As a hard-working editor-in-chief, webmaster, and all-around ne’er-do-well, you’d be surprised at how many people want to buy my cards for me. “You’re such a great person, Ferrett,” they’ll say, lighting up a cigarette for me, “What can I do to make your life better?”
But the problem with all of that was that I never remembered what cards I needed. Sure, I had sycophants galore who were simply dying to spend their hard-earned lucre to make my decks better, but I inevitably forgot which Apocalypse painlands I needed. Thus, these poor fanboys never got the chance to show their appreciation for me, and the world – or at least I – was poorer for it.
I doubt that most of you have drooling fans the way that I do, but I bet that most of you have a grandmother who loves you, or a wife who thinks fondly of your strange addiction, or friends who just don’t play CCGs. They know you like the Magical cards, but they couldn’t tell a Llanowar Elf from a Pulse of Llanowar.
Thus, your birthday rolls around and they buy you nothing, afraid of getting you the wrong thing. (Or worse yet, they get you socks.)
But fortunately, we’ve anticipated this wondrous need. With the advent of the amazing new StarCityGames.com Magic: The Gathering Shopping Cart, you can create your own Magic Wishlist that allows other people to see what cards you need at this very moment. For example, if any of you loyal readers would like to buy merchandise for me, you can see precisely what I’m longing for by going to this page right here.
This makes it very easy to buy you the exact cards you need.
How do you do this? It’s pretty darned simple! Just follow the steps.
1) Log in to the StarCityGames.com Shopping Cart.
This is simple, but you’d be surprised how many people get it wrong. There are a lot of very confused people out there who think that simply opening up an account on our forums is the same as opening up a StarCityGames.com Shopping Account.
Alas, it is not so. Our forums are not designed to be protected against hackers who long to get at your precious financial data, whereas our shopping cart is. It’s not likely that anyone’s going to break into our forums – but when it comes to making sure that you’re protected, we take no chances.
Thus, Shopping Cart Account <> Forum Account. Please take note of this.
In any case, you can log into the shopping cart by clicking over to sales.starcitygames.com and logging in on the left-hand side. If you haven’t created an account, you can do so right here.
2) Search for a card that your heart desires.
There are many ways to do this, the simplest of which is entering a card into the “Search” field on the left-hand side. If you’d like to get really fancy, you can take a shot at our StarCityGames.com Magic Spoiler Generator, which can find just about any card you want. (For example, I found all of the Apocalypse Painlands with three mouse-clicks, even though I couldn’t remember the names of the cards at all.)
If the Spoiler Generator confuses you, fear not! We’ll be going over that magnificently-engined beast on Friday.
3) Enter the number that you want in the Wishlist! Box and click the Wishlist button.
This is really, really simple. The only possible snags are:
a) You are not logged in, in which case the shopping cart doesn’t know who this wishlisted item is supposed to be for, or:
b) The server has crashed in some horrible way and you should email me immediately to let me know.
4) Lather, rinse, repeat.
Add as many items to your wishlist as you’d like. Feel free to go nuts. After all, it’s not like you’re paying for them, is it?
If you’d like to alter or delete an item from your wishlist, go to http://sales.starcitygames.com/wishlist.php and simply change the quantity and select the “Modify Qty” or “Remove” buttons. Dead simple.
5) Publicize said wishlist.
On your wishlist page, it will give you a link that will show other people what your wishlist consists of – something like http://sales.starcitygames.com/showwishlist.php?user=Ferrett. Mail that link to someone you love!
Alternatively, you can hyperlink the URL in your blog, web page, forum signature (hint hint hint), or online criminal records. Why not? The more people you show it to, the more likely it is that someone will purchase something for you!
6) Have your loved one or drooling fanboy purchase the cards for you.
In an ideal world, this would be simple. Alas, this world is filled with a bunch of teenaged nitwits who think nothing of stealing someone’s credit card and using it buy a boatload of Magic cards for themselves. Because of that, we cannot send cards directly to your home anonymously the way that larger companies like Amazon.com can do. (Amazon.com can argue with Visa about Who Stole What and win; we, sadly, cannot.)
However, someone can send cards to your home if they know your address – which, presumably, your wife, friend, or grandmother does. (If they don’t know where you live, you might want to work out your issues with your family and friends before you go asking for cards.) Or they can send the cards to their own home, to wrap lovingly before they present them to you in person.
Or, best of all, your gift-givers can purchase a StarCityGames.com gift certificate for you in the amount of the cards that you want. Unlike our old shopping cart, whose gift certificate implementation really sucked, our new gift certificates are incredibly handy and everyone should buy them. All they need to know is your email address, and they can send you a gift certificate for fifty zillion dollars post-haste!
So what are you waiting for? Head on over to our new shopping cart immediately, make up a wishlist of everything you ever wanted, and then post that link in every online forum you can think of!
And when you’re done, if you feel a speck of gratitude, you’ll buy a couple off of my wishlist for me. Hey, it’s only fair, right?
TOMORROW: The Deckbuilder, And How To Use It
Signing off,
The Ferrett
The Here Webmasters This Here Site Here Guy
[email protected]