Cards 89 and 90: Dark Discoveries

Today's additions all come from previous contributors. The Tormented hero is from Ville-Veikko Vähäaho, who is also responsible for an Aetherling and the Despoil and Dark Banishing are from Ilkka Siiki, who has previously provided some crimpled cards and a pile of Basic Lands.

The FNM Foil Tormented Hero was found under VVV's kitchen counter. Having been tormented in inhumane conditions for an unknown period of time, the card is severely bent and has worn edges. The Despoil and Dark Banishing were found when Ilkka had some local players over at his apartment to loot his boxes of Commons, so he can get rid of as many as possible before moving abroad. The Despoil is unfortunately only badly worn, but hardly destroyed, so it does not make the cut. The Dark Banishing on the other hand has a small tear on its edge and has been worn badly enough that it bends in odd ways, making it just Practically Mint enough. It is starting to look a lot like Black will be the primary colour of this deck.

Wear 'n' Tear now has 90 cards in it, and the box of cards rejected from it also contains 85 cards. If I combine the two, we are roughly half-way to a small cube. That is starting to look like a real possibility.

Cards 83 to 86: Swallowed Soldier and Defective Promotions

This Anafenza, the Foremost was left at my local game store by Lassi Ahlberg, a local L1 Judge who took his judge exam in the same event I did.

These crimped prerelease promos were collected at the Puolenkuun Pelit prerelease in Tampere by user scor of mtgsuomi.

Scor also threw in these cards along with the crimped foils.

I got two nice deliveries today. Lasse had left a card of mine he had been holding in Fantasiapelit, my local game store, and had attached the pictured Anafenza to it. His sofa hand swallowed her, and digested her to this shape. Beware of deceptively comfy furniture. First they crush your magic cards, then they steal your car keys.

The Odric, Lunach Marshal, Harness the Storm and Burn from Within all come from the Puolenkuun Pelit prerelease in Tampere, where scor likely opened one of them and collected the others as donations to me from other people who had gotten defective product. All of these have had their bottom edge crimped by the machine that packages the promos in plastic. This makes them count as marked cards and useless for tournament play.

The last two cards, Murasa Ranger and the worn Island scor found from his own collection. The Ranger is an interesting misprint where the printer had likely ran out of ink, so the text box has much thinner text than usual. It is otherwise in mint condition, so It'd clearly be legal to play in tournaments and thus not eligible for Wear 'n' Tear. The Island has been with him for a long time and had accumulated wear and tear over the years so it now has a ruined corner which makes it marked. It is not very spectacular, but it is a basic land, so I am not going to raise the bar very high for it.

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 21-27: Mystery Cards from a Mystery Contributor

These seven cards were in the mail on the same day as the cards from Co and ruusuv were, but they came in an anonymous brown letter which had no postmark on the stamp. Normally this would mean that the cards might have been delivered directly to my mailbox, but since they arrived at the same time as my regular mail and Finnish postal workers have been pretty lazy with their markings lately, I can not be sure about it. If my anonymous benefactor wishes to identify themselves and share the story of these cards, they may do so in the comments below.

The Lonely Sandbar, Remote Isle and Aether Spellbomb are severely bent and spotty in a way that is typical to cards damaged by water. The spots are light brown and the cards have a faint smell of coffee, so I deduce that they must have had coffee spilled on them. The forest has similar damage to it, but the spots on it are clear and it has a scratch on the artwork, so it might have been damaged in some other incident.

The Swamp has been badly scratched and it has been bent on the lower half, but I am unable to guess the source of the damage. The Ulamog's Crusher is otherwise practically mint but it has been folded badly enough that the two halves of the card have been partially torn loose. The Death Denied has probably been under the leg of a table or some other heavy piece of furniture as it has a very heavily dented perfectly round shape in the middle of the card.

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 13: National Deed

These cards were sent by Ville Kovelo, a judge and a long time staple of the Finnish Magic scene.

You can clearly see that the damage on the Curse of Inertia is visible only from the right angle.

This Pernicious Deed was found on the floor of the venue of the second to last Finnish Nationals. The owner was not found, so Ville had held on to it until now. It was accompanied in the mail by this roadkill Curse of Inertia, which Ville rolled over on his office chair while taking apart a Commander deck for selling.

The Deed has been rather badly worn by being walked over, but the damage on the Curse is surprisingly hard to see unless you look closely, so it will be left out of the deck for now.  It will keep company with the Soulflayer that was also run over by an out of control office chair. I may add both of them to Wear 'n' Tear once we get to the point where it is only a few cards away from first playtests. It turns out that being rolled over by furniture isn't among the worst things that can happen to a card.

In other news, I passed my L1 Judge exam during the weekend. Yay!

Cards 3 and 4: Childhood Lobotomy and Pressed Valakut

This batch of cardboard was brought to me by Jukka Jääskelä; a local player known for his enthusiasm for Legacy.

Card number three is Jukka's first ever foil that he traded his Planar Portal and Crosis, the Purger for in elementary school. He never needed it for any deck, but he just had to have it because of the captivating artwork. The card has not aged well, and all of its edges are severely worn and the topmost layer is peeling off from one corner.

Card number four is a Valakut Jukka opened from a fat pack and left lying on his desk. It eventually drifted under his keyboard, where it got stuck and torn badly enough that a piece of the border was shorn off.

Card 2: A Mountain with a Peak

These cards were donated by Sampsa Nylund, a most generous player from Helsinki.

The card of the day is a beautiful foil Mountain from the Invasion set. It was Sampsa's first foil that he got as a child, long before he properly got into Magic. The card already had the distinctive peak on the upper right corner when he got it. I am glad to be able to provide a dignified retirement for this crippled veteran of a card that he held on to for such a long time.

The Mountain was kept company on the journey to my desk by this Soulflayer, that has had an unfortunate hit-and-run accident with the wheels of an office chair. This card has a peanut sized dent on the top and some tearing on the edges, but the damage is likely so hard to see trough one of the Perfect Fit sleeves I am using for the Deck, that I am leaving it out of the card pool for now.

It is worth noting that it is currently possible to cast all of the spells in the Deck with the mana it contains. I suspect this might not happen again for a long time after this post.