Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1373: Boston

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

My family took a vacation to Boston, so I talk about my trip and Boston's history with Magic.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for their drive to work. Okay. So the first week of August was a summer vacation for Wizards. They gave us a week off. And so my family went to Boston. So I decided to talk about Boston today.

I'll talk a little bit about my trip. I'll talk a little bit about my history with Boston, Magic's History with Boston. More things you ever want to know about Boston in 30 minutes. Okay, so the first and foremost, I guess the important part here is I actually went to school in Boston. I went to Boston University, specifically the College of Communications. I graduated in 89. So from 85 to 89, I lived in Boston.

I really, really enjoyed Boston. It was a fun town, quite the college town, as they say. Boston, I believe, has some record. This might sound like I'm exaggerated. There are hundreds of colleges in Boston. Boston. You can't throw a stone without hitting a college. But anyway, it was a very fun place to go to school. I really much enjoyed the city. And so every summer, my family and I do a summer vacation. And so I think my youngest daughter actually pitched Boston. But I'm like, yes, yes, we should go to

Boston. So I was excited to show them around, like I said. So the interesting thing, let me talk a little bit of my interaction with Boston, at least magic related. So I believe I've Magic, Wizards the Coast has sent me to Boston, I think two times. Two or three. For sure, there was a pro tour in Boston

that I went to. And at one point, we were testing one of the Mulligans. I think the Paris Mulligan, I'm not 100% sure. And they sent me to, I went to Your Move Games, which I'll talk about a little bit when I ended in the history of Boston. and they wanted to test out the new Mulligan system in a couple local places,

and they sent me to sort of observe it. So the last time I was in Boston, I believe it was 2002. So it was a while ago. So anyway, it was very exciting to go back. So let me talk a little bit about Boston and its history in Magic, and then we'll get into my trip. So Magic comes down. out in the summer of 1993.

Alpha mostly was on the West Coast. Peter Atkinson was the president of Wizards. Did a thing he called the Caravan Tour before they did another thing called the Caraventor. But he drove up and down the coast

visiting game stores and demoing magic. And just drumming up interests in distributors. Just getting enough people that were interested in buying it that he could sell the first run. Now, as we all know, it went very well. I don't, I think it wasn't until beta that the East Coast even saw that. I don't think there's much alpha that was sold on the East Coast.

Some beta was and by the time you get to unlimited for sure. So two of the big hotspots on the East Coast for Magic was New York City and Boston. New York City had, it was called Gray Matter. The people that later would start neutral ground like Brian David Marshall. They were running big tournaments, and in Boston, there's a store called Your Move Games, owned and operated by Rob Doherty. He is in the Pro Tour Hall fame, along with Darwin Castle and Dave Humphreys. Boston was a pretty big early scene for Magic. In fact, New York and Boston were the two big places that tended to run big tournaments on the East Coast.

I think San Francisco did it on the West Coast. and then they had this special thing where they would play each other I think it was called like the Grudge match or something but the winner of Boston and the winter New York would play each other and they had this ongoing thing and so early magic especially I mean your movie games was kind of the center of it but there was a lot of early magic goes back to Boston

and so it's it's kind of fun like I said I know numerous pro-tore players that all sort of went to Boston for school, a lot of which got interacted with Euromoved Games and a lot of the Boston pro scene, if you will. So anyway, so the idea is my family, when we go on vacations, we like to carve up the city we're going to. Like last year I talked about we went to London and to New York.

So what we did is each day we've carved different sections and we do different things. So we flew in and out on Saturday. basically six days there. So I'm going to talk about little of the different sections of Boston, and then I visited a couple places to play Magic. I'll intersperse some of those. And I'll talk about a few of the things we did.

