Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1351: My Trip to LA in 2026

Episode Date: June 12, 2026

I just returned from a trip to Los Angeles, California, where I went to a red carpet event celebrating Magic: The Gathering® | Marvel Super Heroes. I then spent three days doing interviews about the set at Summer Game Fest. This podcast talks all about that trip.

I'm pulling it on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time we're out there to drive to work. Okay, so I just got back from a trip to Los Angeles where I did two things. So I'm going to talk all about them today. We had a giant party to celebrate the premiere of Marvel superheroes. And I went to a thing called Summer Game Fest.

So I'm going to talk about both of those things. But I'm going to go to chronological order. So I showed up on Thursday. That was my travel day. Friday was the big party. So I assume you guys probably saw some of this on social media. But basically, Marvel superheroes is coming out. We wanted to have a big celebration of its release.

And so we did this large event. And let me walk through all the component pieces because it's pretty cool. First off, there's a red carpet. I actually had the opportunity to walk the red carpet, which was really cool. There were a lot of reporters and people taking pictures and video. It was a lot of fun.

The party itself was a little more dressy, although I still found a way to wear flannel, although I had a little... I'm slightly nice to dress as normal, but I did still go with flannel, because that is my brand. So after the red carpet, you come inside and there is like an art gallery.

All of the art was from the Marvel set or different products in the Marvel set. Some of the art was from, most of it was from the main set. Some was from Jump Start. I think a little bit might have been for the Commander Decks. But anyway, there was different pieces of art

that all credited the artist. And if the card was public at the time of, the party, it also showed the card. And there were different objects around the room of different items that some of which you then saw in photos. There also was food, that's where you got the food, near the out gallery, there was a full spread to eat. Okay, then when you, there was like these lasers and you walked through these little laser wall thing and then things started breaking apart and then you got into the quantum

tunnel and you would take the quantum tunnel to the Rainbow Bridge, which was an elevator, and the Rainbow Bridge took you up to the main part of the party, which was there was like a giant fight, and then you could see, you probably saw this in videos, there's this giant mural. We made a

3 by 16 scene of every hero, or a lot of the heroes in the set fighting Ultron and other supervillains. But anyway, and you saw the wall was broken open, you could see the scene. So anyway, there was areas to play up there.

There are a bunch of different rooms. There was one room that looked sort of like a Wakanda room that showed off all the different elements of the set. There was an area of couches that had for art with all the different comic book variant covers of the stuff from Marvel superheroes. There was an Avenger headquarters room, and there were different cards.

and you could put them on the computer and would tell you whether it detected a combo or not among the different cards there. And then on the center post of that room was every single card from the Marvel Superhero set, many of which had not been seen before. And then there were Squirrel Girls Hideout and there was a bar in there.

There were a couple of open bars. And then you could pose with a giant-size Squirrel Girl card, which I was very excited to buy, because Squirrel Girls' My Car. Girl Girl is my card, and I'm very happy to see it so well received. And then there were some vending machines. So you got a coin or something when you entered, and you could use that coin to get

nine packs of Marvel Superheroes. Obviously, the set's not out yet, so it gave people a chance to play with the set for the very first time. So a lot of people were drafting or playing sealed. I had made a deck, although I was so busy, I actually didn't end up having a chance to play. I didn't make a deck. And then...

Oh, so at the party, there was, we invited lots and lots of just Marvel fans from across the spectrum. I had a chance to talk to a lot of people. Amber Glenn, the gold medal Olympist was there. She's a huge fan. I got a chance to talk with her. And she even had her gold medal with her, and I got a pose with the gold medal. It was very cool. And just, I mean, there was just, I mean, lots of magic influencers.

and there were a lot of members there from Wizards, a lot of R&D was there. So it was just super fun. It was, I think, five hours long. It was a long party. But it was great. I had a great time. And in fact, I had made a deck to play magic,

and then I spent so much time talking to different people that didn't end up having time to play magic. But it was really fun, and I met a lot of people who I knew of, but I'd never met before. A lot of magic influencers that I'd watch their, I'd watch their stuff, but I'd never face-to-face method before.

So that was really cool. But anyway, it was a super fun party. I had a lot of fun at it. And obviously, if you go online, there's lots and lots of different videos. We recorded a whole bunch of stuff on the red carpet. Oh, one thing that we did in the red carpet is certain sort of magic celebrities

were premiering cards. Instead of what were you wearing, what card are you holding? And so a lot of people, people dressed sort of to match the nature of their card. Like Leonard Williams had Black Panther and Jimmy Wong had Shinghi. And anyway, it was just, it was super cool. And it was just neat to see.

