Greetings!
My name is Mark and I wanted to share a bit about where & why this endeavor of TheCleverGamer came from.
The Start Of It All
F
or a long time now I've been an avid Magic The Gathering fan. Mostly a collector but gradually I've become a player as well. As I dove headfirst into Arena, I started to see just how well designed MTG really is. As a complete novice, I was actually winning games! But best of all, as I lost, I was learning. I started to really understand the foundational game mechanics and the basics of deck design, card interactions, etc.
The Initial Spark
As time went on, in 2020 I eventually tried out Wizard's product, called Jumpstart. For those unfamiliar, the annual Jumpstart product (not the set-specific-Jumpstart products) are an innovative and unique MTG product, very different from the normal booster packs you may be used to. Jumpstart works like this: You take (2) 20 card pre-constructed booster packs of it, smash them together and since they're pre-constructed they include all the lands you need. Just two packs of any jumpstart boosters essentially function as a complete 40 card deck once shuffled up.
In my opinion, there is no better way to introduce someone to paper magic. It's fun, chaotic, easy to pick-up. However, after a while and after a few in-person games, I noticed something. Jumpstart pre-constructed booster packs have a set card list and once shuffled, especially if the two themes are close in color identity, I was having a little bit of a hard time separating them back out quickly. Not terrible by any means, not a ton of trouble, but it just wasn't fun. What I often found myself doing is just pulling up the official wizards website that has the decklists of each, and then sort them out by hand to make sure I didn't F-anything up for the next game of Jumpstart I might play with these pre-constructed packs. And that's when a spark of an idea appeared in my mind. There HAS to be a better way to do this...
The Evolution of The Spark
Gradually, as my MTG collection grew, I played more and more physical games of magic, and I started to look into the Commander format as may people in my situation do. Commander really appealed to me due to the format being 100 card singleton (1 card each max - 100 cards total per deck), for some reason having a deck with 2-4 copies of the same card felt like a waste and a bit derivative. However, what I found most fun about the Commander format is all of the customization and flavor you can inject into your decks.
With Commander, if you're in a good group you can be quite casual which allows you to focus on a deck with a quirky theme (like FOOD), a kind of creature (like humans or dragons), a particular win condition (like intentionally losing!) and really just make a fun or even funny deck, without having to think of only winning. However as I built more and more Commander decks, I started to realize that keeping track of my decklists was pretty easy using a wonderful site like Moxfield. But, when I had to share my decklists to others, I often found myself without my login and trying to explain a deck to a friend at a random moment was a bit difficult. I would often just settle on cracking open the deckbox and showing the cards to the person. As a collector, I kept thinking of this as unnecessary wear and tear on my decks and in the back of my mind... that there has to be a better way to share information like this. And then it came to me -- technology can solve this. I started to think about my fascination with RFID technology (local area data transmission technology). RFID has been great for marketing needs, but could it be used in a way to help me with my MTG Commander decks?
My Solution is an NFC-Enabled ECKOcard™
After spending all my extra time at night and on the weekends (and putting down Baldur's Gate 3 if you can believe that) I have designed a wonderful card, tested a dozen NFCs and other materials and created a solution to my personal Commander Deck challenge. I call it our TCG ECKOcard™.
In my opinion, our TCG ECKOcard™ is an elegant solution to a common and frustrating problem for TCG collectors. The card is hand-made, fits in a Standard Card Sleeve (thicker than a normal card ~1MM) programmed with your EDH Decklist URL and accessed by simply hovering over it (no tap needed) with a modern Smartphone. The smartphone does the rest. In testing we were able to even scan through various deckboxes without even opening them. This makes access of your EDH decks very FAST, a huge time saver! Please see our listings for more information.
In closing, I do have one request: the TCG ECKOcard™ is our first product, our baby, so please be kind to her!
Thanks for reading!
-Mark
