Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1039: Costa Mesa Women's Club with Scott Larabee

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

In this podcast, Scott Larabee and I reminisce about Magic's distant past.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work at Home Edition. So today I have Scott Larrabee with me and we are going to talk about the distant past of magic. I want to tell a story of the first place that I ever felt was like a magic gathering. a magic gathering. What we called the Costa Mesa Women's Center. So, Scott, you and many others were responsible for the making of this. So, I want to go back.

So, when did Costa Mesa start? When did it, like, do you remember, like, what month and year? It was... It had to be be 94 or 95. When did Legends come out? Legends came out the summer of 94.

Okay, so it was around that time. Okay. Because I found out about it because I went up to LA to go to a magic thing at the hotel by the LAX airport, which is actually where I first met you. Yeah, yeah. So real quickly, we're going to talk about LA, so I wanted to get the audience, most of us don't live in LA. Back in the day, so we're talking back in, you know, 94, the only real gaming things that happened was there were three gaming

conventions that happened in the hotel by the airport, and it was like three times a year every four months um one of which was late in the summer and like orc con or something um and that is the event i went to where for the very first time i got my hands on magic i i had heard of it i'd seen it but the first chance i had to buy it was at at i'll call it or kind of each i had their own names but um and i think did you and i meet at one of those conventions no uh a bunch of people got together and did something at that same location okay but it was a different group of people it was a jennifer schleckburn if you remember her oh yeah yeah yeah and it was jim murphy one of the guys who started the south

coast game association and a bunch of people and they they just said, we're going to have a day of magic. They had a they had a magic tournament and they had they had, you know, people, dealers selling cards and things like that. So, yeah. So and I found out about it because my brother started talking to you on IRC. Yeah. So he said, hey, there's this thing coming up this weekend. We should go. And I said, up this weekend we should go and i said sure and we got there and my brother ran off to find you and then he came back and he said here this is mark you should meet mark and i said hi mark nice to meet you and you said come meet my friend henry which was henry stern so like the two people that i have known the longest in magic

other than my brother brian are mark and henry stern who uh both lived in the LA area and were just magic folk um but we both went on to work at R&D uh at Wizards of the Coast and I followed a few years later so um so at that show there were flyers going around that said Costa Mesa Women's Club weekly magic tournament you know there's going to be a constructed tournament because there were no formats then so it was was just constructed. And then there was a sealed deck tournament. And I remember the hilarious part about the sealed deck tournament. It was, it said it was $15. You keep the cards. It's just like you had to convince people to play in it because, oh no, you got to keep the cards. So I just want to explain something about Limited. And yes. So when R and D first made magic,

they experimented behind the scenes and we're doing things like limited, but the idea of playing limited, like I remember at 95, uh, the world championships in 1995, or sorry, uh, I think it was us nationals in 1995.

The one that, um, justice beat Henry in the finals they introduced Limited for the first time and there was like a three hour meeting because everyone was up in arms how dare we do sealed

play or something because draft wasn't even a thing yet that would come later but in the early days it was constructed and the idea of playing sealed just wasn't a thing that most people did and also in general I should explain But in the early days, like, it was constructed, and the idea of playing SEAL just wasn't a thing that most people did. And also, in general, I should explain, in L.A., while there were individual events, like we're talking about, like conventions and things, there was no weekly place to play, which was shocking to me, right? I mean, it's a major city, and I was a Magic player, and I was ready to play magic and there was nothing.

So Costa Mesa is like 45 minutes south of Los Angeles. Yes. So how, any idea how it ended? What is your memory? Do you know how it ended up there? It ended up there because Jim Murphy, who was one of the guys that ran that con and three other people, I can't remember all their names, but one of them's name is Chuck. One of them was Kyle Schubel um who i still see some front time he's working at sony now i run into him every once in a while at some show um got together and decided to run this tournament on a weekly basis

they had the same so the real problem was is that everybody used to go to chuck's house so a few p he'd invite people over to play Magic, and they'd bring friends. And next thing you knew, there were 30 people there every Saturday. And they're like, maybe we can do this and make money. So they did. They went out and they found a location, which is this 100-plus-year-old building in Old Town, Costa Mesa, California, which is in orange county near it's 15 minutes from disneyland to kind of give people a little bit of uh geography and kind of

say where it is and they found this place that was never you know that was a uh just basically like a kiwanis club for women uh in costa mesa and they they used the building once a month because the club owned the building and it was never used. They rented it out on Sundays to a church, but on Saturdays, it was never being used. So they said, we would like to come in and use it every Saturday.

