Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #471: San Diego Comic-Con 2017

Episode Date: September 15, 2017

I attended another SDCC and had another Blogatog Live Magic panel where I talked for the first time about Unstable. In this podcast, I talk all about what happened, including a few tidbits about Unstable from the panel that didn't make it out to social media.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today I just got back this last weekend. I was in San Diego for San Diego Comic-Con 2017. So today's podcast is all about my trip to San Diego and Comic-Con. Okay, so a little history. I've done a bunch of these over the years. But a quick, I don't want to assume you've listened to every other Comic- history. I've done a bunch of these over the years. But a quick, just I don't want to assume you've listened to every other Comic-Con podcast I've done. So way back when, when I used to live in Los Angeles, before I moved out here to live in Los Angeles, I used to go down to Comic-Con every year.

And then when I started working for Wizards, there was a point where Wizards used to go to all the conventions, and so I still used to go to Comic-Con every year. Then eventually other stuff happened. Wizards didn't always have a booth. And so I stopped going to Comic-Con. And then about 10 years ago, my good friend Michael, so Michael Ryan, the same person that co-created the Weatherlight Saga with me, he was working for a company

that was going to be at Comic-Con, and so he had a room, because they had got him a room since he was going to be there, and he said, hey, I have an extra bed, why don't you come down, you know, if you fly down, I got a room for us, and we can go to Comic-Con. And I talked to my wife, and she said, that sounds like fun, you should do that, then I should do that. and I talked to my wife and she said, that sounds like fun, you should do that. Then I should do that.

So we flew down and Michael and I had a great time. So much so that the next year we did it again. And then the year after that we were going to do it again and then Michael couldn't go for some reason. So I just went by myself. And after doing Comic-Con for a couple years, I was really enjoying myself, I had been to a lot of panels and I was like, you know what? We could have a panel. Magic could have a panel. So I went

to talk to Elaine Chase, who's the VP of Magic brand, Magic brand. And I said to her, look, would you mind if I did a panel? I said, you know, I could run it. I've done panels before. I'm media trained, obviously.

Would you mind if I ran a panel and she said oh no no that sounds great you can run a panel so I set it up and then they came back and said you know what we should let's do this right and so they sent out a bunch of other people so the panel had a whole bunch of people

on it and for five years we did a big panel but as things happen we you know priorities move around and they decided you know a whole bunch of people on it. And for five years, we did a big panel. But as things happen, we, you know, priorities move around and they decided, you know, okay, maybe we shouldn't do a giant panel at Comic-Con.

And so they said, okay, this year we're not going to do a panel. So once again, I went to Elaine. I said, Elaine, I'm going to go to Comic-Con. Even if, you know,

even if Wizards doesn't send me to Comic-Con, I'm going to go to Comic-Con. I, you know, even if Wizards doesn't send me to Comic Con, I'm going to go to Comic Con. I enjoy going to Comic Con. And if I do, I would have fun. Let me, way back in the beginning, I was going to do a panel by myself.

Let me just do a panel by myself. And she goes, oh, okay, sure. So starting last year, I did a solo panel, which I called Blogatog Live, which is named after my blog. Whenever I do a panel by myself, I call it Blogatog Live, which is named after my blog. Whenever I do a panel by myself, I call it Blogatog Live, because my blog, obviously, people ask me questions, so it's like,

it's kind of like that, except live. And so, last year I did that, and this year I continued the trend. And so, I had some fun stuff to talk about this year, So we'll get to the panel. But anyways, this is my second solo year. Now, the way it worked is Hasbro... Wizards doesn't have its own booth, but it has a wall in the Hasbro booth. So if the Hasbro booth, there's one wall dedicated to Magic.

This year, it had a giant Nicole Bolas mural, the whole wall. And then we had a glass display case that showed off Arbor Devastation, the set currently on sale. And it showed, there's a Nicola Bola statue coming, I think later this year.