I'm assuming if you're listening to this, you're a gamer. My family likes games, so there's a few things we did that I would call a game-related. Okay, so Sunday, so the thing I did Sunday that was the most memorable is, So one of the things about visiting a place You haven't been in a while There's a famous expression You Can Never Go Home Again And what that expression means is

That the place you grew up with That what you know as a place Changes with time And this is true When I go back to visit where I grew up Like, you know, less and less stores You recognize are there Like one of my trips to Boston

Was some things I did recognize Or some things that are classic Some things that have been there since, you know, the 1800s. But a lot of things were radically different. And so one of the dichotomies of the trip for me was old versus new. But I did want to appreciate the old. So on Sunday, I actually had lunch with two of my friends from college, Tony and Jen.

Tony was my roommate sophomore year. All three of us became friends freshman year. I went to the College of Communications. So my freshman year, I lived in a place called Warren Tower. which is like the freshman dorm. It claimed to fame. I think it was the big, at one point it was three towers. It was the biggest dorm in the U.S. at one point.

And it's a floor plan that's modeled after a prison. Literally the walls are cinderblock. And so I went to the college communications. It turns out I wasn't on this floor, but there was a floor all for people who went to college communications. I didn't know that existed, so I didn't sign up for that. But anyway, I hung out there all of a time. And both Tony and Jen lived on that floor.

All three of us were in the college communication. So I spent a lot of time with the two of them. Sophomore year, Tony, we moved to a different dorm, but Miles Standish Hall. But Tony was my roommate my sophomore year. Then I lived by myself, my junior and senior year. But anyway, I had seen Tony when I visited in 2002. I didn't see Jen since I graduated. Now, all of us had stayed up on social media, so, I mean, I have some general sense of what's going on in their lives.

But I hadn't seen them. And so we had lunch. I mean lunch at Legal Seafoods. So Legal Seafoods is a seafood place that has existed since I was in school. Like there's a lot of things about going back to the 80s. But Legal Seafood was there, and I like Legal Seafood. They've really good Clam Chowder. Before I went to Boston, by the way, I did not appreciate New England Clam Chowder.

I became a fan while I lived in Boston, and now I'm a huge fan of New England Clam Charter. I do not touch my hand in Clam Charter. What are you doing? New England Clam Charter. Oh, the other thing that, by the way, when I talk about my schooling that comes up, a bit is people always ask me when I say college communications I majored in what was called broadcast and film

which means TV movies. I watched a lot of TV movies in class and I majored in screenwriting because my original when I graduated from college my plan was I was going to go right for television which I did a little bit and a lot of people asked me why I didn't study games. Why didn't I study game design?

Because you could not study that wasn't a thing. When I went to school, in fact, the college communications in Boston University, when I went there was one of only three schools in the country dedicated to communications. Now, I don't think you're allowed to be a school unless you have a school of communication.

But back then, it was kind of a rarity. And the idea of studying, you know, I got a Bachelor of Science, a B-Assing Communications, I'd like to say. But anyway, so it was fun seeing my friends and sort of reliving things and going to

Legal Seafood. Also that day, we find a cool place. I'm blinking the name of it, but where you could play, it was like a bar that you could play miniature golf. But the real cool thing about it was that it was all computer, like the computer handled

whose turn it was and what your score, it kept score, and, you know, it was very clever. There was three different courses within the bar, and the holes were very clever. And like the one we played, one of them asked you two false questions and you had to hit the ball through the right hole and then you got extra points if you did

and it was very fun but anyway that by the way was in C-Port we actually had a day in C-Port so I'll get to that in a moment so Monday so the very first thing we did on Monday my family to get into the gaming part of my family

my family loves escape rooms for those that have never done an escape room and maybe I'll do a podcast on an escape room at some point my family loves escape rooms So escape rooms really quickly are... The idea is you're in a room, usually a locked room, although I mean, you can walk out, but a quote-unquote locked room. And then you have one hour to solve some problem. Often it's escape the room.

Sometimes it's stop something. My family have done 30-plus escape rooms. We've stopped the zombie apocalypse. We've robbed numerous banks. We put criminals in jail. we discovered mysteries. We've done all sorts of things. They're always themed.

