Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1040: Ice Age Prerelease

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

In this podcast, I talk about the Ice Age Prerelease in Toronto, the first-ever Magic Prerelease.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive from work. Okay, so this morning I did a podcast and it was good. I probably could have used it. But all day it's been nagging me. I feel like I could do it better. So I decided I'm doing it on the way home. So you get a special drive from work today. Okay, so the topic today is the very first ever pre-release tournament. So we're going back to 1995, June 3rd and 4th of 1995. It's the Ice Age pre-release. So it is the very first pre-release of its kind, and it was a singular event. Like nowadays, you go to a pre-release, there's lots of places you could go.

But if you wanted to go to the Ice Age pre-release, you were going to Toronto, Canada, because that was the only place it would be. So today, I'm going to talk all about the historic event of the very first pre-release. I was there, I will tell some stories, and I will sort of fill you in, so before we're done today, you will know everything there is to know about the Ice Age pre-release. Okay, so before we get into the actual pre-release, I want to do a little background, a little setting up.

Part of understanding Magic history is understanding context. Okay, so in 1993, the summer of 1993, Magic comes out at JamCon. I start playing shortly thereafter. I went to, I had heard about it. I worked, I was working at a game store. People kept coming and asking about it. Eventually I tracked it down at a game convention, not too much longer.

And I started playing Magic. Okay, in 1994, in January, The Duelist comes out, which is the magazine that Wizards of the Coast was publishing about magic. I read it. I felt that there wasn't enough advanced content. So I pitched the idea of a puzzle column to The Duelist. We flash forward to the summer of 94. I've been writing puzzles for The Duelist, but I wanted to do more.

So I knew that Catherine Haynes, who was editor-in-chief of The Duelist, was going to be at Gen Con that year. So I flew myself to Gen Con. I ended up, basically I talked to Catherine.

She's like, you want to write my articles? Sure, just pitch me ideas. If I like them, you can write them. And one of the ideas I pitched her was to cover the 1994 World Championship,

the very first World Championship, which I did. If you've ever seen pictures of the finals, you have me there taking notes. Anyway, so I started writing for the Duels. I became a regular contributor. I did the three things, by the way, that you need to get a good writing gig.

A, I was knowledgeable in the material at hand. B, I was a good writer. And C, and probably the most important, I turned my work in on time. So I started writing for The Duelist and I started writing a lot. In fact, I think there was one Duelist magazine where I wrote 20% of the magazine. So anyway, I became one of the go-to editors for the magazine. And through that, I started doing freelance work for other sections of the company. Okay, so the next important date, this is more of a magic date, is... So magic comes out, the first expansion was called The Raby Knights, that's in 94, in January 94.

Then Antiquities. Then Legends. Then the Dark. Then we get to Fallen Empires. So Fallen Empires is important because it is... So at the beginning of Magic, Wizards of the Coast was struggling to print enough cards to meet demand. As the story goes, they printed what they thought

was a six-month supply, sold it in three weeks. That's alpha. Then they made even more, but they thought, no, this time really was a six-month supply, sold out like in a week. That was beta. And they were struggling to sort of keep up. Arabian Nights, Antiquities, Legends, The Dark, they were very hard to get. If you wanted to to get that you had to go to the game store the day it came out, wait in line and hopefully buy some before it sold out so

Fallen Empires was the first time where they made a set where they were able to print to demand now people didn't believe them the story of Fallen Empires basically is that Wizards said they were able to print to demand. Now, people didn't believe them. The story of Fallen Empires basically is that wizards said to the people, because what was going on was it was so hard to get magic,

people would order way, way more than they mean so that they would end up with what they actually wanted. And Fallen Empires came along and wizards said, no, no, okay, we're up to demand. We will give you what you order. People didn't believe them and overordered like they always did. And then when they delivered that, there was a glut in the market. So Fallen Empires for a long time, there's lots and lots of Fallen Empires out there because of that. Anyway, the set after Fallen Empires

was Ice Age. So Fallen Empires had really convinced everybody that they were in fact able to print to demand. So Ice Age was the first set where I think Wizards felt like, okay, it's time to start doing promotion. Why? Because when your product sells out the day you put it out, you don't need tons of promotion.

