Collecting stuff is pretty much an common theme when it comes to hobbies. In fact, CCG means collectable card games. I was raised on collecting baseball cards, and I’m not totally afraid to admit that I have played Pokemon once or twice (Only the old school Red/Blue on the original Gameboy). We, as humans, want to collect things.

But the funny thing about collectable card games is that they are games as well. You play games. Having a stack of baseball cards does nothing, as you can look at them through the plastic pages in your binder, but there’s nothing really that you can do with them. Magic, being a game, means that you can collect and play them at the same time. You can fill your decks with treasures that you open or trade for. That’s part of Magic’s appeal, you can do both.

Yesterday WotC released the newest From the Vault series where it’s all Legends. By having all 15 special foiled cards be Legends, we can use them to build our decks around. This naturally would be amazing for Commander since we love to pimp out our decks as much as possible. Personally, I’m not going to open my box.

This is a huge disappointment to me. I’m not trying to short the market by having fewer copies of the product around, I just don’t see the value in opening them up. I really wanted to play with these cards too, so it’s not like I’m trying to jump on a bandwagon here. With reasons I get into in my next GatheringMagic piece, I just don’t see this as a good meshing between the concepts. Not because I only have one of those Commanders in my Highlander Collective (We’ll get to that in September), but because I feel that WotC didn’t take full advantage of the situation.

The product was created to help bring back high level collecting to Magic. I’ve got some weird things in my Magic collection: unopened Mirrodin Besieged Faction packs, the old Duelist abacas counter, a print copy of The Sideboard from the Summer of 1998 and about 100 copies of Madrush Cyclops. Looks like I’ll be adding an unopened From the Vault: Legends, still in its white protective box, to that collection.

I wanted to have it to complete my collection of my FtV purchases. It’s not going anywhere. Right now it has the same play value as my Baseball cards.

None.

If you ever went to one of those end of the year school assemblies, you might recognize the title from a certain song’s lyrics. I’m just partly wondering if they even do this song anymore, or if its too old for today’s generation.

Yes, as of today, I’m not looking to create original content for 99EDHProblems.com.

Don’t don’t be sad, it’s not all bad news. Here’s some possible questions that you might have:

Really? Why are you shutting this blog down?

If you’ve noticed that there has be little content on this blog recently. It’s not because I don’t love you guys. I just can’t create content for this blog as often as I’d wish.

So, you’re not writing about Magic anymore?

Whoa, that’s not true at all. For those that don’t know, I started the blog MTGColorPie.com (hence my name), years before this one. After I started to fall in love with EDH/Commander, I started another blog (where you’re currently at) about the format. So, for over a year, I was managing 2 blogs about two separate Magic topics at the same time, where this one accepted user content as well. That’s when a new variable entered into my life:

I’ve been writing for ManaNation about EDH/Commander.

For those keeping track, I’m also writing for part time on QuietSpeculation.com and in discussion to write for another website for which I can’t talk about just yet. MTGColorPie is continuing as well (a new post should come in the next day or two for those that are wondering). As I’m planning out articles and topics, 99EDH was the one that always got shafted because of the overlap with ManaNation. Anything I would want to write for this site kept getting pushed back and put in the pile “I’ll get to it next week.” When people asked where I wrote, this blog was starting to get left out of my locations. Not because I didn’t love it, it was just getting too much to keep track of. I didn’t want to write about Commander for ManaNation and then do the same thing for this blog as well. I had been holding back in both places afraid to step on toes.

And I’m afraid it was hurting my work.

Now I won’t hold anything back for when I write for ManaNation.

But the other thing good for you is that except for a break when I was on the Magic Cruise, I’m writing every week over there. You were lucky to get one every other week on here. That’s great for you, since you’re actually getting content on a regular basis, and great for me, since I won’t feel like I’m trying to spread things too thin. Because you’re getting my Commander thoughts there, this blog has really become redundant.

But what about stuff like Stone Cold Commander of the Century (Of the Week)?

I’ve got a ton of ideas. I don’t have the time nor the energy to do them all. I thought that I could do something fun and easy to keep this blog going. We know how well that went. So, I’m taking my talents to ManaNation where I might be talking about things like that every once in a while. SCCotC(OtW) seems like a nice thing I might tack onto the end of posts every once in a while, so it’s not going to disappear.

What happens to this site?

I’ve paid for the domain name until later in the year. I’m not deleting this blog at all so if you keep coming back here you’ll find the same stuff. I was struck earlier this year about how UGMadness.net has now gone down and is gone for us forever. While I may or may not keep the domain name, I’m keeping the blog up for reference.

Listen, I’m not saying that stopping this blog this is a bad thing. This blog has helped launch my work for ManaNation.com and Derfington’s at QuietSpeculation.com with both of us writing about Commander. You’re still getting Commander content, it’s just not going to be here.

I hope you guys understand that, and respect that. It’s been great giving you my thoughts on this blog, I wish you’re with me for the next step at ManaNation.com where I’m continuing the adventure.

Thank you for the fun times at 99EDHProblems.com