Hidden Leaves playing cards

[winterline]

Check out Mahdi Gilberts first deck, Hidden Leaves.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mahdigilbert/hidden-leaves-playing-cards-by-mahdi-the-magician

 

[MaryD3]

Those are so cool

 

[JarrettC2]

I’ve got mixed feelings. Gorgeous design choice however the lack of indexes could go either way. You would have to adapt your routine to the deck, as I could totally see strolling and using these and the spectator mixing up jacks and kings, 5s, 7s, 9s... so on and so forth.

Anything where the index is rather inconsequential these would shine.

 

[EndersGame]

These do indeed look beautiful, and the minimalism of design and colour works well.

But like others, I wonder about the practical application. Without the indexes, a lot of magic tricks might lose clarity.

It might make some tricks strong, but which ones?

Royal Fantasy by Lubor Fiedler is a definite contender, but you'd need to gimmick (i.e. make unusable for anything else) one of the cards to do it.

 

[winterline]

Yes, it does change what you can do and also opens other doors. Stacks are entirely hidden, only the face card could possibly give the stack away, pseudo duplicates, you can hold them, covering up one pip to show a super clean ACR. Oil and water will look ever better.

From what I've heard, this old style was largely only used with cards up to 6 and the court cards. 7-10 do have a small issue, but that being said, laymen are not used to looking at cards anyway, so to getting them to count the pips would likely assist in them remembering the card

 

[EndersGame]

Oil and Water would indeed look terrific, and so would Out of this World.

Upon reflection, Lubor Fiedler's Royal Fantasy (based on Bro John Hammond's "Fantabulous") wouldn't work after all, because the spot cards from Mahdi's deck have one-way pips, and so the gaff would only work for half of the card.

The one-way pips do look neat and clean, and having one-way spot cards can create new possibilities, but it also can create new challenges or reduce the aesthetic appeal after shuffling.

 

[JarrettC2]

Triumph would work really well too.

Like I said, I don’t know if I can rely on spectators counting pips correctly some times. You would also eliminate some tricks purely because of how you have to handle the card and the value wouldn’t be clear.

It’s a deck that looks beautiful for certain effects and confusing for others. Hiding stacks is a questionable pro as i’ve yet to be called out for a stacked deck but I could see the appeal.