We’re going to start with the incredible Narcissus by Chris Philpott. This takes the principle from the wonderful 100th Monkey effect and brings it to a whole new range of close up and emotionally engaging presentations. If you’re not familiar with the original principle it meant (in its most basic form) that you could appear to make people stop being able to read words. In these effects you take a photo of the spectator with their own phone, holding a card with various things written on it – and when they look at the picture or video, the words have changed in a remarkable way. Fantastic idea, wonderful engaging presentations. Worth every penny! £49.60

Next we’d like to highlight a really innocent-looking but incredibly versatile prop which will enable you to force almost anything. If you’ve been in magic any time the name Svengali Force Pad will tell you all you need to know. But this is an essentially self-working and incredibly versatile item to include as part of a larger effect. We’ve seen them crop up as part of various presentations on things like BGT or AGT. You might be able to make one yourself, but why not get a professionally made one for the very modest price of £10.99.

Regular readers will know that I’m a bit of a fan of mentalism, and Steve Dela has taken an old idea and given it a twist to turn it into a fantastic bit of walkaround magic. Will to Read is a prediction type effect using a page from a book – it takes almost no space in your pocket but has a big impact. And has the potential to be linked in to other effects to make a great routine. £32.50

And finally, since we haven’t highlighted any playing cards for a while, I thought I’d mention the Superior Deck by the Expert Playing Card Co. It comes in an attractive blue, red or black backed deck. Along with the promise of handling well (we haven’t yet had a chance to try them to comment I’m afraid) they also have a tuck case which promises to be more resilient and last longer. All available at £4.99 each. They’ve now released an Invisible Deck, a Marked Deck and a set of popular gaff cards in the same design.

That’s all for this month.  Let us know if you’ve seen anything worth looking at…

The post Trick of the Month – October 2016 appeared first on Bicycle Cards.

What is it?

Essentially Revolution is a gimmick which enables you to spin a deck of cards on your finger. That’s the long and short of it. You’re supplied with the simple gimmick, attractively packaged (I think the quality of magic packaging has improved over the years – am I alone here?!) and also some specially printed cards for some of the effects taught later. As is the trend, you are also given a location and password to watch/download the teaching.

How’s the teaching?

Greg is a superb and entertaining teacher. His tongue is firmly in his cheek at various points during the explanation which makes it great fun to watch – he’s a nutter and I love his silliness. That being said, the explanation ran to about an hour and half, and if we’d lost some of the chuckles I might have saved some time… If you’re a diehard fan you’ll enjoy the outtakes section at the end.

As well as answering just about any question you could possibly have about the thing, there’s an interesting segment where you watch someone trying the thing out for the first time and Greg comments and corrects what he’s doing. That’s a great way to learn – especially for something like this which is a little bit ‘knacky’. Greg, of course makes it look super easy, but you won’t be doing this straight away. It will take a fair bit of practise to get a consistent/reliable spin – though probably much less effort than it looks like it should!

Other comments?

The ‘new’ bicycle tuck cases don’t have the back design printed on them – which makes one aspect of this slightly more difficult than it would have been before. Can’t really say more without exposure. Greg describes ways in which you could use this as an opener, a trick in the middle or a flourish as you finish. There are also thoughts on hiding the gimmick (which is largely hidden in plain sight anyway) etc. If anything, for me it felt like slightly more information than was needed on a relatively simple gimmick and move. Maybe I’m old and jaded but 50 ish minutes on just the move felt like overkill.

The routines

There was a nice idea for a hypnotism based routine – a great premise, but it was only really briefly taught – so if you don’t know the couple of moves needed you might need some more help.

Spin Cycle – utilising one of the specially printed gaff cards – whilst you spin the deck a spectator makes some choices to define a card. When you locate the card in the deck it is seen to be the only one with a ‘spun’ back design. And then it magically reverts. There are also a couple of special cards where the faces have been ‘spun’ which allows a few other variations.
Deshuffled – Revolution makes a great addition to the ‘Unshuffled’ routine (available separately) – so that a mixed up deck is spun on your finger and then it reverts to new deck order. Lovely.
Invisible Revolution – Very clever routine with a ‘well known gaff deck’ which adds an extra triumphant feel (let the reader understand) to the Invisible deck. Lovely sneaky idea.

