Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #485: HASCON 2017

Episode Date: November 3, 2017

The very first Hasbro-centric convention, called HASCON, was held in August. I was there, and this podcast is all about it.

I'm pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, today I just got back from HazCon. So today's podcast is all about HazCon 2017. Okay, so let me start by explaining what is HazCon. So back in 1998, Wizards of the Coast was purchased by Hasbro, a giant toy company who makes many fine products that you probably know. And Hasbro, so about six months ago, I was approached by Whitney. Whitney does, she's one of the people that plans the events for us. And she said, Hey, Mark, what are you doing in September?

So for those who know, I don't travel a lot. Usually I go to San Diego Comic-Con and one other place during the course of the year. I try to only travel twice a year. But I had not yet committed my second travel yet. And Whitney said, We are doing, there's a brand new convention called HasCon. So Hasbro basically was doing a convention that was supporting all of its brands. And as Magic is one of its brands, its second largest brand, they wanted us involved. And we really wanted to sort of make the first year as special as possible. So Whitney was really excited

and wanted me to come. And I said yes, because I'd never been to HazCon, being there, never been to HazCon. I said I couldn't miss the first HazCon. So, I signed up. And so, today, I'm going to walk you through sort of all that was my HazCon experience. Okay, first of all, let me explain exactly what it is. So, the idea was, it's a convention that plays up all of Hasbro's different properties. So let me walk through. I'm not going to name all the properties,

but I'll do my best. So Hasbro has a lot of very famous properties. It has My Little Pony. It has Transformers. It has Nerf. It has the Disney license, the Marvel license, the Star Wars license,

like Disney Princess Princess and stuff. It has For Real, PlaySchool, Play-Doh, Trolls, Beyblades, and many, many others. Also, it has the Hasbro family, like Milton Bradley, Parker Brothers, Monopoly, Yahtzee, Scrabble, you know, a lot of games that you recognize as being sort of classic games. A lot of them are made by Hasbro. And so the idea was, obviously, of course, it has Wizard of the Coast games. So it has Magic and Dungeon Dragons. And so the idea was, it was a celebration of all things Hasbro. And so let me walk you through the whole experience. Okay, so I flew out on a

Wednesday. So I had to go to Providence, Rhode Island. So it turns out that the headquarters for Hasbro are in Rhode Island. I think the main, the main, like the the mucky mucks are in Pawtucket. And then there's also some stuff in Providence. In fact, one of the main offices in Providence is literally across the street from the convention center where Hascon was held. So most of the volunteers at the event were Hasbro employees. So anyway, I had to fly to Providence. So when my plane tried to land in Providence, it was very foggy. And the machine

that helps you land in fog, I guess, was broken. So they were trying to do a manual fog landing, which is hard to do. They tried once, didn't do it. Tried a second time, couldn't do it, and then said, okay, we're going to Boston. So Boston, for those who don't know, is about 15 minutes away by plane, an hour away by car. So we were forced to land in Boston. Luckily, there were a bunch of other wizard folk on the plane. So four of us took a cab and drove from the Boston airport, Logan, to our hotel in Providence. So it was not the best start to it. I had a long travel day on Wednesday.

But, come Thursday, so the first thing we did was we had a staff meeting and walked through all the things that were going to happen and then I had a chance to look around. Now, the nice thing about looking around before it actually opens is I can see everything before

all the people are there. I took a whole bunch of pictures, by the way. If you go onto either my blog or my Twitter and you look for the combination of hashtags of HasCon and of Watsi Staff, which is on all my posts, you will find the pictures. I took a lot of pictures, not just of our booth, but of all sorts of people's booths. There was a lot of cool stuff there. And, like, for example, just a real quick rundown of some other stuff that was there. I'll get to the magic stuff in a second.

So one of my favorites was Nerf had this sort of blow-up arena, if you will, sort of inflatable that had, like, mesh on the sides and had a roof on it. And the idea was inside there were corridors and it was a place to have a Nerf fight that was all contained. And what would happen is you would sign a waiver, you get your glasses, you had protective eyewear, and then you would pick your blaster and then you would go in, you and, I don't know, 19 other people, and just have like a 10-minute Nerf fight. And it was very cool.

