Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1059: MagicCon: Barcelona

Episode Date: August 11, 2023

In this podcast, I talk all about my trip to MagicCon: Barcelona.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work at Home Edition. So I'm actually back home. I recently was in Spain, in Barcelona, for MagicCon Barcelona. So today, I'm going to talk all about my trip. So, now for starters, I used to travel to Europe all the time. Back in the days, I was going to all the pro tours. We had a lot of pro tours there. And there was a point where I was like every year traveling to Europe. The last time I think I traveled to Europe was in 2019.

I went to London. There was an event in London. But then the pandemic hit. And well, I've done a little bit of traveling in the States. This was my first trip back to Europe since the pandemic. So there were four Magic Cons in 2023. And I was able to go to two of them. And so one of them was Philadelphia.

That was the first one of the year. And then one of them was Barcelona. I really wanted to go to Barcelona because, like I said, I haven't been to Europe. And, you know, we're trying to establish Magic Cons in Europe. And so anyway, I wanted to go. So let me walk you through my time. So I had a lengthy flight. I think a 10-hour flight to Amsterdam and then a flight from Amsterdam.

Like a two-hour flight to Barcelona. So a long trip. like a two-hour flight to Barcelona. So a long trip. And the way it worked was I showed up on Wednesday. So the event is Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Originally, the plan was I was actually going to be in Game Nights Live, was the original plan.

But then my schedule didn't work out, and I had to drop out at the last minute. So I wasn't able to do it one day, one day I will. Um, okay. So the event was held at a, Oh, so I showed up on Wednesday so that I could, uh, adapt and, um, normally, uh, Thursday's run through for different things so that we could do the run throughs. Um, uh, I had three panels that I had been asked to do. So I will run through all those panels. And then the site was a pretty big site. It was very hot there. It was in the 80s when we were there.

And the site was one basically large, very, very large convention space. And in it, let's see, at one end there was the Pro Tour. And then near the Pro Tour was some casual play space. And there was like a little area for content creators. Then there was a bunch of stages that were color-coded, white through black, or white through green. So there was a white section,

a blue section, a black section, a red section, a green section. That's where all the tournaments were run, other than the Pro Tour, obviously. That was where all the events were run. Then there was an area for dealers.

There was a bunch of different places for people selling magic themes and cards and stuff. Um, and then there was an area that was, um, it was, uh, inspired by Lord of the Rings. It was a Lord of the Rings, um, area. There was, like, a little section for the Shire. And there was a birthday cake for Bilbo's 100th birthday. And then there was the area of the elves. Was that it? And then there was one section where there was one section where you could see the weather light that you could post in front of the weather light. And there's a separate section that had a,

um, uh, Elizabeth hanging from the, the, the sky, uh, angel Elizabeth. Um,

then there was a stage where a lot of deep events, all my panels were on the stage. Uh, and then there was a store where you could buy merchandise. And, uh, the way that magic cons work is there's a bunch of merchandise that are unique to magic con. And usually each a bunch of merchandise that are unique to

Magicon. And usually each event makes some stuff that's unique to that event. In this particular one, I know they had a local artist make one of the shirts and had a pair of matching shorts you could buy. And the main theme of Barcelona was Lord of the Rings. So there were a lot of Lord of the Rings shirts. So anyway, a lot of cool magic merch.

Now what happened was on Thursday the air condition wasn't even on on Thursday. It was very hot. But even on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, the days of the event, there's a law in for sure in Spain, maybe

it's all of Europe, that there's a law in, for sure in Spain, maybe it's all of Europe, that there's a lot of conservation issues going on. So, like, they can only cool it down to like 80 degrees or something. So it was still pretty hot. I broke out my jorts, my jean shorts. And so, and I had my magic shirts and stuff. Okay, so Thursday was practice day. Like I said, I had three panels to do.

And so I had... The three panels I had to do were there's a preview panel that I did with Gavin and Ovidio, who's one of our art directors. Previewing Wilds of Eldraine, Lost Caverns of Ixalan Doctor Who there was a solo panel I did that was me telling stories and then there was a panel that I did with

Glenn Jones and Lady Danger that talked about how we adapted magic for Lord of the Rings, how magic for Lord of the Rings, how we made Lord of the Rings into a set. So on Thursday, it was practice day, and so I did a run-through of my previews.

