Magic Tricks

If you watch the demo you'll see three great effects, but what you won't see is an effect called "Bolder Assembly", which is a twist on the "Bold Assembly" effect that actually is better than the original. For some reason, it's not mentioned or even shown, but when I saw this variation using the kings instead of aces with an incredible kicker ending I was floored. "Bold Assembly" is good--especially considering the fact that it allows you to do an ace assembly with a borrowed deck, no extra cards, and no setup other than pulling out the four aces to start the effect--but it's more of a "that's cool" effect rather than an astonishing effect.

"Myth" uses a concept I've never seen before. I have dozens of magic books and probably a hundred DVDs or more, but I've never seen this method mentioned before. After I did the work to my cards, I immediately found a dozen more uses for the method. "Myth" as explained is powerful and definitely makes you look better than you really are, but the card work is what you'll take away and love.

"Triumph V.136" is good as well and is explained in a way that allows you to fully understand the history and motivation for every move.

The downside of this DVD is the incredibly annoying breaks in the explanations. There are literally sixty second chunks of teaching, then a break to a title screen that says "Bold Assembly: Explanation continued..." and then Ben picks up explaining how he got where he is like you'd left the room and forgot rather than just sat through another title screen break with the cards in your hand. If the DVD was set up so you could repeat those as a chapter, I could partially understand (it would still be far too many breaks) but you only have 3 chapters in the DVD (one for each effect explained) so you have to stop and rewind anyway.

Don't get me wrong, Ben is an excellent teacher and you can easily understand everything and follow up on this with no problem. I just hated the annoying "ready, set, STOP" breaks in the teaching. This is definitely one you want to add just for the methodology of "Myth" alone. You'll put the concept to work immediately on other effects that will come to mind. And don't forget to watch out for "Bolder Assembly", as it will probably become your new ace assembly effect of choice.