Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1219: MagicCon: Chicago 2025

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

In this episode, I talk about my recent trip to MagicCon: Chicago.

I'm pulling away from the curb because I dropped my son off at school. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today's topic. I just got back from Magicon Chicago 2025. So this podcast will be all about that event. I know that not everybody could attend Magicon Chicago, so I will share with you so you can you can vicariously experience where it was like to be there. And a bunch of things we'll talk about there are we put

videos up a lot of the we record things that happen. Some of which I did and you have the opportunity to go online. I don't know whether it'll be up when this goes up or not, but it'll be up soon after if not already up. But anyway, there is some opportunity for you the person who was not at Chicago, sorry, Magic Con Chicago to experience Magic Con Chicago. So I will leave that over there. Okay. So this is the sort of third year. So back in, what was it, in 2000, what was it, 2000, 2022, we did Magic 30, which was in Las Vegas. Then the next year started with the official sort of magicons and there were four magicons it was in Philadelphia then Minneapolis then then Barcelona then Las Vegas and the second year where there were three of them it was in Chicago it was in Chicago, it was in Amsterdam, and then it was in Las Vegas. So this is the second Chicago.

So it was held in McCormick place, I think it's called. It's the largest hall in all of America. It's humongous. And last year, we were at the end of it, we had walked all the way to the end. I think we, I don't know if we maybe doubled our space, we have a lot more space than we did last year. Last year was at the time the best selling Magic On that had ever happened.

I believe that number was broken by Vegas and then we broke it again this year. But anyway, it was definitely a little on the crowded side. So we got more space. So this year, so the idea was, so if you walk into the hall, you have to walk down the whole convention center, but you walk in the hall at the end.

First of all, there's a new sign, big Magicon sign, which I really appreciate. It's like a, not even a sign, as much as like a statue almost that said Magicon. You can take pictures with it. And then right there was where the Pro Tour was at. All Magicons have a Pro Tour at them. So the Pro Tour was right there and you could watch if you wanted to. Then you would go into the left and there was a giant hall.

In the hall, let's see, there were booths so if you wanted to go buy things, there were just lots of people selling lots of magic paraphernalia. Then there was a little section where you could race cars that was themed after ather drift. So you could have, there were little cars that went on the track and you had a little lever you pulled, a little thing you pushed, a trigger you pushed, and then you could race that.

And then right behind that was a family area Where people could do family related things and we had activities for kids It used a bloombrow set that we had set up for bloombrow There was a creator central section where is come meet your favorite Online, you know magic creators There was a store online, you know, magic creators. There was a store where you could go buy magic paraphernalia and we have lots of different items that are unique

to Magicon that you could buy. There's a thing called Artist Alley. Artist Alley is a place where there's artists and there were 40, 50 artists, a lot of artists from all over Magic's timeline. And you could go and you get things signed and you could meet the artists and such. And then there was a free play area. They just want to sit down and find people to play with and play games. A lot of like commander stuff went there. Then down a floor, that was the third floor, the second floor, there was the same hall

of the same size as everything I just explained, except all it was, was ticketed play. And the way ticketed play works is there's a main stage, there's five sections, and they're color coded by matching colors, and then there's tablecloths to match. So there's the white section, the blue section, the black section, the red section, the green section. And you could go sign up, and there was all sorts of different events that are being run, and you could go sign up for the events you wanna run, and then they'd rerun on that floor.

Across the way from, on the second floor, there was a theater, and some of our big events went on in the theater. I was involved in one of those and then also if you went outside the on the third floor and went you had to go down a little ways there were some community rooms and some rooms where we read panels that weren't in the big thing and I did a panel in one of the smaller rooms. One of those was just community stuff. One of them was more wizard stuff. And then there was a whole section.

