Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1369: MagicCon: Amsterdam 2026

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

In this episode, I talk about my trip to Amsterdam for the latest MagicCon. ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay, so I just got back from MagicCon, Amsterdam, 2006. It was really fun, and so today's podcast is going to talk about all about the things I did at MagicCon. So, I've been to one European Magicon before, which was in Barcelona, it was like three years ago. Two years ago, there was an Amsterdam Magicon, but I wasn't able to go to that one. my first, this is my fourth time visiting Amsterdam, my fourth time visiting Amsterdam for Wizards,
Starting point is 00:00:37 but only my first only Magicon Amsterdam. So anyway, it was held at the RAI, I think it's called. It's a really big facility, really nice, the ceiling has windows in it, anyway, it's very pretty, very big. Basically, we had two big rooms, as we often do, one for sort of, sort of, tournament play. Actually, I don't even know if two ones right. We had a whole bunch of different areas. There was areas for the pro tour to happen. There's
Starting point is 00:01:08 areas for sanction play. There's areas for pickup play. There was retail. There was a creator central where you can meet your favorite magic celebrities. There was a family center. There was an area
Starting point is 00:01:24 where you can do puzzles that Margatli makes. There was an an area for the Avengers, we take pictures and stuff. There was a lot. It is definitely pretty chockful of things to do. By the way, you've never been to a MagicCon. I heartily, heartily recommend you do.
Starting point is 00:01:44 They've gotten so big. There's so much going on. There also was a man-a-stage where events were happening. I did something on the stage each day. I will talk about those during this podcast. and there was anyway there's infinite things a lot of stuff going on
Starting point is 00:02:01 it was super fun and if you've never been the biggest problem going to a Magicine there's so much stuff going on that you can't even absorb it all but it's one of the things I love
Starting point is 00:02:12 I don't get a lot of time to walk along the floor just because I'm usually pretty busy but I always try to do it a little bit so anyway okay let's start so I arrived I flew out on Tuesday and arrived on Wednesday
Starting point is 00:02:26 because when you're traveling to Europe you leave late on Tuesday and you get there like I got there like 1 p.m. on Wednesday. We, a bunch of us traveled, we took a train to get to our hotel and took the wrong train
Starting point is 00:02:40 and then ended up having to get on the metro. But anyway, we eventually got to our hotel. The key, by the way, if you ever travel to Europe is you need to stay up until it's time for bed. You need to sort of go to bed when it's time for bed
Starting point is 00:02:54 to get your body sort of adjusted. Even then, you tend to get up early, even your body. Like, I kept waking up way earlier than I should. But anyway, I slowly got adapted to the time. Okay, Thursday, so
Starting point is 00:03:09 while Magicon is technically a three-day event, for us, it is kind of a four-day event. And the reason for that is there's a thing called the Black Lotus program, which is like kind of the VIP version of it. And we started doing
Starting point is 00:03:25 there's stuff on Thursday for the Black Lotus folks. So, for example, I did a panel. I did a panel with Brian David Marshall and a couple
Starting point is 00:03:39 pro players, Reed Duke and Simon Geertson. We were talking all about the history of the Jund deck. And I talked a lot about sort of the design behind Jund and... Anyway, it was fun.
Starting point is 00:03:53 There were other panels talking about the story and talking about the art. I was just on one of the panels. And then, also, I do a lot of schmoozing of just sort of you know,
Starting point is 00:04:09 what's the correct word for this? I do a lot of going around, signing things, and taking pictures and talking to people and stuff. Part of the Black Lotus experience is getting access to Wizards the folks' employees and stuff. So I do that. And then that evening,
Starting point is 00:04:25 Matt Teback and I did programming. The way it was supposed to work was Matt was doing a trivia game. And so every so often, they would get a chance to ask me a question. We ended up just playing the trivia game, and then I kind of did the Q&A after we were done with the trivia games. It's how it actually ended up working. So we did the trivia game for a while. Oh, there was dinner.
