Cards 110, 111 and 112: Bluer than Blue

This Jace, Architecht of Thought comes from Matti Hämäläinen, a prominent player in Tampere.

These cards were given to me by other players at my local game store. Unfortunately I do not remember from whom each card came from.

In today's haul we have a few moderately bent cards in Gideon's Reproach and Siege-Gang Commander and a beautiful deep dark blue Jace, Architect of Thought. The Reproach and Commander have been bent in use and do not have particularry interesting stories to them.

The Jace on the other hand had been lost on Matti's floor for a while until it was discovered under his kitchen sink. It should go without saying that the card was no longer in mint condition by then. It has been soaked in various mysterious liquids and the current best guess for the dark colour and the slight smell is cooking oil. Let this be a lesson that kitchens are not safe places for collectible cards.

Card 109: Introducing the Chew Test

This card was sent to me by Jouni Saikkonen, a local player here in Jyväskylä. Many thanks to him!

This Swift Warkite has been thoroughly chewed and the blue inner layer found inside Magic cards is both visible and has had its blue ink practically sucked out. The reason for its condition is that the card has undergone a new method for detecting counterfeit cards.

Jouni's toddler daughter cares for him a great deal and is understandably concerned about the value of the Magic collection she will eventually inherit. To make sure her father does not get scammed by shady Magic dealers, she has done extensive Research and Development and is now ready to introduce the Chew Test to the Magic community. This method for spotting counterfeit cards is absolutely infallible, simple to perform and is roughly as invasive as many other popular card testing methods.

To perform the test, you should hand a suspicious seeming card to a nearby toddler. Then all you need to do is patiently wait for them to chew on it until the test is complete and they are ready to let go of the card. It is important to not interrupt this process, as an interrupted test will not give reliable results. Once the toddler indicates that the process is complete, all you need to do is inspect their mouth.

If their lips have turned vivid blue, the card is genuine. If the colour indicator does not change from pink to blue, you have found a counterfeit card. This test is very easy to perform and is very reliable. The best thing is, the Chew Test is unlikely to leave your cards in any worse condition than the famous Bend Test would!

Cards 103 to 108: Baby Snacks and annoucing The Cube

Last weekend was the time for Porocon and the Finnish Nationals as its main event. I met Juha Ihonen there, who has had the honour of providing the first practically mint card for my project. Juha was in the deck check team for the main event and I was running a modern side tournament on day two of the convention. Thank you for these practically mint treasures, and for your support during the event.

Ihonen's card salvaging cats share his floors with a miniature version of him, the Ihonen jr., who is at the age where your gums tend to itch and paper and cardboard look very tasty to your eyes. This combined with Ihonen sr. storing commons in an open box have led to various accidents, six of which are pictured above.

All of the cards have been chewed and even those that haven't been bitten into pieces have been so thoroughly soaked in drool that they are completely destroyed. This blog so far hasn't featured any cards from my own collection, but my floors are reigned over by a Little Girl who shares Ihonen jr's taste for cardboard, so if you will ever see any cards that have been destroyed in my care, they will probably look like these.

The approved card pool for Wear 'n' Tear is now well past one hundred and the pile of cards that haven't quite made it is almost as large, so now is a good time to begin building The Cube from these. As cards keep coming, I will add and remove them from Wear 'n' Tear, which for now is a Highlander deck and may turn into a Commander deck in the future, and all cards will have a place in a cube that I will hopefully get to use  once we are up to three hundred or so cards in total.

Cards 93 to 102: Legitimate Merchandise

The above cards and a couple of dozen more arrived via mail from kanslerioikein, who we remember from the previous singles bin finds. These cards were also found in his local game store. He took all of the worn cards he could find there and sent them to me, but I photographed only the ten most damaged ones.

The Elves of the Deep shadow has what look like coffee stains on it and the Gorilla War Cry is torn, so they easily make the cut for the deck. Most of the other pictured cards have small bends or severe scratching, but I decided to include them as well. With this, Wear 'n' Tear is now a complete Highlander deck with even some leeway to choose cards for the full hundred. I am still hoping to find a five-colour commander to turn it into an EDH deck though.

Cards 76-82: Practically Mint Prerelease

The pre-release was a three-fold success for me. Firstly, because Shadows over Innistrad seems to be a very nice format for limited. I can't wait to get to draft it. Secondly, because I did not lose a single match today. Unfortunately I got a draw on one round though. Thirdly, because I got many Practically Mint cards to add to Wear 'n' Tear.

