 Hey everybody, welcome back to MagicWords.oxy. My name's David and this is a deck review. Hey, today we're gonna look at the Styx playing cards. This was conceived by Eric Ross and designed by Nick Blau and printed from the United States playing card company. All right, so what is Styx? What is the theme behind this deck? There's actually two things, okay? So there's the theme for the design and then the theme for the name. Now the name Styx, that is a river. It's also a deity in Greek mythology and it's the river is the boundary between earth and the underworld and in the underworld is the domain often called Hades and Hades is named after the ruler. And so I think you hear Styx more often as the river Styx from Greek mythology. So that picture of that ghostly figure on the rowboat going across the river, that's the river Styx. All right, so then the imagery on this, the imagery on this is inspired by the acarantia Styx death heads hawk moth. Okay, and that was a big long phrase, but the acarantia moth, there's three of them or three different types or three different, there's three different species of it and it's called the Styx death head hawk moth. These moths are easily distinguishable because they have a vaguely human skull shaped pattern mark on their thorax. So it has this kind of death head, see kind of like symbolism of death. So that kind of goes with river Styx. So the really cool thing about these moths are, first of all, they scream when they're irritated. So they're one of those screaming moths, but they're called hawk moths because these moths actually attack honeybees. Like they will go into a honeybee hive and attack the honeybees to get the honey. So that is pretty cool. The front of the tuck case says bicycle across the front. Then you have a large spade pip there with the skull. They're in the center, underneath it says Styx and you have a lot of ornamentation. Both sides of the tuck case say bicycle Styx playing cards. The top simply says high quality made in the USA and the bottom has some ad copy. Of course the back design is the back design of the cards. The tongue flap gives a little bit of credit to Eric Ross and Nick Flau and then the two little flap flaps have the initials of the creators. That is pretty much it for the tuck case. Let's take a look at these cards. These cards come printed from the United States playing card company and they're done on their casino grade stock. They do have an air cushion finish and a modern cut and if you'd like to learn more about stock, cut or finish, you can click the link below in the description. Now a lot of people always ask how these cards feel and how they handle. Hey, they feel and handle great. The best thing I can do for you though is to stick them into a caliper and measure their thickness so that you can compare them against other decks that you have either held or owned. So I stick 10 of these in the caliper. It comes to 2.91. 2.91 is about the same as the Richard Turner gold standards, the revolvers, the version two smoke and mirrors, shin limbs cards, the Saturn cards and the split spades silver edition are all this same thickness. The back design of this deck is very beautiful and very haunting at the same time. You have a really thin white poker border there and then you have the Hawk Moth repeated on the top and bottom. And then inside that, they're in these two large interlocking circles which I think kind of throws back and it looks like a classic bicycle back design when you have these big huge circles and then in the circles there, you've got some interlocking pattern that's kind of weaved together. Behind the Hawk Moth, you've got like rays of light. Then within the Hawk Moth's wings, you have some other symbolism there. And then you can even see that the Hawk Moth design is even made up of these little geometric shapes that have been locked together. Of course, around the border, you've got some beautiful scroll work and framework. It all comes together. Nick Vlau is an incredible artist and it's a really beautiful back design. All right, so what's in this deck? First off, you're gonna get two Gaff cards. You're gonna get a double backer and a blank faced card, which are both great for magic. You're also gonna get two original jokers. It simply says Joker in the corner there and it's done in that same kind of green, like death green and really dark umber brown color. It's a all seeing eye in the center and then around that, it's a hand holding snakes and then interweave debunks that you just have some other ornamentation. Your ace of spades is very big, very bold, very haunting looking. It's kind of this guitar pick shaped spade pip. It says sticks at the top, has Eric Ross's initials there and then it has the skull icon underneath. It says bicycle sticks made in the USA. Your pips and entity cards will all be completely standard and instantly recognizable, making this deck perfect for gameplay, magic and flourishing. Your core cards are all gonna be bicycle standard, however they have been recolored. They are done in the same kind of muted gold that you've seen throughout. They're really dark red and then this really deep royal green and I think it really adds to making some of these colors pop since the back design is really only one color. All right, so that's pretty much everything I can say about the sticks deck from Eric Ross and Nick Vlau. I think it's a beautiful deck that truly captures the balance between this world and the underworld. I wanna thank Eric Ross for allowing me to have this deck so that I can do this review for you and if you would like to purchase this deck for yourself, you can find it at Eric Ross's website. Thanks, bye.