Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #428: 2015

Episode Date: April 21, 2017

This is another in my series "20 Years, 20 Podcasts" where I talk in detail about all the Magic stuff that happened in a particular year.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in a long series called 20 Years 20 Podcasts, which is very inaccurately named since it's been more than 20 podcasts. But what happened was, many years back, on the 20th anniversary of the game, at one of the World's Competitions, I did a video where I spent 20 minutes talking about the 20 years, one year, one minute per year. And that inspired this series in which I take each year of magic since its creation in 1993 and have dedicated a whole year to talking about what happened in that year. So we are up to 2015. Obviously, I'm getting pretty close to modern day

so I will continue to do this series but at a much slower rate than I once was ok so we go back to the year 2015 so on January 17th was the pre-release and January 23rd was the release of Fates Were Forged codenamed Dewey. So it had 185 cards,

70 commons, 60 uncommons, 35 rares, and 10 mythic rares. So it was the continuation of Khans of Tarkir, the Huey to Fates Dewey. So basically what happened was, if you remember in Khans of Tarkir, there were five factions. the Huey to Fate's Dewey.

So basically what happened was, if you remember in Kanzantarkir, there were five factions. And each of the factions was wedge-related, meaning it was three colors, which was a color and its two enemies. So the idea is Sarkhan Vol was the main character. He had returned home to his world his warlord turn world

where dragons had been killed off and he always loved the dragons and feel like that the loss of the dragons was a cruel twist to the world well he gets the opportunity to travel back in time and Fate Reforged is back in time so the way this worked was Fate Reforged was back in time. So the way this worked was,

Fate Reforged was a small set, Kansatera was a large set, Dragons of Tarkir, which we'll talk about a little later in this thing, was also a large set. Fate Reforged was drafted with either set. And to make that make sense, we had a story with an altered timeline.

So what happens is, Tarkin goes back in time, and he changes something. What does he change? Well, Nicol Bolas and Ugin are having a major dragon fight. And what happens in the original timeline is Nicol Bolas wins and kills Ugin. And Ugin, it turns out there's a special property to Tarkir that dragons aren't born in a traditional sense on Tarkir. They come from these dragon tempests.

And without Ugin there, the tempests stop happening. So Ugin's death leads to no more new dragons. And so once the dragons die, once the humans figure out there's no more dragons, they manage to kill them off. And then there's a world without dragons. Well, he goes back in time and he ends up saving Ugin. Bolas still thinks he kills Ugin because he saves Ugin after Bolas leaves. But he manages to put him in a cocoon.

And so actually Ugin doesn't wake up until modern day. But he does save him. And by saving him, saves the dragons. So when he comes back, there's a different timeline. The dragons aren't dead. In fact, the dragons are running everything. So in this set, there were six mechanics. Kahn's of Tarkir had six mechanics.

They had morph, and they had a mechanic for each of the five guilds. Not guilds, sorry. Five clans, I think we called them. So what happens when you go back in time is, first off, instead of morph, there's a protomorph we called manifest. So what manifest was is, when you played a manifest card, you would take the top card of wherever it told you, usually your library, and place it face down. And then, if it was a creature, you have the ability to pay its mana cost to turn it face up. So it's kind of like, it's morph-ish, kind of a proto-morph.

Then what we did is, the idea is, there's two splinter timelines. So what we, mechanically, what we did is, three of the mechanics are the mechanics that you would see in Khans of Tarkir, and two are mechanics that you won't see in Ordragons, or, you know, that timeline. So the idea is you see mechanics from both timelines is the idea. So from Khans, we brought back Prowess for white, red, blue, called Jeskai. Brought back Delve for Sultai, which is blue, black, green.

And we brought back Ferocious, which was Temur, which is red, green, blue. But the... Let's see who else. The Abzan had a different mechanic called Bolster. Oh, real quickly. Prowess, which you guys hopefully should know,

became evergreen, is whenever you cast a non-creature spell, creature gets plus one, plus one. Delve gets cheaper if you remove cards from your graveyard. You can use that to lessen the spells. Ferocious is a bonus if you have a creature

that has power four or more. Bolster, put plus one, plus one counters on your... Is that lowest toughness creature? Is it lowest power or lowest toughness? I think it's lowest toughness creature.

And then Dash was the Mardu mechanic. Red, black, white. I should mention, by the way, because this is proto-world, the guilds are primary in two colors and splash in a third. So the mechanics, for example, I think just go in the two primary colors. Anyway, Dash is a creature mechanic that you can cast these creatures for a different cost. And if you do, usually lower,

they enter with haste, but then they return at end of turn to hand. And there's a whole bunch of different fun things we did with Dash. So anyway, this was chock full of stuff. The set was led, the design was led by Ken Nagel. I gave it to him because he was one of

the most senior people, because this is a really complicated design. We made use of hybrid technology, because the weirder thing was, it had a draft fine with Kanzatar Kyr, which was a wedge set, and then it had a draft well with Dragatar Kyr, which was an ally color set. And so Heidi made cards that both

feel like they belong with a three color and feel like they belong with a two color. And the solution was, one of the solutions was hybrid mana. So we made use of cards that, like, were three color, but you didn't need all three colors to play, for example. But anyway, that was

Fate Reforged. So shortly after, on February 6th to the 8th, was Protor Fate Reforged in Washington, D.C. So it had, its formats were Modern and Constant Archeer, Faced Archeer, Booster Draft. So the first of the Booster Drafts was planned for the block. This is the point where most of the Protors had been standard,

but at the time, I think we still did one Modern. We don't do the Modern anymore, but at the time we used to do one Modern Protor. This was it. We don't do the modern anymore, but at the time we used to do one modern pro tour. This was it. So in it, Antonio del Moral Leon from Spain defeats Justin Cohen from the United States. Then, February 27th was dual decks.

