Royal Vortex Gold Foil Playing Cards Gemaco

A bit busy for my liking. Feels nice in the hand but not as much on the eyes. Wording is hard to read but the back design is neat.

The gold foil back on the cards is quite nice. The tuck box art is what drew my attention to this deck, but really would have liked to have seen more than the standard pips. Seems to be a fairly nice handling deck.

The deck immediately impresses with its custom tuck box, which has artwork that is deliberately designed to give the impression of an optical illusion, with mis-shaped letters that look like they are distorted and warped in a psychedelic fashion. It also introduces the gold and black colour scheme that is the most striking feature of this deck, especially on the card backs.

The card faces are standard, but that's not why we came to this deck in the first place - we want to see the card backs! These are filled with striking gold foil, and the eye-catching nature of these is amplified further by the intriguing graphic design, which is geared to draw you in and bend your mind with a vortex shaped pattern that creates a kind of optical illusion and can look as if it is moving. I would have preferred to have borders that were similar in size on all sides, but there's no doubt that this is a card back that will get attention!

This special collector's deck was printed by Gemaco. As a result, the faces all have the standard Gemaco artwork, including an attractive oversized pip on the Ace of Spades, and two Gemaco Jokers. Gemaco's smooth Ivory finish and the absence of embossing does mean that they won't fan evenly. But this isn't intended to be a deck you'd normally use for a serious game of cards, but it certainly is ideal for the time you want to make an instant statement of luxury, and to impress people with lots of gold bling! - BoardGameGeek reviewer EndersGame