Judge John Hodgman - Spellcast! The Get Along

Episode Date: January 3, 2024

It's a new year and it's time to clear the docket! This week, it's all about Magic: The Gathering. MTG enthusiast and Friend of the Court John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats joins us to adjudicate these cases!Huge thanks to John for joining us. Check out the Mountain Goats' new album "Jenny From Thebes," which is out now on Merge Records. And see them on tour! Also, make sure to see US in San Francisco at SF Sketchfest! We are going to be at the Palace of Fine Arts on Sat 1/27 at 4pm. Get your tickets at bit.ly/JJHOSF24. And send us your Bay Area cases at maximumfun.org/jjho!

Welcome to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. We're in chambers this week clearing the docket. With me, as always, is Judge John Hodgman. And Judge Hodgman, we also today have a very special friend of the court. That is right. Joining us from his home in undisclosed location, the wonderful John Darnielle, singer, songwriter, novelist, actor in Rian Johnson and Natasha Lyonne's famous television show, Poker Face. And now here with us on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. Now, John Darnielle, we know we love you. Oh, thank you. I love you too.

Let us be known that we love you. And the Mountain Goats is your band. You've got a new album out called Jenny from Thebes. You're about to go on tour. Everything's happening. We're going to talk more about that a little later on. But the reason you're here today is some time ago, you revealed to me and to the world that you are really into Magic the Gathering, the card game, correct? Some would say too into it. Yes. Yeah. But because you love Magic the Gathering, the card game, correct? Some would say too into it, yes. Yeah. But because you love Magic the Gathering so much,

we asked our listeners for Magic the Gathering-related disputes. And boy, did we get them. I was going to say, you really opened up a hornet's nest there. We also asked Magic the Gathering if they would sponsor this episode, and they said no. So, as it happens. Well, you know, Hasbro is on hard times right now. They don't have a lot of time.

That's true. They don't have, yeah, that's right. That's just, everyone's eking by. Everyone's just trying to make it. So as it happens, John, all of these cases that you're about to hear, they may sound like they're about Magic the Gathering, but they're not. That's what magic is. Magic is like that.

Magic is also not necessarily about magic. It's about having a good time with your friends it's about uh it's about storytelling it's about all kinds of different things no i just mean to say all these cases are about a different game that i'm calling spellcast the get along oh oh is it spellcast the get along spellcast the get along did you look this up spellcaster is actually one of the, one of the apps that people use to used to use to play magic online before they came up with their own client. Spellcaster is a way you can play with your friend far away. No,

no connection. And I have my attorneys working on that. Yeah. Unrelated. Yeah. Yeah. It may sound like these disputes are about magic. The gathering turns out.

They're actually about spellcast. The get along a completely different game that is sponsoring this podcast. That I've never played. I think you'll find a lot of it is applicable. Amazing. Yeah. Okay, Jesse, let's hear our first dispute about the totally real game Spellcast the Get Along.

Here's something from Jeff in Pennsylvania. My brother and I have a dispute about direct damage spells in the game Spellcast the Ghetto Hog. Even Jesse, who does not play, is struggling with this one. Direct damage spells have always been part of the game, but they were informally outlawed in our old regular game at the Philadelphia Comic Shop back in 1996. I have moved on from this rule. My brother has not. Now, when I deploy direct damage spells, my brother complains for the rest of the night or flings his cards across the room.

Who's right? John Darnielle, much like Magic the Gathering, Spellcast the Get Along is not just about playing a card game but it's also about spending time with friends with friends family or your brother and is it cool to throw your cards across the room i mean i don't want to i don't want to issue a blanket rule stating that it's not sometimes totally cool to do that but but uh but i will say uh it compares to uh to monopoly that like if you choose to play Monopoly with your family- You've already made a mistake. You are making a choice, right?

There are other games you could play that will not erupt into arguments. Magic is not- Do I need to use the spellcast thing? No, you can say whatever you want. So with Magic, it depends on what kind of player you are. I don't care if I lose. I mean, I like to win, but I get rolled over constantly. It does not bother me. Plenty of people can't stand losing because when you lose, well, I had a bit that esteemed

New York editor Sean McDonald very gently talked me out of including in my book, which was- That's the editor of your novels, the most recent one being Devil House. Yes. Sean, he rises his own imprint, McD times FSG or XFSG. But there was a long digression in part seven of the book, rather long, in which the rules of the game were explained.

And it was an extended metaphor about how the goal of the game is usually to grind your opponent's life down to zero, right? Nobody wants that. Metaphorically or otherwise, nobody wants to see their life total reach zero, right? However, there's other ways of play that are even worse. Direct damage spells are kind of a non-negotiable part of the game, though, is the thing. You can't- Yeah, explain what they are. So it's called one.

One way informally is damage to the face because you have these creatures. Right. Sure. Defending your life total. Right. Right. So usually if I'm trying to put, say, one point of damage at you. Right.

You have a creature who can block that or you have a spell you can cast in response that can prevent it from happening maybe in other in other words if you are if you're dealing damage in this card game i can play one of my creatures say like an an orc or a semi centaur or whatever or yeah or or a rat or whatever but but the creatures will already be out there and i have creatures but they'll take the hit they'll take the hit for me they can block sometimes they'll die in the process quite often, right? Yeah. But direct damage, there's a spell, a red, a one mana spell called Shock. It's a very powerful common card that deals two damage to any target.

Now, that target can, any target is a super powerful phrase. That means I can put it to your creatures. I can put it, if you have what's called a planeswalker, which is not a creature, but who stands out on on the board doing stuff i can put it at him uh or i can do it to the face which is to you right that's not a term in the game that's an informal term players use damage to the face is really kind of aggravating because unless you are playing the color blue unless you're playing control you probably can't prevent uh uh the damage to the face so direct damage i was gonna say jesse there's an there's an exception if you're playing the color blue yeah if you're playing control certainly but if

you're just playing a rat he picks it up very quickly if you're just playing a rat john well so rats are rats are in our our black mana which is swamps each color of mana has its own uh sort of element swamps for let's just define the term mana m-a-n-a so mana is sort of like the gas you use to pay for your spells to pay for casting creatures to pay for casting the spells that will deal direct damage which are usually going to be instants and sorceries an instant i can cast at any time a sorcery i can usually only cast on my turn right so in yeah and that's interesting because in um spell cast to get along yes we call them spellows spellows yeah spellow coins oh this is the thing if we were actually

going to do the full spell cast thing the number of extra terms i would need to replace these things it would take me three days to bone up on this stuff now you're getting excited now you understand the allure of spell cast to get along. Oh yeah. I'm getting a whole, yeah, my, my,

my spellos and my, and my more terms, but, but yeah, so, so there's these, there's these things I can do in blue. And,

and mana is what is produced when I tap a land, right? Each land generally produces one mana by tapping it. Right. And as you can see, this is math for people who were not good at math. I've never learned how to play any of these games, whether it's magic or spellcast or whatever. But I love hearing you talk about it. What's funny, this is one of the things that's satisfying about it.

