talkmagic.co.uk

The Effect

Whatever you can come up with - it's a deck of cards!

Cost
£10 + postage and packing
I got my deck from World Magic Shop but it is also available from The Card Collection/Cards 4 Magic. At the time of writing, I don't think other dealers are stocking this deck yet.

Difficulty
(1=easy to do, 2=No sleights, but not so easy, 3=Some sleights used, 4=Advanced sleights used, 5=Suitable for experienced magicians only)

1-5
Difficulty depends on what you intend to do with them!

Review
Yes, £10 is a lot of money for a deck of cards but I could not resist for long after seeing it on World Magic Shop! I have no idea how much it costs USPCC to produce these cards, but I imagine it can't be cheap.

The rainbow deck consists of 56 cards, broken down as follows:

52 cards with standard Bicycle faces
3 double-backed cards
1 gaffed Joker


All four gaffed cards are blue-backed Bicycle rider design on the reverse, and the gaffed Joker features a five of clubs revelation.

The cards appear to be of standard Bicycle stock and handle well, as you would expect. The back designs are varied and colourful; some I am familiar with, some I vaguely recall seeing somewhere and a few I have never seen before. There are fifteen back designs, each of which consists of between 2-8 colours. The most numerous of these is the Bicycle rider back, of which you get ten cards.



The rainbow deck was supposed to come with a free trick to get you started, but I did not receive this. I have sent a message to Gochos so hopefully he will respond. In any case, there is a book available by Randy Wakeman that I intend on purchasing and reviewing; click here for details.

Overall
A very nice deck that should get those creative juices flowing; I expect Randy Wakeman's book will come in handy if you get stuck for ideas. It may be worth noting that the raindow deck is actually made up of 50 unique backs and not 52 as you might expect, because there are three Bicycle rider backs in blue. (I'm surprised they didn't include an orange backed rider back).

Score: 9/10

Got mine today too!
Very nice quality cards they are too.

This is perfect for all those "one red backed in a blue backed deck" trick but there's plenty of other uses for these!

I'm having great fun playing around with these and recommend all you cardies go out and get a deck!

I'm gonna boost the rating to 10/10 though. One of the finest decks I've ever owned!

I don't disagree with you - the cards are very nice indeed and I'm going to have fun coming up with routines for them. However, my opinion is that it does not warrant a score of 10 out of 10 for two reasons:

1) I don't know about your deck, but a few of my cards suffer from uneven printing on the backs, causing the white border to be misaligned and off-centre (similar problem to the Ghost decks).

2) The deck is advertised as having 52 different back designs. This is not true - as I mentioned in the review, my deck actually has 50 different back designs because I have three identical backed cards (same design, same colour).

I marked it down for those reasons.

To be honest I did notice three blue backed rider backs but I didn't really feel it was to be marked down for that.

And as for the printing, I didn't notice it, but didn't really look that closely to be honest. I may have a check and let you know

Shall we split the difference and say that as an average this deck is worth 9/10?

Sorry about that, I wasn't having a pop or anything. I'm just a bit anal when it comes to details like that; if they are going to the expense of printing these decks, they should really have done a proper job and produced 52 different back designs instead of just 50. An orange backed rider design and a red backed circle design Tally-Ho, say, would have done the job. It's a bit disappointing and has the potential to cause problems when performing tricks that use the whole deck.

I only got these yesterday, but had a lot of fun looking through them.

I must admit that I thought the duplicate back was deliberate, to allow for a "you chose the only two cards in the deck with a matching back" effect. Then again, why they had to be blue Bikes instead of one of the more unusual colours and designs, I don't know.

Similarly, you could always get a red Tally-Ho deck and swap cards, if you really want them all different, but it is a bit disappointing if you're expecting no duplicates at all. Perhaps the point was not to have issues with the fakes? I don't recall a red Bulldog Squeezers card, for example.

I am not sure anyone is going to spot one repeated design in the course of a routine, especially not with so many to keep track of.

Part-Timer wrote:...I must admit that I thought the duplicate back was deliberate, to allow for a "you chose the only two cards in the deck with a matching back" effect...

You may have a point there - I didn't think of that!

...Similarly, you could always get a red Tally-Ho deck and swap cards, if you really want them all different, but it is a bit disappointing if you're expecting no duplicates at all...

I already tried replacing one of the blue Bikes with a blue Tally-Ho card but because the card was not cut from the same sheet, it is marginally larger than the rest of the rainbow deck. So no joy there.

...I am not sure anyone is going to spot one repeated design in the course of a routine, especially not with so many to keep track of.

Again, good point. Perhaps I have blown this out of all proportion; like I said, I do tend to get anal about this kind of thing. (I'd still like to know why they chose to stop at 50 different back designs/colours instead of doing the whole 52-card deck. Just seems odd).

Replicant wrote:if they are going to the expense of printing these decks,

I'm not sure if they actually printed them, perhaps they just swept up the factory floor and the end of a shift.

If you're looking for a good use for these, look no further than 'Color Changing Deck' (John Mendoza - My Best, Vol 3), on this DVD he does it with a regular deck but years ago I saw a video (yes, remember those old boxes with brown tape in?) of him performing this with a rainbow deck and thought the climax was knockout, I always intended to learn it... now I think I will!

I popped in to World Magic Shop on Monday and was shown a trick with this deck - I was blown away as I didn't realise that the guy behind the counter had picked up a rainbow deck in the first place. - He performed the trick that WMS package with the deck "The World Famous Colour-Changing Deck Trick" developed by Costas.
I just had to purchase the deck then and there. I am still getting to grips with a couple of the sleights needed to perform the packaged trick, but I think I will have it together by the weekend.
A worthy 10/10 from me.
If the OP still hasn't received the instructions that he should have with the deck, I am sure that Costas will email them to him.

I forgot to mention that I received the free trick from Costas a few days ago. Considering it's a freebie, this is a very good effect and is up there with the best of them. Highly recommended.

After careful consideration, I have now updated my review score from 8/10 to 9/10. (If it wasn't for the problems I already mentioned, it would have made a perfect 10).

I know its a REALLY BIG ask, but any chance of telling which card face is on which backs?


Thanks


M

In the same order as my photo above (top to bottom, left to right)...

3C, AD, 8C, 6D, 7C, 3D, JS, KC, 3S, 7S, AC, 5H, 9H

10D, 6C, 5D, JD, 5S, QC, 4D, 9S, 2H, 8D, 8S, 8H, JH

10H, KH, 7D, 2S, KS, 4H, 4C, 6S, 3H, 7H, 9D, 10C, 6H

9C, QS, AS, QH, AH, KD, 4S, 10S, 2C, 5C, JC, 2D, QD

You are such a superstar - thanks ever so much!



M

I just wanted to publicly thank Costas for sending me a free deck of Bicycle ESP Test Cards (in return for using my Rainbow Deck photos on his website).