Most of what I'm talking about. If you go online, you can see a lot of this. Go to the wizard's site on Instagram. You'll see a lot of these videos. And then also a lot of other people made videos. Some of which are people, you know, that I already knew. like Ben Bateman was there. He and I had just done an interview

a few weeks before. Maria of good, like, high five, but Maria and I go way back or Graham of Loading Ready Run. Jimmy and Josh and Rachel of Command Zone. Anyway, it was super fun. A great party. I had a wonderful time.

And the other thing of super fun was that was my first chance to talk to the press about Marvel superheroes. Actually, well, we actually, before I left, what we do ahead of time is we'll do a meeting

with online with a lot of reporters that we do and we embargo the information so it doesn't come out until when the party happened. But anyway, sorry, a little behind the scenes. But it was the first chance to do live interviews, which will be a theme for my week of talking about Marvel superheroes. I don't think anything else about the party.

It was just, it's hard to describe. Like I said, if you go online, there were a lot of visuals. It was pretty cool, and I had much fun. Okay, let's move on to Summer Games Fest. Okay, so how to describe Summer Games Fest? That's an interesting question. Summer Games Fest is it's a industry-only event. It's not like a lot of conventions we go to, there's a consumer base of it.

Like the fans come, but that's not what this is. This is more for game industry people to sort of, like a lot of press come and they set up interviews. and the idea is it's an opportunity for you to sort of interact with all the press talking about your upcoming products and such. So for us, we were talking Marvel superheroes. That was our next big thing. Last year, this event, we had done Final Fantasy.

I think the year before, we did Assassin's Creed. And the year before, it must have been Lord of the Rings. Anyway, so here's our work. So when you come to, I don't want to call it a tent, it was kind of like sort of, a building but a temporary building i think um but anyway when you walk in there were places to learn to play magic uh and we had three different uh there's three different ways you could learn one was we had uh cards in the beginner box so the beginner box is the product we've made i believe

beginner box comes with um i don't know whether they're 20 card or 30 card packs um and then you can play i think they're 20 card packs. And then you can just pick any two and play against each other. Then when you feel up to it, you can mix two together and play against each other. And you might even be able to mix three together and play against each other. I know for sure you can mix two. So what we did for that is we took out two of the beginner. We took out the Captain America section and the Iron Man section. And then we had, and what those are is what we call scripted, meaning there's an order to them. The cards are labeled 1 through 20.

So when you play, when you first start playing, there's a booklet that it walks you through your first game, and it's what we call a scripted game, which means it's done in a certain order to teach you elements of what you need to play magic. And so, like in your opening hand, I think you have five lands and two spells, one that's a one drop, one that's a 2 drop.

So in turn 1, you play the 1 drop, and then you play the 2 drop, and then you're drawing cards. And meanwhile, so, like, you have what you need when you need it. But it's designed to sort of minimize your choices and then walk you through what to be doing. And it just demonstrates different concepts, like attacking and blocking and spells.

And, you know, it's walking through the basics of what it is. And because it's beginner box, basically all the big heroes you know from Marvel, like, have versions in that box. They're much simpler versions. They're not versions that we expect to any better place. in like constructed formats with. It's just, what we've learned is when we're trying to teach people,

obviously you want to play things that you are familiar with. And so, like, I taught a bunch of people with the Captain America and the Iron Man. And, you know, there's Captain American Iron Man and Hulk and Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver and Hawkeye and Black Widow and Falcon and, you know, the characters you're going to know from if you've seen the MCU and stuff like that. Anyway, so you can do the scripted version of it. If somebody was a little more advanced, you could play without the scripted version, meaning you still draw the cards in the order you draw them,

but you were free to play in the order you wanted to play. Then, if there were a little more event to that, we had welcome decks. One of the things we were handing out at the event was there are five welcome decks. The white welcome deck was Black Panther. The blue was Iron Man. The black was Black Widow. The red was Spider-Man, and the green was Hulk. And the way those work is

there are two 30-card packs in each deck you get the one that's associated with the character you are playing. So let's say I open up the white one. I get a 30-card deck that is the the Black Panther section. And then I get a random second 30-card pack that is a different color, but not the same color I have. So if I get the white one,