Elspeth versus Kiora. So the way dual decks work is once a year we have a planeswalker versus planeswalker matchup and the other one usually was tied to the fall release so the reason Elspeth versus Kiora I think the thing is we go back a year so this was looking at planeswalkers

from Pharos and I think we were trying to figure out planeswalkers that hadn't yet been in a dual deck before so we were trying to figure out Planeswalkers that hadn't yet been in a duel deck before. So we were kind of limited in our choices, and it's not really that Elisabeth and Kira, in the story, I'm not sure, I mean,

sometimes because of the duel deck, they'll make sure the characters meet in the story. Sometimes they'll try to get the characters to actually have a fight in the story. I'm not sure if Elisabeth met Kiora. And if she did, it was only because this product existed.

Usually what we try to do is, we can come up with a good battle, like a good conflict. We do. So, for example, there's been a couple in the past where it was a legit conflict between the parties. And so, you know, like them fighting actually made sense.

Like in the story, they really did fight. Or they at least had a lot of animosity toward each other. This one is interesting in that Elspeth's the good guy and Kiora's not the good guy. She's sort of more, I don't know, chaotic neutral in some way. But, I mean, maybe they find the story for this. I don't remember. But, anyway, I didn't write it down. I assume, I didn't write the colors down.

I assume Kiora's deck is blue-green because she's blue-green, and Elspeth's either mono-white or white-splash, a second color. I'm not sure. I don't remember. I did't write the colors down. I assume Kiara's deck is blue-green, Christie's blue-green, and El's Bath is either mono-white or white-splash, a second color. I'm not sure. I don't remember. I did not write it down. Okay. On March 21st is the pre-release,

and March 27th is the release of Dragons of Tarkir, a.k.a. Louie. So, Huey, Dewey, and Louie real quick, just for those that don't know those are the code names of these three sets that was the three nephews of Donald Duck

Donald Duck has three triplet nephews that all look the same except wear different colored shirts and caps and I thought it was a cute name at the time I turned out it was a cute name at the time. It turned out it was a horrible name for a couple reasons.

First off, not everybody knows Donald Duck's nephew, so the order Huey, Dewey, and Louie was... I picked it because if you read the comics or watch the cartoons, they are always referred to as Huey, Dewey, and Louie in that order. So I'm like, oh, they have a clear set order. The problem was not enough people... I mean, a few of them... Louie, in that order. So I'm like, oh, they have a clear set order. The problem was, not enough people, I mean, a few of them, a lot of people didn't even know who they were, and a few of them got there with Donald Duck's nephews, but

they had no idea what the order was. And the problem was that they rhymed, so they were really easy to confuse with one another. So people didn't know the order, the fact they rhymed made the interconnection of them confusing, and for those who don't know, they're all spelled differently. Huey is H-U-E-Y.

Dewey is D-E-W-E-Y. And Louie is L-O-U-I-E. So, they're all spelled differently. So, it's not even like they're spelled the same. So, anyway, it caused massive confusion. We made a rule that said stop having rhyming names as keyword names. Although, we would have a few after that

even though we made that rule. Not on purpose, just lock and stock, for example. Lock, stock, and barrel. Lock and stock rhymed, and then we had, like, tears and fears. But anyway, it proved to be a very bad codename. Okay, the set had 264 cards,

101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythics. Had 15 lands. So the way it worked was we're now in the alternate timeline. So, and this was ally colored. Originally, by the way, it was going to be enemy colored

because players had been clamoring for an enemy colored set and I wanted to deliver it to them. Plus, we had never done enemy colored dragons. And I thought it'd be cool to do enemy colored dragons. Turns out we had never done legendary ally colored dragons either. But anyway,

so what happened was I wanted enemy colored, but as we started working on the draft structure, which was Wedge and then becoming whatever this became, Eric Lauer came to me

and said, here's the problem. The correct way to draft wedge is to draft enemy color because enemy ties into two different wedge, you know. If I draft an ally color, then I'm really committing to one wedge. But if I draft enemy color, then I'm open

to two wedges. And so, the correct strategy for drafting concert arc here was to draft enemy color. So his concern was, if we made this enemy color, the draft would be too similar. So I knew Eric was correct. So I

changed it to ally. I promise you, the people that keep clamoring for... We've only done one enemy color set in the history of Magic, which was Apocalypse, which was a long time ago. And I know that we are shy on legendary things of enemy color, that we've done a lot more ally stuff. And so people are always clamoring for an enemy set. I promise you we will get there eventually. I tried for it to be this set, but for mechanical reasons it did not work.

Okay, so what happened in this set was... So in Condor Dark here, we had five factions. They were Wedge. So, Abzan had Outlast. Jeskai had Prowess. Who was next? Sultai had Delve. Mardu had

Raid and Teemer had Ferocious. So what we wanted to do was we wanted dragons to have five completely different mechanics, but mechanics that played nicely with mechanics that showed up in the first block. And then we wanted to have a morph variant.

