Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1282: MagicCon Atlanta 2025

Episode Date: October 3, 2025

I just got back from MagicCon Atlanta, and in this podcast, I talk all about it.

I'm pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time rather drive to work. Okay, I just got back from MagicCon Atlanta. So today's topic is, of course, MagicCon Atlanta. Okay, so I'd been to Atlanta once before for Magic. Back in 1996, it was one of the pro tours in which the only time we ever did this, they opened up Mirage. They had never seen it. and then they played with it. It was like a pre-release pro tour where they played limited with a format they'd never seen before,

never drafted before. But I think that's the last time I was in Atlanta. I'd been there one other time on a personal thing, but for work, I think that's the last time I was there. So anyway, I was excited to go to Atlanta. As I talked about in my prep podcast, I had a bunch of things to do. So I'm going to talk a little bit

about how the convention looked and then I'm just going to walk through my days and talk about the many things that I did there because I was quite busy. Okay, so it was in, I don't know the name of the convention center. It's right by the Mercedes-Benz Stadium. I know that. I assume it's their biggest convention center.

So on the bottom floor was the main hall. The main hall, let's see, starting at one end, had a whole bunch of area for open play. And then the other corner was the pro tour down to that end. Then there was an area for, retail where people could go, you know, buy various magic things. Then there was an artist alley where there were infinite artists there that you could go get to sign stuff. There was a family section. There was a little arcade section. There was a big Spider-Man section. There's

like the office, J. Jonah Jameson's office, and there was a Spider-Man themed puzzle you could do, and there was fun stuff to take pictures with. And then there was a creator. And then there was a Creator Central area where you can meet your favorite creators. And then next to that was the meet and greed area, which I'll talk about a little bit today, in a little bit. But it was huge. It was, it's very, very big. Now, that's the main hall. There were then three auditoriums. There was the Showdown Auditorium, the Spin Down Auditorium, and the Manna stage. The Spin Down and the Showdown, Spin Down, I think of Showdown. The showcase and the spin-down auditoriums were a little bit smaller than the main stage.

The man-stage is the largest stage. Those were also on the first floor a little ways away, not too far away, but from, and mostly those were different, a lot of community-run things. Then the man-a-stage was on floor three, so floor one was the main hall. floor three was the manna stage that was the biggest stage there was I did a lot of stuff on the manna stage and then the merchandise hall was on five and it was

quite a walk. I know it's not ideal, just the way it worked out we needed a place big enough to hold it and the only place it made sense I know in future events it won't be that far away it was definitely a little bit of a walk this time but anyway and that merchandise is we make all sorts of stuff that's unique for the show

that you can go buy, and it's a lot of fun stuff. I did walk up there. I had to go get, I normally, when I do my talk, I wear a shirt of the show. So I went and got my shirt, so I have my show shirt. It's my tradition. Okay, so let's dive into what happened at the event. So I'm going to talk more about what I did.

This is my perspective. I'll hit upon other things as they come up. But there's a lot, a lot of things that go on in the show. I mean, my participation is just in a small portion of them. So even though I'll focus on the stuff that I did. You know, one of the things if you've never been to a MagicCon before, I always recommend making a schedule.

There's a lot going on. There's a lot of open play. There's a lot of scheduled play. There's a lot of opportunities to meet and greet and meet your favorite, either magic influencer or meet some of Wizards people. You know, there's just so much going on. But anyway, let's start. So my day actually started not on Friday.

Friday's when the main show opened, but on Thursday. And the reason for that is we have a tier we call Black Lotus, which is the highest tier, and there's some stuff that happens for the Black Lotus people on Thursday. And I'm involved in that. So, for example, Thursday afternoon, I did a Q&A for the Black Lotus folks. And Q&As are fun. Mostly it's just people ask me questions and I answer the question. It's kind of like my blog.

The only difference is in my blog I get to choose which questions I answer because I get lots and lots of questions. we're live, if someone asked me a question, I answer the question asked me. So I've done a lot of Q&A's. I do them every year at San Diego Comic-Con. I like doing Q&A's. They won some special programming for the Black Lotus folks,

so that's what I did. And then that night, there was a party for the Black Lotus folks. We showed off a bunch of Lauren Eclipsed, a lot of art, and a couple cards for the way we call the First Look, all of which we showed the next day in the preview panel, which we'll get to in a second.