Nerf also, for example, had a lot of practice range where you could try out different Nerf blasters and do target practicing. They have a subsection called Rival that shoots these little plastic balls. You can try that out. So when I first found out that I was going to be a special guest there, on the front page they posted my picture. So I was showing my son that I was a special guest at HasCon. And his response was, is that Dude Perfect? So there's this group from YouTube called Dude Perfect, five guys that do trick shots.

And they have a branded, they're doing some stuff with Nerf. And so Dude Perfect was going to be there. So every time I talked to my son, he was all excited to see if I had met Dude Perfect yet, which I never did. So maybe one day I will meet Dude Perfect. I did not meet them at Hezgon. But anyway, they had some, they do trick shots and they have a special, like, their own branded Nerf stuff to do trick shots with. And so you could, there's an area for you to do trick shots and they have a special like their own brand in Nerf stuff to do trick shots with and so you could, there's an area for you to do trick shots.

But anyway, so that was Nerf. You know, the Hasbro family area had a lot of giant versions of games. There was a giant operation you could play. There's a giant Monopoly board. There's a giant toilet trouble. And you could just try all sorts of different games.

They had a pie face where you had a, like you ever go to the carnival and you have the big hammer and you have to hit it to ring the bell? They had one of those except it put a pie in someone's face. So like your friend would stand there and you had to see if you could hit it hard enough to get the pie in your friend's face. there and you had to see if you could hit it hard enough to get the pie in your friend's face. Then, you know, My Little Pony had all sorts of things you could do. There was a coloring wall. You could color in My Little Ponies. And there was, I think there was a place where you could decorate.

You could get a little My Little Pony where you could paint it. There was face painting and hair glittering and all sorts of stuff. So, Transformers, the Transformers and the Marvel and the Star Wars had a little bit of a historical bent to it. You could sort of look and see the toy lines through time. They had a lot of samples of older toys. They had samples of current toys. There was a Transformers movie. They're showing off all the stuff from the Transformers movie.

There were props from the movies. There was a Transformers movie. They're showing off all the stuff from the Transformers movie. There were props from the movies. There was a life-size Optimus Prime statue. There was a cosplayer that was playing Bumblebee in a really, really impressive costume. He was like 10 feet tall. That was very cool. Marvel did this thing where they were making prototypes on live

that they had brought some prototyping machines that sort of do 3D sculpting out of plastic. And so they were making things and then they had people literally there that were painting it so you could see the whole process of making the action figures. That was really cool. Marvel also had original costumes from the movies. They had Spider-Man and Star-Lord and Thor and Black Panther and... I'm forgetting. Anyway, from all the different movies and you can see the actual costumes. Once again they did a lot of historic stuff. You can see older things. Star Wars had a land speeder and had a throne you could pose in.

It had a little diorama using the action figures to spell key scenes of Star Wars. The Troll Booth, you could watch the Troll movie. The Play-Doh Booth lets you make all sorts of Play-Doh creations and things. The For Real booth, I think there's a new For Real tiger that you could play with. So like all these booths, your Beyblades, you could do Beyblade action, you know, spinning top game. And the idea was, you know, whatever you went, if you went to a booth that you had any appreciation for, there was both stuff aimed at kids and then also stuff aimed at adults if the product line was old enough that the adults might have played with the game when they were kids.

So there was a lot of activities for the kids and kind of nostalgia for the adults. So, you know, you can go to the G.I. Joe booth and you could see sort of the newest line of G.I. Joe toys, but also you could see older stuff that if you were a parent, maybe you played with when you were a kid. So it was really cool. They had a new game called Drop Mix, which is a game. It's a music game with cards where you use the cards to sample bits of songs. It wasn't out yet.

Maybe by the time you guys hear this, it'll be out. But it was a cool game. They were showing off. Anyway, all sorts of fun stuff there. It wasn't out yet. Maybe by the time you guys hear this, it'll be out. But it was a cool game. They were showing off. Anyway, all sorts of fun stuff there. It was really neat. You could see all the different Hasbro properties. And, you know,

and it was made, by the way, to be really, really interactive and fun. The con was aimed at families because the idea was there was cross-generational stuff that the kids could be excited about stuff they could do,

but the parents would have fun with stuff they could do. So let's talk about the Magic Booth. Also, D&D had a booth, by the way. I think the way it worked is you could roll up a character and make a character and then you could take it upstairs and actually play it in a role-playing session. They also had some places you could pose. They're also doing a dinosaur thing,

so a lot of synergy between magic and Hasbro, and I'm sorry, and Dungeon Dragons. And there was like a goblin you could pose with. Okay, let's get our booth. So our booth was, there were sort of, I would say, four areas to our booth. So the first area was,

if you had never, ever heard of magic, you could walk up, and they would start explaining the basics of what magic was. And they would walk you through the real simple heard of magic, you could walk out, and they would start explaining the basics of what magic was. And they would walk you through the real simple ideas of the colors and not sort of teach you to play, per se. That's a different area.