So the idea was we had morph, then protomorph, and this was supposed to be future morph. And we tried a whole bunch of a morph variant. So the idea was we had morph, then proto-morph, and this was supposed to be future morph. And we tried a whole bunch of different morph variants. We ended up going with mega-morph, which means that you cast it, and a mega-morph, when you turn face up, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. So the idea is,

if you cast it through its morph, it gets to be a little bit bigger than if you just outright cast it. It was an offshoot of something we called Smorph. So what Smorph was, is instead of playing three mana for a 2-2, you played four mana for a 3-3. What you did is you put it face down

and put a plus one plus one counter on it. The problem with that was that you couldn't mix it with morph and manifest because the audience knew it was a Smurf card. So it got killed for being incompatible. In retrospect, I wish... I'm not sure how often it matters that you play a Morph or a Megamorph and people don't know which it is.

So, I don't know. I'm sad we didn't do Smurf. People didn't like the name. Megamorph rated really low in our... I mean, like one of the bottom ever rated mechanics. Now the funny thing is it plays well. It saw a tournament play. It's actually a good mechanic.

I think the name was a little goofy and I think people's expectations were a lot more grandiose. Because we went back in time and did a really different variant. Manifest is a really different morph variant. And we went to the future and people felt like different variant. Manifest is a really different morph variant. And we went to the future and people felt like we just didn't do enough of a difference. Okay.

So then what we did is each one of the keywords fit in with... It was synergistic with the wedge keyword. And the idea being is, let's say I have a wedge clan deck I made. When you get this thing, it fits into that deck if you want it to. I mean, you could, so for example, let's say I'm playing a Jeskai deck, and then I get Ojitai. Ojitai is white and blue. Well, it fits into your red, white, blue deck.

So it fits into it, was the idea. So, okay, so let's run through. So Abzan was Outlast, And so this set was Bolster. I just talked about Bolster being in Paper Forge. So Bolster generated plus one, plus one counters. Outlast also generated plus one, plus one counters. And there are a whole bunch of cards that cared about plus one, plus one counters. So it's sort of these two played together nicely.

Then Jeskai turns into Ojitai. Jeskai was all about, um, um, prowess, and it turns into Rebound, which was our repeat mechanic from, what was it from? Uh, Champions of the Common God? What was it from? I'm blanking on what it was from. Um, anyway, what it does is, they're sorcerer's instants that when you play it, they happen Uh... Champions coming? Where was it from? I'm blanking on where it was from. Anyway, what it does is they're sorcerer's instants

that when you play it, they happen again next turn. Well, prowess cares about non-creature spells being played. Well, this, in one card, gets you two spells. So it works really well with prowess. Then, um...

Saltai had delve, which had things where you use the graveyard as a resource. Uh, then, uh, I don't know the dragon's names. Uh, Blackblue was Exploit, which is a mechanic that said when this enters the battlefield, it was on creatures, if you sacrifice a creature, you get an effect out of it. And the idea was, uh, in a vacuum, this creature could turn into a spell, essentially, because you could just sac itself. But, if you had a cheaper creature that was less of, you know, you didn't want, you could sacrifice that to get the spell, spell effect. Then, Teemer had Ferocious, and Red-Green was Formidable. So Ferocious got an upgrade if you had all creatures that had power four or greater.

And Formidable got upgraded if you had a combined power of eight or greater. So it looked at all your creatures rather than just one. But obviously, if you were able to, you know, if you're halfway to Formidable, if you could do Ferocious. So both really wanted you to have a lot of creatures. And then, the last one, you had Raid in the first set, and then we had Dash, which was the upgraded mechanic

where you could get haste and attack the turn you played it. And so Raid and Dash played nice together. So the funny thing about Dragons of Tarkir was we really thought that, like, that people were going to go gaga for, oh, it's all dragons all the time, dragon, dragon, dragon, dragon. And the funny thing is we had made a world that people liked so much in Khans of Tarkir that people really liked the clans,

that when Sarkhan altered the timeline and brought back dragons, the players were sad that we had sort of killed the clans. And so what we were hoping people for was like, yay, dragons! They were like, oh, really? Why did Sarkhan change the timeline? So it didn't quite

pan out the way we hoped. I mean, dragons are real popular. When you do our market research, it's like the most powerful creature type by far. I's like the most powerful creature type by far. I'm sorry, most popular creature type by far. I think angels is number two. And goblins is number three, for those that care. Okay, so on April 10th through the 12th

in Brussels, Belgium, was standard, I mean, not standard, was Protor, Dragons of Tarkir. And the formats was standard, I mean not standard, was Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir. And the formats were standard and Dragons of Tarkir, Fate Reforged draft. So now you've got to do the second. So each timeline got its own draft at a Pro Tour. So at, in Brussels, at Pro Tour Dragons of Tarkir, Martin Dang of Denmark defeated Shota Yasuka of Japan.

So Yasuka, for those who might not know, he's a Hall of Famer. He also was the 2006 Player of the Year. So that was a pretty high-octane finals. Okay. Moving on. May 6 was Tempest Remastered.

Now that was an online-only only product so what we did was we took all of Tempest Block so Tempest, Stronghold and Exodus and we remade it using modern development technology and so the trick was that they were allowed to take any cards they wanted from the whole Tempest block to make a cool, modern drafting experience.