Starting point is 00:04:47 They were providing dinner. It was Thursday night there's always a dinner for the Black Lotus Gras. Anyway, and then I did a Q&A for, an hour, so we're just answering questions. Anyway, so that was Thursday night, Thursday to the day. Mostly I just did Black Lotus stuff. Okay, Friday, the main event happens. I'm trying to remember my process.
Starting point is 00:05:13 So, one of the things that I often do is we often have shows up on the stage. One of the shows is normally a preview panel. And I'm not on every preview panel, but I'm on a lot of preview panels. And so this time, the preview panel was broken into two sections. One was Reality Fracture, which I did with Roy. Roy's in charge of story. And the other was on the in multiverse magic sets of 2007, which was Jackie and Zekeem, Zakeel.
Starting point is 00:05:52 Jackings and Keel did that. Okay, so in the morning, we had to do a run-through. We normally, so normally the way the preview panels work, or panels in general, is that we do a run-through, multiple run-throughs ahead of time. Normally at Wizards, we have at least two run-throughs where we're, you know, sitting around a table or sometimes we're on Zoom, and we do a run-through with all the people that are there with our script and getting practice everything.
Starting point is 00:06:20 This time, which is something we don't normally do, we actually had a full run-through. We were miced up, we were on stage. We had a full run-through, which was really nice. It allowed us to sort of fine-tune some stuff. And we did that early in the morning. Then I had an opportunity to go play in Gavin's unknown event. So if you've never played in an unknown event,
Starting point is 00:06:45 it's something that Gavin runs. You get a mix of cards. I got, I believe I got two passes. of Lauren Eclipsed, two packs of Secrets of Strick-Saving, and two packs of mystery booster two, and then a special booster of cards made by Gavin and friends that are all brand new for the event. Although he reuses some, so some of them might have been from other events. But anyway, brand new cards that are made for the unknown event. And then you make a commander deck, a 60-card commander deck.
Starting point is 00:07:19 The rule is you don't have to follow color identity. and you get one commander, and then there's no real deck restrictions. You're not restricted to singles. You can have multiples and stuff. Anyway, I made a blue-green deck. Who's my... Momir Vig, I believe, was my commander. So I have blue-green with Momir Vig.
Starting point is 00:07:44 So I had a really good game. I played against somebody. There was a card. It was a white-black card that whenever it enters or whatever it attacks, you find a person outside the game and you get them to make a rule. And then as long as you both agree to the rule, then you have to do that rule for the rest of the game.
Starting point is 00:08:02 And that was a wacky, a lot of weird suggestions, and it was fun. And then, in my second game, I actually, it wasn't my, I had in my deck, it was something Gavin had made. It was called Emmercool and Chatterfane.
Starting point is 00:08:17 And so it was a 15, 15, it cost eight green, green, green, 11 mana. It was a 15-15 Emmercool and it made 15-1-1 squirrel tokens. I managed in my game to cast it twice and I still didn't win. So, high-octane games I played.
Starting point is 00:08:35 Anyway, I had a fun time playing in that. I played three different people. Anyway, like I said, if you ever go to MagicCon, definitely definitely sounded for the unknown event. It is wacky and strange, but super fun. And I always enjoy doing them. Then, I
Starting point is 00:08:51 went over to Creator Central. I had a chance to play mood swings with a bunch of people. So my game, mood swings, came out in June. And so actually, I ran into a lot of people who had mood swings cards, and I played a whole bunch of mood swings. I think for the weekend,
Starting point is 00:09:08 I was something like 12 and 2. I did pretty well. I mean, it's my game. But anyway, I played a lot of people in mood swings, and some people I introduced to, a bunch already owned mood swings, but I just played with them. And I also Oh, and, yeah, I think that's...
Starting point is 00:09:24 Oh, sorry. Then, my big event on Friday was the preview panel. So the funny thing is, before we went out, they were talking, they said, you know, just be aware. This is a European crowd. Sometimes, you know, American American Airlines are a little louder. You know, they will be excited, but, you know, they might be a little more restrained. That's not true. They were hoot and hollering.
Starting point is 00:09:49 So I went on first with Roy. and we talked all about reality fracture. We showed up a whole bunch of cards. We showed... So the Lorwyn 5 are in it. So we showed Jason's Plainswalker card. We had already shown Chandra's cards before. We showed them again.