But sort of get you interested in the concept of what the game is. Just the idea of your wizards dueling with magic. And then they would give you a welcome deck. And they said if you wanted to learn more, just across the way, there was a learn-to-play area where someone could sit down and they would teach you how to play. So you could then learn right there, and then they'd walk you through, and that's where they'd actually sort of teach you the basic rules so that you could play a game

and see what you thought of the game. Then, next to that, we, on Thursday, so I arrived on Wednesday. On Thursday, while we were setting up, there was the announcement of Magic the Gathering Arena, a brand new video game we're doing. We're trying to bring digital magic, you know, sort of authentic digital magic to sort of a modern touch and feel, just making it a little more dynamic and making it a little more fun to watch when people put it up on Twitch and stuff. But anyway, we had just announced it on Thursday, so on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, people could play it for the very first time.

And we had, I think, eight computers set up, and so two computers were meant to play against each other, and then you could go on and you could play it, somebody else was there, and there were lines all weekend. But it was a really cool opportunity to actually, for the first time, see it. In the last section, well, in the middle there were some statues. We have some partners that are putting out

really high-end statues that are like three feet tall or two and a half feet tall. One is of a Johnny and the other is of Nicole Bolas. They were both really, really cool statues, if you are into very ornate, cool statues. And they were,

the first ever they were displayed there. Then there was a section of the giant Jace statue, not one that you would buy, just a huge statue that we have for the booth. And then in front of that, we had five cosplayers. So the Gatewatch was there.

We had Jace. We had Ajani. We had Liliana. We had Chandra, and we had Nissa. The reason we had Ajani instead of Gideon was we had a cosplayer. She came all the way from Switzerland, who did a great Ajani. And just Ajani, I guess, is a little bit easier to cosplay than Gideon.

I don't know. We just had a really good Ajani, and Ajani's one of the gate watchers. We're like, ah, for this show, we'll have Ajani represent the white rather than Gideon. But anyway, you could come. They were there in the booth most of the times. You could pose with them.

They'd take pictures. The cosplayers were all wonderful. Liliana, by the way, was Christine the Sprankle, who, as you guys know, probably the most famous cosplayer in Magic. Anyway, it was great fun, and the cosplayers were all awesome, and it was very cool. Oh, Jace, by the way, was Gavin Verhey, which I'll get to. Gavin did some stuff. I'll get to in a second. Okay, Jace, by the way, was Gavin Verhey, which I'll get to. Gavin did some stuff. I'll get to in a second. Okay, so Thursday night was the friends and family night.

So the idea there was it allowed any Hasbro employees to bring their friends and family for sort of a night to see everything ahead of time. There was food set up. So there were hamburgers and hot dogs and macaroni and cheese and pizza. And there was all sorts of desserts, including gelato with homemade waffle cones. Really good. And then we showed stuff off. So one of the neat things about the show in general was that there was a lot of families coming, a lot of young kids. I think Magic got exposed to more small children than ever before.

Normally at a convention with Magic, there's not a lot of small kids. So it was really interesting. You know, we did a lot of teaching of children. You know, like there was one point at our Learn to Play booth where everybody Learning to Play was like a 7 to 13-year-old girl.

And we were commenting that that's not a site you see a lot in our Learn to Play booths at our conventions, which was really cool. Now, that was downstairs. Upstairs, we had taken over an entire ballroom. I think we had seats for 700 people, and we were running two events,

well, two main formats over the weekend. There were a few other things, but the two big ones was we had Iconic Mafters Draft. So Iconic Mafters is a product that doesn't come out until November, but we previewed it this week, or it has come out last weekend. So two months ahead of time to do what we call, what's called a blind pre-release, which means that it's a pre-release where people don't know the contents of the packs when they open them. The last time I remember us doing that was in 1996 at the Pro Tour in Atlanta.