The only caveat was they couldn't change anything about the cards. The only tool available to them was they could... Now, they were able to change rarities, and they were able to use cards from anywhere else in the whole block, but they made a large set worth of cards for a drafting experience. So the set ended up being 269 cards, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythics, 20 lands. So it was changed to modern day sizes. Sets were actually slightly bigger back then. So it was changed to modern, had modern rarities to it. It really was a fun experiment to sort of see what you could do.

Like I said, the fact that they could only use cards that pre-existed, that were from the block, meant that they didn't have, you know, a lot of times if you want to do something, you can just change the card. Oh, we're missing a three-drop? Fine, this four-drop becomes a three-drop. Couldn't do that there. I believe the person who designed this, I think, was Adam Prozac. Oh, Drags of Tarkir, by the way,

the lead designer was Mark Gottlieb. I don't, not that lead developers aren't really important, just I don't know them off the top of my head and I did not write them down. So, because I'm in charge of design, I know who did things because I was, you know,

that's who I interacted with. I think Drag Stark here, I know Condor Stark here had been Eric Lauer leading the development, and Dragon Stark here, I'm pretty sure, was Dave Humphreys. Oh, no, no, no. He did Fate Reforged. Dave did

Fate Reforged, and I think Tom Lepilli did Dragon Stark here. I think, actually, it might have been a combination of Tom and Dave did Dragon's Dark here. I think Dave did Fates Reforged, and then Tom and Dave together did Dragon's Dark here. And Tempest Remastered,

I don't know. I mean, there was a design team that then handed off the development team, or maybe they were all, maybe for that product, it was just one. Adam Prozek, I think, led that. So I think he might have been the design and development. Development's a little less important

in a product in which all the cards have already been tested. I mean, there's some development to be done, obviously, but not quite as much as a product in which you've never seen the cards before. And people ask me all the time,

is Tempest Remastered ever going to come to paper? Like, would we ever take that product and print paper versions? The one thing stopping us is the reserve list. About 80% of the rares in those blocks

are on the reserve list. And I don't... There's no way to make this product without making some cards on the reserve list. There were enough restraints on it already. So, anyway, Tempest from After will not be a paper product, but it was fun. I don't know how often

by the time we're talking now things come on for X amount of time. Maybe it's the kind of thing once in a blue moon they do a nostalgia draft. I don't know. Anyway, before it began Adam came to me to ask because Tempest was my first set, obviously.

And so we walked through what Tempest was up to and the design and what our thoughts were. And I gave him some insights into how I thought it clicked together so that he can reimagine it, you know, he can remaster it. Okay, moving on. So May 22nd was Modern Masters 2015 edition. So I think this was the second Modern Masters, I think. One of the problems with jumping back in the past, when you have products that are all, you know,

Modern Masters 2013 or whatever. In fact, I think the first Modern Masters didn't have a year on it. And then when we did the second didn't have a year on it. And then when we did the second one, we put a year on it because we had to differentiate them. So Modern Masters started out as a one-time supplemental product thing.

Proved to be very popular and we've since turned the Masters series into an annual product. It's not always Modern Masters. Last year we did Eternal Masters. So, I mean, there's different Masters things. But anyway, into an annual product. It's not always Modern Mafters. Last year we did Eternal Mafters. So, I mean, there's different Mafters things. But anyway, this was the second of them.

And the Mafters was we wanted to give people more access to cards from Modern, but we also wanted people to have a fun draft experience that sort of allowed you to draft Modern cards. And so Modern Mafter Masters was this cross between a fun modern product that also, you know, gave people more access and stuff. Anyway, Modern Masters... Oh, I didn't write the date down.

But there was a giant Grand Prix that used Modern Masters. And I think at the time it was the largest Grand Prix ever. I think it was like a record-setting Grand Prix. There were, I don't remember exactly, but thousands and thousands and thousands of people there. I think the Grand Prix itself might have had like 3,000 people, I think. I mean, they capped out the Grand Prix. Like, they couldn't have any more people. So that's a pretty big, and they were prepared for a lot of people.

So that was pretty big. Okay, moving on. So next, July 11th was the pre-release, and July 17th was the release of Magic Origins. She didn't have a codename. I think it was like M15 or something was the codename. So it had 272 cards, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 55 rares, and 16 mythic rares, 20 lands.

So it had two mechanics, which was renown, which was renown had a number after it, and the first time a renown creature does combat damage to the opponent, you get to put that many plus one, plus one counters on it. Now some renown creatures also care about having plus one counters. And then spell mastery went on, I think just Instants and Sorceries. And there are spells that upgraded if you had two Instants or Sorceries in your graveyard. So it's a spell that kind of encouraged you to play Instants and Sorceries. So Magic Origins was the start

of something new. So we were starting, we were we started doing a refresh on two different things. We were changing kind of how we were doing the sets. Dragon's Dark here was the last of what we call the third set, three set blocks.

