Here are the five items you’ll be voting on:

• The World is Not Enough by YWN
• Standard Bear’r by YeNguyen
• Casual Product Roundup by Vandermonde (w/ images by Basilisk)
• Six Vengevines by Basilisk
• A Sword of Ice and Fire by Vandermonde & Basilisk
• Interview with a Mine Bearer by YWN
• Basilisk Man by Potato
• Why Aren’t Our Creatures Attacking? by KingCobWeb

As often occurs at Tolarian Academy, students studying there have found a glut of free time this summer. In the name of Magical Science, they took a few minutes and slopped off a study about the creatures living in Dominaria. Debates are ongoing as to whether the scientific method applies to magical beings.

This is what they found:

(Click here to view this image at full size.)

Bendan Blawmi is 20 years old, is single and likes to play baccarat. He has the best profession in the world. He’s a mine bearer. I went to interview him in a coffee house in Jamuraa. Who knows if this isn’t the coffee house Bendan will blow up in soon? To help break the ice, I offer him a cigarette.

Want one?

No, thank you. I don’t smoke. Those things can kill you, y’know?

Why mine bearer?

I didn’t really have much of a choice. My dad was a mine bearer, and so was his dad. As the firstborn, it’s my job to carry on the family work. It’s in my blood, and therefore soon will be splattered on the wall.

How did your family react to the news?

They knew I wanted to follow the fuse my granddad lit. I’ve always had the mine bearing bug in me ever since I can remember. When I was a little kid, I had the habit of throwing myself into the pool, power mine style, and soak all the keldon kids. I think it’s something that’s born with you, y’know? My family took it well. My brothers look up to me, they know a mine bearer is someone who rises up in life. My mother settled herself with my choice, but she insisted I graduated. She said an uneducated man is no more than a goblin and that, if my mine bearer career went south, I’d need something to hold on to. If I still had hands, that is. She said, “crippled is one thing, crippled and stupid is something else!”

Do you have an idea how you’d like to go off?

Well, you can never control these things, but I have an idea what I’d like to do. Above all else, I want to be successful and blow up correctly. My dream, of course, is to take a gargadon or a wurm with me, something big that people will remember me for. The one thing I dread is to be a dud, to fail to blow up a guy because they found someone’s cloak lying around. Sometimes I have nightmares that I try to blow up a Bog Elemental, that I pull the pin but the mines don’t explode. And I’m left standing there, with everyone laughing at me. I wake up panicking. It’s like those dreams you have as a kid, that you go naked to school…

And after you blow up, what do you think happens?

Man! After I blow up, I’ll wake up in heaven, next to the Prophet and seventy virgins! I’ll have seventy virgins all for myself!

Bendan, have you ever been with a virgin?

My sister.

Sexually, I mean.

Oh, no.

Do you know how much trouble a virgin is? You have to convince her to go to the bed, convince her you really do like her and that no one will think she’s a slut just for sleeping with you. Then comes the sex – well, let’s just say all that kinky stuff you see Jolrael doing in your magazines won’t fly with a virgin. And in the end, she’ll hold on to you so hard you won’t be able to get free to take a leak until morning.

I did not know that…

And worst of all, no matter how lousy you were, she’ll always look at you as “the first”. She’ll think you have some kind of special bond or something and she’ll never want to leave you. And that’s just one virgin, now imagine seventy.

I had never thought about it that way. No wonder they call it eternity…

A Sword of Ice And Fire is a series of fantasy novels by George R. R. Martin.

Momir Basic

Now you and your backwards, Luddite friends can enjoy the format that Magic Online players are raving about at your own kitchen table! Includes:

• 60 Basic Lands
• Momir Vig Avatar
• Token copies of every printing of every creature, ever

MSRP: $149.99

Mental Magic

Experience magic’s entire rich history, or at least the parts you can come up with on the spot. Includes:

• Blank Cards with Casting Costs
• Dry Erase Marker

MSRP: $16.99

Cube

Experience the endless replayability of draft with the power and synergy of constructed at the expense of both! Includes:

• Large Plastic Case
• Empty, resealable Packs
• Powerful and Exciting Cards Sold Separately

MSRP: $59.99

DC10

Restrictions breed creativity, which can be a real burden. Now with DC10 you can turn off your brain and cast huge monsters. Includes:

• Spin-Down Mana Counters
• 200 10-Cent Rares
• 3-5 Barns for Shuffling

MSRP: $21.99

Two-Headed Giant

Take a break from the frustration of losing to your best friend by exchanging it for the frustration of your best friend causing you to lose to others. Includes:

• Blame Token
• List of suggested semantic arguments the format gives rise to
• Coupon for half-price surgery to literally graft your head to your partner’s body

MSRP: $1.19

Click here to VOTE! (You must register on the GG Forum to vote, of course.)

Here are the five items you’ll be voting on:

• Build-a-Bear Games Workshop (by Vandermonde)
• Elspeth Photograph Controversy (by Crunchums)
• Garruk’s Companion (by LiXinjian)
• Would You Like to Play a Game of Magic: the Gathering? (by KingRamz)
• Life after Yawgmoth (by Mobiusman)