And they're like, great. The rent was insanely cheap. It had its own tables and chairs. You didn't have to bring in anything. And it had a kitchen so they could bring in pizza and serve food and sell sodas. And it ran. That's how it started.

Yeah. I went to the first one and continuously went to that show. I mean, it happened every week. And then what happened there, just for a little bit of my story, is eventually those guys opened up a retail location called the South Coast Game Association in Costa Mesa, which then I started going to. And they had a few of the original guys that didn't, they didn't want to keep doing this. They kind of, they'd sickened to magic. They wanted to move on. So they were looking for other people to kind of buy into the business. So my brother and I did, and then we became store owners. And then eventually Pro Tour came along. We ran, you know, we ran qualifiers.

And then eventually I went to work for Wizards. That's, you know, that's 1995 to 1998 right there. But the Women's Club Tournament, it was great. It was, I mean, you're not kidding. It was the only thing to go to. People drove weekly from Santa Barbara. That's like an hour and a half. They drove weekly from San Diego.

We had. Not every week. But occasionally once a month. We had two car loads that drove in from Phoenix. Arizona to go. Because there was nowhere else to play. You played with. If you had a friend you played in their house.

Or you invited people over. Or you came to this thing. Because there were stores that sold magic but there were very few game stores and none of them had anything about what do you mean you want to come in here and play like no none of that existed the other thing that i guess it's important to understand for some context here is that one of the things that wizards spend a lot of time doing is like convincing local game stores that allowing play in your store was beneficial for the store and that that just wasn't a thing i mean you know um i can remember one store

i used to go to so it wasn't zero stores but it yeah you know and the thing that i don't know the thing that really the reason i wanted to sort of bring this up as a topic today is i love gathering bits of magic history and it's this really organic thing that kind of happened where it just everyone decided this was where we wanted to be and like you know if you look at sort of early Los Angeles and all like the pro players and people that came out of Los Angeles like they were all there that you know that's how I I met all of them yeah and same yeah yeah many many of us many of us are still friends to this day we still talk um and some of them went on to

become professional magic players and become hall of famers yeah alan comer was one of the san diego players who drove up every week and alan went on to uh be voted into the magic to the mad to the pro tour hall of fame. But it was a great weekly tournament. Like I said, it started off with just a constructed and a sealed deck. There was like an entry fee to get in the door. And that got you the constructed event for free. And then the limited event cost $15. And the first limited events were revised starters with two revised boosters.

Because that's what was out at the time. And like like i said we had a lot of uh you know we had a lot of people selling cards and it was uh it was just a cool thing and then we had food and it was i mean the the hall was the the room it's just one big basically empty auditorium hall that multi-use that could be doing a lot of things um and we would get at its height we were getting 200 to 220 people a week uh funny thing in la if it rained that weekend we were turning people away if it was the sun was out we wouldn't get that many yeah uh one of the little things about la is that uh you know the rain drove them to go what are we going to do all day on a Saturday? I know, let's go down and play Magic all day. It was fun.

When did it open up? Because it opened up in the afternoon. It opened up Saturday. We changed the times over the years. Early on, I can't remember, like 10 or 11. And it would go kind of late. It would basically go until whoever was running it that week wanted to go home yeah which was not me initially as soon as i bought into the south coast game association i

took over running the tournament and i made a lot of changes one thing is i got everything sanctioned and we had you know we put some rules in place and uh made it a little more little more official um and but we you know we'd go and we, you know, people would play in the tournament until they dropped and then everybody would just sit around and play and talk and then we'd, we'd finish it up. And then, you know, I, you know, I'd lock the doors and a bunch of us, we'd go to Denny's and then we'd keep going. Like we just kept going. I remember the late Denny trips. I remember that. Um, okay. So one of my favorite things that happened in this event is, uh, there was a lot of inventive format building.