This is the first time we had a whole dungeon dragons. It was sort of like, it was Magic on Chicago featuring Dungeon Dragons. And so there were a bunch of Dungeon Dragons content. You can go play Dungeon Dragons. So it had its own little section to do that Also importance for me, I guess There's an area that's up on the fourth floor

It's going up an escalator that is the black lotus room, which was like twice the size of last time And that is there's different badges you can buy with Well, the top badge is called the Black Lotus badge. And as you will see, one of my jobs is I do a lot of schmoozing with the Black Lotus people. OK, so I get to Chicago on Wednesday. So the event technically is Friday, Saturday, Sunday. See, it was February, I think, 21st, 22nd, 23rd, I think. It was Friday, Saturday, Sunday. But Thursday, we started to do more advanced things for the Black Lotus people.

And so actually my, so Thursday I had to go to, there always is an employee meeting that happens on the day before the event. So they can walk us through all the things going on, show us where everything is at, and then answer questions. Each section has its own leaders, you know, who's in charge of what. So if you have a problem and they want, it's like emergency stuff they run through. They run through all sorts of, you know, if A, B or C happens, what do we do? Anyway, after that, then there was a meet and greet. Meet and greet is the wrong word, I'll use that for something else later.

It was sort of a welcoming party for the Black Lotus people. And so I went to that. So one of the things that we've done over the time, so this is the ninth, if you count Magic 30 as a Magic Con, which it essentially was. It wasn't called Magic Con. But I think this is the ninth, if you count Magic 30 as a Magic Con, which it essentially was. It wasn't called Magic Con. But I think this is the ninth Magic Con.

I've been to six of them. This is my sixth one. And the idea is we've kept trying to improve what's going on. We spend a lot of time and energy listening to what players want. We do a lot of surveys. And so one of the things for the Black Lotus room and the Black Lotus badge level, when we asked them what they most appreciate about being Black Lotus, the number one thing they said was getting to interact with people from Wizards of the Coast. And so I have a certain amount of responsibility. When they make my schedule, I have a certain, now, I also, I do a certain amount of Black Lotus time,

but I also do what I call, what I call floating time, which is I spend a certain amount of time where I just go out on the floor and walk around, and then people can stop me and say hi, and take a picture, or I'll sign autographs. And so I make sure that, I mean, I definitely have allocated Black Lotus time, but also I've allocated sort of floor time.

Anyway, on Thursday, I had to go to the welcoming, I don't know what it's called, welcoming party for, and then at night, there was a place that they did after hours things, and they did it all, they did it every night, and there were, it that uh like a punk bar that was like blocking half away wasn't super far away but anyway that first night we went we were doing the so one of the big things we were doing at this event is showing off Tarkir

Dragonstorm I'll get to the preview panel in a sec so one things we did with the Black Lotus people is we did a special, advanced little, we showed off a card, which we would later show off in the preview, so they just got to see it a day early. But we showed off a card early that no one had seen yet. I nursed it, we showed off Nerset. And anyway, Matt Tabak had made a little, I don't know what it's called, activity game that we did so there were like five different things one for each of the clans of Tarkir and the last one was

Aaron Forsyth and I did the last one which was a little puzzle they had to solve but anyway you know they had to do all the things and then they did they the reward was they got to see a card but anyway and then afterwards I stuck around I chatted with people did more schmoozing they say. But anyway, that was Thursday. So now we get into Friday. So Friday is the main event.

So the very first thing I did every day is there's breakfast in the black lotus room. I go there, do a little schmoozing. Then on Friday I had to go do a rehearsal. So normally we have a bunch of different panels. Some are conventions, I have a whole bunch of panels, some might have less. This one, I just had one panel and one talk. So my only panel was the preview panel.