And it was an early version of it. It wasn't painted yet. But it was a model to sort of show it. It was really cool. And of course, we always have a exclusive. This year's exclusive was six cards. So it was the Gatewatch, or the main Gatewatch. So it was Gideon and Jace and Liliana and Chandra and Nyssa and Nicole Bolas.

And the latest version of the cards. So it was the Nyssa, Gideon, and Liliana from Amonkhet. Nicole Bolas from Hours of Devastation. It had the Chandra from... The Kaladesh Chandra. And then I think Jace was from Shadows of Inderstruck, because that's the last time we printed Jace. And what we did was,

they were the same cards mechanically, but they had a different treatment. And so the art was made to look like they were carved into stone, like they were kind of like hieroglyphics. And then you see that Nicole Bullis is carving them into the stone is the idea. And then along with the six cards, there was a poster. We worked with, I think it's called Mundo, I hope I didn't get that wrong. And what it was is we printed on a magic sheet.

So the back of it is actual magic backs, if you've ever seen a magic sheet. The way we make magic cards is we print them using an 11 by 11 on a sheet, and then we cut them up. So this was a magic sheet. The back are magic backs. And the front was this really cool poster of Nicole Bolas. It is white and black. It's a white and black poster with a gold overlay. It looks very cool.

Anyway, so that was the exclusive this year. And the way the booth works, Hasbro booth has one big booth that's for showing things off and then one big booth that is the shop where people can wait in line to get tickets and come to shop and stuff that's where you can get the magic so anyway so Wednesday night is always a preview night it's what I call the good shopping night because the way it works is people bring stuff to sell now some people allocate it like abro shop, we allocate stuff for each day.

So if they sell out one day, there's stuff for the later days because it's allocated. But most of the people selling at Comic-Con, they bring stuff, when it's gone, it's gone. And so sometimes you want something, and if you don't buy it early enough, then it's not there. Like there's a t-shirt I found for my daughter, and I didn't get there fast enough. She needed a small, and they were out of small. So no shirts for her. I mean, I got another shirt for my daughter but none of that shirt so anyway wednesday's preview night um so i went and checked into the booth um we had a small contingent this year just two brand people a pr person and me um and so i checked in and uh at the booth they were giving away a little uh like you ever been to at the booth they were giving away little, uh, like, have

you ever been to like Burger King? They have like a little paper crown. It's kind of like that except they were bolas horns. So it's little paper crown bolas horns that you can get. Um, and the idea is you could use it for, you know, take the crown or you like just dressing up like bolas, whatever. Uh, we were giving those away. Um, and so I went to the booth to say hi.

And while I was there, I... So one of the activities, and I'll talk to you when I get there, was on Saturday, I had spent some time... There was a boy named Ty who was there for Make-A-Wish. And his big wish was to come to San Diego Comic-Con. And he particularly liked magic. And so the way, for those that don't know Make-A-Wish, the way Make-A-Wish works is the kid gets to ask for something, they get a wish, and then they try to set up something

special for the kid that's a surprise that the kid doesn't know about. So he was really into magic, and he wanted his family to come to Comic-Con. He wanted them to dress up in costume. So on Saturday, he was Sarkin. His brother, who also plays magic, was Sorin. His mother was Liliana, and his cousin was Jace. And the local chapter of Make-A-Wish had worked with a seamstress there to make the costumes.

Anyway, I ran into them on Wednesday night, and Saturday'll get into—Saturday was my day with them, so we'll get there. Okay, so Friday night—I said Wednesday night was mostly me. A good chunk—one of the fun things about going to San Diego Comic-Con is I have responsibilities, and I take those very seriously. But a lot of the time, I just get to go over on Comic-Con, which is very fun. So it's one of my favorite trips of the year okay so Thursday I didn't have a lot of responsibilities on Thursdays

there's a few interviews I had to do so one of my responsibilities is we always have a PR person go and they line up different press and stuff usually on site I'm doing more what we call niche press or press that's more about people in which gaming is part of what they normally cover. It is very, very hard at Comic-Con to get the mass press

because there's so much giant stories going on that it's hard to compete with, oh my God, there's a brand new Marvel movie or on that it's hard to compete with, oh my god, there's a brand new Marvel movie or whatever, you know, it's hard to compete. So a lot of what the show's about is doing some of the smaller stuff, more focused things, and then making contacts with people that you can, down the road, sort of do things. But there are a lot of interviews that I will do with, you know, people who are more game focused. So I did a couple interviews on Thursday.