So I want to talk about Grandmaster, because this was, at the time, my absolute favorite format. And usually, I forget when Grandmaster started, but I would call you on the phone, like, save me a slot, I want to play Grandmaster. I was just going to say, I'll give you a story about Mark and Grandmaster. He used to call me on the pay, the place only had a pay phone. So Mark would call me on the pay phone there. Somebody would answer and go, Scott, it's Mark. And I'd go over and he's like, I'm on my way. Make sure you save me a slot in the Grandmaster.

Don't start until I get there. Because you needed eight to do it, right? So for people that don't know, the Grandmaster format, the way it worked is, you would get a starter deck. So, I guess I should explain that. So, back in the day, when Magic first started, a starter deck had 60 cards in it. It originally had two rares, and later would have three rares. And the idea was, it was a mix of cards and land.

It wasn't super playable out of the box. But the way it would work is is you would get one starter deck, so 60 cards. I think you could add in some amount of basic land. Yes. And then you made a 40-card deck, I believe, for the first round, right? And then you would play somebody. Usually there were eight people in it.

Sometimes, if you were lucky, it would be like 16 or 32 or whatever, but usually there was eight. And the. Sometimes, if we were lucky, there'd be like 16 or 32 or whatever. But usually there was eight. And the way it works is you played somebody, and then the winner got the cards of the person who lost. Yes. And then you rebuilt your deck. Right. And then you played the next round.

And then second round, I think, was 60. I think it was 60 cards from the second round on, because you had enough cards. And then, right, you would redo it with all the cards you won, and you would build a new deck, and then you would keep doing that for as many rounds as there were. Right. Normally, it was three rounds,

because it was eight people, but if we got more, it could be more rounds. Right, and your prize for winning is you got all eight decks. Yeah, you got all eight decks, yes. Yes. And it's funny,

it's just for a little history, is so Henry and I, the mini-master format was Henry and I riffing off of that using a single booster. I believe it. That's where the Mini Master format came from. And why it's called Mini Master, by the way. I always say, why is it called Mini Master? Because not a lot of people call it

Pack Horse and stuff, but the original name was Mini Master because it was a mini version of Grand Master. That's why it was called Mini Master. No, that was fun. We ran those with the revised starter decks, and then for a while there, we couldn't run them No, that was fun. We ran those with the revised starter decks. And then for a while there, we couldn't run them because we couldn't get product.

Yeah. So then when Ice Age came out, we ran Ice Age because Ice Age had starter decks. It was the first, like, non-base set that had full decks, if I remember correctly. And so, yeah, we ran Ice Age for, God, we ran Ice Age decks for years. Because then Ice Age, after Ice Age, was Alliances and then Home, you know, and then it was Alliances and then Home Lands, I guess. Mirage was the next pick. Yeah, so not until Mirage did we get any new decks.

So we ran, yeah, Ice Age for like a year. And then we did. And then I think about the time you left to go work at Wizards. Because I remember you came down one week and you were like, been hired, of here yeah so i'm 95 i left in 95 right uh it kind of fell off after that i think you were you were really the driving force to get that thing going because i don't recall us ever doing it with mirage yeah yeah i think i uh we had to have eight people so i would make sure there were eight people and so, right. I also, I mean, I knew everybody. So, like, a part of me coming in was, like, drumming up enough people so I could play.

Right. Mark could convince everybody. We always ended up with eight. Yeah, the interesting, so here's a little interesting behind-the-scenes story. So, when I first, basically, Wizards said they'd be willing to hire me. And so I came back to L.A. to sort of go, oh, do I want to work at Wizards? It wasn't my plan. I was a television writer.

That wasn't my master plan. So I remember I went and talked to my friends about, is it a good idea? Should I go work for Wizards? So one of my favorite stories is I come to the Saturday Costa Mesa. And so I gather a bunch of people around. So I asked this question. And when I asked my friends that weren't magic players, they're like, I don't know. You know, you really wanted to do this writing thing.

It seems like you're going off on a different thing. And, you know, my non-magic friends were sort of cautious about it. But I asked them that thing. And everybody to a t was like absolutely of course you have to do this no of course you have to do this and so they were very supportive of me going to work for wizards anybody would have done it i think uh and i'm pretty sure i know who you were taught the group you were talking to and there were some professionals in that group yeah like mario for instance like i think mario would have dropped what he was doing

and he would have gone and designed magic cards. Everybody talked about it. Once you got hired, then everybody was like, oh, you can get hired? That's awesome, right? Yeah, it's interesting. So one of the early LA teams was called Pacific Coast Legends. Correct.