So the idea of the preview panel was, we were gonna walk, like the preview panel is, here's some upcoming stuff, and I'll walk through the preview panel in a second. What I did in the morning though is we had a run through. So we went to the room where, not the room where the actual panel was going to be, because that was the big stage,

but we went to a private room so we could run through. And the way panels work is, we run through them usually two times at Wizards and one time at the event. So we run through them usually two times at Wizards and one time at the event. So we run through three times before we do the actual thing. Just so we know the slides and the order of things and who's gonna say what. It's not, I mean, parts of it are scripted,

parts of it are more, this is the basic note you have to hit and you can say whatever you want. Some of the people actually write out what they're gonna say. I find it, I just find it reads better if I like know what I wanna say, but just sort of say it. That way it feels, I don't know, it feels less scripted. And so that's my strategy is I know where I have to talk

and I know what I have to say, but I don't like write it down. So what I actually did like in the actual preview was a little bit different than what I did through run throughs, but you know, know in the same covering the same material. So anyway we did a run-through and then I had my first meet and greet. That's why I before I just didn't want to call it meet and greet. What a meet and greet is is there's a certain area in the hall which I didn't mention before it was near the open play and there's just certain area in the hall, which I didn't mention before, it was near the open play.

And there's just two different tables, and there's lines. And people can come and meet wizards employees, they can meet content creators, magic celebrities, if you will. And the idea is you come get in line, and then you can meet the person, you can talk to them, I'll sign autographs, I'll take pictures. Normally how a meeting will work is, I talk with the person for a minute or two and I

say they bring things for me to sign. I sign cards, I sign play mats, I sign badges. Every once in a while I sign weird things like fruit. And then, you know, while I'm signing things I'm talking with them and you know, it varies from person to person what I talk about. And then usually I will take a picture with them. I mean, anybody can take a picture. I would say about 90% of the people want a picture. So we normally do the picture. And then I do that.

I did it for the first two days was an hour of the last day was an hour and a half. I did it extra on the last day. But anyway, it's just an opportunity that if you're at a magic on and you want to meet there's someone who you really want to meet. Me or one of your content creators that you really like. There's a lot of people doing meet and greets and you go meet them and anyway, everyone's real nice and it's I know all or I know many of the content creators and they're all very very nice people. So if you're ever at a Magic Con come do the meet and greet. So anyway, I did the meet and greet

and then it was time for the preview people. So if you're ever at a Magic Con, come do the meet and greet. So anyway, I did the meet and greet and then it was time for the preview panel. So last year, what we call the man of stage was built in the same room that everything else was, but the panels can get loud, especially like game nights live. If you listen to my podcast from Las Vegas, I participate in game nights live. That used to be a really full crowd and they were quite loud. And so one of the complaints we got was it just was so loud. So we wanted to move it outside of the room and there's a theater right across the way. So we got the theater this time.

We were able to rent the theater. Not only really because the theater sat like thousands of people, 2000 plus people. But one of the most popular things we do is a preview panel. So preview panel really is we look at what's upcoming and we share some amount of things. The closer it is, the more we can share. For example, we basically are four things in this preview panel. First, and what was the lion's share of it, was we were talking about Tarkir Dragonstorm. It's the next set. Obviously, we spend the most time on the very next thing. We were going back to Tarkir, for those that might not know that.

We visited Tarkir many years ago in a set called Khansar Tarkir, ten years ago I believe, and there were three sets there back when we had blocks and Khansar Tarkir was a wedge set so a color and his two enemies and then in the story the main character Sarkinval, he went back to his home world, he's a planeswalker, but he loves dragons those who have never seen a Sarkin Volkart, he loves dragons, but it turns out in his world the dragons had been killed off. So he ends up being able to go back in time and I won't get deep in the story, but he's able to save Ugin. Ugin had a fight with Nicol Bolas. Nicol Bolas kills him, but he manages to save Ugin

so Ugin doesn't die and as a net result of that the dragons don't get killed off I won't get into the details, but that's essentially what happens And in the set when he goes back in the past that's fate reforged Khans of Tarkir is the present and then time gets redone and there's a new timeline and that's now dragons of Tarkir and instead of The Khans running everything the dragons run everything they're dragon lords so anyway, we had done that and Khans of Tarkir was super popular and dragons was I mean people liked it, but they didn't like it as much as Khans of Tarkir