Vive la revolution?

All in all this is a simple concept and a nice flourish which, if you’re prepared to put in the practise, would be a good addition to any card set. It gives the impression of more skill than is actually involved and could be a really good way of breaking the ice at the beginning of a set, or going out with a flourish at the end. And the Invisible Revolution idea would work as a very strong effect even without the Revolution bit!

Available direct from Merchant of Magic for £26.99 at the time of writing.

Review copy kindly provided by Murphys Magic to whom dealer enquiries should be directed.

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The genius of this routine is that it makes the ID entirely suitable for a platform performance and adds a brilliant kicker ending where some paper balls which have been used to select audience members are unfolded to reveal the name of the freely constructed card written on the sheets before the trick even began.

I am completely sold out on the important magic truism that effect is everything, method is (almost) nothing. And if you’re performing in the real-world for real people you will know this to be the case. Which is one of the things which makes reviewing quite challenging because magicians sometimes take a different view.

But either way, the effect that the audience is left with seems to me extremely strong – and the clever construction of the routine flew past me when I watched it the first time. Cody goes into a lot of detail about why he does things the way he does and so there is much to learn from the DVD. You won’t find any radically new principles here, but there’s some clever thinking and wording going on which adds much to the overall strength of the effect.

On the downside, in addition to the necessary deck (which isn’t supplied – only an instructional DVD), you will also need to make a modest investment to make up the rest of the necessary. But this is a very modest additional expense – and for the overall value of the routine seems to me very worthwhile.

Teaching is clear and detailed, and it is nice to see a live performance included – which always gets a thumbs up from me. He explains a variation using the Brainwave Deck instead of the ID, but for my money I would probably stick to the ID version.

A small excursus on Invisible Decks

On the subject of IDs, I will share my own experience. In spite of our name, I have found Bicycle Invisible Decks to sometimes be a little bit too ‘slippy’ which makes it harder for me to use, so for many years I have favoured the Royal Magic (non Bicycle) version which had a bit more ‘stick’. But I’ve just got my hands on a Card Shark version in a Pheonix Deck and this is my favourite version to date – and will become my regular deck. It has the added advantage that it is made in their ‘Parlour’ size which makes it more visible in a stage setting than a standard Poker deck. End of diversion.

All in all, I like this a lot. Although I don’t do as many platform shows I can see me making this up and adding it to the set, since you get a good amount of magic for a modest investment. It is not difficult to do, so will leave you plenty of time to work on your performance. Which is just the way I like it.
Available from Merchant of Magic for only £31.99 at time of writing.

Review copy kindly provided by Murphys Magic to whom dealer enquiries should be directed.

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What’s the verdict?
We really like the effect and think it is very strong. Depending on which version you perform (at least 3 different versions are on the DVD) you will need some basic sleght of hand – but nothing too difficult. Everything is explained very clearly on the DVD supplied. It is one of those methods which is exceedingly ingenious – and you will love performing it. So what are our reservations?

Depending on your performance context this may have some limitations. One of the versions requires a table, though a different version could be performed in the hands. Re-set is straightforward, but you would probably want to be on your own to do it. And though you could use the deck for other effects, in practise there would be a few limitations on you, depending on which version you performed and at what point in your set you performed it (difficult to say more without exposure). Finally, the stickers themselves are not re-usable – so if you are performing this regularly you will certainly need to buy refills. These are available at £17.99 for 50. Oh yes, and you’ll need to do a small amount of ‘craft’ for the initial set up. It’s not too tricky, but I wonder, at this price point whether that could have been supplied already done.

So it boils down to whether you think the strength of having a sticker on the back of the card (which would certainly make a good giveaway) is more powerful to a layperson than the effect you can achieve with an invisible deck – which in terms of effect is essentially the same to a layperson – freely thought of card reversed in deck (hence known in advance). With an ID, you get more or less instant re-set, and no re-fills – though of course the deck couldn’t be examined as it could here.

So as ever, you pays your money and you takes your choice, but we think this is a clean and powerful effect. Available now at MagicTao – for £21.99.

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