Custom “Magic 95” EDH Deck and Box

  

In case you don’t know “95 magic” is an old school format that has been rising in popularity at the time of writing, along with “93/94” magic. Check it out here: https://www.reddit.com/r/oldschoolmtg/

Star City Games has written about 95 EDH too.

No one at my local store actually plays 95 EDH so my deck is really just a themed EDH deck. I’m probably going to have to make it a bit stronger so it doesn’t get completely wrecked by the modern decks. 

Check out the sweet nostalgia factor:

I only altered a few of the cards and I’m not including any proxies, of course.

For the box, I was inspired by the work of Aaron Cain. I often play magic on picnics or in random places and it is important to me that my deck box is thin enough to fit in my pocket, and strong enough to weather being thrown around.  Unfortunately, Aaron’s boxes are a bit too thick for me at 2.5 inches.

I wanted to see if I could get a strong wooden deck box made with a two inch exterior. Two inches is just thick enough to hold 100 cards in perfect fit sleeves, which are much thinner than standard sleeves.  With no prior woodworking experience and only a few tools, I headed over to my local Rockler woodworking store and picked up some Cherry and Walnut and got started.

I tried a sliding top design, but soon realized that that was not strong enough (even with splines or even metal reinforcing it).  Since the wood I’m using is 1\8^th of an inch thick the opening needs to be reinforced by the lid. I came up with this design:

I like this design because it’s simple and elegant with no mechanical parts. Just like Aaron’s boxes I used a Miter join on the sides, which is gorgeous and super strong with the lid closed. I sanded the corners down quite a bit so that it would fit more easily into my pocket, which was the whole point of the project.

The trick is getting the lid to snap on correctly so that it doesn’t pop off when the box is dropped. Each of those little bevels needs to be a dove tail shape so that the lid is held into place after you snap the top on. To do that I cut the shape of the lid and then used wood glue to sculpt the dove tail shape afterwards with some trial and error.

Ultimately, I enjoyed the process of woodworking, and I’m super happy with the result!