But in redoing the timeline and making the dragons, the wedge part of it went away. So in the story we had built into the fact that even though the Dragonlords had taken over, there were whispers of the clans, because the clans existed back in Fate Reforged in the past, and so we kind of knew that if we ever went back we wanted to make sure that we had the opportunity to do the wedges. So anyway, ten years later we're going back and it's like, okay, well what do people expect? And what we realized was the mantra we used was the best of both worlds. They, you know, they liked the cons, not the cons, they liked the clans, they liked the

wedge clans, and they liked dragons. So like, okay, let's give them both. And so a lot of what Tar'kyr Dragonstorm is, is the clans have sort of reclaimed the world. And so it's about that. There's a new cycle of spirit dragons that help them and anyway. So what we did is we walked through a whole bunch of cards from the set. The main structure of the Tar'arkir part was we went clan by clan. What is Jeskai up to? What is the Sultai up to? You know, Mardu and such and such.

And then for each clan we showed off a card or two, although I think Timur didn't have a card, but everybody else had a card. And then we also showed off a brand new box and we showed off, we showed off I think seven or eight cards. I think we showed off eight cards, one of which was Narset, we had previewed that before. So that might've been on social media because we had previewed it. So there was Narset plus seven cards

that were brand new as of the preview. The stage was really awesome. It was very theatrical. There was like smoke machines and oh, and we had this giant like dragon jaw that we had had from original concert art kit that we brought. It was on the stage. So anyway the panel let's see if I remember there were five of us. Blake Rasmussen was the host and then basically I was I was the sort of design representative.

Athena was the architect for the product. Forrest was the art director for Dragon Storm. And Athena was the product architect for Dragon Storm. And then we had someone who was doing layouts and graphics on cards that works with like booster fun. Anyway so what we did is we spent a lot of time talking about tech here. We showed a lot of art. We showed a little bit of cards.

And then that was about 35, 40 minutes maybe of the presentation. Then, so on the Tuesday before the event, we had done a thing online for Final Fantasy. We had premiered a video that showed a lot of cards. We just really showed that video again. We didn't have new content for Final Fantasy, but not everybody had seen it. And it is fun showing content to people, the crowd of 2000, a lot of screaming, it's very fun. And then we that a crowd of 2000 a lot of screaming is very fun

And then we talked about edge of eternities, which is magic going into space It was too early to show cards, but we showed a lot of art I think more art than we've ever shown this early we showed I'm not exactly 30 some pieces or so and then I did a lot of talking about pieces or so. And then I did a lot of talking about some philosophy of it and we talked about the art style and you know. Anyway, so we went through that and talked about Edge of Eternities and then the last thing we did as a little teaser, as a little like one minute video is reveal that Avatar of the Last Airbender was going to be with the unannounced set of the

end of the year And one of the things that's super funny is Chris Mooney was the lead designer for that set Alicette designer and they've been waiting they you know They couldn't talk about it till it was public and so they brought an avatar hat and they filmed the crowd reacting to the video. And anyway, they were quite excited. Okay, so that was the preview. And then I think that was my last schedule thing. I didn't spend some time on the floor. Like I said, I want to make sure every time there's time on the floor where I can sort of move

about and just run into people and see fans and you know and it's fun to just sort of interact. I talked about this last time, but one of the things that's super, that I love about Magic Con is the pure positivity of it. Like I go online all the time and not that there's not some positivity online, but there's a lot of negativity online. And just to go to Magic Con where it's like 99.9%

pure positivity, just people sharing with me like how magic impacted them and how they made friends or met their loved one or really dealt with a problem. This was a tool to help them. I had somebody who talked to me about how they'd gotten sober and they needed somebody to focus on. Anyway, a lot of wonderful and really amazing. And if you're ever by the way at Magicon and you see me, I love hearing about how magic

infected you are, that is really cool to me. I like to hear personal stories. So I'm always happy to hear that. Anyway, that was mostly of Friday. Saturday was, let's see, my schedule wasn't quite as tight. There's some Magicons I've done, right? I have like five panels and this one was a little lighter for me, although ironically, or interestingly, I guess,