Five years ago, if you'd have shown me the rules of this this game i would have said to you oh i'm never going to understand this this is impossible right you learn it as you play so it's exactly like soccer or baseball or something or hockey generally speaking if i sit down and try to explain hockey to you mr hartford whittler's cap yeah yeah thank you oh i'm not going to get this game even the offsides rule seems impossible to understand when it's explained to you. When you watch it played, then you say, oh, I get it. He can't pass. It's a two line pass.

He can't do that. Right. Because I think I think they eliminated that rule. Yeah, I think they did. Which is just I, you know, I'm a curmudgeon. And I think when they change rules purportedly for faster play or whatever, you know. purportedly for faster play or whatever. Jesse, it's true that the one game that you do not want to know the rules to at all

before you get into it is hockey. Get out on the ice and just figure it out. Just get on, you'll figure it out. So why are they playing this game in such an unusually gentle manner in the unusually gentle city of Philadelphiailadelphia so yeah they're old and their old philadelphia game they banned these direct damage spells so they are expressing a taste for a play style right um and the best way i can explain this to you is with a different play

style that they haven't banned surprisingly because direct damage the problem is i can load up a bunch of direct damage spells that if you've chosen not to play control and most people are against control, as you might imagine, might be gathering, I like to play control. Yeah. No, if there's one thing that is true about my life, I am not against control very much to my mental ill health. So as I say, control is the color of blue islands islands right there are players who when they see you cast a turn one island will immediately resign they don't want to play against that deck right it's just not fun because what i do with my control deck is prevent you from playing your game right

you sling a direct damage spell at me and i play a spell called negate and i and that stops you from doing what you tried to do and you wasted your spell you don't get it back right uh and and all i did was play on your turn i wait for you to try to do something and i stop you from doing what you tried to do and you wasted your spell. You don't get it back. Right. And, and all I did was play on your turn. I wait for you to try to do something and I stopped you from doing it. That's blue, right? Direct damage. However, for those of us who like, do you remember chip tune the era of music? Yeah. And it was music. It was very fast or, or Atari teenage riot, that type of music, right? Direct damage is that style where if you don't have the nerves for it you're gonna say i didn't get a chance to do anything and already i'm down

four right and it's very aggravating to play and they're all red decks this is all red mana so what those what they're expressing at the kitchen table there is that they don't like that play style that they'd rather you didn't play red but the mature opinion about this is that like look there's a bunch of play styles banning an entire play style you might as well ban the color red if you can't do direct damage because that's what red does or what might have been okay in 1996 in the comic book shop in philadelphia yes when you were kids now in the year of our God or whatever, 2023, going into 2024, maybe it's time for Jeff and his brother to play some direct damage. Maybe so. I mean, it's fine for one of them to just start playing blue and then there won't be any direct damage problem.

I'll tell you what, I heard about half of what you said because I was mostly writing down new names for Mountain Goat songs based on phrases you were saying, starting with the color of control is blue. It's my long-awaited response song to Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair. Yeah. We have another case that sort of gets at this too, right, Jesse? Here's something from Tony. My friend Dylan and I were playing Spellcast the Get Along. I played the land card Rainbow Veil. Everyone agreed to pass Rainbow Veil

along to the next player at the end of our turns, but Dylan didn't. He played Simic Growth Chamber. This bounced Rainbow Veil back to me and set me back one mana for the rest of the game. I was just trying to have fun and give everyone extra mana. And this is obviously a typo that should be Spello. Spello's instead of mana, but you get the idea. Rainbow Veil is a land card that says it adds one mana of any color to the

mana pool and it passes to your opponent at the end of the turn. Right. This is the same conflict as the last one is some people are trying to play a friendly game that is more about having a conversation, just hanging out. Right. And somebody else wants to win. Now, John's going to like this a lot. At some point, somebody wrote an article breaking down three types of players and contending that you will find people who are blends of these three types, but everybody is one of

these if they're playing but everybody is one of these. If they're playing spike is one. Timmy is another. Who's the other one? Spike, Timmy. And I didn't know there were names, spikes,

Timmy's and Johnny's right. Spikes are the ones who want to win. That is the only reason they are playing the game is to win. They may have fun doing it, or they may not. They may be playing for money. They may be competitive, but they're extremely competitive players, right? And their only interest is in winning, right?

Any other interest they have is ancillary to this. Timmy's want to play cool cards. They see a card that is extremely powerful and they just want the opportunity to get that card on the board, right? And let it do its thing, right? And Johnny's, I never, in a great irony, I never remember what Johnny's are supposed to be doing. Let me find the article.

Johnny is the creative gamer to whom magic is a form of self-expression. Johnny likes to win, but he wants to win with style. This is me, right? I don't want to play this. You're literally, you literally are a Johnny. Yes. And the thing is,

and that's why I lose more than most people because I want, if I win, I want to do it on my own terms. I want to have designed the deck myself instead of playing the meta, which means you find a deck that somebody else has built that's very efficient and you play those cards. Spikes generally do this and they might make their own slight adjustments, but they're not trying to build a deck that tells you anything about their aesthetics. Pretty much every writer I think alive is going to be a Johnny. He's going to want to say, I'm going to make a deck that expresses who I am, that tells you something about me. But your friends, one of them is a Spike and he wants to play a game that he can win. So he figured out a way to get Rainbow Veil back in his hand. And he's excited about this. His friends are Timmy's.

