Rainman

John

This is a superb book if you're a serious stacked deck user. As Vanishing Inc. states on the website, you do need to have mastered a stack deck.

There are four effects/chapters:-

BEFORE THE RAIN
This is a single deck effect which requires a specially prepared deck. This is a really good introduction to the core principles of the main effect RAINMAN. You could do this as a standalone effect and forget the rest.....but, after investing a lot of money in this book, why would you!
The effect consists of three strong phases, all easily accomplished if you know your stack well.

RAINMAN
This is the main effect which requires which two specially prepared decks, one in red, one in blue.
This consists of the same three phases learned in the first chapter above, but using two decks, plus another three phases of mental agility. where the performer "cuts" a portion of cards off the two combined decks. In my opinion I found these last three phases a little weak.
Anyway, you are buying the book for this routine and it's really worth the time and effort in preparing the decks and learning this superb effect.

AFTER THE TRAIN
This is a six deck version which of course requires six specially prepared decks.
The routine only uses one of the strong phases of the main Rainman effect but you repeat it for three spectators. When you learn the principles of this trick you could increases the effect to as many decks as you want.

TRIPLE RAINMAN
Although this effect requires a special deck from Luke Jermay. I didn't understand why because the same effect can be acheived with a regular stacked deck.
It's a great standalone effect anyway.

OK, the specially prepared decks.
The decks utilise two special principles which I can't mention in this review but I'll refer to them as principle#1 and principle#2. You can buy principle#1 magic decks , and you can buy principle#2 magic decks, but no such decks exist using both principles. So, you can do it yourself if you're a dab hand at doing this, or invest in a jig, or get them professional done at a cost.

Rainman will cost you 2 x principle#1 special decks + 3 x regular decks plus time (and maybe money) to prepare principle#2. Plus there are other little special things that need to be done to the backs an fronts of these cards.

The instructions also include how to the handle the special decks. Yes you can genuinely shuffle these cards (in a particular way), and it does mess-up the stack, but these special cards maintain certain aspects of the stack which I can't mention here......but it's so clever.

In a nutshell:-
You need to have mastered a stack.
Further purchases required (decks).
Lots of preparations.

10/10 for this masterpiece.