The pros opened Mirage and nobody knew what was in the set yet. So this was a pretty cool thing. It's unfortunately the way that magic works. We want to get people excited for the set. So we preview cards and show stuff off. We just don't have blind previews anymore. Just you know the set before you get to the previews. And so this was really neat to do something where you just didn't know what was in the packs.

Now that was sealed. That was played sealed. And then a draft we did. It was what we called the 25th anniversary draft. And the way it worked was you got everybody in your pod got the same three boosters in the same order. The first one, I think, was a standard legal booster. The second one was a modern legal booster. And the third, I think, was some kind of master's.

I think that's how it played out. So, for example, the one I did, I did one Thursday night. People were allowed to come up and play Thursday night. But not a lot of people realized we were up on the fifth floor, so most people stayed down on the third floor. So we had a... Well, later in the weekend, we had plenty of people coming to play Magic.

On Thursday, friends and family night, we didn't have as much. So I got a chance to play, which was fun. And the draft I did was... First pack was Amonkhet. Second pack was Dragons of Tarkir. Third pack was the original Modern Mafters. So that was a lot of fun. I had a chance to play against some of the artists who were there. One of the things we did is, so we had an area to play with. We brought in a whole bunch

of artists, including, there were three cards we did. We made some special promotional cards for the event. Oh, one thing I forgot downstairs is there's a retail area where you could buy a lot of Hasbro things, and then there was an exclusive area. So a bunch of brands had made exclusive things for the show. Magic had made a thing where we had three cards that all did crossovers to other Hasbro brands. We had one that referenced Nerf, one that referenced Dungeons & Dragons,

and one that referenced Nerf, one that referenced Dungeons & Dragons, and one that referenced Transformers. The Nerf one was an equipment that let you use an actual Nerf gun to try to mill your opponent. Sword of Dungeons & Dragons was a riff off the sword of, like, Fire and Ice, so it gave you protection from, I think, Clerics and Wizards, and then every time you deal damage, you make a 4-4 gold dragon. And since this is an unset, you know, silver borders card,

it literally was the color gold. And then the last one was Grimlock, which is a dinosaur, a dinosaur transformer, and he could go between himself and a vehicle. It was a double-faced card. Anyway, we brought all the artists.

The artist that did the Nerf gun is the one I played. I was winning the game until he got a Gristlebrand, and then I lost. Because the only way I had to deal with the Gristlebrand, I had already cast. And it is hard to stop Gristlebrand. And there was mats made of all the art. In fact, one of the hot items of the convention was Tyler Jacobson had made the Grimlock and both the vehicle version and the dinosaur version. And we made a, there was a, Ultrapro was selling a double-sided mat that had one on one side and one on the other side. It was

super popular. I think it sold out on Friday and then they printed more and then shipped them overnight. And then the new ones also sold out right away on Saturday. So anyway, and also upstairs, so there was an area to play with. Oh, there was a prize wall for those that haven't been to big conventions. But the thing that's

been going on for a while now, Grand Prix's and big conventions is when you win matches, you win tickets. And then tickets can be used to purchase things off the prize wall. There's lots of magic packs. We had a bunch of different giant magic cards that we used for promotion, but then we put them on the prize wall so people could purchase them or could win them. Sorry, not purchase them, but win them.

We also, there was a VIP room. I spent a bunch of time in there. So VIP room, one of the things you could do at this convention is be a magic VIP. I spent a bunch of time in there. So VIP room, one of the things you can do at this convention is be a magic VIP. And so if you did that, there was a special room for the VIPs that had food. You could charge your phone and there were couches. And Wizards folk spent some time there.

I spent a bunch of time on the weekend just sort of chatting with the VIP folk. I also spent a lot of time out in the ballroom sort of talking to players. I signed lots of cards and mats and shook hands and answered questions and took pictures. One of the things that's interesting is normally I don't travel a lot. And so, you know, when I go to a show here in Seattle, eh, I'm kind of jaded. They've seen me a million times. It's not as exciting. But when I go out east where, like, I haven't been in 10 years and you know, basically it was full of

ballroom people that have never met me. You know, it's fun. It's, one of the things that I like about my celebrity is that in,

I'm a big fish in a small pond. So like in certain areas I get to be the rock star where, like one of the things in the ballroom that would happen is I'd be talking to somebody

and you know, I would chat with them, answer questions, shake their hands, sign something, maybe take a picture. And then in the time that I would do that, other people would want to meet me and we would start lining up.