They're trying to have fun with playing cards, right? They want to play a cool card. They want to get their turn with Rainbow Veil. Well, wait a minute. I just want to clarify here because there are a lot of names being thrown around. Yes. Tony played Rainbow Veil. Right. But Dylan bounced it back to Tony with a Simic growth chamber card. Right. But Dylan bounced it back to Tony with a Simic growth chamber card.

Right. In order to deny the extra mana to the other players. Right. Who's the spike? The spike? Who's the guy who bounced it back? Dylan. Dylan played Simic growth chamber, right?

So Dylan's the spike. Dylan's the one who is trying to put other players at a disadvantage for his own advantage. What's a Simic Growth Chamber? When Simic Growth Chamber enters the battlefield, return a land you control to its owner's hand and tap it to add one tree in one water drop to your mana pool. So that's one forest, one blue mana, and one green mana. And that's a powerful card. That's an uncommon land. And it enters tapped,

but when it does so you get to put a land back in your hand. So what he just did is buy himself an extra land because you need land to cast spells that puts him at an advantage. It's a, it's what's called card advantage. When you have more cards than the other guy, you have an advantage. The guy who's,

who's doing that, he's playing spike his his only concern is winning right uh and and putting other players at a disadvantage by denying them access to the mana that he has all right i'm just gonna add two more uh track titles to the album land advantage this is a good one and uh that's a powerful land it enters tapped so well you know i have i have a song called if a powerful animal comes that i think uh the the the name comes from the flavor text of some other games on all these cards you'll sometimes see lines of of prose right and it's

called flavor text and some other game had the line if a powerful animal comes and i went well i like that i'm taking that boy jesse did you hear john do you hear john darneel buzz marketing his album wow there was only on the album darken hill here on merge records and tapes recorded at fame in muscle shoals uh with matt ross spang the great matt ross spang producing he's just calling it's like it's like it's like raw capitalism all of a sudden oh it's look i was born to pitch john if i know one thing one thing, guys, it's this. In the feudal days of Acacia, finding the Rainbow Veil was often the goal of the knight's quests. So this is the flavor

text of Rainbow Veil, which is interesting because it's a land, and most lands don't have flavor text, but strange lands that do extra things like this sometimes do. Flavor text? Yeah, the flavor text is written by the flavor unit, Queen Latifah's rap they should do a co-branding they should do a secret lair with queen latifah that would be great

so john before we go to the break where we're going to hear about a fourth style of player called luna we have to make a ruling on tony's case so was it uncool for Dylan to bounce the rainbow veil back to Tony? Or was it inbounds? It's inbounds to me. Inbounds. Sorry, Tony, you're a Timmy. Dylan's a Spike. That's the way it goes. We got two Johnnies and one Jesse, but we got to take a break.

Yes, Jesse? Let's take a quick break. We'll have more fantastical card cases around the corner on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. more fantastical card cases around the corner on the Judge John Hodgman podcast. You're listening to Judge John Hodgman. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. Of course, the Judge John Hodgman podcast always brought to you by you, the members of MaximumFun.org. Thanks to everybody who's gone to MaximumFun.org slash join, and you can join them by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. The Judge John Hodgman podcast is also brought to you this week by our pals over at Made In. Jesse, you've heard of Tom Colicchio, the famous chef, right?

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And you get to hear this sound. Here's a special limited time deal for our listeners right now. Get up to 60% off your Babbel subscription, but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash Hodgman. Get up to 60% off at babbel.com slash Hodgman spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Hodgman spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash Hodgman. Rules and restrictions apply. Welcome back to the Judge John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket with our pal John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. Here's a case from Joseph in St. John's, Newfoundland.

My partner Luna and I play Spellcast the Get Along. Very popular game, a lot of parallels to Magic the Gathering, but is definitely different. Luna doesn't like to attack other players because it's too mean. When Luna does target another player, they always apologize. I believe Luna should be more aggressive. It will help them win more and have more fun. believe Luna should be more aggressive. It will help them win more and have more fun. All right, John D same deal, right? But is there a style of player who is just apologetic? And is that a cool way to play? Oh yeah. I actually, um, uh, there was a pre-release, uh, streaming thing where you play against people who, you know, sometimes they'll say, I'm so sorry. I don't mean,

I happen to love these players the most, the ones who apologize before they destroy you. It's like, you know, but I think that's probably a psychosexual issue I have to work out. But, but, but that's, there's all, it's why this game is so good. It's why I'm such a fan of it and such a, you know, sort of an evangelist for it is like, there are so many ways to play and it really is more evidently a style of self-expression. You're sharing something about yourself in the way you play, right? I think that's why people don't like these burn decks is like, oh, what you're telling me about you is you're not here to play a game with me. You're just here to beat me, you know? And that's true in many other sports. You know, we experienced this on baseball fields when we're kids and everything else like that.

But which kind of spell does Luna... Luna doesn't like what? Luna doesn't like to attack other players. Oh, but you can't. So Luna... Unfortunately, Luna wants to play a style that I'm now delighted to tell you about. It is the style that people hate the most, but those of us who play it can frame it in a way that makes it sound benign when it is, in fact, so much worse than direct damage. What do you need to play magic, John? What's the one thing you must have that you cannot play magic without? Time and cards. Cards is correct. Cards is correct. Time is also correct, but you have to have cards.

And you have to have a deck of cards, which... Yeah, let's talk about cards for a second, because I'm hearing a lot of terms like burn deck and overpowered deck and all eternals deck. Right. But people might not know either magic or spell cast. Right. In this game, you have cards to start. You earn cards or capture cards. You build a deck that has moves in it that only you can do. And you carry that deck with you.

You no longer take other people's cards. That was in the first iteration of the game you actually were playing to win the cards. Oh, okay. But you don't do that anymore. You bring your own cards. This would take a long time to explain. There's another version called Draft where you're all opening up packs and building a deck on the fly, basically. Okay.