For years and years and years, the way Magic did blocks was we had a large set in the fall. These are all, you know, northern hemisphere seasons. In the fall, we would have a large set in the fall. These are all, you know, north northern hemisphere seasons. We had, in the fall, we would have a large set. In the winter, we'd have usually a small set. And in the spring, we'd have either a small set or a large set, depending on what we were up to. In the beginning, it was always a small set. Eventually, we started doing large sets. And we eventually figured out

that it wasn't quite working. So we changed to a two-block model. And what the two-block model was, starting with Battle for Zendikar, which I will get to momentarily or eventually in this podcast, we were doing a large set in the fall, a small set in the winter, and then a large set in the spring, and a small set in the summer. And so we were going to be doing two blocks a year. Each block, instead of being three sets, would only be two sets, a large and a small. And starting with Magic Origins, we were also, not rebooting, but changing up how we were

doing the story a little bit. So at the time, there were five characters in Magic Origins that you are seeing the origin of. So it's five Planeswalkers. In white was Gideon, in blue was Jace, in black was Liliana, in red was Chandra, and green was Nissa. So you did not know it at the time,

but these obviously would be the first five members of the Gatewatch, who are currently playing a major role in the story. And so we were giving you their origin. So the way the set worked was for each color, or sorry, for each planeswalker, you got to see what plane they originated on, their home plane,

and you got to see what plane they went to for the very first time when they sparked. So for those that don't know how it works, usually sometime in adolescence, but at some point in your life, when you undergo great trauma, your spark will ignite and you will teleport, your planes walk for the first time to a different plane.

Up until that point, usually you had no idea that there was a multiverse. And, okay, so, as of the set, before the set came out, the only one who we knew their home plane was Nyssa, who was from Zendikar, obviously, okay, so, and as of the set, before the set came out, the only one who we knew their home plane was Nyssa, who was from Zendikar, obviously, we knew that. Okay, so Gideon turned out was from Pharos, people didn't know that. Uh, and his first, uh, planeswalk, he sparked to Bant. Um, Jace was originally from Vryn. Um, Vryn had only been mentioned before

in Plane Chase, the supplemental product where you had the different planes. We introduced a bunch of different planes, and two of those show up for the first time in the set. I think the first time in the set. Jace was from Vryn, and his first planeswalk was to Ravnica.

Liliana was from Dominaria, no one knew that. And her first walk was to Ravnica. Liliana was from Dominaria. No one knew that. And her first walk was to Innistrad. Chandra was from Kaladesh, a place you guys had never met before. In fact, was made just for this product. Although, obviously, as you guys all know,

we eventually went there. So we knew when we made this that we were planning to go there. So we spent some extra energy on Kaladesh because it was part of our plan to be going to Kaladesh. Then, when she goes, to go there. So we spent some extra energy on Kaladesh because it was part of our plan to be going to Kaladesh. Then she goes

to Ragatha, which is kind of a volcanic plain. Ragatha had been also in Plane Chase, just like Vryn had been. But that's the only reference I think you'd seen to those two. And then Nissa started on Zendikar, which is the one place people knew, and she ended up going to Lorwyn.

So really what we were trying to do is show our characters interacting with a bunch of planes people knew. You know, Ravnica, Innistrad, Lara, Lorwyn, you know. And so anyway, and not only only that we also introduced some new planes well we finally showed off Rin and Ragatha and we introduced Kaladesh

and we had to spend extra energy on Kaladesh because we knew we were going to Kaladesh so there was a lot of time and energy spent in Magic Origins but anyway

Magic Origins shows the five origin stories oh and the coolest part about it is we had five planeswalkers well five legendary creature cards representing the five origin stories. Oh, and the coolest part about it is we had five planeswalker, well five legendary creature cards representing the five characters, and then they transformed because they were double-faced cards.

You got to see them spark and they transformed into planeswalkers. Now, the way we did it is, I think you saw them on the front side, the age of which they first sparked, and you saw them on the back side, the age of which they first sparked, and you saw them on the back side, modern day. So we learned also, for example, that both Gideon and Chandra were pretty young when they sparked. They were kids, especially Chandra, who was like 12. She was pretty young. And you learn their story.

You also learn about, because we told you their origin story, so what exactly caused each of the characters to spark? And as we learned, there was trauma in all their lives. Chandra was about to be killed when she sparked, stuff like that. It's kind of cool. And then there was a theme in the set of growth

because we were watching the characters grow. That's why both Renown and Spellmaster had a flavor of growth to them. Now the set originally, by the way, before we decided to do what we did, originally was going to be a normal core set that had a villains theme in it. But once we realized that the core set was going away as part of the two block plan and that we were going to start this new storyline, we decided to use it as a means to introduce. we were going to start this new storyline. We decided to use it as a means to introduce.

So Magic Origins is very core set-like, although it's a little more aggressive than a normal core set. Normal core sets didn't have new mechanics, and this had new mechanics. So it wasn't exactly a core set. It was sort of a, we used to call it a core set plus. Okay, anyway, that was Magic Origins. And then July 31st

Oh, hold on. Before I get to that. July 17th, at the same time the set came out, was Deck Builder's Toolkit, 2015 edition. So what we do is every year we put out a Deck Builder's Toolkit, which is meant as a product to help a new player. One of the things we know

when you're beginning, it's hard to get a lot of cards. So Deck Specialist Toolkit is mostly commons and uncommons, but a whole bunch of cards. And so it allows a newer player to just get a lot of cards. It gives you deck themes, and the way it's put together is there's different clumps of cards that push toward different themes to help encourage you to build decks for the first time,

you know, thematic decks. And that came out July 17th. Anyway, then July 31st through August 2nd was Pro Tour Magic Origins in Vancouver, Canada. The formats were Standard and Origins Booster Draft. And there, Joel Larson of Sweden defeats Mike Sigrist of the USA. So Mike Sigrist was the 2014-2015 Player of the Year. Joel Larson was a longtime pro from Sweden. I think this was his first win at a Pro Tour, I believe.