But when you're able to meet demand, you do need to start doing promotion. And so Ice Age, for those that don't know, Legends was the first, after Alpha, Legends was the first large expansion set. But it wasn't really designed to be what we call a standalone. So the original plan for Ice Age was Magic the Gathering would come out, would be out for a couple years, and then they'd stop making Magic the Gathering would come out, would be out for a couple years, and then they'd stop making Magic the Gathering and start making Magic Ice Age. And Magic would sort of be the refresh of the product.

And then Magic Ice Age for a while, then it'd have a new name. The idea was that Magic Ice Age would replace Magic the Gathering. Now, none of that happened. So it was designed by who we call the East Coast Placehefters, which is Scaf Elias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, and Chris Page. They also designed Antiquities. They designed Fallen Empires. They designed Alliances. Very good design team.

Three of the four of them would come work in R&D. I actually worked with all—I mean, I know Chris Page, but the other three worked at Wizards, and I worked with them at Wizards. Scaf and Jim, I worked for quite a while with at Wizards. Dave Petty was just there. We overlapped just a little bit. Anyway, this was the first expansion that was released in French and German and Portuguese and Spanish. It had 383

cards, which is a lot of cards. It had 121 commons, 121 uncommons, 121 rares. So at the time, all the sheets, all of Magic was printed at one printing place, 121 rares. So at the time, all the sheets, all of Magic was printed at one printing place, Cardamondi in Belgium. And the sheets they used, at least at the time,

were 11 by 11, so it was 121. So what they did in Ice Age is, it was like everything was unique. There were 121 commons, meaning every card in the sheet was unique. Every card in the uncommon sheet was unique. Every card in the rare sheet was unique. Every card in the rare sheet was unique. So, for example, the

equivalency of the rares in Ice Age is equal to what is now a mythic rare. 1-121 is roughly what a mythic rare is. So all the rares in Ice Age were essentially mythic rares, mythic rare rarity. The set did have basic lands. It also had

in addition to normal basic lands, it had snow-covered basic lands, which were part of the theme. About 8% of the set was reprints by name, meaning exact same, you know, same reprint with the same name. And about 8% was a reprint with a different name. And that included some creature types that would change creature types. I've said some creatures that change creature types. So the set had, there were snow-covered lands in it. The five basic lands came in a snow-covered version. There were cards that cared about snow-covered land.

They introduced what's called cumulative upkeep, which was an upkeep. So let's say you have a cumulative upkeep of one. On turn one, you pay one. On turn two, you pay two. On turn three, you pay three. On turn two, you pay two. On turn three, you pay three. It keeps going up by one each time. And they also had what we now call cantrips. They called slow trips at the time.

They called them cantrips at the time. We now call them slow trips. They were cards that you drew an extra card, but you drew at the beginning of the next turn. There was a card in the set that they were worried of the interaction with it, so they made you draw the card later. We later realized you could draw the card right away, but they were the precursor of modern cantrips.

Anyway, so what happens is, Wizard has Ice Age. They're like, okay, we can print to demand. We want to do something, you know, we want to do something promotional for it. So the idea they came up with was, okay, what if we do an event, what if we do a pre-release?

So for the very first time, people would play with cards they'd never seen before, and there'd be a big tournament. So they put a big advertising in the duelist and some other places. 500 people could sign up ahead of time. 250 could sign up at the door. It was in Toronto, Canada at a comic convention. It wasn't even by itself.