You pass the cards around in a circle. You take one and pass the rest of the pack along and in this way over the course of three packs you build a deck right famously that's what my friend matthew from the flea market likes to play yeah no because draft is the purest form of magic because you can't bring anything but your skills to it right the cards you're going to get are a matter of chance and your good choices right and so uh but i I mean, if you don't know what you're doing, like I can still tell you what card I passed to the left. And this woman looked at me and said, are you sure? I said, yeah, yeah, no, it doesn't fit with my deck. Okay. And then when I played her 10 minutes later, she's completely rolled over me because I had passed a card called dream

trawler that you should absolutely interrupt whatever you were trying to build to take the dream trawler because it will kill the opponent dead and so take the dream trawler write that down john yeah i'm writing it down if you should pull a dream trawler do not pass it to the right or to the left but the style of play i was going to tell you about is called mill and this will take minute, but I think you'll be happy with it. Put a minute on the clock. So, oh, I meant a minute metaphorically, John. As you well know. This is spellcast.

So in Mill, I'm making you throw your cards away into the graveyard, right? That's what you're, when you discard a card or when a creature dies, it goes to the graveyard. Unless it goes into exile. I'm not going to go into that. But you're, the first thing you have to do, every turn you take, is draw a card. If you can't draw a card because there are no cards in your library, then you lose, right?

Then it doesn't matter what your life total is. Your life total can be 30,000, and you still lose to me personally because I have milled your deck. I have put all your cards in the graveyard using my magecraft, right? And so people hate playing against mill because what mill does is not only prevent you

from playing your spells, it just says, no, you don't get to have any cards to play. There's only one style of play that I think is hated maybe even more and it's harder to do. It's called land destruction where I just destroy your lands. That's really hard to do land destruction. Mill's comparatively easy. And the first time my son, Moses, wanted to play, he was about four,

and he saw me building decks and I handed him one and I took one and we started to play. And I realized that I had a mill deck. Explain to your four-year-old that he has to continually keep putting his cards in the graveyard. It's one of the more unpleasant errands of fatherhood i've ever heard so okay well buddy um this says that you have to take the top three cards of your library and and put them in the grave and the look on his face was like he understood that he wasn't going to be getting those cards back and the question on his face was why why do i have to do that you were you were spiking your own son well no this isn't spiking. It's milling is what it is.

It's playing. And spikes don't generally play mill because mill is beatable in a lot of ways. If you're playing against a mill deck, there's a lot of things you can do. And one of them is if you're playing a bunch of cards that you can get back from your graveyard, then you don't care about your graveyard. You can just get them back. But most decks can't do that. And there's a great card called Cut Your Losses that says target player mills half their library.

Right. And it has a thing called Casualty, which says if I sacrifice a creature whose power is two or greater, I get to do that twice. So I mill half your library and then I mill the other half all in one move. I will never get enough of playing cut your losses. It's my favorite thing. Wow. But it's the deck that determines that you play mill because you've got a bunch of mill cards, and that's what you have to play.

So you usually wouldn't play mill in draft. You build your own decks, right? You build them from the cards that you have or buy or on arena that you have come into possession of. And then you choose what colors you're going to build your decks around and what style you're going to play. Right. So with regard to Luna, the style of Luna's play is to be incredibly apologetic. Yeah.

And also I had a note here from Luna's partner that they'll roll a randomizing die when attacking in order to not take responsibility for the damage they're doing or something. You know, said uh about something else this this sounds like a very i understand like because i don't like i don't like i say i don't love damaging people face to face you know here you go sorry but it's not always damage to the face sometimes it's damage to a rat yeah to the creatures but but the the goal of that is to eventually get the creatures out of the way so that I can put damage on you. Right. But, but I mean, that's, I have the same conflict when I'm playing any competitive game.

I had the same conflict, you know, betting on horses. You bet on one horse. Well, you, you basically said to the other horse, I don't think you're as good or as fast as this other horse. Yeah. But you don't have to go over to the horse and actually say it, John, I've told you that at Saratoga many times. The horses don't speak English. You don't have to go over to the horse and actually say it, John. I've told you that at Saratoga many times. The horses don't speak English. You don't have to go up to them and say you don't believe in them. Very powerful psychic beings, horses, and they know. They know. They can see you in the stands.

Well, then just say it from the stands. We don't have to trudge through the mud to find them. I bet against you. I bet against you. Don't bother. So what is your advice then for Luna? Do you think that Joseph's right, that Luna should play more aggressively? No. your advice then for luna do you think that joseph's right that luna should play more aggressively no luna should play mill and luna should uh play in a play style that takes those cards away from their opponents or luna should play um uh white enchantments and and and and render all

the other creatures inert so that they can't do any damage right now should perhaps play a card called overwhelming splendor that reduces all of the i know you feel me right john write that one down luna should play overwhelming splendor splendor which will uh make all of their opponents creatures no matter what they were once will now all be one one creatures that lose all their other abilities and a one one can only deal one damage which is not much damage so uh so yeah there are a number of strategies available to luna to prevent this damage from occurring uh but you can't have a rule that says you don't get to deal damage there you go luna john d has just dealt you overwhelming splendor here's some more here's wait hold on judge hodgman i i think you've been writing these down

to give a new mountain goats album to jd but I think by the time we're done, I think we'll be able to write and record the Mountain Goats album. We'll have enough material that... Jesse, I know you as a big hip-hop enthusiast, and I think this is your chance. You may know that Post Malone bought the most expensive magic card ever to exist.

What does that have to do with hip-hop? Doesn't Post Malone make hip-hop? Eh, that was my joke. Sorry. You guys are really looking for beef, aren't you? Hey, I don't play mill. Yeah, I'm a real spike. I will mill Post Malone's one ring card.

I will mill it. Post Malone bought the most expensive deck of- No, the most expensive single card. John, I know the name of a magic card. Yeah, what is it? I have magic cards when magic cards were new. I would estimate the time frame to be 1993 and 1994.

You should send these cards to me right away. First class air with insurance and I will take good care of them. A good card is Sarah Angel. Sarah Angel is a good card. It gets reprinted a lot.

It's a strong and good card, yeah. Yeah, don't you agree, Hodgman? Sarah Angel is a good card? Sarah Angel is an incredible card. I love John. Assuming the mental authority. Sarah Angel is a great card. Wouldn't you agree, John?

Not a great card. No, it's just a good card. It's a good card. Sorry, my mistake. Good card is what I meant to say. You're suggesting that Luna should play Mill. We know that Luna is a little apologetic by nature. Should Luna play bold Mill or meek Mill?

I don't, I'm not familiar with Mr. Mill's work to say. I think. Style of play should be bold, Mill, or meek? You're right. Meek Mill. The rapper, Philadelphia rapper, Meek Mill. Yes. Meek Mill.