And so, like, lines would spontaneously form whenever I stopped to talk to somebody. And so then I wouldn't leave until I got to the whole line. And so sometimes getting across the, like, the ballroom would take a while because I was constantly stopped. It's cool.

I'm not complaining, by the way. It was really cool, actually. One of the neat things I like about my celebrity is there's a time and a place where I get to be a superstar, and then most of the time, when I'm shopping, no one's bugging me. The thing I will point out, by the way, if you ever see me, even out in the wild,

I'm always happy to meet fans. I'm always happy to shake hands or sign something or take a picture. Don't be shy. I won't bite. shake hands or sign something or take a picture. Don't be shy. I won't bite. But anyway, it was a lot of fun. I love interacting with the fans, and that part was one of my favorite parts of the weekend. I'll talk a little bit more about it if I have time at the end.

I want to make sure I get through all the events, though. Okay, so Thursday was Friends and Family Night. Okay, so Friday. So Friday is the beginning of the convention. So the first thing that happened on Friday is the 25th anniversary panel. So the emcee was Matt Tabak,

and then the special guests were me, Elaine Chase, who's the VP of Magic, and Gavin Verhey, who also works in R&D, and for this convention was also cosplaying as Jace. So what happened was

people thought it was going to be a panel but we surprised them. It was a game show! And so when you'd walked in you got a some people got a random basic land and then we would call people up. So there were basically two games.

The first game was we'd call up three teams. Each team had a team captain of either myself, Elaine, or Gavin. And then we were given a trivia question, and we had to go in turns naming something in the category. So the first category was Planeswalkers that have cards. Gavin won that one. Then the second category was creature types that are in Amonkhet or Hour of Devastation.

Elaine's team won that one. And then the last of Devastation. Elaine's team won that one. And then the last one was artists from Alpha. My team won that one. I joked later that the category to me was a little different. The category to me was people I'd worked with at Wizards. Because about half the original artists from Alpha at some point had worked at Wizards. So there was a lot of overlap. And I personally knew a lot of them.

So it was a lot easier to remember them. Like, oh, yeah, you know, I worked with Amy Weber. I worked with Sandra Effingham. I worked with Dan Jelen. I worked with Chris Rush, you know. So it's fun doing a lot of early artists who I luckily have a relationship with a lot of them. I know a lot of them. So they'll easier remember them. Okay, the second part was we called up the two other groups, because there were five groups, five basic lands. And they, oh, I forgot. Okay, so second part was we called up the two other groups because there were five groups, five basic lands. And they—oh, I forgot. Okay, so one of the things that was going on, every time trivia was done and people would solve stuff, we would then show off preview cards.

And so we showed off cards from Iconic Masters because no one knew anything, and we showed off cards from Ixalan. And so we kept showing them out different preview cards, Ixalan. And so we kept showing them a bunch of preview cards, which was exciting. And then the second part was we did the charades part where people would get three magic things.

You know, horsemanship was one of them I know. They would act it out and they had two minutes to act out three things. And then Gavin and Elaine and I as the celebrity guests would guess it. We and they had two minutes to act out three things. And then Gavin and Elaine and I, as the celebrity guests, would guess it. We were pretty good at guessing. One of them, by the way, was me, one of the clues. And the note specifically said they couldn't point at me.

They had to act like me, but we got it. So that was a lot of fun. And so, anyway, we showed off stuff there. We also at the end revealed one of the big cards from Iconic Masters, which was Mana Drain got reprinted. And then there's lots and lots of jokes about R&D being hit by a bus. Because many years ago, back in 1995, someone had asked me if we'd ever reprint Mana Drain.

And I said all of R&D would have to be hit by a bus before that happens. A little context, just because a lot of people are joking about this. At the time I said that, the only way to reprint something was in an expansion or in a core set, meaning you had to go through standard to get reprinted. So what I was saying at the time was, we're never putting Mana Drain back in standard, so yeah, it's never getting reprinted um little did i know we would expand how we did reprints and supplemental products and if i understood that maybe i wouldn't have gotten such a definitive statement but uh anyway we did reprint manna brain rnd is okay no buses involved um then there were some other panels the panel uh the next panel we had um well uh so I think we started by doing the 25th anniversary panel then we opened up

a kind of master's people started playing a kind of master's then in the afternoon Alexi Bricklow was one of our artists did a live demonstration of drawing something live and then while he was drawing Jeremy Jarvis and Cynthia Shepard who are two of our art directors kind of

