Pocket Nightmare by Max Maven
https://www.penguinmagic.com/p/13054
This is more a comparison between Pocket Nightmare and Card to Pocket by The Other Brothers than a straight review of Pocket Nightmare. Anybody who knows me will probably be well aware of the fact I’m a huge Max Maven fan, so it’s probably going to surprise nobody when I say straight out of the gate, I prefer this to the other one. However, that’s not to say Pocket Nightmare doesn’t have some of the same drawbacks, it uses a gimmicked one-trick deck, very similar to the CtP, so you’ll need to really like the effect or stick to only doing it on stage. It also has the same discovery risk as CtP (but as I said in the previous review, although the chance is there, it’s quite a slim one). The big difference is though Pocket Nightmare uses one deck, and that’s it. Card to Pocket uses two decks and another item. Repeatability is another issue, Card to Pocket can genuinely be any card, Pocket Nightmare can’t, but as I think doing repeat performances of Card to Pocket, one after another would be a poor idea anyway, so that’s not as big an issue as it may be with other effects. There is only just under five dollars difference in the price, so although that may be the deciding factor for you, I don’t really think it’s enough to quibble over. For me, Maven’s just feels cleaner and works better for the way I’d personally use it, but if you think Card to Pocket is better for you, I’m not going to hold that against you, both should play fantastically to any lay audience, it’s just the minutiae that means picking one over the other.