Basically, there are a series of puzzles. And you have to solve the puzzles. Some of them are sequential. Some of them are happening at the same time. But you have to figure out different things and then through it, crack and solve things. And there's always a narrative story. So on Monday, we went to what I'll call the Fanio Hall area of town,

sort of a downtown. And we went to Boxeroo and did Storyteller's Secret. which was, the theme was, there was a writer that it disappeared, and you had to figure out what was going on. And anyway, it was very clever, and it played around the theme of literature, and

I don't want to give away the secrets, because it was very fun. One of the neat things about escape rooms is, normally there's more to discover than just the room you start in. I'll just leave it to that, but there's always things to discover, and as you find new things, it opens up, and you get new elements. So then we went to Fanio Hall. So Fanio Hall, for those who have never been to Boston, I think got created in 1826, I believe.

The center part is called Quincy Market, and that the food is there. And then on the outside are more shops. Fanio Hall has, like I said, walking through Quincy Markets, not that there weren't different stalls than there were when I was there, but it looks like I remember. And so it was fun. And then after Fanio Hall, we walked to the north end, the north end. The North End is kind of the little Italy of Boston. There's a place called Mike's Pastries that we got.

We had to get canoles. We got canoles. They were very good. And also I had some pizza from, what was it, Regina's? Anyway, we had a good time. Oh, we went to the Old North Church, which is where Paul Revere, if you remember, one if by land, two if I see. One of the cool things about Boston, by the way, is that there's so much history there.

I mean, you know, just like, here is where the Boston Tea Party happened. Here's where the Boston Massacre happened. There's just like key events. You know, like one day we went and visited a graveyard and like, here's Sam Adams buried right here. So it's pretty cool. So, and the nice thing about that day was just sort of seeing some of the old part of Boston that I always appreciated. That was fun to show. my family. Okay, Tuesday, we went to Mulden to a place called Bodeborg. So I think Bodeborg comes out of

Sweden, I believe. So the idea of it is that there are different rooms, and they signify how physically active the room is. There's green, red, and black doors. Green means not that active, red means somewhat active, black means very active. And when they say very active, it was quite active. So the idea is that there's puzzles, and most of them have multiple rooms. Some have two, some have three. But the idea is you go in the first room and you have to solve the puzzle in the first room in a certain amount of time. If not, you get kicked out.

If you do, you advance to the next room and then possibly the third room. And the idea is they don't tell you what the room has a name, but they don't tell you what the goal of the puzzle is. So to give an example, the very first one we did, like see the stars. And you walk in and there's three lights. And what you realize is each light's connected to a line that you have to trace.

And if you trace it, it gets to a button. And then when the light lights up, you have to correct the appropriate button with the appropriate light. And if you do that, you get to the second room. That's that same thing but more complex. And then you do that, you get to the third room, which is the same thing, but even more complex.

In each room has different challenges. Like I said, some of them can get quite physical. There's one called Escape from Alcatraz That is quite physical So anyway We did that It was really fun My family likes doing a lot of different types of games like that

And this one was very fun We had done, like I said We do escape room So we had played in this space But the idea that you're just doing One singular puzzle That are themed and connected And they don't tell you quite what to do

Is a little bit different But it was very fun And we really enjoyed it Then after that, I got a few recommendations of places to visit that played magic. One of my problems was a lot of places that got recommended that were really good. We were a bit outside of town. We didn't have a car or anything. And so mostly we went to the area that we were going.

And then if there was a game story, I got recommended in that area, we would stop by. So after we left Maldon, we went to a place called Tavern of Tales. So Tavern or Tales, actually, what they call a game cafe. I actually, we played one of these when I visit when my daughter graduated from University of Arizona there's one on campus or right next to campus that we went to. And these are fun.

So the way it works is there is tables you can sort of rent and there's food so you can have food and then there's infinite games that you can borrow and play. They have shells of games.