I did some technical checks for my personal thing. We didn't actually meet. We had done some stuff before we got there for the Lord of the Rings. We had done a full Lord of the Rings, so we didn't end up doing a Lord of the Rings on Thursday. We had done some stuff before we got there for the Lord of the Rings. We had done a full Lord of the Rings, so we didn't end up doing a Lord of the Rings on Thursday. We had done it before. And also just to get a sense of everything, where everything was at. And, you know, there were a bunch of rooms for wizards and stuff.

So, you know, when I had pressed stuff, know where the press things were. So anyway, I sort of get accustomed to everything. So Thursday. And also there's a nine-hour time difference between Seattle and Barcelona. So, like, I had to get adjusted. It was, you know, I had to adjust myself. So I had the full day to get adjusted. Okay. So come Friday is the event.

So the first thing I did each morning was, so the, there, you can buy what's called a Black Lotus ticket, which is sort of the VIPs of the event. And the Black Lotus, there's a little breakfast gathering in the morning. And so one of the things that I did is every morning I would go to the VIP room and chat with the Black Lotus folks. to the VIP room and chat with the Black Lotus folks. On the first day, mostly I just said hi to everybody because I hadn't met anybody before. Overall, there were less Black Lotus people.

The whole tournament, it's the first time we were in Europe, and so the U.S., there's usually more people in the U.S. right now than in the European ones. I think with time, maybe that'll change. But part of doing the events early on is getting people used to what the events are. And there's a lot of the last big events that Magic used to do were like the Grand Prixs.

And these are a little bigger. These are more convention than the Grand Prixs had been. So anyway, just getting people used to what they are. So anyway, first thing I do is I go, and I do some schmoozing, and I talk to people and said hi, and so was in the VIP room. Then I go around the hall,

and then I sort of schmooze in the larger hall so I can meet the non-VIPs who are at the event and sort of walk through and talk to everybody. And, you know, one of the things I like to do when I go to events is I just like to meet as many people as I can. I like to talk to people. I sign things. I take pictures. And it's fun to me. It's fun just walking around the hall and just having people see me and get excited and then, you know, just sort of impromptu gatherings. As you'll see, we do set up some time for less impromptu stuff.

But it is fun to sort of walk around. And I could see the pro tour. So meanwhile, let me mention the pro tour real quickly. I wasn't involved in the pro tour at all. So at one end of the tournament hall was the pro tour. It was like pro tour, I don't know, Lord of the Rings? I'm not sure what they called it, Pro Tour Barcelona. Anyway, they were playing, I think they did Modern,

and they did Draft with Lord of the Rings. So anyway, that was going on the whole weekend. There was a whole slew of people dedicated to that. There was a lot of fun stories from that. I know Kaibuda did really well, made top eight. Long time pro. And anyway, a lot of fun stories. But that, so the whole weekend,

while all the stuff I'm talking about was going on, there was an entire pro tour going on, and that was happening. Also, there were a lot of, we invited a lot of different, uh, content creators. And so, um, some of them had stuff on the stage. Uh, some of them, we had a section that was near the end that was near the pro tour, uh, where they can sit and they can play people.

So people could come and play with their favorite, um, content creators. Um, and there also was a signing area. I did, that I'll get to in a second. But we made sure people can come meet their, you know, their favorite magic celebrities and they can get signatures and greet them and stuff like that. Okay, then, so the first big thing I had to do was, I did do a signing. So I did a signing

so people came up and I signed mats and cards and a few people had me make tokens and I posted a lot of pictures and I had a chance to talk to everybody. So one of the things that I really enjoy, one of my favorite things, maybe

my favorite thing of Magicons is a lot of my interaction with the public is online. And it's not that there isn't, there is plenty of positivity online, but online is mixed with a lot of negativity. It is the nature of social media and it's been a trend. I mean, it's getting meaner over the years. It's been a trend. I mean, it's getting meaner over the years. But anyway, one of the nice things about being at a live event is the amount of just pure positivity.

