Introduction

Those of you who’ve been reading my blog for a while know that I sometimes get unusual calls from my boyfriend when he’s at work. Well today I got another one, but this time it was not tied to a request for me to craft nerdcore jewelry.

A Mysterious Package

So, Jeremy called me this morning with excitement and a great deal of puzzlement in his voice. “A package just arrived for you here at the Moonbase*,” he told me. (*Another name for the LoadingReadyRun office, where he works.)

“A package? At the office?” I said, because repeating things is helpful and makes you sound intelligent.

“Yeah. Did you order seven pounds of magic cards and have them delivered here?”

“Did I do what? Magic cards? Seven pounds? What?”

“Well it’s a box that says it contains seven pounds of Magic cards, from Troll and Toad, the online card store, and it’s addressed to you.”

“Are you sure? It has my name on it?”

“The invoice says ‘Importer: Tally Heilke.'”

“Um… wait, really? It says Tally Heilke?”

This went on for a while, with me continuing to sound deeply intelligent and parrot-like, and all of us – me, Jeremy and all his co-workers in the background – rubbing our heads in an excited but entirely mystified way. I had Jeremy crack open the box, but there was no note inside, just a LOT of Magic cards. Various lands, M11 commons and a random (and rather interesting) assortment of 25 rares with absolutely no unifying set or theme.

So after work I went down to the Moonbase and sure enough, there was a package with my name on it. Here’s what it contained.

Two boxes very very full of Magic cards.

One box contained mana of every colour and of many different sets.

The other box contained what must technically be termed a shit tonne of M11 commons. (Btw, does this photo remind anyone else of that bit in Beauty and the Beast, during the song Be Our Guest when there are those lines and lines of dancing dishes, stacked on top of each other? No? Ok, nevermind, just keep reading.)

And 25 randomly assorted rares.

Wild Speculation

Now, I don’t know if this was sent by Troll and Toad, or by someone else via Troll and Toad, or what. I don’t know why it was sent to me, though I can happily put forth some wild speculation. Given that my name was on it and it was sent to an address that one would have to have a certain amount of knowledge to associate with me, I highly doubt that it’s some sort of random mistake. (I sure hope it isn’t!) Here are my various and wild guesses as to why it was sent:

1. Someone is commissioning me to build them a tree fort out of these Magic cards. Which frankly sounds awesome.

2. Someone heard that we have a desperate shortage of Magic cards and wanted to help out. Which would mean that they’ve paid no attention whatsoever to anything my and my friends have been saying on the internet of the past several months. But we’ll totally forgive them, because they’re clearly awesome.

3. Someone saw my Magic card crafts and noticed my poor boyfriend Tweeting about how I kept cutting up his precious cards (though of course he exaggerates, the way boyfriends do), and figured they’d send me a whole bunch of cards to consecrate to the crafting gods with wild abandon and glee. Which is totally freaking awesome, and if I knew who it was I’d give them several huge hugs.

So I have no idea who these are from (though, they could, of course, simply be from Troll and Toad, in which case a huge thank you to them), or why exactly the were sent to me, and I certainly hope it’s not a mistake of some kind. But regardless, it’s been a pretty exciting day. My imagination is gearing up for some massive-scale crafting possibilities… And I hope whoever sent the package will let me know more, like who they are and why they sent these boxes full of crafting supplies, er, I mean, Magic cards.

Notes about the cards

There’s an old-school rare in here that neither Jeremy nor I had previously come across, and there’s something about it that really grabs me. False Dawn is a white sorcery that costs two mana and allows you to turn all permanents you control and all cards you own that are not in play into white cards until end of turn, then allows you to draw a card.

It’s an intriguing mechanic that I think could do some interesting things in the right deck. But what really grabs me is the art. I’m not sure how to explain it, but it’s got an 80s-style-animated-epic-adventure feel to it that reminds me of Lloyd Alexander books and fantasy films from childhood and gives off an aura of wistfulness and excitement. I really can’t explain it any better than that, but I love the card.

I also noticed that  when you spread all the cards out in random order, not organized by colour, as I did for this photo, they’re rather reminiscent of a string of Christmas lights. I may have to do something with that…

The Myr is, of course, very excited about all these cards. So many new creatures to blow up!

So a HUGE thank you to whoever sent these! I hope you’ll tell me who you are so I can thank you properly, and so you can tell me if these are indeed supposed to be for crafting, or for playing, or for sharing – not that any of these things are totally mutually exclusive. This was really such an awesome surprise. Unexpected snail mail is one of the best things ever. Unless it’s bills. Or advertisements, or political flyers. But this wasn’t any of those things, so it really is one of the best things ever!