Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1115: MagicCon: Chicago

Episode Date: March 1, 2024

In this podcast, I talk about my time at last weekend's MagicCon: Chicago.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. And you can tell I am a little bit hoarse. Why is that? Because I just got back from MagicCon Chicago. So today is all about that event. Okay, so the event was held in Chicago So the event was held in Chicago in February. I think it was, I can't remember the exact dates, but the 20th, 21st, 22nd is a Friday through a Sunday in February in Chicago, which at first blush would seem like not the best time to have an event in Chicago. But actually, most of the time the weather was really nice. We did have a blizzard one night.

But other than that, the weather actually was quite nice. Okay, so for those that have never been to a Magic Con, this is our, we did Magic 30 in Las Vegas in 2022. Last year, we did a Magic Con in Philadelphia, in Minneapolis, in Barcelona, and again in Las Vegas. This year, there are three Magic Cons. This was the first one in Chicago. Second one

will be in Amsterdam and third one will be in Vegas again. Okay, so what did I do in Magic Con? So Magic Con, for those that have never been, is a magic convention and there's a lot of different components of the convention. There is a giant play

area where you can play events. There's a casual play area. There's what we call the Mana Stage. There is a giant play area where you can play events. There's a casual play area. There's what we call the mana stage, which is a stage where we do panels and presentations. There's a giant merch area to buy your merch. There's what we call the creator corner, where you can come meet your favorite creators and play with them or get them to sign stuff.

There is a whole bunch of dealers selling stuff, store owners selling all sorts of magic merchandise. There was an area this time where there were puzzles, where you can come and, Mark Gottlieb made three different puzzles, and you could solve the puzzles. It was flavored as Murders at Karloff Manor. There was... Also, there was a Pro Tour.

And you can come and watch the Pro Tour being played. And I'm sure I'm missing a bunch of other stuff. But there's just lots to do. It's a giant event with much going on. My responsibilities for the event... First off, I did a lot of programming. I was in six different things on the mana stage, which I will get to. And I also did a bunch of signings, some meet and greets, and we's a ticket that's called Black Lotus, which is kind of the fancy of the tickets.

Every day I do a little bit of schmoozing with the VIP people. So Friday, I think I was there for the breakfast. And then my first panel was on Friday. It was a preview panel. So I did it with Blake. Let's see, Blake was the host. And then Aaron Forsyth and Roy Graham. So Roy is our story person. And Aaron is my boss, VP of design. So we came and we talked about four different upcoming sets.

We went backwards. We went chronologically backwards. First we talked about Bloomboro. We showed off some cards. I talked about how it's structured in such a way that each two-color pair is built around a different animal. Because this is our anthropomorphic animal world. And we showed off one card named Mabel. So I said that white-red was the mice. We introduced the fact that enters the battlefield is becoming enters.

And there's a light typo theme. Most of the way it works is if you put all the mice together, if you just draft mice, the mice are in red and white, they'll have a cohesive theme. They'll play well. There's a little bit of light typal. The card we show up, Mabel, for example, gave plus one, plus one to mice. So there is some light typal going on. But it's not like Lorwyn that's heavy typal where all you can do is draft cards of a certain type. There will be decks that lean towards certain animals, certain strategies. You know, if I draft all, I said at the panel that my favorite draft archetype was rabbits.

And if you just take a lot of rabbits, you will have a fun rabbit deck. And we showed off a whole bunch of art, all of which probably is online now. And we showed off a whole bunch of art, all of which probably is online now. And we showed off a couple cards. Okay, next up we taught Assassin's Creed. It's another Universes Beyond based on the role-playing, not role-playing game, the video game. And there's multiple Assassin's Creed video games, obviously. And we showed off a few cards. Enzio, I think, is one of the characters.

We showed off the Animus. Anyway, we showed off a bunch of cards from the set and talked about sort of how we captured the feel. We said that there's an Assassin's-type-o flavor. We showed off a mechanic called free running which allows you to cast a spell cheaper if either an assassin or your commander has dealt combat damage to an opponent and we talked about that. We then showed off modern horizons 3. We talked about how this is the first modern Horizons with access to double-faced cards. We showed off, we're doing a cycle of Planeswalkers,

showing the Planeswalkers are sparking. So they start as a legendary creature and they turn into a Planeswalker. We showed the Ajani before and after cards, the legendary creature and Planeswalker version of Ajani. We then showed art for Tomeo, but didn't show Tomeo's card. And we didn't tell