But anyway, two really good players played in the finals in Canada, in Vancouver. And then, let's see, August 21st was From the Vault Angels. So when we first made the product from the vault, it was a brainchild of one of our magic brand managers and us I think now he's a brand director. Um, He came up with the idea as a product to Sort of show off the collecting of magic make them cool for the stores and the very first one we made was from the vault dragons and Elaine who is uh another

brand manager now the vp of um magic brand um she really was uh wanted to do a from the vault angels and she encouraged us she wanted the follow-up from the vault dragon to be from the vault angels but we were like we really want to mix it up. If we just always do creature types, then people believe that's what it is. And so I think the second one was Exiled. Cards that have been banned and restricted. But anyway, we promised Elaine that one day we would get to Angels and finally we came

true in our word. So finally, From the Vault Angels. So it had 15 Angels. I didn't write down the Angels or anything, but it's... And there's some that, like, we, we, we managed to get, um, some versions of art you haven't seen. Some, some is brand new art, but some, like Sarah, was art that we'd used, but, and, you know, either I'd never printed it on a card, or I think maybe it was only a promo card.

But anyway, if you love angels, that was for you from the Vault Angels. Um, okay. But anyway, if you love angels, that was for you from the Vault Angels. Okay, and then on August 28th, we had Duel Decks, Zendikar versus Eldrazi. So our custom at the time was that the fall Duel Decks would be tied into the fall set. So the fall set was Battle for Zendikar. So we had been there before. Turns out, by the way, that it's hard to lead into a set where you haven't been there before. We luckily had been to Zendikar, so we had a whole block of Zendikar cards to play around with to make these decks. When you're going to a brand new world, it's a lot more challenging because you just don't have

cards from that world. But anyway, this was trying to show up the fight that the Battle for Zendikar was all about a battle between the Zendikari and the Eldrazi, so we showed that up in the duel deck. And then, August 28th of the 30th, was the 2015 World Championship at PAX. So we actually had a giant,

Magic likes doing things at PAX, in 2015, we decided to do a giant reveal for Battle for Zendikar. In fact, if you Google PAX 2015 Battle for Zendikar, you will see, we had this cool thing where we had, I think it was Ulamog, that was breaking out of the window, Like, there's this giant statue. He was, like, half in, half out. And out on the street, he was, like, crushing a police car. And, you know, it was really cool.

So we spent that, and we had a giant blowout where we introduced for the very first time Battle for Zemekar. We had a big show that I took part of. I was on stage with Will Whedon. And I did a whole podcast on this, by the way, if you want to hear it. If this sounds fun, you want to hear it all in detail.

You can hear about how I practiced with Will Whedon multiple times, only on the final show, him to say to me, I'm going to go somewhere different with this. But it went well.

It went well. It was fun. I enjoyed Will. Will was fun. Anyway, at the same event, we had the World Championships. So they played four formats of the World Championships. They did a Modern Masters Booster Draft. They played Modern. They did a Magic Origins Booster Draft, and they played Standard. And the finals were played in Standard. So anyway, at it, Seth Manfield from the USA

defeats Owen Turnwald, also from the USA. So Owen would later get inducted into the Hall of Fame. Maybe one day Seth will. I don't think he's qualified yet. Anyway, both really good players, and it was quite the finals. And that was a very interesting world. I mean, worlds got kind of

overshadowed that year, just because they were sort of stuck in the basement of all the stuff that was going on. And the next year, in 2016, which was last year for us, we were a little bit better at that. Once again, the world champion was at PAX, but we gave it a little bit more focus, a little more spotlight, if you will, than we had the previous year. But that is from the 2016 podcast.

We'll get to that. But anyway, that was a big packed blowout. It was fun. I had some busy, busy days. In fact, one of my days, I remember, I think I had to show up for, like I had to show up at like,

I don't remember what it was, some crazy, crazy early time, like 6.45 a.m. And then I left at like 11.30 p.m. I had a long day. Okay, but anyway, speaking of Battle for Zendikar, on September 20th, no, 26th, was the pre-release. October 2nd was the release of Battle for Zendikar.

274 cards? Yeah, 274 cards, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 57 rares, 15 mythics, 25 land. The land were full art land, by the way, for those that don't know that. That was a big hit. We had done that the first time in Zendikar on the Travel Back. We also did it. So Battle for Zendikar was when we had left off, there was a cliffhanger. What had happened was we came to Zendikar for Zendikar and World of Wake,

but we knew something was amiss. Oh, the Eldrazi had been trapped inside the world and why the world was going crazy. And so in Rise of the Eldrazi, a combination of some planeswalkers and so I believe it was Jace, Chandra, and Sarkin had been kind of lured

to a certain spot by Nicol Bolas, made them unlock the door, if you will, to the jail. Nissa opened the door thinking that the Odrazi would flee to her plane, and the plane would be safe. That's not quite what happened. So anyway, they got free, and we kind of ended on this cliffhanger, like, what's going to happen to Zendikar?