The first addition is the Conquering Manticore from the Heroes vs. Monsters Duel Deck. It was given to me by a younger player in the tournament who had started playing Magic with his brother after they bought the duel deck. I unfortunately did not memorize his name. The card had fallen on the floor and slid under his brother's fridge during a game, and they had left it there because removing it would have taken too much time and effort at the time. When they finally retrieved it, they noticed that the fridge had leaked all manners of fluids and grime onto the floor below and the Manticore was gone for good. Thank you for letting me have it!

The rest of the cards all come from the same pool of cards. My friend Ismo Virtanen toppled his bottle of flavoured mineral water during deck construction, which soaked his deck. He sleeved up what he could and played trough the tournament, but after the games many of the cards had been soaked long enough that they were worthless. I felt sorry for his loss, but also eager to add such fresh cards and a first-hand story to my little project.

I give my thanks to Ismo and the sponsor of this contribution, Bonaqua, for these fine cards. The pile I got from him contained many more cards, but I added only the seven most severely bent cards. Some changes may happen in the future, if some of these appear too good to fit in with the rest of the deck or some of the others dry more and settle into more bizarre shapes.

Cards 68 to 75: Sedimentary Basics

Ilkka Siiki brought me a huge pile of worn basic lands when we were playing Cube at my place. Thank you!

We spoke briefly about how hard it is to find destroyed basic lands after Ilkka had brought me some cards for the previous FNM update. Between then and today's Cube night, he had dug trough his layers and layers of old cards, and brought me a huge pile of worn Basic lands. There are dozens of them, but I picked only the eight most visibly damaged for immediate inclusion to Wear 'n' Tear. Some more may be added after more thorough scrutiny.

Some of the lands have been worn in use, some have fallen victim to treacherous reflexes when they fell on someones lap and the Island from Portal has probably been used to make tokens or counters during a game. It is quite impressive that a Perfect Fit sleeve is just tight enough to keep the Island in shape well enough that it can be carelessly shuffled.

This took Wear 'n' Tear up to 75 cards, so I made a sideboard by setting aside some of the cards that are especially hard to cast and a few low-impact cards and we played a few games to test how this works. Ilkka dug out his Pauper Turbofog to provide an appropriate level of challenge, and after two games we had won one each. We got everyone ready for the Cube before we could start the third game, so the ultimate winner was never decided.

Card 58: Voice of Korea

This very rare Korean Voice of Resurgence is a contribution from Hannu Vallin, one of the gentlemen behind Poromagia.

I have got yet another practically mint card to introduce today. This Voice of Resurgence was originally obtained by Hannu Vallin for his personal collection, but he had lost it on his way home from work. He found it on the parking lot the next morning, but it was far too late to save the card. There is still an astonishing amount of sand adsorbed on the card, which it deposits as fine layers inside any sleeve it is in.

Being run over by cars in bad weather is cruel enough, but that is only the beginning of the Voice's story. Hannu took the ruined piece of cardboard home with him, but he tossed it into a bag on his porch and abandoned it there. The card spent several seasons outdoors at the mercy of the elements, being buried under snow and soaked by melting snow and so on, until much later Hannu found it again, and sent it to the only home it could fit in, Wear 'n' Tear.

I have tried to describe the damage on this card for a while now, but I am still at a loss of words. There is sand, there is grime, there is extreme water damage and it is beautiful and horrifying at the same time.

Card 57: Daggered Cloak

This Cloak of Confusion was given to me during FNM by Topias Paasonen, a local player and one of my neighbours.

This Dark Ritual was mailed to me by Jani Havukainen from Helsinki.

This time I am presenting you a severely malformed Dark Ritual and a slashed Cloak of Confusion. Wear 'n' Tear is starting to have a really high number of black cards in it. We already have one Dark Ritual in the deck, so I am not adding this one to the official counter, which assumes a singleton format. If we include duplicates, the count is at 59 cards, so I am just a few lands short of being able to run a challenge table as a side event at some tournaments.

The damage on the Cloak of Confusion is very interesting. Topias may have explained to me what happened to it, but our friendly local game store was so busy at that moment, that I didn't quite understand what was said. It has some generic scratches and wear and tear but what has properly destroyed the card is the huge slash that has split the card neatly in half. To my trained card coroner's eye it doesn't look like it was cut by scissors, but I am truly at a loss on what else it could have been. People don't toss Magic cards to practice cuts with their swords and knives do they?