what the other three. This is a cycle, but we didn't say the other three. We did show off some themes from the set. There is a colorless Eldrazi theme, and energy is coming back. We showed off cards for both those themes. Finally, we talked about Outlaws of Thunder Junction. We showed off Oko's card. Oko is the planeswalker on the set we showed off members of the gang including Tiny Bones and Rakdos and Vraska and we Oko showed off a new mechanic

called Crimes, Committing Crimes so what Committing Crimes is whenever with a spell or ability you target an opponent or any of their stuff, their permanents, their spells, cards in graveyard, that's committing a crime. And there's cards that care about committing a crime, that when you commit a crime, something happens. And I should point out that giant growth isn't inherently a crime, but if you giant growth your opponent's creature,

it becomes a crime. So whether or not you commit a crime, but if you giant growth your opponent's creature, it becomes a crime. So whether or not you commit a crime, a lot of times it's how you use cards. It's not, I mean, there are certain cards that you use them after targets, and they have to target the opponent's stuff, or they usually target the opponent's stuff. But there are other things that could be crimes

depending on how you use them. We did, we also showed off a Fibble Fip at the end. There's a new Fibblefip legendary creature. And it mentioned a mechanic called Plot that we did not say what it was, but for you guys all to figure out amongst yourselves. So the set, for those who don't know, Allo's Thungr Junction,

because of the change in the multiverse, there are now Omen Pass. So now people other than planeswalkers can move between worlds it's a lot harder if you're not a planeswalker but it's possible and so we wanted to do a set where we collected something from across the multiverse

and we chose villains so this is a villain set and because we needed a good environment and wanted a brand new environment this is the first brand new environment since Nukapena and it is a world called Thunder Junction, in which lots of outlaws from around the world. It has several, it's based on sort of the Western, the American West genre

that's very popular. And so you'll get to see that. Okay, that was the panel. After the panel, I had to do a signing. And so I so basically for the signing, I'm at a table. Anybody wants to come. Normally I will sign some stuff for the person. And then if they want, I will take a picture. So a lot of sitting and standing. And that was fun. I really enjoy

meeting players and so it's great. One of the things that's really nice, in fact probably my favorite thing about Magic Cons is online there's a lot of feedback and there are players that say nice things online but let's just say online is a little more critical.

A lot of, we'll call it constructive criticism online. In person it's just there's a lot more critical. A lot of, we'll call it constructive criticism online. In person it's just, there's a lot more positivity. There's just people that are so excited to meet me and so excited about magic and just want to tell me what magic has meant to them and their life. And lots of people telling me how they read my articles when they were very young. And it was fun. I met a lot of people. There were a lot of parents with children there. A lot of couples there. Just a lot of people sharing

magic with people they care about. And that was very much fun. And then the final thing I did on Friday was I got to participate just a little bit in Game Nights Live. So Game Nights Live, for those that don't know, Jimmy and Josh, Jimmy Wong, Josh Lee Kwai, do a, they have a show called Game Nights. They also do a podcast called The Command Zone. Anyway, they do a lot of content.

Anyway, they brought Game Nights to the event. It's called Game Nights Live where they play just like they would on Game Nights but instead of being recorded, it's live. And there's always four people. Always Jimmy and Josh. Sometimes, well, there's a special guest. Rachel usually is the third if there's only one guest. And that happened this time. Rachel was the third. And then the guest was the prof, the professor. And so the theme for this one

was Guilds of Ravnica. So Jimmy was Orzhov. Josh was Golgari. Rachel was Boros. And the professor was Izzet and two of them used brand new guild people from Murderer's of Kralov Manor and then two of them used older ones

from other Ravnica sets anyway my participation in this is there is a what was called the Tournament of Guilds Championship Belt, because it's sort of like wrestling. So I carried that in, and I wished them all good luck in the event.

And Jimmy and I had a little banter, and I teased that maybe, maybe one day, I might be on Game Nights Live. We'll see. But anyway, it was a lot of fun, and uh, I got to do that. Uh, so that was my Friday. Um, okay. We move into Saturday. Saturday was my longest day. Um, so Saturday I did some more breakfasting with the VIP folk. Um, and then I had a whole bunch of panels. So my first panel was the Ravnica influence. Again, it was me. Joe was the host rather than Blake. Aaron and Roy were with

me again. But we also had Zach, Zach Stella, who's one of our artists. And we were talking about how influential Ravnica as a setting has been for mechanics, for art, for card frames, for all sorts of stuff. It introduced faction play and balancing enemy and ally colors. It changed how we do block structures. It introduced hybrid mana. It introduced water marks. It just did all sorts of things.