At Atlanta. So Atlanta was the Pro Tour where we played the pre-release of Barrage. Right. And there was a period of time we did side events at the Pro Tour where we played the pre-release of Barrage. Right. And there was a period of time we did side events at the Pro Tour. Yes. And that one had a team event, which I think was the only side team event where like,

you know, at the Pro Tour at least. Yes. And PCL won that. So that was, and that was Henry and Frank Gilson and Mario Rubina and Mark Chalice. Preston Poulter, I think. Maybe Preston Poulter. Yeah.

I think he was in PCL after I left, but... Okay. But anyway, the... But anyway, and then there was... There was a bunch of... I mean, I don't know the people, no, the LA folk, but it was really interesting. The thing that I loved about that period of time was there was a lot like tournaments now are very ingrained

the way that like there's a tournament structure and there's a calendar and you go to your local store and they can every Friday night it's Friday night magic and you know it's very sort of spelled out and this was the first time at least in my magic career where the idea of the same thing on the same day, you know, started

to happen. Right. You knew what to expect. Like, you got, there's a nice, everything was the Wild West back then. Like, you'd go to one tournament, like my tournament, and then I remember, like, there was a game store up in Whittier, which is just a little north

of, a little north and west of Costa Mesa, kind of halfway between Orange County and LA yeah uh called I Am Comics and uh they they started running a magic tournament on Friday nights and I remember the first couple of weeks they ran it like everybody from like our group yeah uh we all you know we'd go up there and we'd play in the seal deck and it was totally unorganized like we sat down we sat there with our sealed decks in front of the sealed deck and i swear we sat there an hour and a half before they told us to open them up like nobody knew what they were doing yeah it was it was it was bad it did not last long but that would happen like

somebody would say oh well costa mesa doesn't how hard can it be and then they would try it and it would kind of fall away right so um the other thing is like software there's another interesting thing about sort of um yes like right now if you want to do a magic tournament, there's software to run the tournament, right? Right. Like, I remember, for example, you pairing with index cards. Index cards, I absolutely did, because that's all we could do. At the first Pro Tour I attended, which was the second Pro Tour,

the one at the Queen Mary in 96, Dan Cervelli had written turn which was a very very very early version of all the tournament software you see now i mean it did basic things like you could put people in and you can enter results and it would do standings and it would do pairings and that was it it wouldn't do much else beyond that yeah um it didn't even report into wizards like you had to take the results and you still had to write everything down by hand. But that was that was amazing at the time. Right. But I judged that first pro tour. That's how I got to know people at Wizards because I volunteered for that and went in.

And and I remember I got there and they said, oh, we're yet we have software. And I said, really, where? And I just went up to Dan. Hi hi i'm scott i run this event goes to mace every week he goes yes i'm well aware of you guys i said i want this software he goes well we're finishing it up this weekend as we test it with the pro tour they did everything on index cards on the side right yeah and then the minute it was done i had somebody finally was they sent it to me and i'm like great and then i switched over. It was, it made things so much better. So here's a little, a little Pro Tour history for people. Yeah. LA, the LA crowd did very well in early Pro Tours.

Yes. And one of the reasons for that was they were used to playing limited formats. Right. And it just wasn't something, like, limited formats weren't something most people did. Like, I remember one of my favorite things, favorite stories is we were running, they decided for 95 nationals to do some

sort of limited thing. And the European offices, like, Wizards said to the European offices, we want to start running limited events. We think that's really good, we think it's a lot of fun, and Europe just refused to run events for us. They just would not do it. Our players will not play in limited events.

And at the boat, so the second ever Pro Tour was the very first time we ever did the first limited Pro Tour, because New York was constructed, but LA was limited. The second

worst limited format of all time, by the way. Yes, yes. Tell people what the limited was today. It was fourth edition Homeland. It was awful. There was only one that was worse, and that was fifth edition Visions. Okay, so my story is

we had said to the European office, look, we're doing a pro tour. We want you guys to, you know, you and your players to start playing. And they just refused to do it. They were not running events. So there was a cut today, too, to the top 64. And the top 64 was 61 North Americans, two Japanese, and one European player.