I mean, the number of people that came up to me, and we're talking hundreds of people who are just like, hey, here's what magic means to me. Here's the way that magic's made my life better. I met people through it, or I had some area where it just helped me, or whatever. Just lots and lots of people talking about how magic just meant something to them

or means something to them. And that, you know, as someone who has spent all my time making magic, it is really nice to, you know, to hear people talk about it, to see people enjoying it. Just, they're just, one of the great things about MagicCon

is just watching all the people enjoying magic. Uh, and that has been, that's just fun. It's one of my favorite things about going to Magic Cons is just sort of soaking all that up and, and getting a chance to meet people and to talk to people and hear about what they're excited about and stuff like that. You know, it's, um, you know, a lot of my job fundamentally is making all of you happy. Uh, and the way to do that is to talk to all of you and like what do you want and there's lots of people that want lots of different things so um and and it's just fun to meet different people and see all the different people playing and anyway okay so i did a signing um and then right after the signing uh i had a panel so my first

panel on friday or the only panel i had on Friday, I had three panels, one each day. My Friday panel was my Friday panel was the preview panel. So the way it worked is the three of us went out. So the first section was, we talked about Lost Caverns of Ixalan.

Mostly this was a video talking. A video was the art director for it. And he's originally from Guatemala and a lot of the stuff that he, like, he was making a set where it was his own, you know, his own culture. And that the joy is sort of bringing that to magic. And, you know, that's one of the fun things is

we like to explore a lot of different cultures for inspiration. But having people that are literally making it from that culture is awesome. We try to do that as much as we can. We have a lot of consultants and things, but it's nice also when the people making it come from a place of, look, this is something that I know and understand, and I want to design something that's awesome. So anyway, a video talked about Lost Caverns Ixalan.

Oh, I explained. talked about Lost Caverns Ixalan. Oh, I explained, the one part I explained is that we're calling, what we're calling the Lost Ixalan is what I'm calling a backdrop set, which means that we're going

back to Ixalan, but it's not the mechanical definition of Ixalan from the first time we were there. We are going to do a different mechanical expression, but the world, the backdrop, is a world you already know. And so, there will be dinosaurs and pirates and vampires and merfolks,

but it's not a typal set. It's not a faction set built around types. That's not what the mechanically is. It's an underground world, and we showed a whole bunch of pictures, and not only is it underground, but part of the tropes of underground world is sort of a lost city, where there's a city beneath the world, and we showed a whole bunch of pictures, and not only is it underground, but part of the tropes of underground world is sort of a lost city, where there's a

city beneath the world, and so the sky is rock, essentially, although it looks more like sky. But anyway, we showed a bunch of pictures, and a video talked very passionately about all the cool things that went into it, and we showed off some gods,

and we showed off lots of cool pictures. There's angels and all sorts of cool stuff. Okay, the next section was Gavin talking about the thing that he loved, which is Doctor Who. So Gavin is a long, long time Doctor Who fan. In fact, he was dressed in the panel like the 10th Doctor, I believe. Anyway, he was in charge. He led the set, and it's been a passion project of his.

And so he got to finally... The previous week at San Diego Comic-Con, he had shown off the first batch of cards, but here he got to show off a whole bunch of more cards. And so Gavin got to walk through and show off some cards and talk about the set, and he was very excited watching Gavin talk about... Generally, Gavin's excited, but more so than normal.

So anyway, he talked all about Doctor Who. Then the third section was my section, talking about Wilds of Eldraine. And basically, what I sort of explained was we just had a giant capstone event set, kind of like War of the Spark had been with Martian Machines. And after War of the Spark, we said, you know what?

We need a breather. And we went to Eldraine. So we were looking for another place to have a breather. Like, you know, it's a good place. Eldraine. So we went back there. And so while at Eldraine, the thing I said is it's the ramifications of the Phyrexian War lay heavily on the world. The king and queen are dead.

Rowan and Will have been disparked. A good chunk of the kingdom is asleep because of the Wicked Slumber, a spell they used that has a Sleeping Beauty-like quality to it that they used to stop the Phyrexians.