The rest of the time, I went to some panels, and I did some shopping, and I walked around. Anyway, I had fun. There's a lot. Comic-Con has all sorts. There's so much going on, for those that have never been there. The big thing this year, which I actually didn't do much of, is what they called experiences,

where you got to go in somewhere and experience something. There's a Blade Runner one, Blade Runner 2049, where you got to like come in and experience what it was like in the future. So sort of like the idea is it's a set in which there are actors and there's all this stuff to sort of make it exactly like what you know. And you get to interact with the actors who are all in character. There was a Stranger Things one I know where you could, like, be in the house.

Oh, and there was a super fancy one for Westworld where only 150 people a day got to do the experience. And then they treated you like you were in Westworld. Anyway, I know people that did some of these. I heard stories from some of them. And so there was all that stuff. There were a bunch of panels. I had a chance to see a bunch of panels.

It is a golden age. To be aware, for those that don't know this, I am a huge comic book fan. The reason that I went to Comic-Con, for example, when I lived in Los Angeles, which was 20 plus years ago, when I went there, it wasn't that they didn't talk about some movies, but usually it was about like a comic book movie or something. It was very much more, it had a little more of a comic book edge to it. The mass media has definitely sort of

taken off and while there's still plenty of comic book things, and I tend to like to go to the comic book things, there are still, there's lots of other things. And we are now in a golden age of comics in mass entertainment. Like, one of the things that I've made an effort to do is, I actually watch all, or most, the comic book TV shows. And just because I grew up with the comics and I really, I enjoy it and I get all the references.

It's fun for me. And they just keep adding more. Like, for example, new ones starting now that were at Comic-Con. I mean, all of them were at Comic-Con. So, The Gifted, I saw The Gifted. The Gifted's an X-Men spinoff. There's The Gifted.

There's Inhumans. There's Krypton. There's Black Lightning. There is... I think there's like five or six new comic book adaptation things. The Defenders is coming out. Anyway, there's an endless number of them. And I watch them all.

So it is... I'm backlogged right now trying to watch all the comic book things that I want to watch. It is an embarrassment of riches for someone who loves comic books. Anyway, so that was Thursday. Okay, so Friday morning I did a signing at the booth, at the Hasbro booth. So the way the signing works is that for one hour you're at the booth, at the Hasbro booth. So the way the signing works is that for one hour, you're at the booth. And so we were handing out the horns again. And then people could come and I would sign things and I would take pictures with them. And I would talk to them a little bit.

But anyway, it is fun for those. I've talked about this before, one of the neat things of kind of being a celebrity, but in a bubble, like, you know, an E-list celebrity, whatever you want to call it, is that there are moments in time where I get to be the rock star, if you will. And signings are one of those times where it's just fun. Like, there's people who are really excited to see you. And, you know, I get a lot of people talking to me about the impact magic has made on them and how much they love magic.

They'll talk about different things. There is no greater joy as far as rewards for my job of just seeing people happy and seeing people tell me the impact that the game has had on their lives and how positive it's been. That is awesome. I always love doing signings.

If you happen to be, go to HazCon. I will be doing signings at HazCon. I don't get out, I mean, I don't travel all that much. So I'm not in, I mean, I go to events in Seattle. But if you live in Seattle, seeing me at an event, magic event, is not that big a deal. I do it all the time. But if you don't live in Seattle, other places in which you don't normally have a chance to interact with me, I know that's a bigger deal.