Right. And after that, I think that was the, you know, the European I said okay probably we should start running these things maybe we should do this yes but

so I did another podcast where I talked about the very first pre-release the Ice Age pre-release yes I played in it because I was reporting on it

they wanted me to play in it but I went undefeated and one of the reasons I attributed to it was that I've been playing limited every week at Costa Mesa, so I understood how to play Sealed, which a lot of people had no idea.

I mean, the Costa Mesa crowd did really well at the first Pro Tour, too. I think we put... I know Preston made the top eight. Preston made top eight. Justice, which is sort of an unrememberable. Yeah, he was kind of... He became more affiliated later.

Yeah, I mean, he lived in Utah, but he came down a lot. He played the regionals. Right, because he was like the only player in Utah, basically. Yes, yes. But at that second pro tour, there was a juniors division too,

and I think we put three in the top eight of the masters, and I know Zila made the top eight, because Zila made the top eight of everything. Yeah. Jason Zila. He was a young kid back then. Yeah, yeah yeah a bunch of other juniors uh we made it we did a very good showing at uh at that uh at that pro tour i know scott johns made the

top eight yeah the first two yeah scott lived up in davis california at the time but he would come down a lot yeah uh so he he was included and uh i i can't remember i'm having trouble murk van house was a guy who was at costa mesa every week he made the top eight he was this guy that wasn't really part of the crowd that you and i talked to but he was there every week and then when he made it to the pro tour and actually made the top eight we're all like oh i guess he's good like yeah yeah yeah so the other thing i should point out we're scott, oh, I guess he's good. Yeah. Yeah, he is. So the other thing I should point out, Scott and I are from L.A., so we're telling you the L.A. story,

but this story, you know, I know, for example, I had Bride of Wastemen on recently, and he lived up in San Francisco, and they had their own thing, and it was their own thing they were playing, and everyone was playing the deck and whatever. And you go to New York,

it eventually became Neutral Ground, but Brian David Marshall and his partners their own thing they were playing, and everyone was playing the deck and whatever, you know. Yeah. And you go to New York, like, they're neutral. It eventually became Neutral Ground. Neutral Ground, right. Brian David Marshall and his partners were, like, running Grey Matter events, I think. Grey Matter, right, yeah. You know, so, like, I know Rob in Boston was running stuff. So, mostly what happened in the early days was

there wasn't yet a large thing yet. Like, Wizards was doing... Wizards started sanctioning in... The DCI started in January of 94. And then sanctioning slowly... People were slowly starting to sanction. They did sanctioning

when they finally went to ELO rating, they reset everything and started over. And that was in November of 95. Yes, yes. That's after I was at Wizards. Correct. And the reason we did that was we were gearing up for the Pro Tour and we wanted to sort of revamp

for the Pro Tour. We wanted to invite people based on ratings, and the ratings they had before that were additive. So just the more you played, the higher your score was. And then we moved to an ELO rating. So ELO is based on, I guess what they do in chess. Chess, yes. It's based about how score was. Yeah, yeah. And then we moved to an ELO rating. So ELO is based on, I guess, what they do in chess. Chess, yes. Right?

It's based about how you do it versus other people. And so if you beat someone who's better than you, you go up more. But if you beat someone that's lower than you, you go up less. So it's measured how well you do against different people. But the thing I really imagine that I think is really important is the internet was much, much younger.

I mean, the Usenet existed. But what people think of as the modern internet was much, much younger. I mean, the Usenet existed, but what people think of as the modern internet was not there yet. And Wizards had made an interesting choice. This was something Richard did, where they really withheld information. They did not release deck lists. Like, there was no...

So there were really pockets. Like, each sort of little area, each city, had its own community and its own metagame, and there wasn't, like, a universal metal gig. It didn't happen yet. Nope. And so I know, for example, like, we would go up to play in a San Francisco event, and just, it was a completely different metagame. We didn't know it, you know.