But part of the Black Lotus is you get this preview party. Okay, that was Thursday. Friday, the main show opens. So one of the things, just a little theme here, is one of my responsibilities of the show, among many, is what I call schmoozing in the Black Lotus room. There's a special lounge for the Black Lotus folks, and I swing by there, and I talk to people and take pictures and stuff. I also go to the main hall. I also do some non-Black Lotus schmoozing as well. So I try to do both.

But I have time allocated for me for the Black Lotus room. Okay. Then I had the panel. So my biggest event on the first day was I was part of the preview panel. So the preview panel was Blake and Hilly were the hosts. Roy is a story person. Roy and I. And then Gavin has a story person.

an announcement and then um uh daniel and then there was an announcement at the end um uh daniel and dylan and dylan had a section okay so um the idea the way it worked this time was you came out when it was time to when it was time to talk about your thing you came out otherwise then you went away so rather than if everybody sit on stage for the whole time have people come on and off um i actually talked in three different sections, although one of the times I just stayed on where I'd them go off and come back on right away. So basically what we were doing was we were talking about next year. The vast majority of the preview was about Lauren Eclipse, which is the first set of next year. We explained that we're back on Lorowin, but thanks to the events of Una and, you know, Laurewin was forever

changed when the Aurora got sort of stopped. And now, rather than, you know, back in the day, back when original Lorwyn, the world was either all Lorowin or when the Aurora happened, it became all Shadowmore. That happened every 300 years. But after the events of Lorowen, it is now, we call it a marble cake

of light and dark, meaning the world keeps swirling and the light and dark portions can shift. And if you have a light portion, you have a light version of yourself. And if you're in the Shadowmore portion, you're the darker shadow version of yourself. And so we showed off a bunch of cards.

We showed off a bunch of double-faced cards at high rarity. There's some double-faced cards. We showed off just like one of the things I talked about was how that this is a world that is both Lorwin and Shadamor. So mechanically, about half the set is Lorwyn-inspired things and about half the set is Shadamore-inspired things. And that the Lorwyn side cares a lot about typal. The Shadamore side cares a lot about color. there's hybrid on the Shadamore side because that hybrid was a big big thing from Shadamore

but anyway it was just really cool we showed a lot of art all this is online in fact the panel that I'm talking about is online if you want to see it we then said that the next item is a Universe is Beyonce that's not announced yet we're going to announce it at New York Comic-Con I'm going to be going to New York Comic-Con

I don't think I'm part of the panel announcing it though but anyway I will probably do a podcast about New York Comic-Con. And then the third set is Secrets of Strick-Saven. So we talked a little bit, Roy came on, talked a little bit about the story. We didn't show any cards. We showed some art, but we didn't show any cards from it. Really, the only cards we showed were from the very, Lauren Eclipse. We showed a bunch of cards from Norman Eclipse. Then the fourth set, another universe is beyond set. It was Marvel superheroes. So I got to come out. This was one of my things. And basically what I said was, it's kind of what I would call it,

The set is all about the Avengers, but it has like Fantastic Four, has Shield, has a lot of the street-level heroes, like Heroes for Hire and Daredevil, and then just, it's a lot of kind of Avengers and Avengers-related characters. We showed a whole bunch of art, and one of the biggest applause that I got, I told the following story. When we first were pitching to Marvel, Aaron came to me and had me make the cards. And Aaron said, look, make a lot of the things we expect, but just make us one deep cut. And so the deep cut that I made,

and this is the character that I got to announce, they got a big scream, although this character is not as deep cut as they were five, six years ago when I made this card. I announced that we were doing Squirrel Girl. And Squirrel Girl is my first example of a character. One of the things that Marvel does really well is there a lot of characters that maybe you know them,

maybe you don't. I mean, if you're a big fan of Marvel, you know Squirrel Girl. I think she's a big deal. But even if you're not as familiar with Marvel, hey, we made a really fun squirrel car. You like squirrels? You will like squirrel girl. So anyway, we talked a lot. I talked a bunch about Marvel. After that, we talked about The Hobbit.