I have the opportunity to get blue, black, red, or green. The idea is you can first, you can play the two-thirty-third. card parts against each other. So out of one welcome deck, you have two decks that you can play against each other. But if you and your friend each have a deck, you can shuffle both parts together and then have a two-color deck that you can play against each other. So we just shuffle them all together. So if you, the beginner box was a little too late for you, you could pick and play with welcome deck. So we did welcome decks as well. And then we also had packs of Marvel Super Bears there. For the more advanced players, we sort of

open packs and we would walk through some of the decisions and strategy of how we had made the deck. So that's first and for... Oh, the other thing was, if you came to the site, we were handing out welcome decks, and we had a few other small things, but the welcome deck for the big thing we were handing out. But the idea is anybody who came by... Well, sorry, there were people who made reservations,

and they had priority, and then if we had space, if you were walked by, you could come in, and usually we had space, although we were very busy at times. Okay, so that was that, but then, there were two breakout rooms that were meant for interviews. One of which had a table

so we could play in it, and one of which had a couch. I ended up, the room with the couch ended up being my room mostly for the weekend. I recorded one or two things in the other room, but most of the time I was in the red couch. So some of the time,

there were some people from Marvel, Jesse and Amanda, that came. So some of the interviews was me and somebody from Marvel, but the vast majority were just me. And we had a lot of press from different places, some of which was gaming press, some of which was people that were reported on Marvel specifically.

And so I got to talk a lot. I don't know if you've ever watched, like, when a movie comes out, the actors did this thing where they just rotate in different reporters and they report them so everybody can have that little segment of interviewing. I don't know what they call that,

but it's sort of what I did. was just a lot of different people would come, and then I would talk about whatever. They asked my questions and I'd answer. There definitely was some overlap. Like, as the day went by, I got more, like, it was easier to grab examples because I'd given that example before.

Like a real common question they would ask me is, what was my favorite card in the set? And my answer, by the way, I'll tell you my answer. I'll tell you some of my favorite answers that I gave. So my favorite card in the set is I would tell the following story. I would talk about how when Aaron Forsyth, my boss, first came up with Marvel Superheroes, not sorry, first came up with the idea for universes beyond.

He said to me, what do I think of the idea? First words out of my mouth were dibs on Marvel. So when we decided, when we were pitching to Marvel, one of the ways it works is we sort of make a deck of something to show them. And part of what we want is we want some magic cards, because we want to show them, hey, here's what we'd be making. So Aaron came to me to design the cards for the, the pitch. And I designed a bunch of things that you would expect. But he asked me to do one

deep cut. This was more deep cut six years ago than it is today. My deep cut was Squirrel Girl. And mostly, I just wanted to make an army of squirrels. People know me know I love squirrels and I love doubling. So how could I not make a doubling squirrels card? So the idea is whenever Doreen Green, aka Scoral Girl, enters or attacks, she makes a one-one squirrel. And then you You can activate her for, I think in my version of it, it was three in the green, I think, either four or three in the green. They changed it to one green, green, green. They made her much more green focused.

You get a double the number of squirrels you have. You get a counter for every squirrel you have. So it doesn't just count squirrel tokens, but any squirrel. And she herself, obviously, squirrel girl's a squirrel. So anyway, that card minus the fact they changed some numbers. I think I made her as a three-four. She ended up being a four-four. And all my activations, my man-a-costsome activations,

I think were three in the green, and they got changed to one green, green, green, green. But other than some power adjustments, the car is exactly as I pitched it. And so that is my favorite. I'm a big fan of Squirrel Girl. And I thought she was a really good example of how, look, if you are a Marvel fan,

Squirrel Girl is a pretty popular character, and here's a chance for you to play Squirrel Girl. But if you're like a squirrel fan that doesn't know anything about the Marvel Universe Never heard a squirrel girl before in your life Still really good into squirrel deck, you know And my example of one of the things that I thought Marvel did really well was

There's just so many cool characters That we can just do neat things with them And You know, and I think that's a lot of fun Anyway So I did a lot of chatting

and talking about the different things of Marvel. And it was super fun. I like doing interviews already. I mean, I like talking about magic. It's not, shouldn't be a big surprise that I enjoy talking about magic. But I also like talking about Marvel. So anyway, so most of the time we were doing interviews.

I had many, many interviews every day. We'd go to the little room with the couch. And sometimes it was taped. Sometimes it was audio recording. sometimes. It was just for Ridden, so they would just talk to me. And I was very enthusiastic. I mean, it's not like I'm not normally enthusiastic, but I was extra enthusiastic. One of the things that's super fun for me is as a Marvel fan, I'm what we in the pit refer to as a Smee, which stands for subject matter expert. I know Marvel really, really well. So it was fun, especially with

some of the reporters that were more Marvel-focused reporters. It was fun diving in deep and doing Marvel stuff. That was just super fun. Okay. But I didn't just do interviews. There was more. So on, so the event, the party was Friday night. Summer Game Fest was Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

So on Sunday, we were invited to IGN has this giant live event they do over that weekend. They were doing it over that weekend where it's in their head quarters and they have people who are there, very excited players. And then I got to go on stage along with Amanda from Marvel.

