June 1, 2015: Collaborating With The Decemberists

Some of you may have seen over the weekend that The Decemberists were handing out a special Munchkin promo card at their concert in Quincy, Washington. Here's how that happened.

One day, when I was still the Marketing Assistant, I came into work to find an email in my inbox from Chris Funk. Chris Funk, for those who don't know, plays the banjo (and a host of other instruments) for The Decemberists. I've been a fan of The Decemberists for a while now; I enjoy their music for its own sake, but some of their songs also have deeply personal meanings to me, for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here. So, when Chris contacted me, I was over-the-moon excited. Seriously, if you'd been here, you'd have seen me going around to all of my co-workers, telling them about it.

Turns out, Chris is a Munchkin fan, and he wanted to help us promote our stuff somehow. We started talking, and we came up with an idea we both liked: a special Munchkin card, based on one of the songs from the band's new album, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World. The Cavalry Captain seemed like a natural fit. For those unfamiliar with the song of the same name, we used these lyirics to come up with the rules on the card:

I am the cavalry captain
I am the remedy to your heart
I am the common collective
I am imprinted upon your stars

Andrew Hackard and John Kovalic took it from there. The rest, as they say, is history.

-- Brian Engard