Casino Royale Mystic Edition Playing Cards

Love the back design, the ace cards, and the green+purple color combination is a tried-and-true classic (ask Wimbledon). Not a fan of the jokers, but that's minor. For $12, I'd expect a little more, but on sale for $6, I bought two sets. The name is accurate - these feel good for poker nights, but maybe not the best for tricks or cardistry. No blank or double-back card, FYI.

I like these, but they are not as nice as I thought they would be. The teal color for the black suits is more off-putting than I thought it would be - it really throws me for some reason. Somehow the purple for the red suits isn't as noticeable That said, I love the overall color palette used for these, just not the distribution. The back design is nice. I like that the diamonds have a few holes in the pattern and that the colors are distributed. With all of the opportunities for variation, there is a rather subtle one-way back design that you may not notice if you are not looking carefully. Could this be the secret referred to in the ad copy? I don't know. The court cards also have some of the accessories replaced with various diamonds and other items - kind of cool. The one thing that stands out as different for me is the ace pip design - while I appreciate extra decoration for more than the single lead ace, and the interesting motif inspired by diamonds already in the theme, the artwork looks a little juvenile in comparison to the sophistication of the diamond theme on the card backs.

A very interesting deck here, using nice silver, dark teal, and purple inks. The one way back design is all diamond patterned. All of the cards have white backgrounds, with club and spade cards having dark teal coloration instead of black, and the heart and diamond cards having a purple coloration instead of red. I like the use of these colors, as it's something different, but not so different that it would be difficult to use these cards practically in a game of Texas Hold 'Em or something like that. The fonts and corner pips are standard, as are the center pips, although the center pips appear slightly smaller than those on a standard deck, at least to my eye. The court cards are almost standard, as there's slight changes made to incorporate the diamond theme, a theme that is also incorporated into the center pips of all the aces. Now to the jokers, which are, in my opinion, the big shortfall of this deck. This deck was produced by "Bomb Magic". Instead of incorporating the theme of the rest of the deck into the jokers, they've incorporated the company name, giving us two full sized jokers, both different, which are silly looking clowns dancing around and throwing bombs. I'd rate this deck at 3.5 if half stars were possible solely because of the poor jokers, but I'm rounding to a four ONLY because the rest of the deck was so nice, and because I can't give half stars here. I'll use this deck for card games that don't involve jokes, since these are disappointing!