And so I try to make sure whenever I go someplace that I can do that kind of stuff. So it was fun. I liked doing the signings. And the other thing that's really funny, by the way, at the booth is that when you start, what happens is it's all the people that came to see you. So you get all

the fans in the beginning. And I try to take my time, but you know, there's just a lot of people there. So it goes quickly. And then at some point you have lines run out. Now you're just waiting because you have a full hour, you know. So like the first half hour was, you know, sign, sign, how you doing, talk to people. And then it slows down a little bit. So then you get to the part where people who are coming up are not necessarily magic players. They're just in the booth and they see that there's someone signing and they're like, oh, and so then you start getting people who are just like, I don't, I don't even know what this is, but I'm going to get you to sign my crown sort of thing.

And that's fun because I get to interact with people like who don't really know magic. It's a very different experience, but it is neat to sort of talk to them, and we'll get a lot of kids and stuff. And then at the end, I tend to get people who saw the social media that I was there, so they weren't there right on time, but they got there before it ended. And so it's sort of like a whole bunch of magic players,

some non-magic players, and a bunch more magic players. And once again, signing was awesome. There's a little slip they put out to tell you that there's a signing last year the slip mistakenly listed me instead of head designer it listed me as what was I

it was like lead art director or something which not only am I not I've never done anything remotely like that and I I teased them last year. Not that I didn't care. I just thought it was funny.

I said, this is like, okay, we've got to get it right. So they made sure that I actually said head designer and not lead art director on it. Okay, so Friday I got to do more Comic-Con stuff. Okay, Saturday was my busy day for Magic. Okay, Saturday was my busy day for Magic. So first off, I met with Ty and his family. So it was Make-A-Wish. So the way it had worked was Make-A-Wish had contacted us a month ago or something.

And basically what they had said to us is, Hey, we would love for you to be involved. And we, just for the record, we interact with Make-A-Wish every once in a while. Never have turned down Make-A-Wish. Never have, never will. Awesome organization. Usually, though, in the past, when someone makes a wish, often it's to come to Wizards. So we set up a tour and stuff at Wizards. And so this was different in that we were somewhere else. But anyway, he liked playing commander, and we found out that he liked zombies, and he liked black. So what

we did is we made two commander decks. I had Pete Ingram, one of our N.E. folks, I had him make me two decks. One was a Gisa deck, and one was a Garolf deck. So for those who don't know, they're a brother and sister in Innistrad. She's a necromancer, he's a stitcher. So they both make zombies, but one's black zombies and one's blue zombies. And the joke is they fight about what the best zombies are. But anyway, I knew he liked zombies, and I knew he liked black. So he played Gisa. We gave him choice, but he played Gisa, Gisa and I played Garalf. And we had a black on blue match. And so it was fun. It was dramatic.

So in the first game, it was really close. I was at like six life. And he has like, I don't know, like eight creatures on the board. And I get Cyclonic Rift. I'm able to bounce it. It's a spell that you can it's from Return to Ravnica from I'm able to bounce it. It's a spell that you can... It's from...

Return to Ravnica from Izzet. And it had Overload. So it's bounce one of his guys or all of his guys. So I had enough mana to bounce all of his guys. And then when he brought him back, he was able to get me down to two life. But I was able to win that game. It was very close.

So then we played game two. And the reverse kind of happened in game two, which was I to win that game. It was very close. So then we played game two and the reverse kind of happened in game two which was I got him pretty low and I was like a turn or two away from winning when he beat me. So then Ty won the second game. So we split 1-1 and we did a lot of cool stuff.

We brought a lot of fun things for him. We had an artist that did a special sketch for him. We had a giant Nicole Bolas card that we'd given him. And anyway, there was a bunch of different things. One of the coolest things also is we gave him a bunch of Amonkhet packs and our Devastation packs. And he opened up his Amonkhet pack and got the Force of Will Invocation, which I was trying to explain to his mother how rare that is, like how the chance of that happening is so slight.

But anyway, so Ty, I believe, I've told had a really, really good time. I'm happy. It was a pleasure. It was fun, obviously, to do stuff like that. And Ty and his family were all super nice. And it was a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun playing with Ty. It was really cool.