And so we spent an hour talking about the influence of it and sharing stories and talking about different things. I talked a lot about how the set came to be, some of the challenges we had. I talked about how the. I talked a lot about how the set came to be, some of the challenges we had. I talked about how the shock lens got made, and just a bunch of different stories there. And that was a lot of fun. And then we took questions from the audience. We did about 15 minutes of Q&A, which was fun. Okay, the second panel I did on Saturday was the 20 greatest mechanics of all time. Basically, when I'm at a MagicCon, I tend to do a solo event where I pick a topic to talk about.

For those that have not seen, oh, I should mention, all these panels I'm talking about are all posted online. If you want to see the preview panel, the Ravnica panel, the 20 Greatest Mechanics panel, any of the panels I'm talking about, including, I believe, Game Nights, it's all online. If you want to see, if you weren't there and couldn't see it live, it's loaded up on YouTube on our channel. You can see it all. So all this content is for you to come see for yourself. Normally when I do a panel, my solo panel, usually it's about some topic. I have a lot of slides.

I like having a lot of pictures in my panel. I believe this panel had 500 slides as an example. And so I'm just talking about, in this case, what I thought the top 20 mechanics of all time. I will probably do a separate, maybe one or two podcasts on that very topic. So I'm not going to get into great detail here. Cause it's, it's worthy of its own series of podcasts. But anyway, I did that. I had really good response from the audience. And it was a lot of fun. Then my third panel was what we call a community panel. And what a community panel is, is we, Wizards of the Coast, make a bunch of panels that we do on the main stage.

But there are a lot of panels that the community is allowed to suggest panels. And we okay them. And then there's a community room and there's panels ongoing in the community room. So the panel that I was in was called 30 Years of Content and Commentary. And it was talking about sort of what, how magic commentary online, what it's been.

And we talked, this is also, I believe, online. I think all the, I think, I think most of the community stuff was filmed, I believe. I know all the stuff on the main stage was filmed. I think this was filmed too. We talked about like starting with the era of the print magazines and the Duelists and Scry and Inquest. And then moving on to sort of early days on the web and talking about the early Magic of the Gathering.com and Star City Games.

And there's just lots of online places where you can read content, Channel Fireball and stuff like that. And then we talked about podcasts and then video stuff. And anyway, it was just sort of talking about all the different evolution. Saffron Olive was also on the thing. We interviewed Mike Flores, did an interview that was taped

that we saw. It was super fun. And it was really... The host asked me to be on the panel. I was very honored to be asked. I was glad to do it. It was really fun. And then after that panel, I went to play in Gavin Verhey's Unknown Events. So the way these work, Gavin does them every MagicCon.

Gavin will make brand new cards that he'll sticker that they sticker on cards and that you get a variety of different things this one we got a lot of Murders in Carl of Manor some draft boosters, I think one collector booster, we got some Ravnica Remastered and we got some mystery boosters which just have stuff from all over the place. And then we had some special cards. The theme to this one was the cards represented

different magic celebrities and influencers. I got a card called the Water Morrow that I didn't open, but I learned about it because I got lots and lots of people asked me to sign it, so I pretty quickly learned of its existence. So I played. I got there late because of my panel. I quickly built a deck. I did end up getting to play three rounds.

So I built. Oh, what you were doing, it was building a 60-card commander deck. So you had to have a commander. And then your deck had to follow the color identity. I think you're a lot of, in limited play, I think you're a lot of repeat cards. I didn't have any repeat cards, but I'm not 100% sure whether you're a lot of repeat cards. In draft, you can. Maybe in limited, I never did, but my commander was Rift the

Awakener. But my deck basically was a white-green deck. I had the ability to get red mana. So I think I splashed. I splashed just a little tiny bit of red, mostly to cast Riff. Anyway, my deck was quite efficient. I went 3-0. Did quite well.

And that was my Saturday. Okay, so Sunday, I did Breakfast VIPs. I had one panel on Sunday. It wasn't a panel, sorry. One event on Sunday. I was in something called the Clash of the Creators. And so it's a game show where we asked people that attended shows last year. We sent them a questionnaire. They filled it out. And then the top answers were on a board.

And then we had to guess the top answers. And the way it worked was there were two creator teams. They were just a different creator-influencer people. One team was led by Olivia Gobert-Hicks, and one team was led by Brian Kibler. They played each other. Olivia's team won, and then they played the Wizards of the Coast team.

So our team captain was Matt Tabak. We had Ellie Rice. We had Chris Mooney. We had Harla Snyder and myself. And anyway, so we were triumphant. I think the final score was we had 600 something and the other team had 43. So I think we won four of the five categories. There were five categories for each round.