We had teased something on Billboard's birthday, but we officially said we were doing The Hobbit. And then we talked about, oh, then I had to talk about zip lining. That's the big capstone event set. I kept asking if I could say things, and they kept telling me I couldn't say things. So in the end, what I basically said is, I'm hit by a little spiel, I said. I said, look, before we began exploratory design, we do the thing we call the Seeds Meetings. And that's when we sort of figure out the essence of what we're trying to do. In the Seeds meeting, Aaron Forsyth, my boss, we pitched the idea that we won.

And he said, look, I think that's a cool theme. I think players would like the theme, but I don't know, I don't know if we can communicate the theme. It might be too hard, like, in a single booster, how do you get, let people know this is the theme? And that was the challenge given to us. and we came up with an idea that was a pretty cool idea. We didn't quite know how to execute on it. It had some challenges, and we figured out how to execute on it. We built the entire set around it.

I was always worried at some point they'd come back and go, no, we can't do it, but they didn't. So anyway, I didn't have... So reality fracture, the two sets that I led next year are Marvel superheroes and reality fracture. I'm really, really excited about both. obviously I adore Marvel to the end and it was just fun working there was just so many heroes

you know Spider-Man was like one character like a lot of the stuff that was focused on Spider-Man and Spider-Man related this is a little bit broader there's lots of lots of different characters it's sort of adventure core but I mean there's a lot of lot of different characters a lot of heroes a lot of villains

and reality fractures yes I love making Capstone event sets we're telling a major story it was something that players been asking for us to do in a long time, a fun theme. So, anyway, I was just very excited. Very excited.

But anyway, and then the last thing we talked about after that was, oh, Gavin came out, and he announced the last Universe is Beyond set. We are doing Star Trek. Very exciting. I'm not as much, I mean, I watch all the original show in the next generation. So, I mean, I would say I'm a Star Trek fan. I'm not as die-hard of Star Trek fan as I'm a Marvel fan. But I'm a Star Trek fan.

I have watched hours and hours of Star Trek. So the story I always tell is when I did my very first draft for Star Trek, I first picked Kirk. I second pick Spock. And I'm like, I have no idea what I'm doing, but I know the deck's going to have Kirk and Spock in it. Okay. And then finally, the last thing was Daniel and Dylan talked about.

There's a whole bunch of for Final Fantasy stuff coming out for the holiday. So that's about this year. But anyway, that was the preview panel. It was packed to capacity. and it's a pretty big room, so that was pretty cool. After that, I had a meet-and-greet. So a meet-and-greet is when I sit at a table, and people come up to me, and I sign things for them, and I answer questions, and I take photos.

It's just a chance to come and meet me. Now, notice, I will say, if I'm ever on the floor and you see me, I'm happy to sign things or take a picture or answer a question. Meet and greets are just, I'm at this spot at this time. You want to come meet and greet me? here's when you know you can do it. If you find me on the hall and I, like I said, just like I take time to sort of schmooze in the Black Lotus,

I actually plan and plot time. I'm like, okay, now I'm going to walk around this section of the hall. I also play in a bunch of events. In fact, I played in, oh, before I get to that, the other thing I did on that day is I did a Q&A for the press. So every day I have press. So I have interviews every day. I think this was the preview panel Q&A,

where we talk all this stuff we previewed. Then I got to participate in the Spider-Man draft. One of the things I like to do is I like to play some magic when I'm at the event. We're at a MagicCon. I actually got to play Magic. I got to play in three events, and I was undefeated. I'm very proud of that. Most of R&D folk are like former pros.

I am not, so I was really happy. Anyway, in the Spider-Man draft, I managed one game. My favorite game is, there's a card called Black Cat, three Black Black. When it enters, you look at the top nine cards of the opponent's library, take two of them, exile it, and then another seven randomly go on the bottom of the library. And then you now have those two exiled, and then you can cast them, and it color fixes you. So anyway, I play the Black Cat, they destroy it. I reanimate the Black Cat.