Okay, after that, I had to go back to the booth to meet Dana Fisher and her dad, Adam. So for those that don't know, Dana Fisher managed to go five and four in Las Vegas this year in modern. The cutoff to day two is six and three. So one match shy of making the cutoff for day two. So why? Why is that impressive? Well, you need to know that Dana is six years old. Her dad taught her when she was three. In fact, the day after I met her, she turned seven, so now she's seven years old.

But anyway, she's a six-year-old Magic player, now a seven-year-old Magic player. She was dressed as Nyssa. Really cute. And I had a chance to interact with her and her dad, and she was really smart and a really cute little kid. She loves magic. The next day was her birthday, and she wanted to spend it playing magic. And I think she had a really good record. I think she went 18-6-1 or something.

She's a good Magic player. And her goal, her and her dad's goal is, they wanted to see if she could make Day 2 at a Grand Prix. And she almost did it. In Modern, in Las Vegas. She was one match away. I think she's going to do it. She wants to be the youngest person to ever do it. We were trying to figure out how young.

We thought that maybe it was 10 years old. We don't have stats quite like that, so we're sort of using memories and stuff. Anyway, that was awesome. And so what happened was, she walked back, we went up to the panel. So my panel was on Saturday at 6.30. We had a room that held about 500 players.

We filled it up. So this year, every year sort of we, we can, we, we talk about different things. And usually I go to all the brand managers and I say, Hey, is there anything you want me to talk about? Um, and so this year, one of the brand manager who said yes was the unstable brand manager. Um, Adam's his name. was the Unstable brand manager. Adam's his name.

And so one of the things is Unstable is something we haven't done in a long time. Unhinged came out in 2004, which is 13 years ago. And we want to do a little roll-up to coming out because we wanted people... What we wanted is, A, if you loved the old Unsets, we wanted to reassure you

that this is a fun thing that you will enjoy. If you didn't either know about them or like them, we wanted to say, look, this is a little bit different. We're using some modern technologies. You know, while this has a lot of the fun of the originals, it's a bit different. So I wanted to talk a little bit about the differences. So what happened was I started by showing off a piece of art one of my favorite pieces of art is that of a raccoon turtle creature

selling squirrels out of his trench coat which is an awesome art all this art I believe is up now on our site if you want to go take a look on it or it might be we might put it on social media anyway it's out there there's people who will be collecting the art

okay number two so then social media. Anyway, it's out there. I'm sure there's people who will be collecting the art. Okay, number two. So then I said, okay, I want to show you a card. I said I wanted to show you guys a card from the set. But I got two caveats from my brand manager. One is I couldn't show a silver border card, which is a lot of the set. And the other is I couldn't show a land. So I told people that, yes, yes, yes, we're doing Fortland.

John Avon did the art. We're doing something special with it that we had talked about doing in the past but didn't do. But I did have one card that I could show you that both wasn't silver-bordered and wasn't a land. And that's when I revealed the unstable version of Steamflugger Boss. So for those who don't know, Steamflugger Boss was a card in Future Sight, a future-shifted card from the future. And we thought it was really funny to make a card that just made up terminology. Meaning it just, like, we just thought it was funny.

We went through a whole bunch of different versions. Like, I remember there was a version like, all splorgs get plus one plus one. What's a splorg? And then eventually we settled on whenever a creature erects a monument, instead it erects two monuments. And then I remember editing, it's like, erect, really?

Do you want players erecting things? And we changed it to assemble a contraption. And the idea from us was it was just goofy. It was just like, ha-ha, it's referencing something that doesn't exist. It was meant to be a joke. But then Aaron, Aaron Forsythe, he was doing the development column at the time, revealed that it was a joke, that we had no intention of doing it. It was just, ha-ha, it was a joke.

And that triggered the audience. They're like, what do you mean you're never making contraptions? And it just became a running thing. Do you have to make contraptions? Are you making contraptions? Is this contraptions? So I vowed at one point that before I retired, I would do contraptions. That is a bucket list goal as a, you know, bucket list, as a magic designer. By the way, I didn't say I was going to retire once I did it. I said I wouldn't do it, I wouldn't retire until I did it, which now means I'm allowed to retire. I have no plans to retire.

