#MtgForLife

I have a plan. Bear with me, and I might give you a Mox. At the very least, I'll give you the chance to pimp a Magic card for a good cause.

We hear the news. We feel some kind of empathy for whatever war-torn country is the "flavor of the week", eventually shut down the tv, and go readily to sleep at night. But god damn. Fuck people shooting tear gas at boat refugees trying to find harbor, and fuck people who thinks owning a cell phone makes your home bomb proof.

The amount of refugees today can only be compared to the time of the Holocaust and WW2. Nearly 60 million people were forcibly displaced in 2014. That's one out of every 122 on the planet. Of these, the confilict in Syria is the single biggest one. 250 000 dead in the civil war so far, and Doctors without borders has reported that suppliers in Syria refuse to sell essential medical supplies such as gauze and surgical threads to doctors due to government intimidation.

Stay with me, duals and curses ahead.

I wont tell you the horror stories, mostly as I can't grasp them. I have spent 15 months training in the Swedish military, but I never went to a war. This is outside my realm. When I work an eleven hour day with a stressed out boss, that's a very bad day for me. For someone used to a salt mine in Bolivia, sitting in a chair with free coffee for eleven hours would probably be the sweetest workday ever. People fleeing from ISIS is outside my context.

So what then? Play the waiting game, and accept that this is not happening to us? Well. Lets do something instead. Lets downgrade one of our cards.

I've been updating this blog weekly for three or four years now. During this time, the interest in old school magic has grown immensely. This blog gets about a 1000 pageveiws a day by now, which is kinda insane. I don't use any ads, premium content, nor any other way to collect any money from this. Some people have asked me about a paypal donate button here to support the blog and our tournaments, but I've never felt that Old School Magic or #mtgunderground should be incentivised by money. But if you ever felt that this blog or this format was a good thing, and you've wanted to support, now is a good time.

So here's my plan. This is four days salary for a Medicin sans frontiers employee working in Syria:

This could be food for a week:

This is a golden time to act. Changing a Tarmogoyf to a Scavenging Ooze in your deck could actually save lives. Downgrading a BB card to WB has real value. We all have a couple of cards we don't really need, staples sitting in our binders or cards that could be exchanged. If we do this, we might actually save a handful of real people from dying. Using our hobby and the community for the people in the real underground.

So this is what I'll do. I'll sell that Tundra to get some money to give to Doctors without borders. Instead of that Tundra, I'll write MtgForLife on a Hallowed Fountain and play that one in my EDH deck instead. It's not like I'll ever be sad drawing that one instead of the Tundra. Hell, I'll play it with much more pride. Then I'll sell a Volcanic Island to buy stamps. Because this is where you come in.

Yeah, you guys.

For anyone selling, downgrading or just neglecting to buy a $25+ card, and giving the money to the #MtgForLife project, I'll send you a random 93/94 legal card. I'll sign them and tag the card with the project as a memorabilia. If you don't have any card you want to downgrade, just neglect to buy one or donate some money for the cause anyway, and I'll send you a card. If we get just 10 people to skip a blue dual for a basic land or shockland, we'll reach $1000. If we reach $1000, I'll throw in another Tundra in the pot.

Anything helps. A Thoughtseize to a Duress. A skipped booster draft.

And let's make this interesting. I have a deck under construction which I hoped to finish by the end of the year. I lack a pair of duals and a Bazaar of Baghdad, among other things. If this project should reach $10,000, I'll put my next deck on hold, and use my Magic budget for the rest of the year to buy a Mox, find someone skilled to give it an awesome alteration, and give randomly to someone who donated $100 or more. All we need is 100 people giving up a dual or a Tarmogoyf. 10 people willing to downgrade a Mox from Beta to Unlimited. Raising $10,000 will be hard. If we don't, I get a small win in the fact that I'll still have a Magic budget for the year. If we do, I might say bye to my Bazaar shenanigans, but I'll get a huge win in the fact that the community raised fucking $10,000 to save some people in the real underground.

All the money we collect will be given to Doctors without borders. I'll sell some of my own cards to pay for the stamps. Our incentive in this is a collective sense of accomplishment and the knowledge that we did something decent. At the very least, I'll give up a pair of blue duals and big chunk of 93/94 cards I don't really need to live. If this actually works, one of you'll be a feel-good Mox richer in a month. I'm not the richest man per say, I don't own my own apartment nor have a car. But I certainly have a few cards I could give up to make a fubar situation ever so slightly better. Here's the campaign at Indiegogo.

#MtgForLife. Lets do this shit!