And then at this particular cafe as many game cafes do, you can rent rooms. So if you want to run a D&D campus, or whatever we want to do, you can rent private rooms to play your games. And also, a lot of magic is played here. I saw up on the wall.

They had reality fracture advertised. So I don't remember the exact nights. I know one of them was probably Friday. But I think there were two different nights for people come and play magic. So there was a lot of magic played there. It got recommended to me as a really fun place and the food was good. And so we definitely did that. Wednesday was our Seaport Day.

although technically Monday, or Sunday, we've gone to legal seafood at Seaport. But this is the day we sort of wandered around Seaport. So Seaport, to connect to magic, Wizards of the Coast. Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast, from the longest time was in Pawtucket in Rhode Island, near Providence. But they moved, or are moving, and they're moving to Boston. In fact, their new building is in Seaport. I actually didn't see the new building. I thought about it after the fact.

But anyway, so now if you want to go visit Hasbro, it is in Boston. So that increases the chance that maybe I go to Boston because now are headquarters. I don't really go to headquarters all that much, that more, like Aaron goes a lot more than I go. I was there once. I went to Hasbro, Hasbro Khan, and that was in Pawtucket. So I didn't go to Pentatechut once. I saw the offices once, which were very cool. Okay.

Oh, Seaport Day. We saw a lot of seatboard. saw Spider-Man. The Elmo Draft House is a fun theater where you can order your food. Anyway, my oldest Rachel lives in New York, and they have Elmo Draft House in New York, so she recommended

we try it. We did. It was super fun. And they have a lot of, like, old posters. It's very, very fun, and you can order from your seat and order food from your seat. It's very cool. And my little tip, just a little life advice I will give you for me. So one of my rules

when there's a movie that I know I want to see. Spider-Man, good example. For those who don't know this, huge fan of Marvel. If you haven't heard any of my podcast about Marvel. So one of my rules when I have movies I'm going to see is I try to avoid the trailers.

I don't read anything about it. I don't read gossip about it. I know nothing about it. I want to go into the movie not knowing anything. And one of my So, actually, I can use this example. So Spider-Man, I'm not going to give it away because some people haven't seen Spider-Man.

But for Marvel fans, there's a pretty good twist in it that you, the audience, aren't supposed to know. And I literally gasped when it happened. My wife was making fun of me. I literally gasped when it happened. And that came about because I didn't, ahead of time, learn anything about the movie. A similar to when I saw the second Doctor Strange. I don't know, I mean, this is a little bit of spoiler, but at least this came out two years ago. in Dr. Strange

that he goes to alternate realities that's the whole premise of the movie and in one world they meet what's called the Illuminati which is an organization of people that get together and it was the Illuminati from another world but still was the Illuminati and I didn't know

it was going to happen in fact I didn't even know who the villain of the film was because I didn't watch the trailers and I didn't watch I didn't read anything and so the movie had a lot of like honest I was surprised I didn't know like the movies are actually made that you the audience don't know things

So when you find them out ahead of time, you are not seeing the movie at its most awesome. Okay. Thursday was Cambridge Day. So Cambridge is where Harvard is located in MIT as well. And so in my, when I went to college, I went to Cambridge quite a bit. There are a lot of fun things in Cambridge. In fact, I'm going to talk about a different game store in a second. There was a game store I liked in Cambridge that I used to go to.

It's not there anymore. But in my youth, in my youth, in my college days, we used to, in my college days, we used to, go there all the time. So Tony and I and our friends Mitch and Marion was my little gaming group and we used to go buy games and then play them. It's where I discovered Cosmic Accounter. Anyway, there are a lot of fun games that I

bought and then played in Boston and I found memories of game stores in Boston. The one we visited that we got a recommendation to was called Pandemonium Games. So Panamonium Games it's two-story. They have the main

floor in the basement. They have lots and lots of games. It's not just magic. They saw all sorts of games. And they have tables downstairs for play. For example, when we walked in, they were advertising the Hobbit pre-release, which was happening later that we were there midweek. We were there on Thursday, and it was that Friday and Saturday.