Basically the comic convention was on the main floor. Upstairs with an open balcony was where the event took place. Also at the same event was Canadian Nationals. Eric Tam would win that. Okay. So the way it basically worked was you would sign up and you would come to play. Like I said, the important thing to understand here is I think the reason they did a pre-release

was they were just trying to cause spectacle early enough that they then could talk about it and remember, social media wasn't what we have today. The internet existed, but it wasn't what we have today. The internet existed, but it wasn't, there was no streaming, you know, and the internet was a lot slower in conveying information. So they, you know, so one of the things they wanted to do was have an article about it. And so Catherine Haynes called me because I was her go-to article writer, and said to me, we're having

a big event in Toronto in June. We would like to fly you there. Wizards had never flown me anywhere. It's the first time they've flown me anywhere. And we'd have we'd like to have you cover the event. But not just cover it, we'd like you to play in the event, so that you could get first-hand knowledge of what it was

like to play in the very first pre-release tournament. Or at the the very first pre-release tournament, or at the time, the pre-release tournament. So what happens is I get flown there. A lot of people travel to there. So Dave Humphries, who I work with, so I led the vision design for March on the Sheen. He led the set design.

I worked closely with Dave. Dave would go on to win the event. And I think that Dave and I are the only people who work at Wizards right now that were at that event. That's closely with Dave. Dave would go on to win the event. And I think that Dave and I are the only people who work at Wizards right now that were at that event. That's what we believed. Anyway, I talked to Dave about this. I got some stories from Dave, so I will interweave some. I know that Dave and Darwin Castle drove up from Boston. It's about a nine-hour drive to Toronto from Boston. So people traveled. I obviously flew in. So I, I, I came from California, but I, I got flown in by Wizards. So, um, but anyway, so the way it worked was,

it was, uh, um, it was a, uh, sealed event. So I don't remember how many packs you got. Um, you would get some packs, you would build a sealed deck. I think it was six rounds of Swiss on day one, which was Saturday. And then it cut to top 32. And then those 32 advanced to day two. And day two was single elimination. Now, a few wrinkles here, because this is early in Magic. Probably the biggest wrinkle is you played for ante. So every game you played, you draw your seven cards, your eighth card, I forget

whether it was face up or face down, but you would ante up the card. And then if you won the game, you got your opponent's ante. The story that Dave tells is, oh, and the other thing, I guess before I tell them, sorry. You were only allowed to have five basic lands added. All the other basic lands had to come in the pack. Obviously, that included the snow-covered basic land. You couldn't get extra snow-covered basic lands.

But you could get basic lands. And so the story Dave tells is he's playing somebody. In game one, he beats him. The anti-card is a mountain. And in game two, the person changes their colors because they didn't have enough mountains to run red anymore. So just to give you the kind of craziness that is anti in a sealed event.

Okay, so let me set the scene. And then I'll talk about my deck, what I built. Okay, so let me set the scene, and then I'll talk about my deck, what I built. Okay, so everybody gets seated, and this is the first time we had run a tournament, the first time Wizards had run anything this big. They had done the 94 World Championships, but that was done in, there were like mini tournaments that fed into it, so there were 128-person tournaments that fed into it. So there were 128 person tournaments that were single elimination.

And the winners of the top eight of those tournaments played in the final day in a 128 single elimination. So there were sort of heats that fed into the final thing. So they had never run anything as big as this. This was 750 people, which now might seem like there are tournaments that are that big. But in the day, New York

used to run some tournaments, Boston ran some tournaments, and there are a few other places I'm sure that ran tournaments. But even those places, 750 people was a lot of people. So, I don't know if this was the biggest event when it was run, but it was really big. And it was by far the biggest event that Wizards had ever run. So, it was a little, it took a little while to get

everybody in their seats and, run. So it took a little while to get everybody in their seats, and it took hours to sort of sign everybody up and get everybody going. But when we started, we all sat down. They brought in armored guards with padlocked steel boxes. They brought them in. It was a lot of pomp and circumstance. And then they opened them up and pass them out. Okay, so let me talk a little bit about Ice Age Sealed, and then I'll talk about my build.

So for those who don't know, Ice Age was the first set where Sealed was possible. You didn't even get lands in Legends. I mean, honestly, you could play Sealed with core sets. You could play Sealed with core sets. You could play Sealed with core sets. But outside of core sets of Alpha, Beta, and the various Limited and Unlimited, this was the first sort of standalone expansion that was designed that you could sort of play with just it. Meaning, if you wanted to build a constructed deck of just Ice Age, you could. There were the cards you needed to do that.