So we came back. It was time to see what had happened. So what had happened was the Odrazi had kind of taken over the place, and things were looking pretty grim for the natives of Zendikar, the Zendikari, but they had not given up the fight. And so we sort of told what we call a rebel story, kind of like Star Wars, where like someone's in power and they have a great advantage, but you're rooting for the underdogs to see if they can take back their world. So this set was the first set in the new two-block structure,

although it changed mid-design, which brought up some challenges. So there were a lot of mechanics in the set. I will run through them all. So Rally was a variant on the ally mechanic that you saw in original Zendikar. Just cleaned up a little bit. And the original one only worked on your allies. This one worked on all your creatures rather than just your allies. But basically Raleigh was

when a creature enters the battlefield Raleigh says whenever this or another ally enters your battlefield, it does something that affects your creatures. Either it counts them or it doesn't an effect for them. It grants them all something. And that was Rally. Landfall came back. That's a popular mechanic. Landfall triggers whenever you play a land. Awaken was a spell mechanic

that if you kicked the spell, if you paid extra mana for the spell, you animated, permanently animated a land. You put plus one plus one counters on a land and animated it so you turn it into a creature. Still as a land, but now it can attack or block. Devoid was, the Odrazi were all colorless. But because we didn't want everything to be sort of what we call true colorless, we made a bunch of cards that were inspired by Ghostfire from Rise of the Odrazi. No, I'm sorry, from Future Sight. And Ghostfire was a colored spell,

meaning it cost color to cast it, but was colorless. And there was a colorless theme that went on in the set, so Devoy played into that. Converge was a mechanic that made you count how many colors of mana you spent when you cast it, I think.

Ingest was a mechanic that made you exile cards off the top of your library. Oh, I'm sorry, not you. Made your opponent exile cards off the top of your library. And then Processors were creatures that could eat cards in your opponent's exile. And by eating them, what it did is it put them into your opponent's graveyard.

But anyway, this was Ulamog's set. Ulamog was the hungry one or the great eater or something. I'm blinking on his name. But his big thing was he consumed things. And so the Eldrazi were slowly eating the world of Zemekar. And so we wanted to capture the idea of Ulamog. At the time, he's the only Titan left. He's the only Eldrazi left.

We later learned that's not completely correct. Emrakul had gotten lured away, and we learn about why that later in a different block. But it turns out that Kozilek had gone underground, and he comes back in Born of the Gods. But anyway, this is the start of our story. When the story begins, various planeswalkers, I guess Gideon is the first one to realize this problem.

Gideon goes to get help. He runs into Jace and Liliana. Jace volunteers to come help. Liliana turns him down. They then go to Chandra, who turns him down. So just Gideon and Jace go to Zendikar. Nissa is a native, already lives on Zendikar. Kiora, also a native Zendikar, will later show up.

Anyway, they fight. They meet up Nixilis, who uses the opportunity to get back his spark. He almost defeats them. Shinder shows up at the last minute and saves the day. And then the planeswalkers, through some using some knowledge that Jace had acquired, are able to defeat them in, well, that's the story in Born of the Gods. But anyway, this is the very beginning of the founding of the Gatewatch. They don't actually become the Gatewatch until Born of the Gods.

But this is the beginning where they first start coming together. And like I said, a chock full of mechanics. I'm not sure I think any other fun facts. So October 16th through the 18th was Pro Tour Battle for Zendikar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, here in the United States. It was standard and Battle for Zendikar booster draft. And, let's see if I can say names correctly, Kazuyuki Takamura from Japan defeats Ryuichi Tamada from Japan.

So there was a point in time on the Pro Tour where the Japanese were very dominant and having a Japanese on Japanese finals was happening all the time. While the Japanese still are very good players, their dominance dipped a little bit over the years. More so, other countries came up to meet their quality. It wasn't that Japanese got any worse, just other countries also got really good. And this was the first all-Japanese finals in a while. But anyway, once again, an exciting thing.

So now we move to November 6th. So November 6th was the 2015 Holiday Gift Box. So it is five boosters, 20 basic land, a foil scythe leopard from Battle for Zendikar, and six illustrated dividers in a fancy box. This product was created because there are people, like your grandma, that might know you're into magic but have no idea what to buy you.

And what we wanted to do was make a product that very clearly told someone who had a loved one who played Magic that they were looking for a gift. It said, Hey, you want to get a gift? How about the 2015 Magic Holiday The Gathering gift box? Howdy gift box. Ooh, I think they might like

the Howdy gift box. So we wanted to make a product that was clean and clear for someone who didn't know much to buy. And that you, the Magic player, if your grandma or somebody bought it for you, you go, oh, yay, this is something I would want. We tried this product over many years, and the one thing that finally got us to succeed,

interestingly enough, was the name. That whenever we got fancy with the name, you know, the beatdown box or whatever, people didn't understand the purpose of it. So the key to the success of the product was calling it the Holiday Gift Box. Get it? It's a gift for the holidays.

It's a holiday gift box. And this was the first time I think the first time we did the dividers, I think. I know Ethan was in charge of making the dividers and I know he spent a lot of time figuring out like what dividers would you want and this and that. Oh, were the stickers? I think the dividers that came with stickers that, like, what dividers would you want and this and that. Oh, were the stickers?

I think the dividers that came with stickers, they put on the dividers, I think. Unless the stickers were next year. Anyway. Okay, moving on. November 13th was Commander 2015. So these were two-color enemy commander decks. There were five of them. And the mechanics in them is they introduced experience counters.

And the idea is experience counters stayed with you. So if your commander had activations that used experience counters, and then something happened to them and you had to recast them later, the experience counters were continuous. So the idea was your commander kind of got stronger over time, because even though he might die and come back, the thing that he referenced off of didn't go away. The experience counters didn't go away. Also, there's a mechanic called Myriad.