I actually like being busy. I'm happy doing lots of panels. I like getting on stage, I like talking. Oh, I did forget something, sorry. On Friday, after we did the panel, three of us, so Blake and me and Athena, we did a press roundtable, which meant we went to the press room and then there was like, I don't know, 10 to 12 journalists and then they asked us questions for an hour and we just sort of answered the questions. And the nice thing about the roundtable was one

person would ask something and then another one would do a follow-up and anyway, that was a lot of fun. So that's another big part of my job I got to do media you know do press and stuff. So Saturday I did brunch as always oh one thing they did on Saturday is there's a game I talked about this at Las Vegas that Aaron made for a party for a R&D party one you know party. And basically, it is a game about trying to predict when things are. And the idea is you have to lay things in line. And as the list of what the events happens,

it gets more crowded, it gets harder. But the idea essentially is six people play. We start with one card. And then when you get your card, you have to place it in the line. And it gets harder as more things get there. And then when you miss two, you're out. But when you're out, you get a prize, a booster pack.

I mean, you get a better prize if you win the whole thing. This particular time, one of the things I did that I hadn't done last time, Aaron was running it. So I was doing the thing where I was a lifeline. So I'm like each player got one lifeline once. And so if they were having trouble, they could ask me. Now, I didn't always know the answer, but usually, A, a lot of times I did know the answer, but a lot of times, even if I didn't specifically know the answer, I had a lot of information I could work with to help narrow down the answer. Like, oh, this happened when so-and-so was brand manager because they were brand managers

during this time, you know. Like one of them was talking about like Kuala Lumpur when Chris Pakula wins Kuala Lumpur. And I'm like, oh, oh, that was a magic rotational that my wife, Laura, couldn't come with me because she was pregnant with my first daughter, Rachel. So like, oh, okay. So that like, I really can narrow down the timeline because, oh, well, that life event that I can connect it to, I know exactly when that happened. So anyway, stuff like that's cool.

I did a meet and greet on Saturday. Oh, and I played in, I played in the Unknown Event. So Gavin runs an event every, and the Unknown Event basically, it's always something different. It's different things each time. And he makes cards specifically for it. There's like stickered cards. And so it's just very chaotic. This one, you got six boosters of mystery, mystery booster two, and then

you got one special like booster of cards that Gavin had made, randomized booster. And then you had to make a 60 card deck. You had to have a commander, but there's no color identity. But anyway, anyway, it was super fun. I, I went one and two. One of my games, I almost, almost won and I lost. One of the games I just crushed and one games I was crushed. So, but anyway, that was Saturday. Sunday.

So once again, did breakfast. My big event on Sunday was I did a talk. So one of the things that's really nice is I did my first talk at? Magic 30 where I did like 30 years 30 pictures because it was our 30th anniversary of magic Where I talked about I showed 30 years of pictures with me in them and then I shared the story of what the picture was and it allowed me to just Talk about a lot of different aspects of magic history

In Barcelona, I did one that was like a trivia, where I asked trivia questions and people tried to guess it. And then I would tell a story based on the trivia question. Then last year in Chicago, I did the top 20 mechanics of all time. And then Vegas, I did a bottom 20 mechanics of all time. So this time, I like, 20 seems to be the right amount of things to talk about.

I have a famous GDC speech called 20 years 20 lesson. So I decided to do the 20 most influential designs was my thing. I will stress by the way, why I do try to, I do pick things carefully in the thought. It is more as a means to structure a fun talk. I mean, I always put up the my thing at the end. If people are going to argue, that always put up the my thing at the end. If people argue, that's kind of the fun of it. I'm not saying my pick is the definitive answer or anything. It's just my opinion. But really it's a chance for me to talk. So I did a 60

minutes and I say 60 minutes as watching my clock. I went up to 60 minutes. But anyway, that is going to be online. It might already be online. I'm not sure when that's going up compared to me recording this, but probably is up by the time you guys hear this. But anyway, it's mostly me sharing stories. I mean, really the idea is I talk a bit about, I mean, there's a lot of magic design talk, but it's a lot more behind the scenes stuff. And I share stories about things that happen.