Yeah. that is interesting as you look at early magic, that one of the things that I think if you look at magic now, that there's a huge magic community, there's a huge tournament structure. Like there's a lot of things that you can take for granted that are, you know, and you know, wizards and Scott specifically, you know,

like a lot of people spent many, many, many years getting this up and running to have, and I'm not even talking to the big premier tournament, but just turn this into your local game store so that yes every week you know something and it feeds into things and you know there were there were no rules there were no previews yeah um nothing i mean usenet was a big thing and for at least for me i usenet and irc were the thing yeah like there was a really early international magic community but it was all on irc and it was like 200 people

and they were all over the world but like and it was great because then as things began to grow and we started to go to different tournaments we get to meet all these people finally and it was really neat and um some of them are still around many of them are gone um yeah that's how you you found out about things because you'd go you'd go read rec.tradingcards.games.tradingcards.magic every day because you would find out something that's how you found out anything everything was rife with rumor as well i mean 99 of it was was terrible lies or just rumor unfounded rumors but there were nuggets in there you would yeah well true but when i started working wizards one of the things i actually pretty quickly got them

to institute is i got them to start letting me write stuff in the duelist where i could like tease things that were coming out so that i could give you actual information that wasn't happenstance that was like real like if we said this in the magazine you know actually it's going to happen and so you still do that i mean you used to do here's 10 things about the teasers they're called the maru teasers yeah Yeah, I still do them. Right. And people would go, that's ridiculous. Why would you ever do that? And then the card would come out and go, oh, I see what you did.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the inspiration for that actually was Mirage, I think. So, the story is, when Magic first came out, there was Force of Nature was in Alpha, right? It was in 8.8.

Right. And then Phyrexian Colossus was in 9.9. And then we made it 10.10. And then in 11.11. So we were in Mirage. I wanted to make a 12.12. Because this is part of the thing we do. And Bill said, I don't know.

That seems... He goes, look, if you can make a 12.12 that's interesting, I'll consider putting it in the set. But I don't want to do it just to do it. And so I made Phyrexian Dreadnought, which costs one mana for a 12-12 trampler.

Maybe you had to sacrifice 12 power worth of creatures, it was the thing. But anyway, so Bill, it entertained Bill, so Bill put it in the set. So when I did the teaser,

I was like, there's a 12-12 trampler for one mana. Mana. Yeah, so that inspired put it in the set. So when I did the teaser, I was like, I, there's a 12, 12 template for one man. Yeah. So that inspired me to do the teaser. So I thought that was such a fun teaser. Yes. So anyway, we're almost,

I almost out of time here. So unbelievable. I guess what I'm hoping for today is to give people a sense of one of the things about early magic is there's a lot of things that are just a given now, how the community works, how social media, how the tournament structure, even just like we said, the actual infrastructure of software and a prize structure and, you know, all sorts of things. It is interesting to me to look back, to sort of look to the early days, you know. It is because there wasn't, there weren't really,

there was no tournament rules. There was no nothing. So like, we're going to run a tournament. How do we do that? And the guys who ran the women's club before I took over did a, you know, a decent job. Like it was so loose and everybody just, really everybody just wanted to get together and play magic.

And the rules of the tournament weren't a big deal. Once the pro tour was announced, then everything became, the stakes went up right right so it was like everything had to be codified and you had to figure it all out and so in the meantime even before the pro tour um i know personally i had started investigating like well i've heard there's chess tournaments what do they do and so those were things where i figured out you know how to run because we ran everything single eland back then there was no swiss you ran single eland and so like how do you do single eland when you don't have exactly 8 or 16 or 32 right like everybody else would just oh pair everybody up and we'll we'll fix it later right well then you get you

get down to where you've got five people left who plays who and who gets the buy and yeah so i said well that's dumb like that's just an advantage like the slow player just wins in this so let's so we had to do things like that and we had to figure out you know how do you how do you quickly get people paired up right so you don't you know you have software you can just hit a button and print out pairings like you had to you had to do everything an index card so we would record scores that they came in we'd stack them up by how many wins they had and then you take that stack and shuffle it up. But oh, did you play? And back then, you could play somebody infinite number of times.

