Dear Remand,

<3

I love you so fucking much. I own 19 cubes and they are my babies. I spend so much time working on them, nurturing them. And as a true parent, I don’t pick favourites between my cube-kids. Those 19 cubes hold 3705 unique cards. That is such an insane number I am going to write it out fully: three thousand, seven hundred and five. And between those three thousand, seven hundred and five cards I do pick a favourite, it is you. 

You embody me as a player. You are the perfect Magic card to me. The way you can temporise the game has me mesmerised every time I play you. When I was 16 years old we first joined forces in the standard Heartbeart of Spring combo deck back in 2006. I qualified for my first Dutch National Championships with you in that year. The next standard rotation we joined forces in a blue and green tempo deck. And in that deck I learned why I really love you. 

In a combo deck you are basically a Time Walk. Buying the combo deck another turn to assemble the win. So efficient. But in a tempo deck you take different roles. You either slow the opponent down to race them, or slow them down to gain control over the game. The reason I love tempo decks so much, because the player can always switch from aggressor to controller to aggressor in any turn. And timing these switches makes tempo decks for me the most challenging, and therefore, most fun decks to play. And I just love playing them when I get to do it together with you. My one true Magic love. 

While counting the total number of unique cards between my 19 cubes, I also counter the number of cubes containing certain cards. 8 cards shared the second place with a total of 8 cubes they are represented in. And one card stood alone, isolated on an island, with 10 unique cubes. And that card was of course you Remand. 

It has always been you. I love you.

With love,

Hanjo