Or that weekend, I believe. But anyway, I had a chance to talk to the staff. So one of the things I do when I visit places, so I always try to visit a game store or two when I'm on vacation. When I'm on a business vacation, sometimes I visit more. When I'm on like a family vacation, I kind of like, when we're

near something, I'll go see it, but I normally, it's sort of like my family has its plans. We're like, oh, we're in Cambridge. Oh, I got this recommendation, so I went to the Cambridge store. It also was right down the street from the, we did two escape rooms. I'll talk about that one a second. But anyway, so I always like to talk.

I often talk to players if they're around. It was early Thursday, you know, on a Thursday, so there was no one playing in the store. But I did talk to the staff. I really like to talk to the people who work in game stores. They have a lot of knowledge. They interact with a lot of magic players. And the people who play in stores are, I mean, there's lots of different kinds of magic players. But I really like to hear about, you know, in-store play and what people are enjoying and what, you know, what products worked well for them and which ones didn't. And I always sort of ask, you know,

if we can make anything that you guys would like to see, what would you like? Are there changes we could make? Are there things we're doing we should do more of? And Anyway, I like talking to them. It was really fun talking to everybody, and I find it very valuable to get the information. It is quite useful. Like, I have a lot of hard data. You know, we collect a lot of things. But there's something about anecdotal data, which is really interesting.

I'm just hearing from people, and the fact that I can ask very specific questions. I don't get to ask that of hard data. But if people, I can say, they can say something. I go, oh, and I can ask qualifying questions. you know, and it was, anyways, always need to do that. I really liked the store. It was really cool. So it was right down the street from Red Fox Excape Room.

We did one called the U-Boat, where it was the it was World War II, I believe. And we'd gotten onto a they'd confiscated a U-boat and we had to find, we had an enigmus machine, and we had to find the books so we could figure out their code. But then we had

escape before the ship sunk and some drama. This one was, I don't want to get away, but this one that was called, there was both the escape rooms I did. Actually, we were quite impressed, but they were very fun. Oh, the interesting thing about this one, the U-boat, was my family escaped with nine seconds to go. Our former record was 15 seconds.

So my family does, we solve most of the escape rooms we do. And actually, the U-boat was the hardest one they had. So we normally try to take the ones that are on the upper end. We don't always solve it. It depends on the room. It depends how complicated it is. is. But we solved a good chunk of them. We also went to Harvard Yard. That's where

actual Harvard is. And the other thing that we did, by the way, I don't get into details, is I got a lot of recommendations for really good places to eat and good places to try, whether there's lunches and dinners and desserts. And so we went to a bunch of different places. It was really fun. My family definitely has different culinary things they like. So we tried a different things. And we're on vacation, so we did a lot of sweets and tried a lot of ice cream and donuts and stuff like that, which is pretty cool. Okay, so Friday was my day of reminiscence.

So Friday, we went to Boston University. And we were in that area, the Back Bay and Kopply and that Camer Square. We saw Fenway Park. We saw a cheers bar. We did stuff in that area. The interesting thing about going back to... One of the things about the trip in general is my family had never been to Boston. So a lot of it was me introducing...

Like, here's a classic city, let's see Boston. But a little bit was some reminiscing for me. Obviously, I've got to see my friends. And going back to see Boston University was a perfect example of never going home again. Like, there were buildings I recognized. Both my dorms are still there, although Miles Standish Hall has since been renamed. Because they decided to name something after Miles Stand. I just wasn't right.

And my school couch communications, the building was still there. The liberal arts part of the school, all that, those buildings were there. But there's a lot of new buildings.