Starting point is 00:10:03 I talked about them. We showed Johnny's cards. We showed Garrick's cards. We showed Lillianna's cards. We showed Tiny Bones and Titan Bones. We called it Mega Bones, but it changed it. It was Titan Bones. So the idea is, for those
Starting point is 00:10:19 who don't know, reality fracture just this cool thing where every single pack has a mirrored pair in it where there's a character that shows up on two cards of two different colors um some of those characters are the are the are uh members of the gate watch uh you know chandra the lower one five chandra and uh garrick and liliana and johnny um some of those like tiny bones are just characters you might know it it's super fun we also showed off um enlightened confinant which is a white of Dark Confident. We showed off
Starting point is 00:10:52 a crater claw. There's a red version of Crater Hoof behemoth behemoth, called Crater claw behemoth, I believe. But anyway, we also showed off there's a lot of cool treatments. And anyway, we talked a lot about reality fracture.
Starting point is 00:11:09 All this, I believe, will be, I think it's online if you want to go watch it. But anyway, we talked all about reality fracture and showed a lot of cards and just talked a lot about the philosophy and Roy told about the story. and what's going on. And anyway, super exciting set.
Starting point is 00:11:23 The way I described it in the preview panel was that it's vision's job to kind of swing for the fences and do the craziest version of it. And then often set design does like a slightly saner version of whatever vision hands off. And not this time. I handed it up to Yanni. And Yanni, it is definitely a full...
Starting point is 00:11:44 It goes full throttle. It's a what-if set. It's really playing around. Jase is trying to use... Jason made a whole other multiverse called the Echoverse, and he's trying to overwrite our multiverse, and everything's at stake, what will happen? It takes place on Hexhaven,
Starting point is 00:11:59 which is an alternate version of Strick's Haven, where the schools are an ally, and they're a military school, and I showed off cards from that. We're doing more prepared spells. Anyway, lots of fun stuff. Okay, then Jackie and Zekeel came on to talk about next year's sets.
Starting point is 00:12:18 Now, first off, they announced the existence of Mystery Booster Commander Edition, which has 59 new cards in it. We showed up Jovin and Chandler, two guys from the homelands, and then we showed off a new rule breaker, new mechanical rule breaker, where it lets you sort of do things, put things to your deck you normally can't do. We showed off this otter that lets you play an extra color in incidents and sorceries. Anyway, let's get to the set. So we did announce when the Universe's Beyond sets were happening. We did announce what they were. And we also announced next year, instead of being three magicons, there are four magicons.
Starting point is 00:13:03 Detroit, then Tokyo, then Las Vegas, and then back in Amsterdam. It's so very exciting. And we announced that. and we announced that the Pro Tour Hall fame is coming back. Anyway, we announced a bunch of things. The most exciting things we announced are the upcoming three sets. So let me tell you about them real quickly. So first up was Noctus, the sunken realm.
Starting point is 00:13:28 We've been talking about doing underwater worlds forever. We finally did it. The one weird thing we mentioned in it was, there's no flying because it's underwater. So as we get closer, at some point I'll do a whole podcast explaining that. That was the thing. But anyway, it is this cool underwater set, and we showed a lot of pictures, and we talked about... So for each of the new worlds, there was like a three-minute video where they interviewed people that had worked on it to talk about it, and they showed lots of pictures.
Starting point is 00:13:56 Very pretty. And all this is online. But anyway, one of the challenges of Noctus was, obviously, it leans very blue. Normally, if you're underwater, you're blue. Well, we can't just have blue cards, so we figured out how to wait to do all the other colors underwater. It's very exciting and very cool. The second set was Kamagawa Titan Breach. So the Omen Pass got opened up during the March on the Machine and Kamagawa discovers that
Starting point is 00:14:24 monsters are coming through an omen path from Ikoria and they have to make mechs to stop them. So it is the technology of Kamagawa against the raw, you know, animal monsters of Icoria. That is that set. again, we showed up art and they look really cool. The monsters look cool and the mex look cool. Anyway, very neat set. We had talked forever. The idea of mex versus monsters was it just made so much sense.