And we talked all about the new set. And it was quite the experience. We get there, we go to the green room. And basically there's an audience that's just very, very excited and just screaming and about as high-octane audience as I've ever seen. So we got on and then we previewed. So Marvel superheroes had all been public as of the party. Like, we revealed the final cards at the party.

On Sunday, it was the day we revealed IGN had the first exclusive on revealing Jump Start. And the Jump Start for Marvel, for those who don't know, is really big. There's a lot of new cards. I don't remember off the top of my head. I mean, it also has a lot of reprints with Marvel, you know, new, I mean, reprints, but with new Marvel art. And the idea is there's just a lot of different packets you can get. So anyway, we were showing off some of the cards for the very first time. The Jump Start has some deeper cuts.

I mean, there's some deep cuts in the Mainset, but there's a lot of deep cuts in the Jump Start. Just so there'll be a lot of cards to make. And one of the things, Daniel Shue had been the person who had designed Jump Start. But I, at the time, sat right next to him or two away from Daniel. So he would ask me questions all the time. I was one of the subject matter experts. So I made a lot of recommendations for him for things to go in.

And so there's a lot of... I'm not responsible for all the deep cuts. A lot of them were Daniel, but I did get my share of deep cuts into it. We then, on Monday, we announced one day each day of the following week, which is the week as I'm recording this, you guys will probably hear this. Oh, maybe you'll hear this on Friday. Normally when I do podcasts about events, I try to jump the key with them to make them as timely as possible. So if all goes well, hopefully you'll be hearing this Friday, I hope.

But anyway, this week we released one today, the different commander decks. There's a lot of products in the Marvel Superhero Suite. One of the things that's so great about the license is there's a lot of material. They've been making stories for 60 to 80, year, depending on how you want to count it. And there's just lots and lots of stories. They put up many, many comics every month. And so there's lots of classic stories, which is really cool. So I went to the IGN. Oh, the other fun thing was, so we premiered the jump start. We showed off a new Jumpstart card in each of the colors. And we talked about them.

Once again, I got to geek out talking about obscure Marvel character, or somewhat obscure Marvel because they weren't bad obscure, I guess. And then, after that, then we threw booster packs of Marvel Super Heroes to the audience along some T-shirts and stuff, and that was fun. And so, yeah, that was probably the most

lively thing I did. The other thing that was sort of fun for the week is as people we were following along the line. So the party showed some cards that people hadn't seen and then

you know, it was more cards were shown on a jumpstart than more cards were shown on the commandment. So there's just a constant influx of people getting to reactor cards and that is always fun. One of my favorite parts of my job is making really cool things and then watching players react to those really cool things. And so the response to Marvel Super Heroes

has been a lot of excitement and so that's awesome. And there's a lot of really cool designs. One of the things that we talked a lot about the interviews was we knew this was an important set and you know I've led more vision designs than any human on the planet

and Dave has led more set designs to completion than any person on the planet so Dave Humphreys so we were you know this was put in really in really good hands we wanted to make sure this was a banger of a set it drafts really well

and it has a lot of fun constructed cards and anyway it's a very exciting set Okay. What else to talk about Summer Game Fest? Oh, one of the things that I found really fun was the event was actually a little ways away from our hotel. So we had like a 20-minute walk every day to go. I mean, we could have, I guess, Uber did that if we wanted to,

but we didn't. And one of the things is really fun is, so basically the R&D was me, Dave Humphreys who loved the set design, I love the vision design, Jay Dean-Colm Perrin, who oversaw a lot of the play design, and then Daniel Holt, who did, oversaw the commander decks. And so we would walk to and from the site every day,

and we just got a chance to chat. And it's fun because, you know, I don't normally in sort of day-to-day, you know, not that I don't interact with any of them, but, you know, normally I'm in the beginning part of the process that are a later part of the process. You know, we interact a little bit, but it was fun just having a chance to talk with them. And we talked a lot about sort of upcoming stuff

and got their opinions. Anyway, it was fun. I actually kind of enjoyed the R&D chat time, which was something that I don't quite get as much at work as one you would think that I would get. So that was sort of nice. I don't think of anything else. Oh, the other fun thing was we had T-shirts, staff T-shirts,

but I'd asked if I could just wear Marvel attire instead, and they said, fine. And so I have, as you guys know, a closet full of Marvel attire. And so that was definitely really cool. Okay, anything else about the event as a whole? Yeah, the one thing that I was really interesting to me was it's fun teaching people magic. It's a real, like, I really think every once in a while it's really good to go out and interact with the intro audience for your product. Because it's so easy to get caught up.