Jani got the pictured Dark Ritual as a part of a larger collection he purchased, so he doesn't know what has happened to it. It is bent badly enough that it would stand out as a huge gap in any regular deck, though in Wear 'n' Tear it paradoxically blends in nicely with the other cards that are bulging the pile this way and that. The bending is so heavy I actually felt what kind of contribution was in the envelope when I got my mail. The damage is significant enough to count as destroyed, but I don't know yet which Dark Ritual I have received will make it to any singleton lists I might make from this card pool.

Card 50: Swidden Plateau

This Plateau is the second card sent to me by redditor Zombiesquisher. I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for this and the Sword of Reddit and Tumbling.

I knew to expect something special when I saw another envelope from Zombiesquisher, but I still shed a single manly tear when I opened it and saw what was inside. I cried both in horror of what I witnessed, and in gratitude for getting something this spectacular for Wear 'n' Tear. This card is the very definition of practically mint.

This Plateau comes from another one of Zombiesquisher's friends who was the unfortunate victim of a house fire. Miraculously his Magic cards survived the blaze, but while helping with clearing out the property and moving to a new house, his mother-in-law threw his Legacy and Commander decks in a trash bag. The trash bag was in turn left in a burn pit, but the fire was extinguished by rain during the night. In another miraculous recovery, most of the cards survived the second assault by fire and being doused by rain, except for his Plateau, Underground Sea and Volcanic Island. Zombiesquisher later got his hands on the Plateau and was kind enough to contribute it to this project.

I don't think I need to describe the damage this time, since the pictures above make it painfully obvious what has happened to this card. You can even see the blue layer that Magic cards have inside them as an anti-counterfeiting method. Only thing the photographs fail to capture is the strong smell of smoke emanating from the Plateau. Fittingly, it just became the thirteenth land in Wear 'n' Tear.

Cards 34-37: FNM Spoils

These three cards were donated by Jaakko Vuorela.

The Aetherling is from Ville-Veikko Vähäaho and the Sunstrikers are from Antti Kosonen.

The environmentally conscious Magic players in Jyväskylä recycled some more cardboard yesterday, when I was given the above cards during Friday Night Magic. It's a win/win for everyone and everything. Trash gets properly recycled and my deck gets bigger. Thanks to everyone involved in this!

The Shadowmage Infiltrator, Wolf-Skull Shaman and Goblin Replica from Jaakko are otherwise unrelated to each other. The Finkel he got as a throw-in with some trade and the Goblin Replica has suffered the sorry fate of being stuffed in the pocket of young Jaakko's pants way back when. Carrying Magic cards in your pockets really isn't a good idea, but we can forgive little boys that mistake. The Wolf-Skull shaman has had some sticky drink spilled on it and a bunch of other cards. The distinctive damage is from the drink getting it stuck to some other card and the surface layer ripping off when the cards were separated. Jaakko was unfortunately unable to find the other half of this puzzle yet, but we might see a mirror image of this pattern on some other destroyed card in the future.

The Aetherling from Ville has suffered typical water damage, but I am sadly unable to remember the details of how this happened. It lacks the typical white spots, but it is instead so wavy that you can even see the sexy curves in the picture.  The Ajani's Sunstriker from Antti actually came with an identical pair. They have both been folded to act as protectors for sleeved cards in an envelope. Since they have been intentionally destroyed, I came to the conclusion I can not use them here, so one of them is fulfilling its original purpose again  and is on its way to Sweden bravely protecting some cards I sold via magiccardmarket. Sorry for mistakenly saying they are OK, Antti!

Cards 28 and 29: Bend Test Dummies

These cards were sent by user Reflektio from mtgsuomi. Thank you, Reflektio!

Both the Demigod of Revenge and Inferno Fist have been badly bent in the middle of the card. Even though the damage on these cards is almost identical, their stories are not actually related by more than having the same original owner.

The Demigod has been used way back when in an attempt to test or demonstrate how the Bend Test works. The Bend Test is a well known way to test for counterfeits, since a normal undamaged Magic card can be bent several times and it should return to its original shape without folding or creasing, whereas counterfeits usually break when bent. This Demigod stands as a proof that the Bend Test is not suitable for every card, as foils, played or old cards usually do not survive it, and this card definitely did not.