And the questions were like, name a blue counterspell that doesn't have the word counterspell in its name. Name a black spell starting with dark. Name a guild that you'd want to eat at a restaurant, a Ravnica guild, that you think would have a good restaurant. And so anyway, it was a lot of fun. And it was fun goofing around with everybody. And we had a good time. Then, I'm trying to think what else happened.

I then, oh, I also, both Saturday and Sunday, I had a little bit of press to do. So after my creative, the clash of the creators, I went and did an interview, a video interview. One of my jobs at the shows is we get press brought in and so I do interview. Some of it's more what I would call magic sites and stuff and then some of it is broader like oh, the local paper comes to do an interview and stuff like that.

Then after that, I played in a second unknown event. Oh, so on my way there, here's a little hint of my time, which is fun. So I'm coming in to go to Gavin's event. I'm a little bit late because of my interview. And then someone stops me and asks me to sign an autograph. I always, when people ask stuff, I always sign autographs or do whatever. But it took me long enough to sign that player's mat or whatever they have me sign that somebody else sort of got behind them. And then a line started growing.

And I ended up spending, I don't know, half an hour just signing and taking pictures and stuff. So I got a little later than planned to the unknown event. Again, I built another deck. This time, I had Ojitai, I think, was my commander. It was a white-blue deck. It's the Ochitai from Dragons of Tarkir that I opened up in one of my Mystery Boosters. And I had a fun time.

I did not win. I played. My competitors were good, and they defeated me. I had good games, though. They were quite fun. I only got to play two matches because I then had to run off to my next thing. But it was fun. And if you're ever at a MagicCon, definitely play in Gavin's Unknown Event.

Oh, another fun thing that went on. This was in the VIP room. I didn't play in this. fun thing that went on. This was in the VIP room. I didn't play in this. But there was the casual play team made their own unevented plane chase event where they made a brand new plane chase event. And they had people play and they did that. Oh, another fun thing that's fun is one of the sets that

we talked about, and I didn't, I was on this panel, but there was a Fallout panel. Uh, the Fallout Commander decks are coming soon. And along with the Fallout Commander decks are, um, Collector Boosters, Fallout Collector Boosters. And so we had them at the event. It was two weeks before that they were coming out. So I was given a whole bunch to give away to people, um, just people just as what we call surprise and delight. One of my favorites was there was a girl who I was talking to. She had me sign her mat. I don't know quite how. She was a teenager. And so

I gave her a follow-up pack. And I remember she was so excited in that she was talking to her family at the table. And she was trying to figure out, like, in the next Friday Night Magic, she wanted to come play a card that no one else had access to yet. Because the set wouldn't be out for two weeks. So I thought that was cute. But anyway, it was a lot of fun. One of the things I was doing is when I spotted people wearing Fallout merchandise,

I would give them a Fallout pack. So that was a lot of fun. And also I gave away some Ravnick Room Afterpacks and other stuff. Anyway, I then the last main event I had at on Sunday was I had another meet and greet. Meet and greets, I just say, are super fun. It's fun to get to chat with people and sign stuff and take pictures. And people, you know, usually they're pretty excited to meet me. So they tell

me whatever, you know, how they got into magic or how they play magic or what magic means to them. I hear a lot of really heartfelt stories about sort of the impact of magic and how magic helped them at a time that was troublesome or hard or got them through something or they met their friends or significant other or you know that just all sorts of fun stories and i saw a lot of like i said cross-generational parents who played and got their kids into it um or couples in which they both play together some Some met through magic. Some of them, one of them played first and then talked to a significant other. Anyway, it was super fun.

And it was, and I remember they cut off a line because there's only a window. Like when I got there, I got there 15 minutes early, but there's such a long line. I started signing early. And at the end, um, they came to me and said, well, technically this is

the cutoff, but there's nine more people. Can you take nine? Yes, I will take nine more people. Uh, so I, I wanted to make sure to sign for everybody. Um, then after that, I got a chance to look at, um, I got a chance to look at, uh, a few parts of the a few parts of the floor that I hadn't seen yet. I went and talked to Mark Gottlieb. He had created some puzzles that were really fun. One was like a board with red tape, like a scene board. One with the files strewn about. Basically, the way it worked is you got a sheet.

There were three puzzles to solve. And if you solved all three of them, you won a pin, like a Ravnica pin. So it was quite cool. There also was a family area. I think it existed all three days, but the focus was on Sunday. They had tournaments with the kids. I also talked to Magic Kids, which is a group that helps teachers get magic cards and instructions on how to start a magic club or teach with magic.