walked through the artistic process of magic, talked about the creative process, how they build worlds, and how they concept cards and stuff. Then after that was Blogatog Live. So that was where I was doing a Q&A, basically. Matt Tabak was my emcee again. And one of the cool things, first thing we did is I showed off a video,

a comedy video that my daughter and I had made. I wrote and acted in it, and she directed and edited it. Last year, I had made a little comedy video that I showed at my two panels for the summer. I did the same this year. Hopefully, by the time you see this, I put it up on my, I put it up on my YouTube page. Hopefully I'll remember to do that. But anyway, it's a fun little video. I don't want to give

anything away because the, just watch it. It's a cute video. After that, I previewed the Unstable Lands and I showed, I showeded the unstable lands. And I showed them off. John Avon illustrated them. And they go to the edge of the card. There's no border. I actually, by the way, just yesterday, managed to see the earliest printing stuff are in the office.

Just so we can sort of see how they were printing. And the lands look amazing. as do the contraptions. Lots of cool stuff. There's lots of cool stuff, and I'm excited for you guys to see it all. So anyway, where was I? So I did my Q&A. Yeah, the lands went over great. I did my Q&A. Yeah, the lands went over great. I did my Q&A.

The whole blog and talk went really well. Oh, one of the funny stories is before I got there, I didn't realize that the one ahead of us was also magic, so I was waiting. So they took me to the green room, which is a secret green room that I didn't know existed, and I was able to have snacks. Okay, then Friday night, I mean,

mostly what I did for most of the convention was schmooze with fans and talk to fans and I did a lot of that mostly for the rest of the day. Friday night I had a chance to go out to dinner with all of the cosplayers, save Gavin and the professor

from Tulane Academy. Or, sorry, Tulane Community College. And anyway, we had a great dinner and talked all about magic and all about all the stuff they're up to and all the different places they've cosplayed and what they've cosplayed. Anyway, it was a lot of fun. It was a great dinner. Then Saturday was actually the busiest day of the convention. I, oh, the big story of Saturday is

Liz Lanferro is one of our brand managers. She had been talking with some people from Stan Lee, Stan Lee's company, who are magic players. And they came up with the idea that Stan Lee was interested to come to our booth and see magic. And so it took a while to get him there just because he's a very, very busy man, obviously. And so we kept showing up thinking like, okay, he's going to come at 10 o'clock. Nope. Okay, he's going to come at 1 o'clock.

Nope. Okay, he's going to come at 3 o'clock. It kept getting changed around because he was doing all sorts of other things. And so his schedule was just in constant flux. So we were very flexible. And eventually he came. And so he had a chance to play,

very quickly play Arena against Gavin, dressed as Jace. And then he came and he posed with people. He posed with other cosplayers. And I got a chance to play, very quickly play Arena against Gavin, dressed as Jace. And then he came and he posed with people. He posed with our cosplayers. And I got a chance to meet him and take a picture with him. And so he is one of my idols. I'm a Marvel fan from way, way, way back. So it was just, it was awesome to meet him.

It was one of my, one of the goals of the convention was, I said, if I could just meet Stan Lee, that would be awesome. So hats off to Liz. That was awesome. Thanks for setting that up. And once again, if you look for the picture of me and Stan Lee, I listed him in the pictures. Okay. Saturday, like I said, was

mostly just a lot of magic. In fact, we were so busy in the ballroom that for two hours we couldn't start new events because every table, every seat was accounted for. I spent a bunch of time in the ballroom that for two hours we couldn't start new events because every table, every seat was accounted for. I spent a bunch of time in the VIP room, schmoozing with the VIPs. I spent a bunch

of time in the main room. Oh, then the other big thing was Saturday night, we had a party, a VIP party for all the people that, all the VPAs that come. So it was a celebration, a birthday celebration of magic. Although technically this year it's 24 years, we start the 25th year. And so we did the first of many birthday parties celebrating 25 years of magic. It was a really nice party. It was catered with good food.