So, you know, there's a new mysterious character named Kellen that's doing stuff. So there's a lot going on. I talked about, um, adventures were coming back. Food was coming back. Um, and I mentioned that we're leaning a little bit more into the fairy tales. The, the, the, the kingdoms took the brunt of the attack from the Phyrexians. And so we're going out, um, so what that means is the first set of Thorn Eldraine the majority of cards were actually

based on the Arthurian influence and fairy tales were a smaller portion we kind of flip flopped them they're both still in the set but this set is a little more of a fairy tale influence for example the ten archetypes

that you're drafting are all fairy tales each is based on a fairy tale so white blue is the snow queen blue black is sleeping beauty that you're drafting are all fairy tales. Each is based on a fairy tale. So, you know, white blue is the Snow Queen. Blue black is Sleeping Beauty and such. And so we talked a bit about that. Anyway, we showed off a few new cards.

The first cards we had shown off, we showed a whole bunch of pictures. The goose Hydra, we learned, is from Eldraine. Oh, and the creature with the dinosaur hand, that was one of the gods from Lost Cavern. So remember at San Diego Comic-Con, I showed off eight images. So two of the images paid off in this one.

The other six would happen at Gen Con, but that's another podcast. Okay, so after that, I then had a run in event. I ran, once again, this is for the Black Lotus folks, I ran an unevent. And so what it was is they were playing with Infinity, and then each round was based on an unset. So there was an unglued round, a hinged round, and an unstable round. And each one of those introduced a special ability.

For the unglued round, you could spend two mana as a sorcery to squish two creatures together kind of like the BFM. So everything combined between them, when you squish them together, their power, toughness, their text boxes, their names, their artists, everything squished together. You could do that once per game.

And then in the unhinged one, we gave everybody three booster packs. And then once per game, you can spend two mana as a sorcery to booster tutor. Open up a booster pack and take a card. And then in the Unstable round, for two mana, once per turn as sorcery, you could log on to Ask Urza, the Urza, the headless headmaster. And you hit the minus one. He hasmaster um and you hit the minus one he has three abilities you hit the minus one ability and so you got you got one of those buildings once per game uh for two mana um anyway so what happened was we had some technical difficulties

at the event uh i don't even know what they were but i i know that we had like they're like um we're gonna be delayed by like 45 minutes so i I just did a Q&A for 45 minutes. So people ask questions and I answer questions. And then we ran the event. Like I said, it was three rounds long. It was lots of fun. People said they had a great time. Anyway, and so that, at the end of that, that was my last responsibility on Friday.

But that event ended up being, with all the delays, about six hours. So it was a long event once everything finished. Although that six hours is from the very beginning of the event to the last person finishing. So not everybody was there that long. Okay, then we move on to Saturday. Okay, then we move on to Saturday. So Saturday, my panel for Saturday, which I think was the first thing I did was my panel for Saturday,

was in Las Vegas, I had done a panel called Picture That, where I took 30 different pictures of myself from Magic's history and then just told stories about the history of Magic in the 30 years of stories. So I wanted to do another thing that basically was like,

here's stories from 30 years of magic and I wanted to do another like, pick 30 things and tell 30 stories. So this one was called How Trivial and what I did was I asked 30 trivia questions and then I let people guess. The audience could yell out

what they thought was the right answer, and then I would tell them the answer and then tell the story associated with it. My picture of that from Vegas was a little more behind the scenes. Sorry, a little more about the people and stuff. This one was a little more about the making of magic. You know, like what was the card we printed

that wasn't at the mana cost? We meant to print it at, stuff like that. Anyway, I forgot to mention this. All the podcasts, not podcasts, all of the panels I'm talking about are online. So if you want to see the preview panel, that's online. You want to see my trivia column, that's online. The Lord of the Rings was online. So all of those are online on YouTube if you want to see them.

Okay, so I did that panel. It went very well. Then after that, I did another signing so people could come and get stuff signed. And then after that, I guess – sorry, I forgot. Beginning of the day, I did the breakfast thing like I had done the day before. And then after the breakfast thing, I – every day, I would go do the breakfast thing, schmooze with VIP folk. And then I would go wander the hall and just meet people around the hall. After my signing, I was able to hit the hall a little bit more.