But for those of you who thought that once I make the mic, I'm forced to retire. That is not what I said. Anyway, so people have been wanting us to do contraptions. I tried for a while to figure out how to do them in Blackboarder. And early on in working on Unstable... Oh, so the Unstable story is back in 2011, in fact, January of 2011, there are two other people,

a guy named Mark Globus, who works in R&D, a guy named Mark Purvis, that works in brand. There's the three of us, which I call... We're part of the Council of Marks, want to make the set happen. So we decided our plan of action was, let's make the set. Let's just design it.

And then once we have a finished product, it's a lot easier to say to people, hey, well, we have it. Why don't we just put it in? Why don't we just release it? So we started it back in early 2011 when my daughter was in, eldest daughter was in fifth grade.

She'll be a senior when it comes out. And early on, while experimenting with stuff, I came up with an idea for contraptions that was a little out there. Something that we, something that would have been a hard sell to do in Blackboarder, but it was clearly something that we could experiment with. So, trying something trying something cool, I came up with a way to execute it that I think is a slam dunk execution, because my goal that if I was going to do contraptions, what I wanted was you to say, oh man, that is a contraption, not, well, yeah, I guess if I squint, I guess I

can imagine it's a contraption. And so I came up with something that I really liked. And anyway, I then talked about how we wanted to do something cool. We wanted a world. We wanted a cohesive creative treatment to it. And so we came up with this idea of this kind of mad inventor world. And there were five factions that invented things for their own reasons. So at the panel, I showed off were five factions that invented things for their own reasons. So at the panel,

I showed off the five factions. So the white-blue faction are the cyborgs, what we call the Order of the Wicked. And they are sort of Esper to a silly degree. They are people that are constantly using their technology to improve themselves. So they are like part people, but part machine because they're constantly upgrading themselves. But they're upgrading themselves in the most sort of

humorous fashion. So for example, the philosophy of them would be something like, well, why would I need a toaster if my left hand is a toaster? So they're constantly replacing parts of their body with things they think are functional. And they're turning themselves into like these robots. They're cyborgs,

so there's still a little bit of humanity there. But like I said, it's kind of like what S-period was up to, but a little less serious. Then blue-black is the agents of sneak, S-, N period, E period, A period, K period. And they are spies, and they use their technology to make cool spy apparatus, although they are the worst spies in the world, although they do have cool gadgets. Then black and red is the League of Dastardly Doom, that's the supervillains.

They have their death rays and their weather machines and their apocalypse devices. And they're just, they want to take over the world or enslave the world or steal the world or whatever. They each have their own thing. But there's a whole bunch of supervillains that are trying to do villainy. Then we have red-green

is the goblin explosioners. This is where we put the where we put the steam floggers. One of the things, by the way, is well, let me finish this and I'll get to that. And finally we have the crossbreed labs, which is green and white.

Crossbreed labs are creatures who believe that the solution for peace is to embrace all creature kind. And so what they do is they let people be any parts of animals they want to be.

And so the art that I showed off was a scientist that was part monkey, part spider, part jungle cat. She had a jungle tail. But you get it, she was a spider, part spider, part jungle cat. She had a jungle tail, but you get it. She was a spider monkey. Anyway, one of the things we did for this thing is we brought in people to actually do a world concept

like we do on any set. And the artists were in and had a blast just seeing all the stuff they came up with. And I'm sure we'll show up some of the concept art when we get closer to the project, to the release of the set. But anyway, they had a blast and the Crossbreed Labs particularly are just, the idea is I'm part this animal, part that animal, part this animal.

So one of the questions I got, by the way, was why are these allied, not enemy? For example, mad scientist world seems very is it and Crossbreed Labs people felt very simic. And the answer was twofold. One was that I really, I wanted the steam fluggers there. The whole point of contraptions is building a world in which the steam fluggers were there.