Starting point is 00:14:53 And once the Omen Pass existed, it just seemed like the perfect story. For those of remember that I said that we originally were thinking of using Icoria in Aetherdrift, and then I had to cut it and we changed it in Murganda because we had a better use for it. This was the better use to do mex versus monsters. And then the last set is Zulfurie. So for those who remember, many years ago, Tafari, during the original phrexian invasion of Domenaria, Tafari, to save his land of Zulfir, phased it out. But then he was unable to phase it back in, and he lost his park and all sorts of things happened.
Starting point is 00:15:30 But finally, during the Martian Machine, he was able to phase it back in. And it overwrote on to, it sort of swapped with new phrexia. So now they are on what used to be mirrored in. Anyway, we did what we call a throw forward. It is time for us to go seize all fear. We spent a lot of time in energy trying to make sure that we got a lot of consultants and it's beautiful.
Starting point is 00:15:52 We showed off art from it. It's hard to describe. It's a really cool set. And it definitely is visually distinct and it's mechanically quite interesting. Other than us mentioned no flying noctus, we didn't really talk about mechanics of much of anything. It's more about world and tone and stuff.
Starting point is 00:16:09 Anyway, the audience went wild. It was super fun. Everyone really liked all the stuff we were showing up. I think next year it's just a home run. Although in multiple sets are just stellar, really good. Okay, anyway, that was Friday. So, end of Friday. Okay, so now we get to Saturday.
Starting point is 00:16:29 So Saturday, I did a little bit of schmoozing in the Black Lotus room, as I often do. And then I had a lot of interviews. A huge number of interviews. most of my Saturday was doing interviews. The way it works is that they have press, and then they say to the press, here is the guests available to you, and you can talk to whoever you like to talk to,
Starting point is 00:16:52 and all of them said, I like to talk to Mark, I feel said. So I did a lot of interviews, which is fine. I like doing interviews. It's fine. We did a panel, we did a little panel where they talked to us,
Starting point is 00:17:01 and then I did a lot of one-on-one interviews. Some are video, some are audio, some are just written. Anyway, I did a lot of interviews. And then I gave my presentation. talk. So every magicon that I'm at, I do a talk. This talk was called getting the banned
Starting point is 00:17:15 B-A-N-N-E-D together. And so I hold the record of having the most banned or restricted cards, meaning cards that were ever banned or restricted in any format. Richard used to have the record at 38, but back in Myrd and I passed him. And I've only been going farther
Starting point is 00:17:31 since then. So I talked through so basically I just told the stories of all the different cards I've made. So the presentation really was me just talking about different things I did and why they made them and what happened to them. And there's a lot of... I've made a lot of pretty broken cards.
Starting point is 00:17:49 And so I walked through. Some of the time it just... It was on me. I made a card that's too powerful. Some of the time, something changed during development. It wasn't always my fault. Also, I'm not the balanced guy, so I guess on some level. But I did make a lot of cards that didn't end up being broken.
Starting point is 00:18:08 I made a lot of, the things that tend to get trouble, we make a lot of engine cards, things that turn one resource into another, things that draw you cards, things that get you mana, a lot of mana. And I made a lot of those. And so anyway, I talked about it. Near the end, I talked about how I had 89 cards
Starting point is 00:18:24 that had been banned and restricted. And I said that, I thought maybe someday somebody would catch up to me. And then I explained that Infinity came out and we banned all the sticker cards and all the attractions cards of which I was intimately involved with, which got my number up to 1,
Starting point is 00:18:38 170. And then while I was making the presentation, Secret Skybreak got banned and popper. So I ended at 171, a record that will not probably be broken in the near future. But anyway, so I did that talk. The talk went over well.