I then use one of the cards I stole for them with Black Cat to use WebSling to bounce it, to though I then can play it again. And then I took the chameleon that I also stole with Black Cat. and copied a fourth time. So I black cated them four times. So if you ever do that, you usually win. On my fourth black cat, I've seen all these cards before. Anyway, okay, so that was my Friday.

Saturday, I began as I normally begin, going to the Black Lotus room and doing some schmoozing. So I had two on-stage things on Saturday. The first one was there's a game show called Um-A. actually, which is from a dropout. In fact, of everything I was doing all weekend long, the thing my daughter Rachel was most excited by was that I was doing, um, actually.

She's a huge dropout fan. And so, uh, so Ify and Brian were there. Uh, it was, um, basically it was a magic theme, um, actually, you know, the questions were mostly about magic. Um, in fact, they ended every question one, uh, every question, every statement was, ended with, why is that mark? So, anyway, it was super fun.

So when the very first question comes up, it's about the edge of eternity. And I answer it, but beyond correcting, the way it actually works is they give a statement, you have to say, actually, and then you have to correct the statement. Like, you know, find out what's wrong with it. And the very first one, I corrected the thing they said, and then I added it in like five of other things. And then there was the one later on where they said something.

It was about stuff I had done, meaning I was clearly of the source material for the statement. And so I said, why do you guys go ahead? I know I have this one. There's like four things I can correct. And that they,

if he had went and read one of my articles, so he had made some information, like, well, there's more detail than that. So anyway, I ended up tying Amy, the Amazonian. But I had a super fun time. It was just a blast. read before I went on

I mean the thing the Ify and Brian really stress is it's not really about being I mean it is a game show but it's more about just being fun and entertaining and when we came off Iffy and Brian were really happy they thought the show went great and I was really happy I thought it was super fun

so anyway that was sadly that's something we don't record that's just a live thing so if you weren't live at the event to see it the preview panel was taped and it's online and you can see it now and then my talk, which I'm going to get a second, will be online as well.

Okay. Then I went and did another meet and greet after, actually. And then after my meet and greet, it was time for my talk. So whenever I'm at MagicCon, I give a talk. My talk usually is an hour long,

has lots of slides. This one had 900 slides. And I talked about some, usually magic history is usually what I talked about. So this one was the top 20 most influential magic sets of all time. I am going to do an entire, probably two podcasts

on that speech. I always turn my speech into podcast, so I will do a podcast version of that, once again, it'll probably be in two parts, two or three parts. So I will, I will do, you guys will have a chance to hear that. But anyway, I went on, I went a little long although I was the last thing of the event, so.

I was told that I could go over a little bit. And when I recorded it in practice, I was like 106. I think in the hall, it ended up being 115. And part of that is the audience reacts to things, and like, there's just extra things that happen that a live audience brings to it. And I just, I got to remember that whatever I do, it's going to go a little bit longer. Not a big deal. I just provide more content, I guess. It didn't. No one was harmed by me going

an extra 10 minutes. But anyway, that was super fun, and I really love giving the talks. There are a lot of work on my end, but they're super fun to do, and you've just got to share a lot of fun stories. So like I said, I will be doing some podcasts on that. Okay, which brings us to Saturday. Okay. Oh, the one thing that I forgot. was, I did, after my meet and greet, I actually did another interview. I did a bunch of interviews before I did my talk. But anyway, interviews every day, lots of interviews. So Sunday, I start obviously by doing my Black Lotus time.

I then had a bunch of interviews. One of them was on the 25th anniversary of Invasion. Invasion is turning 25 years old. By the way, that's how you feel old. It's not you getting old. watching your kids get old. That's what makes you feel old. And in fact, I remember going to the invasion pre-release with Rachel, who was a baby. And I remember she was asleep in my arms as I was watching people open up split cards for the first time and watching their faces.

