Arizona mailday

Yesterday I got the chance to play some IRL Magic again, this time drafting "The Beta Cube" over at Jhovalking's place in Oslo. It was a sweet gathering, and I plan to do a short write-up about the cube and tournament in the not too distant future. Before that however, I figured I could do a couple of short posts on some recent mail-days and other collection updates.

As the pandemic rages on and ordinary charity tournaments have been harder to set up, a bunch of heroes in the community have organized and contributed to charity auctions the last couple of months. Even original artists like Drew Tucker, Jesper Myrfors, Ken Meyer Jr and Liz Danford have joined in the efforts and donated artwork or exclusive collectibles for the causes. Earlier this month the Pacific Old School community gathered almost $10,000 to Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), Color of Change, and National Federation of Filipino American Association (NaFFAA) with their summer charity auction. Today's mailday was from a couple of months earlier, mid June to be more exact, when the Arizona Desert Twisters hosted the first major charity auction of the summer, collecting almost $5,000 for the Phoenix Children's Hospital.

The Desert Twisters are awesome. If you are unfamiliar with the team, I highly recommend giving last weeks All Tings Considered a listen. And from my corner, they get some extra attention and high fives courtesy of their amazing artistry and their Showdown tournament, a gathering where all targeting removal are flipped Chaos Orb style to gain "bullets" for value (and street cred, I presume). With that in mind, I'm pretty sure that I would have spent a comparable sum to get my hands on the treasures in the mail regardless of reason, but spending the month's extra money on charity and then getting awesome stuff in the mail at the same time is so sweet it almost feels like cheating.

OK, so let's open a letter!

Christmas in August.

It's good that the box was marked as "Fragile", but I'm not sure this corner is reassuring. Hopefully whatever happened during transit didn't hit the print too badly.

Before we even get to the meat, we find some rad stickers taped to the outside of the box. Very nice.

What have we here? Something else I don't recall bidding on?

Heya, surprise sleeves! These things and the rad stickers really make opening this box next level joyous. I don't know why random gifts makes you smile in such a way, but they somehow just do. Or as Jeff White noted on his Quest for the Shark blag, "If anyone ever sends cards to anyone else ever, you should always include a pile of thoughtfully assorted cards in addition to what they ordered. Trust me."

Boom! Here's what we bid on. It appears minty fresh and survived the handling of the box well. If you don't recognize the art, it is of The Sheriff, a flippin' wild card of a character. It was illustrated by Desert Twisters founding member Kyra's sixteen year-old nephew, Jett Lascurettes.

And here's the man in all his glory. Welcome to the Chaos Orb binder new friend. And look out for Will Magrann.

Backside of The Sheriff. Some fancy technology right there.

And our final treasure. Lady Deathtouch of the Desert Twisters is a highly skilled artist and alterist, so one item in the auction was a customized Chaos Orb proxy. The alter is painted on a Battering Ram and looks even more insane in person. When she asked for preferences I asked for a somewhat cartoony but dark alter, that incorporated the playtest version (Sphere of Annihilation) if possible. Couldn't be happier with the result.

The brethren. Now to find an excuse to flip it on stuff...

Thank you guys for all you do for the communities, old school and others. It makes me so happy to be a part of the gang.