Most of the sets are mono-colored, so whatever two colors you put them in, you have to make mono-colored versions of them. And I really wasn't up for mono-white or mono-blue goblins. Plus, these goblins are not smart. They are sort of

experimenters on the lowest end, which is kind of like, we're going to just slap together crazy stuff and breed fast enough that we don't wipe out our race. The goblins, the goblin explosionators, like I said, they're a little obsessed with hammers. And they're not about orderliness they're about almost like

sort of a chaotic quality to them and that really felt red-green more than anything else so once one of them was red-green it pushed toward allies, I mean cyborgs in white-blue made a lot of sense, the spies in blue-black made a lot of sense, the supervillains in black-red made a lot of sense the reason the Crossbreed Labs is not

Simic is Simic is Simic is all about change for the sake of change, where the goal of the Crossbreed Labs really is, you know, they're not out experimenting. They're not trying to find the latest thing. They really just have a technology, and they're sort of abusing this technology for their agenda. And their agenda is a very white agenda

of trying to create peace through acceptance. I mean, white meets green. It's peace through acceptance. It's sort of like, well, can't we all get along if all of us are part of every, you know, if I'm part of this and part of this and part of that, how discriminating can I be? I can't discriminate against others

if I'm four different things myself. And so their philosophy is very green-white. They vary, sort of band together. It is not a Simic sort of feel to it. Even though I get that Simics do a lot of mutation. But this

is less mutation for experimental sake, which is the way Simic tends to do things. Anyway, I showed off all the unstable stuff. And then I answered questions. Then it was time for me to answer questions. It's one of my favorite parts of doing the panel. And I got asked all sorts of things.

One of my favorites is Dana asked a question. Her dad got in line and she started her question by saying, so I've been playing Magic half my life. That was hilarious. She asked me how Nissa came to be. So I explained that Nissa actually first existed on the packaging of Duels of the Planeswalkers. And we just thought there was a really cool image and said we have to do something with this. And originally she was made to be a villain. That was the original plan. But when we made

the Gatewatch and needed a monogreen character because Garak had just turned and gone evil, we didn't have any choices of a monogreen Planeswalker other than Nissa. So we sort of changed her character a little bit and sort of made her more of a hero and less of a

villain. Sort of had her learn from her mistakes to sort of go a more heroic path. But anyway, so I did my panel. And then I, afterwards I stayed after and I signed a lot of autographs and took a lot of pictures and answered a bunch of questions.

And then the tradition when we go to Comic-Con is we go, we have a staff dinner at this seafood place that's really really good. And I always get a crab because I love crab, lots of king crab. So the funny thing is I order a pound and a half of crab, this is a quick story before I go. I order a pound and a half of crab and they bring me a plate and it seems like a lot of crab. And so my first thought is, oh, did I misremember how much crab I'm supposed to order? Like am I supposed to order a pound of crab and And so my first thought is, oh, did I misremember how much crab

I'm supposed to order? Like, am I supposed to order a pound of crab and I order a pound and a half? And then they bring me a second plate, which is not quite as big, but close to the size of my first plate. And then I'm like, oh, okay. Did I, wow. Did I really misjudge? I go, that doesn't, I'm pretty sure when I eat crab, that's about how much crab I eat. And then the waiter comes by and starts laughing. He goes, oh, somebody made a mistake. So instead of bringing me the pound and a half of crab I ordered,

they mistakenly brought me three and a half pounds of crab. So much crab was had, not just by me, but by my table. And I had a great time. It was fun. And then time to come back home. So anyway, I had an awesome time at San Diego Comic-Con this year I loved

meeting everybody I like meeting the fans I had fun the panel was a great thing I the Make-A-Wish was lots of fun meeting Dana was great so all the signings everything was a lots of fun and Comic-Con of course was lots of fun itself so anyway that my friends is the exciting story of San Diego Comic Con 2017. But, I'm now parked. So we all know what that means. It means this is 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 guys

next time.