And I was able to – there's some other panels. I was able to watch a few other panels. Anyway, and then I think that was Saturday. So Sunday, same thing. I went and did breakfast. Then I sort of went around the hall. So the morning was most meeting, greeting with people. My panel on Sunday was a Lord of the Rings panel about the making of Lord of the Rings. I had been on the vision design team. was LedBot, Ben Hayes and then

Gled Jones was the set lead for the set Glenn is no longer at Wizards but he came for this event because it was his baby and he really wanted to talk about it so one of the cool things then you can watch the video to see all the actual details

one of the things we really focused on was like what were the challenges of making then you can watch the video to see all the actual details. One of the things we really focused on was like, what were the challenges of making Lord of the Rings? And the biggest challenge that I talked about was that when we make a magic set, we have a lot of flexibility. If we need something for a set, I can go to the creative team and say, I need you to add this to the world or change the world. And, you know, the classic example I gave during the panel was when I was making Innistrad, I realized I needed werewolves to be red and green.

And they were in green, but they weren't in red. So I had to go to the creative team and go, I need red werewolves. And like, what does that mean? And we talked it through, but then they made red werewolves. When you're working with an existing license, you know, for example, Lord of the Rings, it exists. There's no changing Middle Earth. Middle Earth is Middle Earth.

And so one of the challenges of making a magic set is you don't have the ability to change things. You have to sort of make do with what does exist. So the two examples where we ran into problems in Lord of the Rings, I mean, we solve these, but one was there weren't a lot of flying creatures, just not a lot of things in the stories fly.

And the things did not balance evenly color-wise. And there was less blue things than there were the other colors. And part of that was talking about how do we balance things, how do we make blue work out. We chose to make elves part blue because

it flavorfully made sense. We pushed more of the sort of scoundrels into blue. The tricksters were a little more blue. And anyway, the same with flying. We just sort of figured out what all existed that could fly. Also the ring mechanic, which had

unblockability built into it, was used to add some of the unblockability that wasn't coming from flying, so that, you know, we offset it that way. But anyway, one of the fun things about it, if you go and listen, is that there's a lot of neat and individual decisions.

You know, we talked through how we decided how many versions of characters to make. We ended up doing two of the major characters and three of a specific few characters, just in the main set. There's actually more in other products. And we just talked about how Glam goes in great detail about a whole bunch of different cards and how we try to bring different characters to life and stuff like that.

So I heartily recommend listening to that. That was super fun. All the panels, I really had fun with all the panels. They were a joy to do, and I hope you guys have a chance to listen to them. They were very fun. I thought they were... Each had their own quality to them,

and so they were pretty cool. had their own, uh, quality to them. And so they were, they were pretty cool. Um, after I did my panel, I had to do some interviews. In fact, uh, after each of my panels, I think I had interviews to do. I think each day I did some interviews. Um, so there's local press. And so I just interviewed different local different local press. One of my jobs of being at events is there's a certain amount of just interviews and stuff to do. So I like doing interviews. So it worked out well. Also, the other thing was the floor itself got pretty hot because they weren't able to turn it below 80 and there were a lot of people there. Our rooms upstairs where the wizards had their own little rooms uh there was air conditioning in some of those rooms and fans and things and so uh also sometimes i would go up there when i just get real hot to

go up there just cool down for a second um i'll try to think other uh oh sunday was also the finals of the pro tour so what they had done was during the previous days, there were events going on stage. There were panels and stuff like I was doing. But for the second half on Sunday, after the Lord of the Rings panel, they basically opened it up and they brought some pros in to do commentary. And they just showed the finals. And you could watch the finals all day long. And that was a lot of fun. A lot of people that are watching that.

And it definitely came down to i'm not remembering names off the top of my head but it was a kid who was sort of i think it was their first pro tour playing a veteran who you know who's been playing for a long long time uh and the kid won in the end uh but pretty exciting um and it was just it was it's fun to see competitive play like i said back in the day um I used to be a regular on the pro tour. So, um, I'm not, it's not something I do now. So I, like once upon a time I knew all the names of everybody just cause that was my job.

And, um, but I'm not as in tune that it's not that I have other areas I'm doing now, but, uh, it's fun. It is fun to see people get excited about professional play. I do think like like, one of the things that makes Magic so awesome is there's so many different ways to enjoy Magic. In fact, that's one of the things I enjoy about this Magic Con in general, which is, hey,

you like playing Commander? There's a Commander Zone. You can go play. I didn't mention it before. There's a Commander Zone outside of the five-color stuff. There's a yellow area that's for Commander. You want to meet your favorite celebrities? You could do that. You want to watch your favorite celebrities? You could do that. You want to watch the Pro Tour? You could do that.