That's why there were a bunch of reprints and stuff. So it was the first product that could realistically be played in sealed. But it wasn't designed for sealed. A Mirage would be the first set that was kind of designed with sealed in mind. So for those that have never played Ice Age, let me explain what it was like. Painful! It was, you didn't, there was not a lot of creatures, especially not a lot of invasive creatures. So a lot of, it was a very sloggy format. Now the interesting thing is,

before that time, I used to go down to Costa Mesa, to the Costa Mesa's Women's Center, and I used to play in what was at the time like the definitive play for Los Angeles. It was about 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, and on Saturday, if you were anybody in the LA magic scene, you would go to Costa Mesa. And one of the things we did in Costa Mesa is we did a lot of limited. So we played Grandmafters and Minimafters and we played a lot just because there was a lot of fun things to do. And so I was well versed in playing limited formats. This is important and we'll get back to that. So Ice Age was a very sluggy tournament and you really, really had to prioritize evasion.

So I played blue because that's where the evasion was. So I knew to play blue. I think my second color was white. I'm not 100%. But I opened two cards that basically became the core to my deck. So card number one was a card called Zuran Orb. It's an artifact. It costs zero to cast.

And you can sac a land and gain two life. Now, I like building wacky decks. One of the decks I built used a card called Dark Heart of the Woods. So Dark Heart of the Woods costs black and green. It's an enchantment, and you can sacrifice a forest to gain three life. Now, this only gains you two life, but you can sacrifice any land, not just forest, and it costs zero to play. So, having played a lot of Dark Heart of the Woods, I'm like, wow, this seems really good. So I remember I went up to

Chris Page, who's one of the designers, and I said, Chris, really? This card seems crazy good. And he goes, oh, no, no, it's fine. So for those who don't know their history, Zern Orb would later get banned and restricted. It's crazy good. Chris actually came up to me a year or two later. We saw each other at an event

and he goes, okay, sorry. You were right. So I had Xern Orb. The second card I had was a card called Vexing Arcanics. So Vexing Arcanics costs four. It's three and tap. Target player names a card.

They then reveal the top card of their library. If it's the named card, they get to put it in their hand. If not, they lose two life and the card is put in the graveyard. Now, this was a sealed event, not a constructed event. So most people did not have a lot of copies of any one card. So normally when I played Vexing Arcanics, people would name land, basically what they named. So even if I missed, meaning they got it, they would get a land. Wasn't a huge negative to me.

But most of the time, I would do two damage to them, and I would mill them a card. So basically what I did was, I built a very slow controlling deck. I know I played everything defensive I could which is why I think I went blue-white.

If it wasn't blue-white, it was blue-red. But I think it was blue-white. Might have been blue-red. I don't remember exactly. I do know it was a slow, slow deck. And basically what I would do is I get on my Zoran Orb and I would stall, stall, stall, stall. So I got my Vexing Arcanics and I would have counter magic to protect my Vexing Arcanics. And then I would

either, um, I would Vexing Arcanics, and then I would either, um, I would Vexing Arcanics you to death. Sometimes that was life, sometimes that was cards. It depends how late I got the Vexing Arcanics out and how much else was going on. Um, but anyway, I managed to do that for six rounds. I won every round. I went 6-0. I even think, I think I only lost like one or two games the whole day. Now, there's a combination of things going on here. One is, I've been playing a Costa Mesa, so I was very familiar with Seal. I had never played Ice Age before, but I was very familiar with Seal. So, like, I knew, I knew to get the evasive creatures.

And, in fact, there was one creature called... What was it called? It was called Illusionary Forces, I think. Or Phantasmal Forces? Maybe Phantasmal Forces. It was a 4-1 flying creature with cumulative upkeep 1. Meaning you pay 1, then pay 2, then pay 3. And I learned... I knew instinctively when I saw this card, like,

Oh, well, the correct way to win is wait until you can play this card and you have enough mana that you can play the Cune of Upkeep to kill them with this card. And so anyway, between the fact that I had evasive creatures or had as many as you could have, and then I was playing a slow controlling deck and I had my Xurne Orb and my Vexing Arcanics. I did very well. Okay, so it comes the end of the day. I've made top 32. And then Scaff Elias comes up to me. And Scaff says, you need to drop out.