Philly, you know, Philly falls out of the conversation when people talk about rap, but Philly is a big town for rap that people should talk about more. You were going to say Post Malone bought the most expensive card. Why don't you restate that just so that we have it clearly? Post Malone bought the most expensive magic card ever to exist, which is the One Ring, as in One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to bind them, in the recent co-branding

with Lord of the Rings. Not co-branding, but the... One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness, bind them, right, John? In the darkness, bind them. That's correct. As memorably sampled on a summoning album, I think, on Stronghold, but I could be wrong. Just as Post Malone bound hip-hop pop r&b and looking like you smell bad well i think post's success is such that if he wants to look that way he gets to look that way

it's impressive he's apparently a very very very good player um uh my friend jack antonoff also plays magic and i think he's a very good player um there's a lot of you know it's it's something you can do with your friends on a tour bus right if you're if you haven't yet alienated them so they don't want to play games with you anymore you can play magic with them what what what opposed to pay for the for the one ring card would you you say? Millions and millions, I think. But here's the thing. The reason it's the most expensive card, you're going to like this. How many of them do you suppose were printed?

I got to go with one. One is correct. It's the one ring. 2.6 million. All so that he could go up on top of a volcano and throw it in there? I mean, I think we're all in agreement. He should absolutely do this and then charge pay-per-view, right? And make it 2.6 back. To me, this would be truly magical business sense.

Or spellcasty, if you will. Some quick snap judgments on some card disputes. Should Vince and Reggie use proxy cards in their unsanctioned play? I hope you know what those words mean. Go ahead. So, yeah. So proxy cards in their unsanctioned play. I hope you know what those words mean. Go ahead. So yeah, so proxy cards, the thing is, I don't think there is a good case against proxy cards. These are counterfeit cards.

Well, that you made yourself, right? If I show you a card trick that involves me ripping up the Ace of Spades, right? You know some of these tricks, right? Or I eat it or whatever. But then later that night we want to play california lowball we will just put together a uh an ace of spades from paper right and we'll use that that'll be the ace right no i'm going to insist that you regurgitate it why

did you even eat it let's play the game so let me let me understand if we all agreed to use proxy cards and it was okay then i could make make a Sarah Angel of my own right now using a piece of paper and a pen. Absolutely. You don't even have to write the rules text on it. If we know what a Sarah Angel does, here's the, here's the arguments for and against proxies. Argument for proxies is some of these cards are expensive and hard to find. I have to order them by mail order. I may not have enough money to buy, you know, I don't have enough money to buy a Mox Amber or whatever, you know, but I want to play a deck that has it. I know this deck that I can design that will be cool to play, but I can't afford. Yeah, that's Johnny style. You want to

play some cool cards and you want to do it with style. Well, but not only that, there's a, there's a, there's a justice angle to it. If I want to play soccer with you, all I need is a ball. And that is why people will often argue soccer is the best game. And I find that argument persuasive, right? Any barrier to entry, it is the beautiful game because any barrier to entry means less fun for more people, right? Whereas if you're playing no proxies, it means that the power of my deck is limited eventually by money or luck. If I lucked into some cards playing draft, that's great. So the argument for proxies is that it's kind of classist for you to say, oh, I have more money than you, so my deck is better than yours. But the argument against proxies is like, look, that limitation, as with many limitations, is an invitation to creativity. This is the Catholic position. When I take a lot

of stuff away from you, I say you can't do this and you can't do that. You find a way to be creative within those rules and find creative routes to things that you wouldn't have found without the limitations. The people who believe in proxies are just hollering bullshit right now. There's no, I don't care about any of that. If I don't have the money to play the same deck, you have an actual advantage over me.

It really is the correct argument, but the aesthetic argument appeals to me as an aesthetic, right? It's like, I like limitation. But then you should be playing limited if you like that. You should be playing draft, right? So Vince wants to use proxies because he wants it to be about fun, not money. You find in Vince's favor in this case?

I find in Vince's favor that proxies for kitchen table, for unsanctioned play, there's no good argument against proxies. for unsanctioned play. There's no good argument against proxies. Our Reddit user on maximumfun.reddit.com, 40% Dolomite, asks, was it correct for me to stop using my Mythic Rare Artifact card because it overpowered my deck and it bummed out my fellow players?

At Kitchen Table, as you might imagine, you and I would both be sympathetic to, who wants to play a card that just takes away other people's fun, right? In this case, 40% Dolomite was using their Mythic Rare Artifact card to turn their opponent's creatures against them by transforming those creatures into green

and black elves. Good use to that card? Yes or no? Good use to that card if you want to win. I'm not sure which card does that, but that's very like Overwhelming Splendor that just like takes all your creatures and says, well, now they're a bunch of 1-1s and they can't do anything else. It's not an indestructible enchantment. So you can respond to that enchantment.

And in real life, you can also respond to my enchantments. But the thing is, this is a key question. It's like, why are we playing? Are we playing to have fun with each other? And do we want the game to last so that we can hang out together, have some hot chocolate, talk about movies in between turns. There is a style of play called commander, which is played by three or more people, right?

It's the most popular and most rising form right now. And in commander, the cards can get very powerful. You can do a bunch of damage, but it's not even about that. It's about having fun with three people because the conversations are better than, than the,

my dinner with Andre format of one-on-one. Right. And viewers, you can't, listeners can't see that I got John to respond with my referencing My Dinner with Andre, and I'll be glowing from that all day. I'm responding. I'm just saying, Jesse Thorne, you're out there in Hollywood, right? I am. As of this recording, the WGA strike is over.

We've ratified the new contract. As of this recording, the SAG after strike is preliminarily over. We're waiting to ratify the new contract. Hollywood is open for business. Can you, Jesse Thorne,

get out there in Hollywood and pitch someone to make a movie of the three of us playing a commander game of Spellcast, the get along uh as a feature film i've got brockheimer's number great we can call it apologize before you destroy

me right that'll stop someone in their tracks on netflix or whatever streamer you use absolutely they they will absolutely use that on web films actually netflix declined to sponsor me so i'm calling the web films now. We can get a freebie out of it in any case. I think we have one more quick one before we go to break, Jesse. Yeah, I'm not going to pitch that to Bruckheimer. I'm going to pitch that to the Duplass brothers. Here's one from Derek in Tacoma.

