Why You Should Play An Unsleeved Commander Deck And Lick Each Card You Draw
Magic: The Gathering is a game all about personal expression. Your deck is an extension of yourself in cardboard; your favorite color or ideology can directly influence the spells and creatures within your "spellbook". It's why I adore and play Commander, a format tailor-made to show off people's personalities in their singleton decks. Personally, I want everyone who sits down at the table to know what I'm about the second they see the cards I play. That's why I play an unsleeved deck with fluid damage from me putting the cards in my mouth and on my tongue.
While the game of Magic is forward-thinking and progressive, there are still some things about it that hold players back. Mark Rosewater has made it abundantly clear we can't eat cards, effectively shutting out a creative outlet for a certain subset of the players. But I am here to show you why you should not bless Mr. Rosewater and his words as gospel truth. In reality, putting cards in your mouth is a fun, creative, and enriching experience that all players should try at least once.
As I'm writing this, I can feel you, dear reader, immediately getting creeped out at the idea of leaving expensive and important cards out of sleeves, or even retching at the idea of using the cards to pick bits of food out of your teeth, but keep in mind why you bought these cards: to use them. Sure, it's not how they were meant to be used, but if Matt Damon had used potatoes and feces the usual way, he never would've made it off Mars in that documentary I watched.
By putting cards in and around your mouth, you can communicate way more than what you could with that same mouth. A Forest poking out of a molar indicates that not only are you here to have a good time, you don't care who sees you do it. You're chewing cards and you're proud of it, and if you don't like it, get the hell out of this game store. Some might call that aggressive, but those naysayers probably have no idea how sweet a foil can taste on your tongue.
Most importantly, I know I'm not alone in a desire to lick cards. A few months ago the entirely serious Reddit community r/magicthecirclejerking was inundated by posts from people attempting to disintegrate a card only using their tongue. Using the same method some 70s marketing guru used to get kids to buy lollipops, Reddit users were trying to find out how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Magic card. While only a handful of posts would make it seem like a harmless joke, we instead got various, in-depth posts about proper card-licking technique, which cards have the worst taste, and so on.
This just goes to show the true passion like-minded card-lickers have, so get outside of your comfort zone and put a Magic card in your mouth, regardless of what the creators of Magic: The Gathering and common sense might tell you. You might learn to love it.
