a nice balance of black, blue and silver. The faces are white, with the hearts and diamonds being slightly darker than standard Bicycles. The court cards are what really caught me, though. Not content with simply re-coloring the standar designs, all the court cards have been redone. The faces and weapons/flowers are basically the same, but the colors and clothing have all been redone. The colors are dark green, dark blue and dark red. The designs are simplified, but still pay homage to the original designs we're so familiar with. The Jokers are of a gambler character holding a card behind his back. One is a reveal, and it's subtle as you would expect from a custom deck these days.
This is also my first encounter with Ellusionist's new 'Performance Coating.' I'm not exactly an expert on the difference between finishes on cards, but I have handled a fairly wide variety of cards. These are by far the slickest I have felt out of the box. If I do a fan and don't keep a firm grip half the cards will slide right out due to the lack of friction between them. Laying the deck on my palm and simply moving my hand back and forth
leaves the top card almost motionless with the bottom half or so sliding around freely.
They Faro, fan and spread with ease.
Of course, the back is borderless which causes some difficulty with reversed card effects. However, I've done some testing on that front (I do several effects with cards reversed in the deck so this is kind of important to me) and I've come to the conclusion that most effects will not be hurt by this design. Even when the deck is split in half, half up half down, as long as the cards are not beveled away from the spectator the sides all look grey. You will, however, have to have very solid technique to hide a card reversed near the top. Which is somewhat of a bummer for me, because I'm working on an effect where for a significant amount of time there are two cards reversed near the top. But it's do-able.
I don't know the price point these will sell at, but I will definitely be trying to pick up many of them.