Because we didn't preview the split cards. So when people saw them first time, they're like, what is that? And that was the time where Magic really didn't do much messing with frames outside of them glued. So anyway, I also get to do an interview where I have an hour with the press where they can ask me any quite it's kind of like my Q&A that I did for I did for the Black Lotus folks but this Q&A is for the press

and they can ask me whatever they want and it's really fun I actually really enjoyed it and I got in deep with some fun topics. Okay, then I got to play in so Gavin Verhe has what's called an unknown event so the unknown event it varies every time

the only constantly of the unknown event A Gavin runs it B Gavin makes unique cards for each event that are stickered cards and allows you to play with things you've never

and they are wacky and weird some of them are slightly overpowered I'm sorry some of them are very overpowered and anyway so this was a two-headed giant so Aaron Forsyth and I joined together as a two-headed giant

his command so the rule was you were making 60 card commander decks but there was no color identity rule normally unlimited

you don't have a color identity rule because it just makes things very hard and it was 60 cards it was Spider-Man Mystery Booster 2 and then one each person got one

booster of unknown cards Aaron's Aaron's commander was Mr. Negative which is from Spider-Man he's a Spider-Man villain

it's a mythic rare and when he enters, you change life totals with your opponent. That will be important. And then I, I don't even remember mine, mine was one of Gavin's cards. Basically, whenever it attacked, I would make a, I would keep searching for cards to I randomly found a card that made a token. And then I would play, whatever that token was, that token would go and play. Even though I got my commander out in numerous games, I never actually made a token.

The real MVP of our things, so we played three. matches went 3-0 was Mr. Negative. In two of the three matches, we were at one life when Aaron cast Mr. Negative. And in both cases, our opponents were in the high 20s because you started at 30-life in this event. So, like, they were 27 and we were one. So we'd swap with them. And then once they were at one, we would kill them. But, and then the other game, Aaron got a scourge familiar, not scourge familiar. He got a little blow. black flyer that has toxic, yeah, I think it's toxic. But anyway, you can sack a creature to give it plus one plus oh.

And he had the origin of Spider-Man saga. And so the third one is he gives a creature double strike. So he basically got it out there, gave it double strike, sacked creatures, so it did 10 damage in one turn and instant won the game. So anyway, we had very dramatic things. That was super fun. And then the next event I played in in the Black Lotus Room, we did a draft with Mystery Booster 2.

I ended up drafting a mono-black deck. I had like nine kill spells. Basically my deck was, I kill everything you have and some creatures will attack you at some point. I had a bad moon. Anyway, mystery booster two is a lot of fun if you've never done the draft. You have to do those, I guess it matters. magic cons, but it's just the, but Michigan Witcher 2, every sheet is a different sheet and

there's, I mean, different sheets. So the number of potential cards in Mitchell 2 is humong, it's thousands, I believe. So you just get all these cards from the past and it was just really, really fun. My only, the only thing that was troublesome was my first opponent was playing black green and a lot of my kill spells don't kill black things. so that was probably because in old school black used to not kill black things and we said what are we doing black is no problem to own black thing okay also the other thing that I definitely did I didn't is I definitely spent some time

walking the hall I like to talk to the retail booths and ask them some questions I like meeting fans so I definitely wander in different areas and I took a lot of pictures and signed a lot of things in general one of the things about this magic con like each magicon we sort of learn from the MagicCon before it, and we keep evolving and improving on what we're doing. And we spend a lot of time gathering feedback on every aspect. You know, what do you want to see in this store? What do you want to see?

What kind of formats do you want to play? What kind of, you know, just on every level, everything that we're doing, what is it you want to see? And so it's really fun watching the evolution. I've been at, of the 10, I think I've been at seven of them. The first was Magic 30, that wasn't labeled a MagicCon, but it wasn't Magicon. And then, ever since then, we've been doing three or four a year. I've been to a lot, a lot of them, and it's just fine.

Like I said, one of the things that I, so one of the things that I've mentioned this before, but we're saying again, one of the things that I really, really love personally about MagicCon is I do a lot of interacting with the public online. And not that there aren't people to say very kind things online, there are, there are. But there is a lot of negativity online. The very nature of how I think the Internet works these days is it really, it really becomes a sounding chamber for people who are upset. And not that I don't want feedback, not that I don't like to hear feedback, not that I don't want to know, once again, how to improve, much like the MagicCon people do, same. I want to hear about things you like and don't like. And the things you don't like, hey, I mean, it's not that I don't want to hear them.