Creatures with Myriad attacked all players at once. So, essentially, it made a copy of every of, it made a copy of itself and then attacked every other creature. So, we had done a bunch of different commander decks, and this was, I think, the first time we had done the enemy. Like I said earlier, with Dragons of Tarkir,

we know there's a dearth of enemy color, two-color enemy legendary cards. There's a lot more ally than enemy, so this product was helping try to alleviate some of that. So the final event of the year, December 11th through the 13th in Barcelona, Spain, was the World Magic Cup.

So for those that don't know, we, the World Championship broke up into two pieces. There's the World Championships, which took place at PAX in this year, which is an invite-only tournament. Originally it was 16, and now it's up to 24. It's an invitational

event. And then, the Magic World Cup is the team event, in which, I think at the time it was top four. I now think it's top three. Anyway, at least back in 2015, the top four people

that applied that um at the uh the way it worked back then was we had three special events in your country

and it was the winners of those three events plus the your captain was the pro player that had the most pro points um from that country

and anyway um uh so the formats were the pro player that had the most pro points from that country. And anyway, so the formats were Battle for Zendikar, Team Sealed, and Team Unified Standard Constructed. So what that meant is Team Sealed is we give you a whole bunch of cards, your team divvies them up into three pools. So the way it worked, by the way, way is any one point in time three people would play and one person would be the coach so the the that way there was the best two out of three matches um and then you had somebody who got a float being the coach and it's actually kind of fun being the coach so team sealed means you you get a whole bunch of cards for your country

you build three limited decks. Standard team constructed means you're building three constructed decks. And not only are they each standard, but if you stack them on top of each other, all of them together are standard legal. So not only must each deck be standard, but all the decks together have to be standard, meaning you only get four copies of every card. So if you put two copies in one deck, you can put two copies in another deck.

But you can't have more than four copies of anything other than basic land between the three decks. So both events were very, very team-oriented. Both Team Sealed and Team Constructed are really cool in that they have a lot of interactive

play. And the way it would work is three people would sit down, they would play three people from the other team, and then the coach would be able to talk to, I mean, the players could talk to themselves, but there was a coach that was focused on going around and making sure everything was okay.

So anyway, at the 2015 Magic World Cup, I'm sorry, the World Magic Cup, I've got to say that correct, Italy defeated Thailand. I think this is the first time either of those was in the finals, I believe. So Italy, I apologize,

I'm doing my best to say these names. So Italy was Marco Camelucci, William Pizzi, Francesco Beffero, and Andrea Magucci. Those were the winners. And then the second place team, Thailand. Okay, I really apologize for these. Virapat Sirulatavarkul, Akhiresh Sorakup, Sutupong Papatukagol, and Cham Pasadaparcha.

Parcha. Parchia. I apologize. I mangled those names. Anyway, that was the final. So Italy defeated Thailand. So that's, by the way, a really fun event. I've gone to a couple of World Magic Cups,

and it is just real neat. There's a lot of a really fun event. I've gone to a couple of World Magic Cups and it is just real neat. There's a lot of team nationality spirit. The teams usually dress up in some uniform of their country. So it's just fun to watch and it's fun to, you know, they get really, you know, it's just a neat event and it's fun. We don't have a lot of team events in Magic. There's some but this is probably kind of the't have a lot of team events in Magic, there's some, but this is probably kind of the high pinnacle of team events in Magic and it's really cool to watch. So anyway,

to recap the year, I'm almost done here. 2015, we had a chock full of stuff. So once again, Fate Reforged came out. We had Protor Fate Reforged. We had dual decks from Elspeth versus Kiora. Dragon's Tarkir came out. So the Protor Fate Reforged was in Washington DC. We had a Protor of Dragon's Tarkir in Brussels. We saw a Tempest Remastered. We saw Modern Masters 2015 come out. We saw Magic Origins come out, including the deck builder. We saw Protor Magic Origins. We saw a dual deck Zendikar versus Eldrazi. We saw the PAX event happen

where we introduced it, and we saw the World Championship happen at PAX. We saw the release of Battle for Zendikar. We saw Protor Battle Zendikar in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. We had the Holiday Gift Box. We had Commander 2015. And we had the World Magic Cup in Barcelona, Spain. That's a lot of stuff to happen. So anyway, as I said in the beginning,

I will eventually get to all the years. I still got 2016 left. Probably before this year's up, I'll do 2016. And then we'll be reduced to one a year since once I'm caught up, I can only do the previous year. But the plan is to continue these. I will continue them. Probably what I'm going to do is, like, I'll do 2017 late in 2018 to give you guys a little bit of time for 2017 to go by. But anyway, I've been told a lot of people like this series. So as we get closer to modern day, I hope you 2017 to go by. But anyway, I've been told a lot of people like this series, so as we get closer to modern day, I hope you continue to enjoy it. And

that was 2015. It was a good year. As you can see, by the way, if you watch the evolution, how we just, there's more and more product getting put out. So there was a lot more to talk about, a lot more stuff. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed that. I hope you enjoyed 2015. But I'm now driving up guys enjoyed that. I hope you enjoyed 2015.

But, I'm now driving up to Rachel's school. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking about magic and all its history, it's time for me to be making magic. So we can create even more history. Anyway,

thanks for joining me, and I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.