Starting point is 00:18:52 People really liked it. After the talk, I did a meeting greet. I used to do multiple meeting greets where people can come, and I sign autographs, and I take pictures, and answer questions. Like I say, while I always do the schmoozing in the Black Lotus Room itself,
Starting point is 00:19:07 I always make sure to do a meeting greet, multiple meeting greets, out on the floor so that anybody who wants to come and meet me has the ability to come meet me and get autographs to stuff. One of the fun things about just doing MagicConns is everywhere I go, people are stopping me all the time, and I'm signing stuff and take pictures. It really gives me a sense of what actual celebrity
Starting point is 00:19:24 might be like. And what I realize is, it's fun and small doses. It's neat at MagicCons that I get recognized everywhere I go. If that was my daily life and I couldn't go shopping, I could see how that would be. It could get frustrating. But luckily, I have a perfect guy on celebrity,
Starting point is 00:19:38 It is something that I can appreciate in small doses in places like MagicCon, and then I can go shopping, and nobody stops me. Okay, that was Friday. No, that was Saturday. That was Saturday. Then we get to Sunday. Sunday, more Black Lotus stuff, more interviews.
Starting point is 00:19:58 And then I was on Pack It Up. So for those who don't know, Ben Bateman does a show where he invites on three people. It was me, the professor, and Ash Lizzle, who's actually from... She's from the Netherlands. And so the way it works is we spin and we draft three packs each.
Starting point is 00:20:19 We had three packs each from across Magic's history. I got... My first spin was for Magic 2015, the Corset. Then I got Magic 2011, the Corset. And then I got Secrets of Strickshaven. I think it was a collector edition. Collector booster. And then a professor rolled some more corsets.
Starting point is 00:20:41 He got Tempest. I think there was a Lorwin Eclips open. There was a Dusk-Morn open. There was a Myridden and a Dark Steel opened. Ash Lizzle got those, I think. Anyway, so what happened is Pac-1, the audience is watching Ben, draft, pack two that are watching
Starting point is 00:21:06 me draft, and then pack three, they're watching Ash Lizzle draft. So what happened was in the first pack, I open up a hydra, one of the hydra, protein hydra, and a black kill spell.
Starting point is 00:21:24 What was my spell? Oh, Doomblade, Doomblade. Doomblade, I think it was Doomblade. I think it was Doomblade. So, okay, giant creature and removal, sounds good. And then I'm like, okay, I'm going to mean black and then Ben is announcing what he's drafting and it's clear he is in black green so I'm like okay I can't stay in black green so I ended up going to black red oh my first pack I was drafting was Magic 2011 because that was the most powerful pack you tend to want to start with your strongest pack
Starting point is 00:21:51 and then I made a deal with Ben that I put secrets to him second so I would pass to him and then professor put Tempest second so I would get temp a second just because I'm I find this of tempest um but anyway, so I ended up red black in the first pack. Now in the second pack, I'm on, I'm on camera. And now, I was over my secret strict saving, which is not good because I'm black red and that's, you know, secret stick saving his enemy colors. And the audience is very excited for me to draft some cards that pushed me to play five color. So I'm all game. I normally do not draft five colors. It's not my thing. I normally draft. In fact, when I get away with drafting one color, I draft one color. But anyway, I ended up drafting this business.
Starting point is 00:22:33 bizarre five-collar deck. I was all over the place. My man, it was crazy. And so then my first match is against Ash Lizzle. She's playing a red-white agro deck. Not a great matchup for me. But she gets a slow start.
Starting point is 00:22:49 I actually get a decent start. I get out my dread skeletons, which are really good against her. And I'm slowly building my board, and I'm like, oh, I might be able to win this. And then my first sign that I was in trouble, I had one white card in my deck, and I had my teromorphic expanse.
Starting point is 00:23:08 Because when we were building me, we had to go quickly. I forgot to put a plane. I had a dual end that had white, but I forgot to put a planes in my deck. So I couldn't get the planes. In my hand was a card that was like a 2-5 game-free life. Like, it's the card that I would have won the game had I had it. And anyway, I screw up there.