And you know, and I talk a lot about different designers because obviously this is talking specifically about design. So anyway, so I had that talk that was super fun. Then after that I did a again a roundtable. This time it was just me where I had a bunch of reporters that all had come and watched the talk and they talked to me mostly we talked about design. Once again that a lot of them were covering the event, and so part of the event was me, you know, I don't know when and where or how they covered me talking about design, but

I like talking about design, so that was fun. One of the coolest things, by the way, is one of the reporters that I met had a really interesting story. He had a teenage son who loves magic, and so he brought him to the event so he could play in the event. Teen or preteen he was, I blinked on the exact dates, 11, 12, 13, something around there. Anyway so his son was playing an event and he is a reporter for Men's Health magazine and so he was trying to maybe see if you can find an article or something because he was there and I

Think he ended up hearing me talk and then while he's getting a tour He said well, can I listen to this way? He sat in on my my thing and then afterwards I talked to him a bit and it was really interesting in My interview I talked a little about that He asked the question of has my how I design things affected how I was a parent, because I had mentioned I have three kids. And I talked about, the answer I gave was,

that one of the big things you learn in design is I have to design to the end user, right? I want to make my card the most useful thing it can be for the person who's going to use it. So I don't want to make the card what I want it to be, I make it what the people who want to use it wanted it to be. And I said that kids are a lot of the same way and that your kid is who they are. Your job as a parent is not to make your kid something, it's to understand who they are

and let them be their own person. And one of the things as a parent is you learn that very early on. They have the personality from babies. So anyway, we bonded a little bit, obviously, with them kids. And it was really interesting in just hearing his story and he was really blown away by the event. He didn't really know what to expect. But anyway, so then what else did I do? I did, oh, I walked the floor some more. I definitely like, like I said, I like interacting with people and it's fun to see the different things and walk around the booth and anyway, that's all fun.

And then I ended my day by doing an hour and a half meeting greet. It's interesting. I don't know why I did our meeting greets on Friday and Saturday, and then I did an hour and a half meeting greet on Sunday. And each time I finished exactly on time. I don't know how I did that. I mean, maybe subconsciously I've seen how many people are online. I don't know how I did that. Um, I mean maybe subconsciously I've seen how many people are online

I don't know But anyway, I finished exactly in time all three times like I had an extra half hour, but more people showed up So, um, and again, I love meeting greets if you've ever had a magic on you want to meet me come to the meeting greet Um, I won't bite. I'm very nice. I will sign things. I will answer questions. I will take pictures I will meet and I will sign things. I will answer questions. I will take pictures. I will meet and I will greet as my name says. But anyway, and then that was the end. One of the things that, like I said, I enjoy Magic. Magicons are endlessly entertaining for me. And I do two a year now. So the next one I'll be going to is Atlanta. I'm not going to Vegas. I did go to, I went to Vegas last year,

but I'm not going to Vegas this year. But anyway, like I said, if you've never been to a Magic Con, I can't, you know, there's so much fun and there's so much different things going on. Like, you know, if you want to just play Magic, there's every format, gameplay that you can play. If you want to just hang out and talk, you want to just play magic there's every format gameplay that you can play If you want to just hang out and talk you want to meet your favorite magic celebrities

You want to watch the pro tour you want to go buy? Infinite cool magic things. I mean all that is there you know and and more there's panels And there's so much stuff to do and that I I can't recommend enough if you ever have a chance to go to a magic On it really is a lot of fun. But anyway, I'm now at work. So that is my tale of this year's Magic Con. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed me talking about it. But as I work, we all know what that means.

It means it's 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 all next time. Bye bye.