Like most of the time when I'm on social media, I'm interacting with the most of the most influential. franchise magic players, right? It is really good to sort of get a glimpse of... You know, I talk a lot about the... We call it barrier to entry, which is, you know nothing, you now know enough to play the game. The gap between those two things is what we call barrier to entry. And some games, like Jenga or something,

there's a very low barrier entry. You watch someone do Jenga once. You're like, I got it. I know how to play Jenga. But Magic, you know, magic is definitely... It's got a decent barrier to entry. And so one of the things that's really interesting is trying to watch how people learn

and to see what excites people. The one obvious thing here is, and one of the advantages of the universe is beyond, is when we're teaching people with the Marvel superheroes, these are characters that most people are playing with already know. And that is a big help as far as getting people invested because you're like, okay, I already have a sense of who this is. It's Spider-Man. I know Spider-Man.

I got a sense of what I'm doing, you know. And that is pretty cool that you get a chance to... Having characters that people already know is very helpful. But it is interesting to watch Just to remind yourself where people stumble What is hard about magic? What's non-intuitive about magic? It's very easy to get very entrenched in Like the very advanced players that you forget

That a lot of people, in fact, the majority of people interact with your game Aren't the most enfranchised players. I mean, the infringement players are very important, obviously But there's a lot of people who play magic that aren't You know, aren't die-hard entrenched magic players and that just having an understanding that was very, it's very interesting. And also, there's something really appealing about watching somebody sort of discover magic for their first time.

Like, one of the most common things when I teach people magic. And I've taught a lot of people how to play magic over the years is there's this moment really early on that happens a lot where they're like, oh, this is really fun. That, you know, they get intimidated or they heard of it. At this point, you know, most people that are coming in our press, have heard of magic. It's hard to report on gaming or something and not know of magic. But if you haven't played yet, you know, it's intimidating. There's 33 years and 35,000 cards,

and it's intimidating to learn. And one of the things that's really nice when you actually get people to learn is that the core game itself is fun. It's a fun game. And that people get so caught up sometime and all the the scariness that is the hugueness of magic, that when you actually get them to understand just the core basics of it, it, it's a scaryness. It's just the craters. It's, you know, It's fun to watch people go, oh, wow. I see why people like this. That's another one I get a lot. Like, oh, I see why people enjoy this.

So that was fun. And so, yeah, I was there for three days for Summer Game Fest. And then I got to come home. So all in all, it was a pretty fun trip. Not a super long trip. L.A. at least isn't super long. So the travel, so it's pretty easy. Same time zone.

So as travel goes, it's pretty easy. Oh, the one other thing I got to do, by the way, which was nice. to this is one of the people who came in actually wanted a demo of Mootswings, which is my game that went on sale June 1st on Secret Layer. And so I actually got a chance to play a game of Moose Swans with them, so that was sort of cool. I did not expect at Summer Game Fest

that I actually get to talk about Moose Wings at all. I did happen to have a copy in my pocket just because I carry Moose Wings around with me, especially when I travel, just so it's small, and compactable and fun to play with people. But anyway, guys, that is, in a nutshell, my trip to Los Angeles for the party and for Summer Games Fest.

I had a really good time. The party, I should stress, I've worked at Wizards for 31 years. I've never been anything like that. I've never walked to red carpet. I've never... It was really something new and different than we've never done.

I mean, we've done parties in the past, but nothing of the scale. And just to see all these sort of, you know, celebrities that just love magic, you know, it was, I don't know, it was intoxicating. It's really cool. And, you know, it was something special that I always remember. And it really was a highlight to me of sort of magic keeps growing and getting bigger and bigger. And so sometimes it's easy to forget how big magic is getting. And then you have an event like this and it kind of reminds you about how many people are playing magic.

and anyway, so it was pretty cool. And Summer Games Fest, which the way I've never done before. I mean, I, like I said, I love talking about magic. I love talking about Marvel. So the combine of those two is pretty cool, and that was super neat. So anyway, all in all, I had a great trip. It was really exciting. And I hope you guys enjoyed me talking about it,

because that was what I did on my very first drive-to-work. after returning. So anyway guys, I am now at work, so we all know what means, I mean this is, what does it mean? It means I'm done talking magic and it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.