Starting point is 00:23:26 And then I get like Bloom Tender out, and I play my hydra for eight. But ironically, I have to do. Blade in my hand. I should have played it for five, left back mana for Doomblade. And I think I would have won if I'd done that. Anyway, I lost Ash Lizzle. She managed to attack me, do just enough damage. She'd two
Starting point is 00:23:42 combat tricks in her hand and did, like, I was at 9 life, she did exactly 9. So I lose. She ends up going to play Ben in the finals and beats Ben. So Ash Lizzle won the whole thing. Anyway, the whole event was fun. It's going to be, it was filmed. They are going to put it up
Starting point is 00:23:58 on line. Anyway, it's kind of crazy. My deck is crazy. Yeah, it is definitely... It was crazy. I had a lot of fun. It was super fun. And actually, playing actually...
Starting point is 00:24:11 It was lots of fun. And like I said, me losing was mistakes of my own. My joke going into it was that I thought my deck was going to let me down and I let my deck down. So my deck actually had a lot of power out of saying that was all over the board. And my man, it was weird. But anyway, that was pack it up. I enjoyed that quite a bit. And then I had another meet and greet.
Starting point is 00:24:36 And so I went inside more autographs and stuff. Oh, also I didn't mention, by the way. There also is a lot of, there's a whole artist area I didn't mention. Yeah, there's so much at the event. Anyway, I did my meet and greet. And then after that, I had to go film the way Pack It Up works is that there's gameplay, but then you go get interviewed and you walk through what you did. and why you did it
Starting point is 00:25:01 and anyway. So I did all that. I did my interviews. And then the event was done. I mean, that night, there were people up playing. I was in the lobby playing magic and such. Although, actually, I didn't play magic.
Starting point is 00:25:15 I was so tired. The one thing about is Amsterdam is super fun. It's a nine-hour time difference. And I don't think I totally got adjusted to the time zone. And I had long, long days. So I was tired. I'm trying to think other fun things
Starting point is 00:25:34 of the event just to sort of walk through things I might have missed. There was, oh, there's weird, Secret Lair is doing a Star-Doo Valley thing. So there's a special cart that would walk around the floor, and when you see it, you had to trade them to get cool stuff. There was... What else was going on?
Starting point is 00:25:57 There was all... There's infinite things happening. Just kind of keep... track of it all, it was hard. Like, I know, for example, in Secretare always tries to do fun things. They're the ones that the kittens at New York, not New York,
Starting point is 00:26:10 not Las Vegas. The artist alley, which I didn't talk too much about, was great. I had a little tiny chance to walk around. I've known some of the artists for a long time. Like, I ran into Mark Tadine at breakfast. I ran at Tom Wanderthran. Anyway, it is fun.
Starting point is 00:26:26 There's all these artists from across Magic's time and you can go get stuff signed, and That was great. There was a whole pro tour that was going on. So this is a pro tour Marvel Superheroes. For first time in a long time, the finals was a draft, which was very exciting. There was all sorts of stuff on stage. I did pack it up.
Starting point is 00:26:50 Olivia and Brian have a show. Oh, and Game Nights Live was there. For the first time ever, by the way, normally Gate Nights Live is the last thing on Friday night. like normally we do the preview in the afternoon and they do it but because we were trying to live stream in the U.S. and with a time difference
Starting point is 00:27:08 we did it late so people will be up when we did it and so they actually went before us which doesn't normally happen they had a superhero theme obviously and yeah it was it's hard to describe like I said it's kind of a whirlwind
Starting point is 00:27:25 like I said I arrived on Wednesday and left on Monday so I was there for five days and it all blurts together gather. One of the other things that I love about MagicCon is I just see lots and lots of people that I know. I mean, it's a pretty tight-knit community, and I've obviously interacted with everybody for such a long period of time. Plus, I'm always meeting new people. Gavin is king of just knowing everybody. I, like, there's a lot of influencers, and little by little, I meet them. Obviously, they know who I am, but I haven't met them all, so it's fun meeting influences for the first time.
Starting point is 00:27:57 Also, I was in Europe, so I met a lot of European influencers. That was super fun. I played a whole bunch of mood swings. It was really fun seeing the game on in the wild and talking to people and answering questions about it. There was all sorts of retailers were selling all sorts of stuff, and I saw all sorts of people showing off cool things they got. I did not have any time doing any shopping. I was quite busy.