So I got it. I mean, first off, I was flown there by Wizards of the Coast. I mean, I was playing an event to report on it. But, you know, Wizards flew me there, so I shouldn't be winning this event. Second is, because I was doing the puzzles, I had advanced knowledge of the cards. So, while I'd never played in a Ice Age sealed event before, I was more familiar with the cards than the average person was, because I was building puzzles out of them.

Although, ironically, the ones I knew really well were the ones I was building my puzzles out of. But, nonetheless, it just didn't make sense. They didn't want me winning. It wasn't a good look. I didn't, you know, I got that. And so, I reported on it the next day, but I didn't play in it. So, I did drop out.

Dave Humphries would go on to win the event. And for winning the event, he got a medallion, an Ice Age medallion that had, like, diamonds on it. Anyway, Dave says to this day he still has the medallion, an Ice Age medallion that had, like, diamonds on it. Anyway, Dave says to this day he still has the medallion. And the other thing that was really interesting is that this was one of, like, Wizards was kind of dipping its toe in more competitive play, more, or not even competitive play, premier events. Like I said, they had run the 94 Nationals at Gen Con. Later that summer, they would rent out the Red Lion Hotel and we'd run 95 Nationals, which was its own thing. It wasn't at a convention.

And then later that in the fall would be The Gathering, which I will get to in a second. Anyway, so the event was a lot of fun. I remember for coming to the event and reporting on it, I was given some Ice Age packs, some sealed Ice Age packs. So when I went home, my good friend Henry Stern and I played Ice Age sealed together. I played with Henry. So he had never played this. He was very excited.

I had only played it in the event. So it was fun. Okay, so now that I've talked about the event, I want to talk a little bit about the history of pre-releases. So like I said, the really interesting thing to remember about this event was I think the reason they made it a pre-release was they wanted to do a promotional event where the news about the event would hit around the time that people could go and buy Ice Age. And the reason they did pre-release, I believe, was that allowed them to have the event, you know,

at a time in which they then could report on it and have the news come out when the set was coming out. But what happened was that it went so well, it was so much fun, it got so much buzz, people loved it so much that they realized they'd hanged upon something. Like I said, I don't know when they made the event. I don't think the plan was this is going to be the start of this thing as much as here's a cool event. But it went so well that the next event, which was Homeland,

there was an event in New York called The Gathering, which I did a whole podcast on. And at The Gathering which I did a whole podcast on and at The Gathering among other things there was a floor where they played Homeland all weekend long so there were ongoing Homeland pre-releases so much like the Ice Age pre-release if you wanted to play in the Homeland pre-release

there were multiple lots of little tournaments but you had to be there in New York at the gathering. The next event was Alliances. So Alliances, I believe there was a handful. I don't remember exactly. I want to say four, but maybe I'm off by a little bit. So they had a number of them, but not a lot.

One of which was at the Pro Tour on the boat, on the Queen Mary. It was the second ever Pro Tour. The one that Hammer beat Tom Gavin in. Hammer Regner. Sean the Hammer Regner. Or Sean Hammer Regner. Beat Tom Gavin. Anyway, that was that privilege. So, after that

was Mirage. So Mirage, we did something also sort of different. We had a Pro Tour where the very first time the players that saw the cards for Mirage was in the Pro Tour. Now, Mirage was designed with limited mind.

Not that we haven't proved since Mirage. And so there was Pro Tour Atlanta was played with, it was basically a pre-release tournament, them playing basically sealed, I don't know whether there was a draft at the end, it was sealed

it might have just been sealed all the way through anyway, and then we did this thing where they decided to have 30 some pre-releases and at each pre-release was a member of Wizards. A Wizards staff member was there. I remember they asked me where I wanted to go. And I said I wanted to go to Alaska.