And they provide lots of, they collect, like at the event, whenever people didn't need cards, they would donate them and they use those bulk cards to help teach kids how to play. And magic has proven to be a really good educational tool, a good social tool. And so I know a lot of different places. And Magic Kids has been just firing on all cylinders, you know, getting cards out there and helping people. Yeah, the funny story is I think they started up during the pandemic. And I saw the guy who during the pandemic and I saw, uh, the, the, the guy who runs the site had posted something. And so I retweeted it and he got a lot of people sending

in cards because of the retweet. And so, um, that, I thought that was really cool. So thanks everybody that sent in cards. That is awesome. Um, okay. So that was my, that was the events that I did. Those are the, the things I Let me talk a little more about the sort of lack, the not planned things, if you will. One of the things, like, I always made some time to try to walk around the floor, you know, go over, see the creator area and see all the people there.

Oh, the stamps. We talked about stamps. So one of the things we did this time was there was a passport and then a whole bunch of people, a lot of the creators and stuff got stamps. And I was one of the people given a stamp. So my stamp is the Planeswalker symbol with my signature on it. And my stamp is purple. And the interesting thing was most people, most of the creators were sitting in the creator areas. If you wanted to go get a stamp

from them, you know where they are. I was moving around. I was doing, I was in shows and meet and greets. And like I was, you had to find me. And so, and a bunch of people did, but you asked me for my stamp, I would give you my stamp. So I did a bunch of stamping over the weekend. I tried as much as I could to, like I said, get a lot of interaction with the players. I was stopped constantly during the thing. And like I said, I, if you asked me to sign a card or sign a mat or sign whatever i signed a bunch of quirky things i signed a flannel i signed an iphone i i signed a bunch of things um but i was always happy to do that always took pictures always answered questions so if you ever

see me an event i am friendly i will not bite. It is possible I'm on the way somewhere. And so sometimes people had to walk with me while I signed their things. But I always will sign stuff for fans or talk to fans or take pictures for fans. So please, if you ever see me, I will always do that. Also, like I said, there were a lot of nooks and crannies in this. There was a cosplay show that went on, a big cosplay contest. I love meeting cosplay people. I love taking pictures with them.

I posted some of those online. If you saw online, I posted with, it was an Avacyn, but Avacyn in Shadows Over Innistrad, where her wings have blood on them. Anyway, I posed with her, and she could extend her wings all the way out. They went out like, I don't know, 10 feet. She ended up winning her category in the contest. She was very excited.

I talked to her the next day. We did our first fashion show. We talked. There were panels on art and on creative storytelling. And then, like I said, there were just so many, even in the lobby after the show was done, I spent a bunch of time in the lobby talking to different people and everybody I talked to just had such a good time. It was so much fun.

And it really is I don't know it just was I enjoy Magic Con immensely I go to two a year so this year I went to Chicago and I'll be going to Vegas last year I went to Barcelona so I went to Europe last year I went to Barcelona. So I went to Europe last year.

I went to Barcelona. I'm not going to Europe this year. Just the timing didn't quite work out. But anyway, let me finish this up. I'm almost to work here. By saying, if there's a Magic Con, remotely in an area where you can get to, they are super, super fun.

We sold out this time. We had 12,000 plus people there. Anyway, it's just a blast. There's so much going on and a lot of fun things. I heartily recommend, if you ever have the opportunity, to go to MagicCon and do it. We've spent years talking about the idea of a MagicCon, of having a unique magic convention.

I'm glad we finally did it. I'm glad it exists. It's super fun to go to and be at. And it is kind of fun also for me for like, so just a little side note. In my normal life, if I go someplace that's, you know, where there are magic players, a game store or something, you know, I definitely get some attention. I'm not, I'm clearly a magic celebrity.

And every once in a while in the wild, you know, I'll be out somewhere and I'm getting popcorn in the movies with somebody, somebody recognizes me. That happens every once in a while. But to get a true sense of what actual celebrity is like, these events it is, like I said, I don't know if I'd want this to be my life 24-7 all the time. But for three days of just people everybody who sees you is excited to see you and wants you to sign stuff and take pictures and you get stalled walking on the floor because a line

forms that so many people want you to do stuff. It's really touching. It really means a lot. It's a lot of fun. And so I want to thank everybody that came up to me and had me sign things or took pictures of me or asked me questions. That was a blast. And I really had fun. But anyway, guys, I'm now at work.

So I hope this gave you a little bit of taste of what MagicCon Chicago was like. But as I'm at work, we all know what that means. This is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking MagicCon, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll talk to you guys next week. Bye-bye.