You want to go get cool merch? You could do that. You want to watch panels? You want to take pictures in the Lord of the Rings area? You want to go play in events? And there are all sorts of events all weekend long. There's a big prize wall. The way the events work is you get tickets when you win,

and then you can use the tickets to turn in to buy stuff at the prize wall. That's how prizes work these days. Oh, you win, and then you can use the tickets to turn in to buy stuff at the prize walls, how prizes work these days. Oh, I forgot, I forgot. One other thing I did on Friday. After the unevent, on Friday, oh no, was it Friday or Saturday? Sorry, on Saturday.

After my signing, after my signing on Saturday, I went and played in Gavin's Unevent. So Gavin Verhey does this event at Magicons. The way it basically works is it's an event. It varies from event to event. It's always different. And Gavin always mixes in some brand new cards that he makes for the event.

So this event, you got a bunch of packs of Lord of the Rings. I'm sorry. No, no, no. You got a bunch of packs of Commander Mafters. And then one pack, I think, of Lord of the Rings. One or two packs of Lord of the Rings. And then you made a Commander deck. Although it's limited Commander, so it's 60 cards.

Not 100. You make a Commander deck. and then you go play. It's one-on-one. So I played three rounds. I went undefeated, and it was a lot of fun. I made a very aggressive deck. Normally in commander, aggro doesn't work, but it's one-on-one, it does work.

So my commander was... I have to remember the name. It's the red-white. It's the red-white it's a red-white legendary creature that whenever a human enters the battlefield target creature gets double strike, I think, to end a turn.

Anyways, very good. And I had numerous opponents. I think I won on the fourth or fifth turn in a bunch of games. I had a very aggressive deck. So, anyway. So, I did that on Saturday. Trying to think the, the other fun things was in the morning before I came to the event, the hotel we stayed in had a gorgeous breakfast. So I had a big breakfast and then I get to interact with all the people at the hotel,

which was Wizardsfolk and people we brought in and stuff. So that was in the morning before I got to the event, I got to do that. And all in all, I mean, I just want to say that I had a really good time. I love Magicons. It's fun to see all the different aspects of Magic. It's fun to

interact with the players. It is fun. Like I said, I don't think I would want to live my life where, like, the... Sorry, Magicons, to me, are the idea of what celebrities really like, where at Magicon, you know, everybody wants my signature and take my picture. Like, I get the sense of being a celebrity.

I'm not like that in normal life, so, like, for three days, that's kind of fun. If that was all my life all the time, I'm not like that in normal life. So it's like for three days, that's kind of fun. If that was all my life, all the time, I could see what that would be. It could be tiring at times. For three days is super fun.

And I love meeting people and I love, you know, it's fun to sign your name and get your picture taken. If it's not, you know, you're just trying to shop at the grocery store or something. But anyway, had a great time. Barcelona was a lot of fun.

The food was good, and the people were great, and it was just a really awesome time. And so I'm not going to go to Las Vegas just because I only get to do so much traveling, and I picked Philadelphia and Barcelona for my two magicons this year. But I'm looking next year to figure out which ones I'm going to next year, so hopefully I'll see

some of you at a different Magicon. If you've never been to a Magicon, like I said, they're magic conventions. That's the best way to think of it, and there's a lot of different factors going on. So whether you want to just play various formats or play some stuff that you can't normally play or watch a pro tour

or just intermingle with all sorts of people and maybe meet people, content creators that you enjoy. It's a blast. And so if you've never been to a MagicCon, I will heartily say it's something you should do. At least try out. I think you might enjoy it. Anyway, guys, that was my trip to Barcelona.

I had a lot of fun. Did a lot of fun did a lot did a lot of things I was tired I definitely at the end of the day I fell sleep easy but I really enjoyed it

and so that was my trip to Barcelona anyway guys I can see my desk so we all know what that means means this is the end

of my drive to work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic I'll see you guys next time bye bye