There was an open bar and there was cakes. So what happened was Elaine talked to everybody, then I gave a toast and then we cut the cakes there were five cakes the white cake was silver pound cake the blue cake was a vanilla cake dyed blue the black cake was a chocolate rum cake

I think the red cake was red velvet and the green cake was a lemon cake dyed green so we cut the cake there was a giant I mean like six foot tall card for people to sign

to wish Magic happy birthday. Oh, and then we gave all the VIPs a special gift. They rolled the dice and got a random bag and in it was

a full set of some set from somewhere between Lorwyn and present day. So I talked to different people. Someone got like a concert Tarkir set

and someone else got an Eventide set. Someone got a Magic 2013 set. Just all stuff from all around. Anyway, they were excited about that. And the party was great and the food was good and the people were fun

and they were playing 90s music because Magic came out in the 90s. And anyway, the party was a lot of fun. Then Sunday was the final day. I actually left. I needed to get home in time to get my kids to school on Monday. So I actually left Sunday afternoon. I think the event closed at 6.

I think I left at 2. So I left a little before the event ended. But I was there all morning, once again, chatting with a lot of players and stuff. One of the things I want to say before I'm not too far from Rachel's school is I really, my favorite part of the whole weekend was interacting with all the fans. I do not get out to as many events as I once did. And so it is really great hearing, you know, talking to all the Magic fans

and hearing how Magic impacts them and what it means to them. And so many people told me just amazing stories. You know, I met a woman who, like, met her husband through Magic, and she's like, you know, Magic's the reason that, you know, I met a woman who like met her husband through magic and she's like, you know, magic's the reason that, you know, we're together and I met people who like just had had tough times in their life and really magic was the thing that pulled through or

people talked about just how they met all their friends through magic and anyway, awesome stories, just amazing things. I mean, I obviously, magic to me is this wonderful thing, but just hearing other people share my passion and love for it, and just meeting the community and getting a chance to interact with everybody was so much fun. The other thing that I really enjoyed is I've been to a lot of magic conventions over the years, and this was unlike any other magic convention I've been to. The fact that it was a Hasbro event, which meant there were just so many families there and young kids there and

just the energy was just such a different thing. It was really, really cool. It was just fun watching. Like, the kids loved posing with all our cosplayers and they were really interested in our game. We did a lot of teaching and just seeing all

these families and kids that's all excited like that's the next generation of magic players and you know I love sort of having an opportunity to you know we don't always get to interact with kids you know and as much as we do normally in a magic convention it's more you know maybe teenagers but older kids you don't get the young kids as much and just having a chance to sort of see the kids and interact with them. There was some cosplaying that went on. Another picture I took.

There were two brothers. One that dressed up as a Johnny. And one that dressed up as Chandra. That was cute beyond words. You know, and there were a lot of cruel. There was a lot of, not cruel. A lot of cool cosplays that went on. I met somebody who had made a suit of armor out of magic cards that was, like, impeccably done.

You know, there was all sorts of cosplaying, like, fan cosplaying going on. There was Garolf, and there was just a lot of different characters. I saw Lilianas and just a lot of different magic cosplaying, which was fun to see. Anyway, it was just, it was a really, like, I will admit, you know, a couple months going into the event, I didn't know what to expect. And there was a lot of questions about, you know, will this all come together? And, you know, there was some nervousness in that whenever you do something for the first time, especially when you do something that's never been done before, you know, that

there's a little bit of nervousness. And I am so happy how everything came out. I really think that it was an amazing thing. You know, whenever you do something for the first time you don't know whether or not you'll do a second one. I mean, this is not me knowing with any definitiveness, but I think the first one went so well

that I think there'll be another Hascon. I think there'll be a Hascon 2. Like I said, I really had a blast and it was really a lot of fun and it was neat seeing all the players. It was neat having a blind pre-release. It was neat having to interact with other Hasbro brands. I don't normally get to interact with Hasbro brands.

You know, we're off and, you know, I mean, I interact with D&D every once in a while. But we're Wizards of the Coast is on the other side of the country from Hasbro. So, you know, we don't necessarily get to interact with the other brands quite as often. So it was just really neat. It was neat seeing the Nerf setup or getting to talk to different people

from different sections about how they do the thing they do. And, you know, we share trips and tricks. And anyway, the whole event was really, really cool.

But I'm driving up right now into a Rachel school. So I just want to say, you know, this was a really fun experience. Like I said, if you look for hashtag HasCon and hashtag Watsi Staff on both Tumblr and Twitter,

you will find all sorts of pictures. I took lots and lots and lots of pictures. But anyway, it was lots of fun. But, as Matt Rachel School, we know what that means. We mean 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.