I do. But there's a lot of negativity online. And when you get to a MagicCon and see all these people having fun and they come up to me and they're so excited to see me. And it's just this outpouring of how much magic is meant to them and what it means to their life and how they met their friends and loved ones and just, you know, just an outpouring of people that are just so excited by the game. It really, it helps fill my soul, as I say. One of the things I really enjoy about making magic is I feel magic's a source for good and making people happy doing all sorts of cool things. And while I do get some of that online, oh goodness, I get a fire hose of it at the events.

And so it is always fun talking to all the people. That's one of the reasons that I like to move around. For example, after I did the preview panel, I had a little bit of time before my meeting greet. So I walked around the stadium because people were waiting for the. the next panel. So I was asking them, okay, if all the things we announced, what most excited you? And that was really cool that everything got mentioned. Somebody was excited for everything.

And it's really neat to hear not just what people are excited, but why they're excited. And that was fun. Just the ability, like, one of my ongoing things all weekend long was to sort of hear what people like, what people were excited by. I often ask people, what art we doing that you'd like to see? Like, is there a set that you would love that we haven't done yet? The Q&A's, especially the Q&A in the Black Lotus Room. There's a lot of people ask about, ooh, I like this.

When are you going to do that? That's awesome. So, anyway, I really had a great time at this MagicCon. Like I said, they just keep getting better and better. I love doing all the panels and things. It's fun getting up in people. I like sharing my excitement. I'm honestly so excited for both Marvel superheroes and reality fracture.

Reality fracture is the caps unvented. Hopefully I said that. I'm just so excited, like, they're, I mean, the other sets are awesome, too. I mean, those are the sets that I poured my heart and soul in. I did work on a bunch of the other sets, so, but just me personally, there's the ones that I spent most time on, so I'm just very excited. And it's fun to share my excitement. You know, it was fun to, you know, my background, I did comedy and improv and stuff,

and it's fun to do on maxily, where I get to actually stretch some of my comedy muscles that I don't get to use all that often. You know, it's fun. And I love doing my talks. I'm a huge fan of the history of magic. So getting a chance to really dive in deep and talk, you know. And while my talk is, hopefully it's interesting and fun and I have a lot of stories I tell. I'm also trying to give away, I'm trying to share a lot of the history of the game.

And like I said, I'm going to do a podcast or podcast on that talk. So you'll get to hear a lot of the stories. You guys also listen to my podcast. So you hear my stories all the time. But I love doing that. I love being a historian of the game. trying to think any final notes any final comments on oh the one other thing by the way that's super fun for me is I know a lot of people through magic obviously I work at wizards lots of people but

one of the things that's super fun is just seeing all the people I know there are a lot of influencers that I've done shows with or I've worked with before you know I've been on game nights I did Good Luck High Five. I've been on with the professor. I've been on Loading Ready Run. I've been all the place doing lots of different things. I've been on Shiven Show. I've done a lot of magic stuff and it's fun to see people and interact with them and that is just always so much fun. In fact, Sunday night I got done with my dinner a little bit early so I came down to the lobby and I just walked around and talked to people and that is always a blast. So anyway, to everybody who I had chance to interact with at this year's magicon it was super fun um and i didn't even get

like one of the things about magic i didn't even touch upon like before i went up to do my talk was the um cosplay contest which was amazing to see all these cosplay things um i had somebody stopped me to show me their collection of swamps and when i say they had every swamp i mean every swamp they had test swamps that we had run they had alpha playtest swamps they had everything um and And that was really cool to see. I had somebody in my meet and greet who turned the comprehensive rules into an actual, like, magical tome that I signed.

There were just so many amazing things. It's just, like, just seeing so many people's passion for magic is so cool. And I'm so happy that what I do, and I've spent, you know, 30 plus years doing, is making people happy and bringing joy to the world. So anyway, that is MagicCon Atlanta. I had a great time.

If you've never been to a MagicCon, I must plug, go to a magic on. They're super, super fun. But anyway, guys, I'm at work. So we all know what that means it's time. What is it, time? It's time to stop talking magic and time to start making magic.

So anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed listening to today's podcast. But bye-bye.