Starting point is 00:28:24 And then the Just the other cool thing was because we're in Europe There's a lot of press from all across Europe So that's really neat So I got to interview you know do interviews with reporters from Italy and Spain And France and England And anyway that was super fun
Starting point is 00:28:44 So I guess my real takeaway is If you've never been to a MagiCon They are immeasurably fun. They are, it is, and each one's a little bit different. The year, this one was a little smaller,
Starting point is 00:29:02 like, I mean, we maxed up the tickets, but the hall was a little bit smaller. So I think this was like 18,000, where I think Vegas was closer to 25,000. But anyway, it's just so much fun interacting
Starting point is 00:29:13 with all the magic players. And the other thing I always talk about is, well, I do like interacting with people online. And I do, obviously. There's some negativity online. you might have noticed. I did a whole podcast on online negativity.
Starting point is 00:29:28 The thing about live is people are so excited and so happy. It is just so much positivity. And as somebody who, you know, my job is trying to make this to make people's lives better and make people happy. Sometimes online can be a little discouraging of people just. But in person, I mean, I met so many people through my meeting, greets on the floor. And something that one of the comments. and through lines is people just saying to me, look, I play this game for a long time. It's very
Starting point is 00:29:58 meaningful to me. I met a lot of people that matter to me. A lot of people talk about how they had a rough time in their life, and this was the thing they got them through. Just really honest, people talk about how magic has improved and affected their lives in positive ways. And so it's like drinking from a fountain of fresh water. It is so nice. I mean, obviously, one of the reasons I do what I do is I want to make the world better. I think magic is a force of good. And obviously, I love making magic. It's just so nice to interact with all the players who are so excited. If you're ever at MagicCon and you see me at MagicCon,
Starting point is 00:30:33 I'm always happy to take pictures, to sign autograph, to answer questions. I interacted with, I can't even, I don't even know how many people I interacted with this week. And it was great. And it's always fun, and I had a great time. So I'm almost to work here. I'm trying to give any other final things, something that went on. at this event that was unique to this event. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Oh, the other thing that was fun is just that it's neat to get to go visit other countries. One of the things, I did a whole podcast on this. One of the things that's really neat for me is that Wizards give me the opportunity to kind of see the world. Now, I have been in Amsterdam before. This, like I said, my fourth step to Amsterdam.
Starting point is 00:31:16 The other thing is funny is, like, oh, get pictures of the canals, and we were nowhere near the canals. I'm like, we're nowhere near the canals. So I did take a bunch of pictures for her. Oh, and we announced, like I said, we announced next year's Magiqon's. I don't know which ones I'm going to yet. I'm pretty sure I'm going to Detroit because that is where Noctus is going to be at,
Starting point is 00:31:37 and Noctus was my set. And I'm pretty sure I'm going to Tokyo because I promise the Japanese office the next time we had a big event that I would go to Japan. I'm not sure by the other two. I do not get to do endless traveling. I just have a lot of responsibilities at home and so I do some traveling I do a little more than I used to
Starting point is 00:31:57 my kids got a little bit older so I can travel more but anyway I always have fun doing MagicCon I've never gone to MagicCon and came back to MagicCon and go oh sorry I did that I always happy it's always fun
Starting point is 00:32:13 I love meeting people I love taking place all the programming is fun the preview panel was a blast doing my talk was a blast Do you pack it up was a blast. Anyway, just endless good times. And so this was success. The irony, by the way, is I'm recording this on my way in.
Starting point is 00:32:34 Today's Tuesday. I got in yesterday on Monday. I travel back on Monday. Tomorrow I leave for San Diego Comic-Con. So no rest for the weary. But anyway, so I will do a podcast on Comic-Con when I get back. So anyway, guys, that is all my time. trip to MagicCon, Amsterdam, 2006. It was a great time. I loved meeting all the fans and doing
Starting point is 00:33:00 all the activities. I'm glad I'm back. I am kind of tired. But that's okay. It's a good tired. So anyway, guys, now that I'm driving to work, we all know what that means. It means at the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.

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