I'd never been to Alaska. And so, I don't know, Juneau or somewhere in Alaska. But I ended up not going to Alaska because there was an event being run in Toronto. The people running it hadn't run a big event before. And they were worried about them. So they asked me to go to supervise. I'd done a lot of running events both in LA when I was there

and then I was very involved in running events at Wizards. We did the Pro Tour and stuff. Anyway, so that was that. So after that, the way the pre-releases were run in the early days is each large city would have someone who ran the event in that city. And it would be a big event. You know, here in Seattle, hundreds and hundreds of people would play.

In fact, it would be bigger than the original, the very first pre-release. And so for many years, that's how it was run. It was run where there'd be one big event. And then ultimately, we realized that the way to allow even more people to play in the pre-release was not just to have a singular event in large cities, but to let local game stores in every city be able to run it for themselves. And so, and then there's been evolution in

how we've done pre-releases. Early on, the pre-release, the only thing you could get on the day of the pre-release was the cards for the pre-release. And then we started allowing certain things to be sold early, and now we sell the set early. So at pre-release you can just get the set. Anyway,

so the reason that this is, I mean, the reason I wanted to tell the story today is one of the things that's really interesting to me about the history of Magic is that there's a lot of things that people take as givens. You know, the pre-release has become so, like, there's a new set. Well, there's a pre-release, at least, you know, of all the premiere sets and the bigger supplemental sets. And so it is, it's fun to look back to a time where, you know, that wasn't the thing.

And I really, I get a big kick out of sort of getting a general sense of, you know, what the early events were. And so I hope today I gave you a little insight. You know, it's for me personally. So one of my little, I began with talking about how my past tied into this. Let me end with that. So basically what happened was I got flown up to, or flown to Toronto to do this event. Went really well.

So Wizards started flying me places. So I got flown to Seattle for the 95 World Championships. I got flown to The Gathering in New York. I got flown up a bunch of times to do, I started doing a lot of freelance projects. Like I said, turn your work in on time and other people will ask you to do work. So at that point, I was doing freelance projects

for seven different sections of the company. And they would fly me up to Seattle from time to time to work on projects. And it was that, one of the times that I got flown up there that I said to Mike Davis that I'd be willing to move to Seattle, that he said, when can you start? I wouldn't actually, it took a little while to set things up, so I didn't actually start my job until October.

But that summer, the summer that started with this pre-release really was sort of my pathway to working at Wizards I mean obviously I was freelancing before that but it was really that summer of 95 was kind of was the summer where I realized that I wanted to work for Wizards

and that I could work for Wizards and I got to know the other big thing was when I went to the pre-release, I had met a few people. I'd met Richard Garfield at an event called Manifest in San Francisco. Uh, I had met Catherine and, like, Jim Lynn, I think Scafalais, I'd met at Gen Con. Um, but most of the Wizards people I'd never met before.

And that, the big thing about this event for me personally was it was me really for the first time meeting a lot of Wizards folk and sparking my interest in coming to work for Wizards so I think this event beside being the first ever pre-release event which is awesome and cool was kind of the event that led to me coming to work at Wizards

and so I have fond memories I remember you know playing in the event I remember reporting on memories. I remember, you know, playing in the event. I remember reporting on the event. I remember covering Canadian nationals. I remember getting the celebrity at the event was a guy named Cato Caitlyn, which footnote in history. He was like the house guest of OJ Simpson. Anyway, I remember getting him to sign a Gosbon ogre.

But anyway, that guy's... I'm almost home now. That was the first pre-release in Toronto, Canada that Dave Humphries won and got his medallion. So I hope you guys, like I said, I like telling little stories about Magic's history. So anyway, I hope you guys, like I said, I like telling little stories about Magic's history. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this

and a little peek into where pre-releases came from. But anyway, guys, I'm now pulling up to my house. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive from work. So instead of talking magic,

it's time for me to be eating dinner. So guys, hope you enjoyed it and I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.