Hello!
Andy from Lucky Paper just dropping in to let you know that we’ve just opened preorders for our first playmat. It’s been a long time coming: I started the illustration before CubeCon last year, and after months of refinement, working with potential vendors, test prints/proofs, and sorting out details of fulfillment, we’re finally ready to bring it to you. The mat costs 50 USD with free shipping anywhere in the world. Preorders will be open until April 17th, and this will probably be your only opportunity to buy one.
In an age of fractured social networks that are constantly toying with how content is delivered through their platforms, I really value this newsletter and all of you who subscribe to it. It’s one of the only truly direct channels we have — so I’m taking this opportunity to give you all some behind the scenes details surrounding this mat.
If you’re a longtime, keen-eared listener to the podcast, you’ll have heard me talk about my personal hesitance to sell playmats or any other “merch”. I feel there ought to be a high bar to bringing any new, physical, fossil-fuel-consuming shit into the world, and the idea of making a bunch of playmats that are eventually destined for a trash can or land fill or the Great Pacific Garbage Patch gives me profound, haunting, existential dread. If you’re reading this and you’ve made or sold some merch in the past please don’t feel judged! This is my own, personal psychological burden to bear and I am genuinely jealous of your brain chemistry.
Needless to say, there were a couple of requirements for me to feel ok about selling a playmat. First and foremost, I wanted it to have a reason to exist beyond some shallow piece of marketing or “in-crowd” social signaling for the podcast. Again, no shade to anyone who chooses to go this route, but for me, putting our logo or show art on a mat was not sufficient reason to expedite the heating of the planet by even an infinitesimally small percent of a degree. Instead, I wanted to make a unique piece of artwork, ideally with some sort of message, that means something to people beyond mere affiliation with Lucky Paper.
For CubeCon last year, we opted to create custom, matching track jackets for our playgroup. Tasked with designing these jackets, I tried to come up with text and imagery that would speak to the vibes and values of our community, and one of the ideas I struck on was the line “Cube will outlive Magic”, which I emblazoned across the back of the jacket in bold lettering. It immediately felt right to me. As much as I love Magic, I’m conflicted about making that love a part of my identity. The community and the space for creativity afforded by the flexible game engine mean a great deal to me, but there are a lot of aspects of Magic, especially as a “brand” and a for-profit product I actively dislike. Cube is where I have found my niche in the Magic world. Cube emphasizes everything about the game that I love and offers a rare opportunity to opt out of most of the elements of Magic that bum me out.
“Cube will outlive Magic” is a statement of preference, of course, but it’s also a suggestion that Cube — the local and online communities created around the format and the creative work poured into every Cube list — is more meaningful and long-lived than Magic as a product. It’s also a subtle criticism of the capitalist incentive structure under which the game is produced. Someday, Hasbro and its shareholders will have sucked every last dollar out of Magic and it will die. Those are the rules: we get to have nice things as long as they’re profitable and in a constant state of growth, but eventually the cash will dry up, and the game will be cast aside just as everything that has come before it. Cube will not die, though. Cube exists outside of that system: it’s punk rock, it’s grassroots, and it’s DIY. Plus, the slogan has the word “die” in it so I get to draw a bunch of sick skeletons!
I was really pleased to see that our jackets seemed to connect with people at CubeCon, but even before the motto was adopted by some others in the community I had already begun drawing the illustration for this mat because of how strongly it resonated with me. The illustration is a direct homage to Matisse’s “The Dance”, which I feel has a lively energy that is contrasted nicely by the macabre details of the skeletal bodies. The type is set in the font Raleway, designed by my good friend and partner on multiple prior podcast projects, Matt McInerney. I chose it partially because of the construction of the “W”, whose overlapping strokes add interest and make it feel more connected to the thread woven throughout the dancers.
On the topic of the thread: I initially added it to aid in readability — compositionally I really wanted the text scattered about semi-organically, but I didn’t want to end up in a “don’t dead open inside” situation — but it became a meaningful element to me. I knew from the start I wanted to render this part of the illustration in applied gold foil, and I could not stop thinking about one scene from Disney’s Hercules, of all things, while I worked on it. The Greek myth of the Moirai and a life being represented with a length of string is a recurring theme of the movie, with the fates who control life and death cutting a person’s corresponding thread to end their life. Strings of immortals are strands of uncuttable gold, and at the height of the movie’s conflict, Hercules is struggling to achieve immortality as Hades is reaching to cut his string, and just as the blades of the scissors close around the thread, it snaps into immortal gold. I found plenty of information about this thread metaphor in Greek history, but a cursory internet search couldn’t determine whether the gold aspect is actually part of the original myth or is a flourish added by Disney. If you know, reply to this email and tell me! Regardless of its provenance, this gold thread came to represent, to me at least, the enduring nature of Cube.
Another detail of this project that was important to me was making sure the mats are of a high quality. The longer they last, the longer they can avoid their inevitable fate as worn out garbage, and the longer I will be spared their floppy little ghosts haunting me. I’m very happy with the quality of the product from the vendor we selected. It’s thicker than a normal playmat, and with a heavy, sewn edge to keep the sides and corners from fraying. Parker was initially concerned the sewn edge would snag on cards as they were slid off of the mat, but this has not been an issue with any of our proofs. Anthony and I have been using the prototypes for months with no issues or signs of wear.
Our costs come out to between $32-$34 per mat, including printing, the gold foiling (which is done by hand, in the US), packing materials, transaction fees, and domestic shipping and handling (which varies a little based on the destination’s distance from Baltimore). This does not include one-time costs, like the industrial stapler I’ll need to buy to seal the cardboard tubes, the few hundred dollars spent on proofs and prototypes, the PO Box I had to get to avoid my home address being on all the return shipping labels, and a couple other bits and bobs. We decided to price them at $50, with free shipping anywhere in the world. Fifty bucks is a lot of money, and more expensive than a lot of playmats, but we chose this number for a couple reasons:
That said, I know that this decision will put this mat out of reach for some people. If you really want one of these mats but can’t afford it send me an email and we’ll see if we can work something out.
This email turned out way longer than I expected it to. Turns out I had a lot to say and some time to kill on my flight. Thanks for all the support over the years!
Cube will outlive Magic.
Andy