The Inferno Fist on the other hand was not used in a Bend Test but was instead folded to act as a cap for packaging another card in a sleeve. After folding it in half, Reflektio found out he did not actually need a cap for that particular package, so this card died in vain. I am glad to be able to provide both of these fine cards a new home.

Cards 19 and 20: Crushed Avenger and Top Tier of Cat Meta

This batch of practically mint Magic cards was sent by user ruusuv from mtgsuomi. The users of that site are really diligent with properly recycling their cardboard!

The pictured Firemane Avenger is another card that has fallen victim to a speeding office chair. The driver of this hit-and-run vehicle has been more thorough than the previous ones, since the ridge on this roadkill Creature is very hard to miss and makes the card definitely marked and definitely destroyed.

Office chairs are not the only destructive force of nature to make a comeback today, as ruusuv also sent me this Skeleton Ship that his cats had been playing with for quite some time. Judging from how much wear it has gained from frequent play, Skeleton Ship must have been a real staple in the metagame of catkind's favourite gaming venue under ruusuv's sofa.

With the addition of Firemane Avenger, Wear 'n' Tear is now officially a five-colour deck.

Card 14: Sword of Reddit and Tumbling

This absolutely fabulous Sword of Feast and Famine was sent by redditor Zombiesquisher, an obviously awesome person.

This Sword of Feast and Famine has tumbled trough a washing machine after one of Zombiesquisher's friends forgot to empty her pockets before washing her pants. This tragic accident has left the card in a sorry state, but amazingly all of the text is still legible! I am glad to be able to add it to my collection, as this card will both be one of the more powerful plays in Wear 'n' Tear and one of the finest examples of what this project is all about.

In the previous post we concluded that office chairs are a low-end threat to magic cards, but now we can supplement that observation by the fact that washing machines are among the worst threats to cardboard. Dear readers, always check you pockets before doing the laundry!

Card 12: Rip Stream

Greetings from the Prerelease at Tampere. While I was working as an assistant judge at the tournament, I was handed this beautiful Full Art Foil Premium Mythic Rare Expedition (Sounds like Yugi Oh doesn't it?) Prairie Stream as a devious bribe.

As those readers who have been exposed to the darker side of the Internet will likely guess, this card has been horribly abused in a game of ''Flip it, or rip it''. While I do not normally accept cards that have been destroyed on purpose, I consider giving this poor card a loving home an act of charity worth making an exception for.

The lower half of the actual card is completely ripped off, and the stripped foil layer is just lying loose on it.

With the addition of an Island Plains, Wear 'n' Tear can produce all five colours of mana and even the fetchland has a target now.

Card 11: Mysterious Delta

This Polluted Delta was sent to me by Markku Rikola, the baldest man in Tampere. May his scalp shine brightly forever.

This Polluted Delta was included in the collection that came to Markku from the Finnish Champion Mikko Airaksinen and Magic Online World Champion Anssi Myllymäki. This happened during the bygone era when it was common to pool collections together to enable a larger variety of decks to be played in tournaments.

The card is otherwise in very good condition, except for one corner that has been neatly sliced off with some sort of sharp tool. None of the three gentlemen know when or how this happened, but by the time Markku got it, the card was already in this condition. I am glad to be able to add it to The Deck, even though there are no islands or swamps to search with it for now. Markku sends the readers his greetings with: ''I hope this card makes the final cut''.

Cards 7, 8 , 9 and 10: Surprise Shreddings

These cards came as a nice surprise in the mail from the alias kanslerioikein from mtgsuomi. Thank you kanslerioikein!

These blue cards were reportedly found among the singles sold at a local game store. Both have seen a lot of wear and tear and the Contempt is missing a corner. The enchantment has also apparently been used as a proxy at some point in its history, as there is ''drake'' written with black marker on its back.

The Evolving Wilds and Jungle Hollow are both badly mangled, which is to be expected as kanslerioikein used them in an attempt to teach their dog to play Magic. It looks like the attempt failed, but I commend them for trying.

''Please, let there be no deck check!''

Card 1: Cathandled Pithing Needle

The first card for the Deck was a Christmas present from J. Ihonen, a well known L2 judge and  player from southern Finland. Many thanks to him!

The first specimen is a Pithing Needle that had been stuck between the skirting and the wall behind some furniture. Ihonen's cats had tried to salvage the card several times during the year, but their attempts had failed.

Some signs of these heroic efforts to reclaim this card can be seen on its surfaces, but other than that, the card is in practically mint condition.