There was a new center for the students. There was a new theater. There was all sorts of stuff they had built since I had been there because I graduated, you know, 35 years ago. And so it was interesting seeing things

I did recognize and things I did. And even the things I did recognize that. I went back to my the dorm I lived in my sophomore through senior year and I walked in and

they just completely changed the inside like it wasn't it literally I mean it just I mean if you had blindfolded me and then opened my blindfold right there and said where are you

I never in a million years would have guessed that it was my dorm um yeah but like my college was you know more similar although it's funny in my in uh college communication they have an auditorium.

The auditorium had a stage. If you ever heard me talk about Lego My Ego, or I didn't play The Last Impressions, which was a romantic comedy where every scene takes place before it, so it goes backwards. Pinter did something like it. But anyway,

the stage is no longer accessible. It's now like a storage room and they turned, like they cut off the stage and now they're just like things there to, you know, to write on, like whiteboards. But like, so obviously the play that I performed all my plays.

It isn't even a stage anymore. And so anyway, it was really interesting. It was very interesting to sort of reminiscency things. And part of the trip that was fun for me was that. And I didn't very much enjoy that. Like I said, we went to Cammore Square, which is where my dorm was. We went to Family Park, which is right on to Camar Square.

We then went to see the Cheers Bar. We did a bunch. We had a whole checklist of things we wanted to see. The way it works, the way my family works is we have a whiteboard at home and we write down all the different things. We do some research and we write down everything we think maybe the family wants to see. And then we go through and we sort of chop up the days and say where we're going and okay, we're going to this place and what do we need to do? Every once in a while, like Bodeabor, we really were interested in seeing so we went to Molden. They're actually never been to Molden before.

other things were like okay I wanted to see Daniel Hall so we carved up sort of the city but it was really super fun oh the last thing we did on Friday by the way is we did a bus tour what's it called something in graves ghosts in gravestones or something where they took us around

showed us old old graveyards and we learned about just some history and some different stories like I said see Samuel Adams and yeah there's a thing that you think is for Benjamin Franklin but it's his parents I guess it's in Philadelphia. But anyway, there's just a lot of fun history.

And so I had a great time. I will say if you've never been to Boston, heartily recommend it. There are a whole bunch of great games in Boston, by the way. We just stuck really close to the downtown city. And so a lot of the ones that I had recommendations were just farther out of the city. But if you have access to a car or are you willing to travel a little more

and you're in Boston, there's lots and lots of fun places to play Magic. Your move game, sadly, is no longer open. But, like I said, there is a lot of fun history in Boston, like I said. Magic, every city, you know, has its own relationship with magic. But Boston has a pretty rich one. And there are a lot, you know, when you look at sort of the top magic players, pro players of all time, a lot of them went through Boston.

Like I said, it was quite the hub. So anyway, just a little tip of. I don't know. One of the things about doing so many podcasts is I look ways to diversify a little bit. I know this one is a little bit light on magic content. But I've discovered that people seem to like some variety. And so, but anyway, Boston's super fun. I cannot recommend enough if you and your family or just you want to go and visit.

There's lots of fun things to do there. The escape rooms were great. Bo de Bordeaux was fun. Anyway, so many fun things to do. We had a great time. My family really had a good time. Also, by the way, it was very hot. I don't recommend it being very hot,

but they don't much control over that. There was a little bit of heat wave we were there, so a little warmer than that was ideal. But we definitely enjoyed it, and the tea was air-conditioned. The tea is the subway system. Oh, another great thing about Boston,

I didn't mention real quickly, is they have really good public transportation. We just bought a T-pass for the week and included all the subways, all the buses, and we could travel. everywhere we wanted to go, and we figured it all out, and it was very fun. So I heartily recommend that.

So anyway, guys, that is all about my trip to Boston. I promise next time we'll have a little more magic content. But when you're almost 1,400 in, you grab for whatever topic you can get. So anyway, guys, I hope you enjoyed hearing about Boston, but I'm at work. So we all know that means it means at the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.