I'm an actual attorney acting on behalf of my 13-year-old son, Wyatt. He brings suit against his older brother, Rowan. Wow. Devs. Wyatt's attorney is OP. It's overpowered. Yes, he is. Nerf Derek.

Okay. Wyatt has a spell cast, the get along deck, that is dinosaur tribal themed. Oh, that's hard. That's a hard deck to beat. He always beats Rowan with this deck. Now Rowan says he hates all dinosaurs and will not even watch dinosaur movies. Oh, no.

Please rule that dinosaurs are cool and that Rowan shouldn't drag dinosaurs just because he can't beat Wyatt. So I believe that Judge Hodgman will agree with me that it has been preemptively ruled by the judge who precedes us all that dinosaurs are cool, right? Dinosaurs are cool in eternity.

And they were cool before us and they'll be cool when we're long gone. Wait, man, are you talking about the judge who precedes us? Are you talking about God or whatever as we refer to it here on this podcast? God or almighty or whatever? We love the dinosaurs so much that he slash they slash she slash them

brought the dinosaurs home with the big old meteor just to hang out with them. Are you really wanting to open up the question of the intentionality of God's behavior and whether or not God set a universe in motion that gave us actual free will and chose then to absent himself from making

such choices with me, who will talk about this all day. I don't know. I don't know, John, is this movie called Apologize Before You Destroy Me or not? Yes, it's very much called that. I think we can all agree, no matter how we feel about metaphysics, that Tyrannosaurs are cool. Brachiosaurus are cool. Parasaurolophosaurs are cool all dinosaurs are cool right yes very true but playing tribal dinosaurs is a way of is a way of playing spike it's a way of saying look i'm just going to run that's mono green uh it means you're only playing green cards you're not playing anything else uh there are some red dinosaurs but mainly they're green and uh and what they're going to do is great big creatures that will stomp on you in fact one of the uh terms for dinosaur decks you call them stompy right because they're

they will stomp on you right and uh and it's not fun to get stomped on and you have to and it happens very fast uh and uh so wyatt's brother is complaining i don't like to play against this deck and this is you know it's the same as with Monopoly and stuff. It's like the little brother is saying, can we play a deck that's more fun to play against than you just flinging damage at me all day? But but so, yeah, I think his brother should should build a different deck and let his brother also have fun. So you're saying that Wyatt should get rid of some should build ainosaur deck if he wants to have fun with his brother Rowan. Otherwise, Rowan's going to stomp away from it. Wyatt should, there's more than one deck to play.

Play a deck that his brother, I'm assuming his brother's a little younger. No, in fact, Rowan is the older brother. Is the older brother. Rowan is getting stomped by Wyatt and Wyatt's dinosaur deck. Oh, well, Rowan's just mad that his little brother's beating him. Yeah. They didn't do dinosaurs at all. So what's the resolution?

Well, the resolution, if he's the older brother, I mean, then it's sort of incumbent on him to build a deck that responds to the dinosaurs. And that's what this song is called, is response to the dinosaurs. Respond to the dinosaurs. Response to the dinosaurs.. Response to the Dinosaurs. Response to the Dinosaurs. It's an actual album. What's some Johnny D-style deck building advice you could give to Rowan to counter the dinosaurs? So he should be actually be playing Fast Burn, the one you started talking about, flinging damage, damage spells, right? If by the time, because dinosaurs, most of them are expensive to cast.

damage spells right if by the time because dinosaurs most of them are expensive to cast you have to play what's called ramp which is uh being able to make your land work harder for you to get these big creatures that cost a lot to play out you're not getting a big dinosaur out on turn two or turn three you don't you can't you don't have the land to play for it because you know they usually play one land per turn if i'm playing red i play one mountain i play shock two two damage to your face right away before you've even conceived of summoning a dinosaur okay and two turns later i'm going to play a turn that lets me duplicate my shock two two again six damage to your face by the time you get a dinosaur out you're at two life worrying about what to do with you with that life which i'm then going to take away by casting demon bolt on whatever 4-4 you brought out.

Write it down, Rowan. Write it down and remember it. Remember. Yeah, play Burn. But I don't like playing Burn. It's the thing, Burn is boring to me. It's like, it wins games very fast, and it's as alienating as big dinosaurs. Again, because the other thing that he can do is play Blue. Because the other thing that he can do is play blue.

If you cast a 12-12 dinosaur, and I just cast Essence Scatter, it costs me two blue, one blue and one any color, right? Well, now that dinosaur goes to the graveyard. I never see him again. He's with the rest of the dinosaurs, right? Play Control. Whether it's burn or blue, Rowan, there's a path for you to beat those dinosaurs. Remember, dinosaurs are big and stompy, but the little small wily mammals, we're the ones who are still here. You can do it, Rowan.

Let's take a quick break. When we come back, more card game disputes. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace because yes

listening is mandatory the jv club with janet varney is available every thursday on maximum fun or wherever you get your podcasts thank you and remember no running in the halls if you need a laugh and you're on the go try s-t-o-P-P-O-D-C-A-S-T-I. Were you trying to put the name of the podcast there? Yeah, I'm trying to spell it, but it's tricky. Let me give it a try. Okay. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, call S-T-O-P-P-P-A-D-I.

It'll never fit. No, it will. Let me try. If you need a laugh and you're on the go, try S-T-o-p-p-p-d-c-o-o ah we are so close stop podcasting yourself a podcast from maximumfun.org if you need a laugh and you're on the go judge hodgman we're taking a quick break from the docket. And I have my eye right around the corner on our appearance at SF Sketch Fest on January 27th.

