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.

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 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 87 and 88: Reading and Spying

These cards were sent by Sampsa Nylund, who has also sent some cards earlier. Thank you again!

Today's envelope came from Sampa Nylund, who also contributed the second card of Wear 'n' Tear earlier. The torn Goblin Spy is from the same batch of cards he got from a friend as a child along with the previously seen Mountain With a Peak. It has some sentimental value as his first ever Magic card. It is a fine addition to my project, even though the ability doesn't reveal any additional information that couldn't be deduced from seeing the unique card backs already.

The other cards are assorted victims of time and games that he could not tell exactly when and where they have been damaged. The Read the Bones has been bent badly enough to make it an easy addition to Wear 'n' Tear, but the Vile Requiem and Trade Caravan, although badly worn, would still be tournament legal, and thus they are not quite worn enough for me. We might see them again if I combine Wear 'n' Tear with the pile of cards rejected from it to create a small Cube.

The Metapost: The Deck and contributing to it

My name is Jyri Hämäläinen and I am a competitive Magic player and prospective judge from Jyväskylä, Finland. I have been actively playing Magic in tournaments since the autumn of 2012, though I was already familiar with the game from having played it briefly as a schoolkid around the turn of the millennium. I am known for a strong tendency to play small disruptive white creatures in all formats.

I got the idea for collecting destroyed magic cards from Cockatrice, where some American player mentioned in passing about his Commander deck built out of ruined cards. The idea appealed to me and I started asking around if people had amusing stories about ruined cards in my area. The response on mtgsuomi and various local and regional IRC channels was very positive, so I moved ahead with the project.

Since all of the cards in it are strictly illegal to play in all games of Magic, The Deck won't technically belong in any format. At first I will try to conform to the card pool of some sanctioned 60-card format. Which one it is depends on which kind of cards I first happen to get my hands on, since I accept cards printed in any product published under the Magic brand. All the cards I am currently expecting correspond to cards legal in Modern, but I strongly suspect that by the 60-card mark The Deck will be a Vintage deck. Even that might fail, if I find some un-cards with interesting histories.

If the number of cards available grows large enough I will likely update The Deck to some 100-card singleton format. I enjoy playing Highlander much more than Commander, but the inherent silliness of this project might match the The Spirit of EDH so much better that I will have to go outside of my comfort zone.

Lastly, if this blog happens to go viral at some point and my apartment becomes flooded with cardboard trash, I promise to turn The Deck into The Cube.