We didn't have a way to prevent it without it being slow. And these are things that tournament software took care of in a way that just made the tournament run a lot smoother. And what it meant was we could run more tournaments because the one tournament we ran was all we could handle with the staff we had and eventually it became a little more automated and so you could have the same exact staff run two three four different tournaments yes um so that so that was a huge innovation um draft coming on remember the first time i heard about draft somebody explained it to me and i went oh okay yeah we, yeah, we should try this. So we did. And I mean, at the very first draft, it was like 40 people. They weren't in pods of eight.

It was just 40 people drafting. And I remember some clever people figured out really quick, hey, you can just draft all the rares and who cares if you win, right? I bought these boosters and I'm getting way more value. And so, you know, that happened. And then you had to figure out how to fix that. And I remember other cool things that happened at the women's club where occasionally Wizards had an idea and they wanted to test it.

And we were one of the locations. They did it in New York as well with Brian David Marshall at Grey Matter. And so one of the things we tested, a couple things we tested, we ran a pro tour qualifier that was all draft yeah because our players are like wouldn't it be great if we ran an all draft pro tour and i got a hold of wizards and i said what do you think and they said i don't know go ahead whatever so we did it it was like the worst attended pro tour qualifier we had because it was really good for people who were really good that everybody else like i don't know how

to draft why would i do that and then uh wizards actually uh like paid us to uh test uh the paris mulligan yes uh before before it was introduced in paris it was actually tested in costa mesa and uh i remember henry henry came down to help run the test yeah actually i went to boston uh rob did a test right i went to boston so uh right uh rob Doherty was testing it. And then, you know, the Pro Tour coming along led to the network of tournament organizers that ran pre-releases and Pro Tour qualifiers and the state championships and Grand Prix trials and Grand Prixs and all these things. These all things came out of all the big cities had one thing that kind of everybody had coalesced around right yeah and so we were we were the natural who's going to run these things right well in seattle they had the the wizards game center and in oregon they had a guy and they had somebody in

san francisco and somebody in la and they had somebody in it was funny they had somebody in reno but not vegas it was like the cities were weird in some cases well because it naturally formed it wasn't, you know. Right, that's just where things were. Like, there was no magic going on in Vegas early on to any degree.

I mean, all the people in Vegas that knew how to play magic would make the four-hour drive to Costa Mesa every week. That's how I met Matt Tabak, by the way. Oh, yeah.

Working at Wizards to this day. He was just one of the Vegas guys that came to Costa Mesa because they didn't have anywhere to play. So, yeah, we got, you know, met a lot of cool. It was great. It was a great time.

You know, you saw these are people that I think had Magic not come along, people I never would have interacted with. Oh, yeah. And like I said, we are all we don't we don't all see each other. I mean, some people I see every day at work but uh most of them i don't see all that often anymore but we keep track of each other and occasionally we talk and uh you know of those early guys i still hear from our chalice every once in a while he gets a hold of me yeah um i hear from uh bryce currents occasionally yeah so uh yeah just the great all these great people that just pop up every once in a while and uh you get to

you get to have a talk like this yes anyway guys that's mostly uh to wrap up here the reason i wanted to do this today just give you a little insight like one of the things about magic history it's a lot to just give facts and your numbers and something but a big part of the history is the people and the relationships and uh there was a really organic sense to early magic because there were no rules. And there was, you know, it was very much people making it up as they went along. And I have really fond memories of Costa Mesa.

That was lots and lots of fun. And if I wasn't at Costa Mesa, I don't think I wouldn't have ended up at Wizard. So I really think that a lot of the magic skills I gained came from just playing magic every week with a lot of the magic skills i gained uh came from just playing magic every week with a bunch of people that were like-minded so i feel the same way like i didn't i i i played but i wasn't very good i i knew i was not a great magic player i got into other aspects of it i i decided that you know what i wanted to do was run the tournaments that was

interesting to me and the same thing like had i not gone to Costa Mesa and engaged in those tournaments, I absolutely would not have the job I have today. I would still be doing my financial analyst job at the University of California, Irvine. I would not be doing magic nowadays. And it was fun. I mean, I love to tell people, what do you do for a living? And I tell them what I do. And they, how'd you get into that? I'm like, made my hobby a career. That's what I did. It's everybody's dream. So thank you so much for being with us, Scott. It was real fun talking with you. But everybody else, I'm now at my desk.

So we all know that means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I will see you guys next time. Bye-bye.