It's our favorite show of the year every year. I love to be part of Sketch Fest. I've been part of Sketch Fest since I think the third Sketch Fest ever, which is now like 20 years ago. Yeah. I mean, San Francisco is your home. So this is a literal homecoming for you. But absolutely for me, a native of the southeastern region of Canada known as New England, going to SketchFest to perform Judge John Hodgman, that's my home too. Like, I cannot wait to get back. And this year we're going to a brand new home, the beautiful palace of fine arts, this remarkable structure. It's, I guarantee be the only show that

we do in a venue that has a lagoon. And, uh, and we would love to see all of you there. It's at 4 PM in the afternoon and there's nothing else going on on a Saturday. So come on out and fill the place at bit.ly slash JJHO SF24. That's all capital letters. Or just go to sfsketchfest.com. You'll find us there and you're going to find a lot of other cool things that you want to be a part of as well. Hey, we need your cases for this show. So if you've got a dispute that you'd like us to consider to adjudicate live on stage that afternoon, that you'd like us to consider to adjudicate live on stage that afternoon,

as always, go to MaximumFun.org slash JJHO and let us know that you'll be in town. I said it before, I've said it again. If you have a problem with my mom, Judy, now is your chance to air that beef because she'll be there. Dollars to donuts, Judy's going to be there. Yeah.

But I do want to forewarn you, she will defend herself. Yeah. And by the way, you can't pay with donuts. Mama don't take no mess, as they say. Jesse, what's going on in the put this on shop right now? Well, the holiday season has passed and I want to give our listeners a chance to do some very classic after Christmas shopping. So if you use the code 2024justice, 2024justice during the month of January, you get 25% off anything in the entire store. 25% off? That's a quarter off. Even the

like fine jewelry. In fact, I'm concerned I might accidentally like sell gold for less than its melt value. But, you know, that's life in the big city. I already made the code 2024justice at putthisonshop.com. There is something for everyone there. And we had such a great holiday season. Thank you to all the Judge John Hodgman listeners who shopped in our shop in person and online. So go to putthisonshop.com and use that code 2024justice and you can have a great discount on anything during the month of January. Let's get back to that docket. Let's get back to that docket. Welcome back to the Judge

John Hodgman podcast. We're clearing the docket. Our guest is the great John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. Here's one from David in Warwick, Rhode Island. I haven't played Spellcast the Get-Along since 2002. All of the smart guys got out of Spellcast the Get-Along in 1993, 1994, is my understanding. They were playing it at Nueva Middle School in Hillsborough, California, but then when they went to School of the Arts

in San Francisco, they became artsy. Right. During the last game, I played a card called Double Deal against my brother, Derek. According to the text on the card, Double Deal deals three damage to the Derek now, and an additional three damage at the beginning of the next game, Derek. Oh, that's an old card. It's a very specific card just for Derek. They don't print cards like that anymore. After this, Derek has refused to play me again for 21 years. Please order Derek to play Spellcast to get along with me and take

the damage. Five points adjusted for inflation. I need to display my superiority. It's important. I'm going to put in the chat the art for Double Deal in the chat. There it is. As you can see, this is splendid. This is a beautiful old piece of magic art. They don't look like that anymore. They're now very professional, but that looks like it was made by a person who did it in his notebook. Yeah, it looks like it was drawn by a withdrawn seventh grader. Yeah, by somebody who plays D&D. And obviously the card is not just targeting Derek. It's literally double deal, deals three damage to your opponent now

and deals an additional three damage to that opponent at the beginning of the next game that you play. With the player, that's right. But it's still one player, it's one guy. So the other guy's going to start his next game at minus, at three, he's going to have a handicap in the next game. I mean, the thing is, in terms of formats, if you're playing this card now,

there are so many other cards that will make Double Deal a non-issue. He should play what's called a life gain deck. It's remarkable that we've talked about Magic this long without me telling you how much I hate life gain. I live to oppose life gain decks. An extremely weird motivational video. I will do anything to make a person who plays a life gain deck wish they hadn't. To make them feel bad about it.

But a life gain deck against Double Deal, right uh to make them feel bad about it but a life gain deck against double deal uh go ahead damage me for three i'll be up by six in by turn two anyway right uh because there's it's very possible to just keep gaining life and gaining life and punishing your opponent with the life that you gain if you run if you run a card john hodgman named Vito, that's V-I-T-O, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, right? That's Jesse's nickname. That was my birth name, yeah. That was my birth name. So Vito, Thorn of the Dusk Rose, has a static condition that means this is true as long as he's on the board.

Whenever you, the person playing Vito playing veto gain life your target opponent loses that much life right i just can't stand this this just drives me out of my mind it's like uh gore vidal used to say it's not enough that your enemies fail you must punish your friends with the life you gain this is exactly what veto is and and it's why i just like vetoes you go ahead and gain life but don't make me pay for it and so i mean they should just play and you should take the damage and and then uh uh is there any deck that he can build that would not merely with you know mitigate the damage that he's starting with but also get back at david the brother for instigating it in the first place so yes there's actually i would strongly recommend and i can't think of the names of the cards but so yes there's actually i would strongly recommend and

i can't think of the names of the cards but uh because i won't i can't think of what the condition is but uh swamps produce black mana right jesse just so you know swamps produce black mana thanks for that john i appreciate your expertise. Jesse looks stoic about this. So a lot of these black decks let you pay life to do stuff, right? Pay two life to do something. And some of them reward you for having lower life. You'll have a creature that gets bigger as your life get lower.

You'll have something you can only do if you have six or less life, right? And these are, they are tricky decks to play, play right because obviously if you get down to zero you're done um unless there is a card uh that also i know you're gonna like uh cloud steel kirin is an artifact creature that you can reconfigure for five and attach to another creature and once that has happened you can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game. Wow. And there's another card called Platinum Angel.

It has the same static condition. You can't lose the game and your opponents can't win the game. What's the name of that card again? Platinum Angel is the easiest one of these. But the thing about Platinum Angel is it's destroyable, right? If I destroy Platinum Angel, then you can lose the game, right?

Oh, okay. But as long as it's in play, you're invincible. Yeah. There's a couple more. So Lich's Mastery is a legendary enchantment, and it's hex-proof. That means you can't target it, right? It just sits there. You can't do anything to it.

And it states that you can't lose the game. Whenever you gain life, you draw that many cards. Whenever you lose life for each life you lost, exile a permanent you control or a card from your hand or graveyard. When Lich's Mastery leaves the battlefield, you lose the game, right? Really complicated card. And usually you're going to lose when you play it. Real easy game to play.

Very accessible. Jump right in. As simple as I thought. It's very funny because there's a format called Jump In that's supposed to be an easy format to play. Very accessible. Jump right in. As simple as I thought. It's very funny because there's a format called Jump In that's supposed to be an easy format to play. You just jump right in and play it. This card will not be found in that format, I would think. But I think, yeah, I think he should play. I think the ruling is go ahead and play a game of Magic and beat your brother and make him regret that he played Double Deal. that he played Double Deal. I couldn't agree with you more. Absolutely, Derek, get in there, get Lich's Mastery,

get a Platinum Angel, do what you need to do and enjoy what John Darnielle calls your reward for lower life. It's reward for lower life. That's my autobiography. But you must face David again. Go fulfill your destiny, Derek and David. Get revenge.

So there's one other little case is not related to spellcast the get along or magic the gathering um but we were just on the road the van freaks road show you're on tour right now John D correct you can go to what is it mountain hyphen goats dot com that's right where you can find all the places that John is playing solo and with the mountain goats you can see John Darnielle in many forms. Choose the form. Yeah, the duo tour in January that starts in Charlotte.

That'll be a lot. With Craig Finn and Bully opening, it's a whole package. It's going to be really fun. Get the over there. But while we were on our tour, one listener came to the tour, met us afterward, and mentioned this interesting conundrum. Jesse Thorne, you want to read us about it?

Chris was his name from Nashua, New Hampshire. I am a middle school music teacher and I teach my students bird song is not music. Am I wrong? Yes. Exactly. Immediately. Yes. There's absolutely no, no.

Oh my God. Go talk to Olivier Messiaen, the French composer, who's absolutely canonical at this point, though he was scandalous when he was new. What a coincidence. I was going to do that after the show. He and I were going to have lunch. I'm afraid he sings with the angels now. Oh, excuse me. I have to really respect my own transition there. That was good.

But yeah, Messiaen wrote an entire great piano piece about birdsong. Yeah, but let me ask you a question. Human or bird was this composer? Human or bird? Human. He was a human being. J.D., him writing a piano concerto based on or inspired by birdsong, or even designed to reflect birdsong,

is something that I can't imagine Chris would argue is not music. I think what Chris is suggesting, and this is informed by our brief conversation with him at our live show, is that if it doesn't involve human intentionality, it isn't music, it's just sound. No, I don't agree with that at all. But I think, I mean, this is a question that what you want to do when you're having this discussion with your students is that's an opportunity to

read John Cage and to really engage with Cage thought, right? John Cage, because of his best known piece, 433, sort of ends there for a lot of people. But he's one of the truly great thinkers of the 20th century about music, because he asked a lot of people, but he's one of the truly great thinkers of the 20th century about music because he asked a lot of questions about what music is, what it means, about what we exclude when we insist that it's only organized sound, and when we insist that it's about human intention. A lot of John Cage's stuff is throwing the I Ching to get results, and it's music. It's still music. Here's the thing. Everything is music. Sylvia Plath has a poem called Morning Song. Do you guys know this one?

No. I had that card briefly, but I had to sell it. So if, and I know this is maybe insufferable, I would like to read a poem on the Judge John Hodgman podcast that I think answers this question definitively. It's about the birth of a child and it's Morning Song by Sylvia Plath. Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your foot soles and your bald cry took its place among the elements. Our voices echo, magnifying your arrival. New statue. In a drafty museum, your nakedness shadows our safety. We stand round blankly as walls. I'm no more your mother than the cloud that distills a mirror to reflect its own slow

effacement at the wind's hand. All night your moth breath flickers among the flat pink roses. I wake to listen. A far sea moves in my ear. One cry and I stumble from bed, cow heavy and floral in my Victorian nightgown. Your mouth opens clean as a cat's. The window square whitens and swallows its dull stars. And now you try your handful of notes. The clear vowels rise like balloons. So my ruling is that if Sylvia Plath says that that's a handful of notes, then that's music. And I defer to the poets on all judgments. Well, I agree. I agree with you that I think that, you know, and even Chris mentioned Cage when we were talking about it, but go and read Plath, go and read your Cage, Chris,

and rethink it because we do have to decenter humans in our experience, because that bird song is a real song. I'm a little confused, though, John, because I was reading along on my Sylvia Plath card. Yes. And maybe you have a different edition or something. But what was the last line of your version? The clear vowels rise like balloons. Yeah, because I have that part, and then it says, take the dream trawler. I really, I would love for Sylvia Plath to just mill me ruthlessly. That would be my dream.

John Dernier, let's just go over it again. Mountain-goats.com or just Google Mountain Goats and you'll get there. Also, I'm on Blue Sky and I'm still occasionally going to the Bird app. You know, it's what it is. Yeah, we won't talk about it. On Blue Sky, what is your moniker? It's the same. It's Mountain Underscore Goats, which I did on purpose. So it would be the same thing.

Mountain Underscore Goats on the socialss mountain hyphen goats.com on the url the new album is jenny from thebes and it's absolutely brilliant available wherever you get your music now and you should absolutely go check out john darneel on tour just just google john darneel tour or mountain goats tour or whatever it is I've been to several of your shows and there's nothing more life affirming than being there and John D catching your eye as he sings his songs. Which I will now, you know, I got contact lenses today. I've been performing without glasses. It's been giving me some freedom, but I, when I last tried contacts, I couldn't stand them. And I thought, but if it's only for a couple hours a night, that will be like the best of both worlds. So wish me luck on that. Big, if true. Devs, JD's eyeballs are OP. Nerf JD's eyeballs.

The docket is clear. That's it for another episode of Judge John Hodgman. Judge John Hodgman created by Jesse Thorne and John Hodgman. Marie Bardi Salinas runs our social media. Our producer is Jennifer Marmer. We're on Instagram at Judge John Hodgman. Follow us there for evidence and other photos from the show. And check out the Maximum Fund subreddit, MaximumFund.Reddit.com, to discuss this episode. That's at MaximumFund.Reddit.com. And we always want and need your cases, whether they're about Magic the Gathering, Spellcast the Get Along, or Mule Born.

Mine are all about Mule Born, the French card game where you're a racing car. Go to MaximumFun.org slash JJHO to share them. And hey, listeners, if you have ideas for Spellcast the Get Along cards that you'd like to add to the deck, why don't you post them on maximumfun.reddit.com or send them to us on social media and we'll repost them at Instagram at Judge John Hodgman or something. I'd love to see what your spellcast to get along card ideas are. We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.

We'll talk to you next time on the Judge John Hodgman podcast.