Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #584: Alpha Playtesters

Episode Date: October 26, 2018

Inspired by a video about the people who playtested Magic before it came out, I go into greater detail about the various playtesters.

I'm pulling away driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today's podcast was sponsored, or was inspired, sorry, by a video. So Nate and Sean, you guys might know them as the duo that did Walking the Planes, and they now do a video series called Enter the Battlefield. So recently, at least from my perspective, they did one called Enter the Battlefield Alpha Playtesters where they interviewed, I think they interviewed three people to talk a little bit about

what it was like to playtest Alpha. It turns out there's, I think, 11 playtesters that I know that went on to at least work on a set that in some level would end up in Magic. I think there were some other playtesters more than that. I'm just going to talk about the ones that ended up designing an early Magic set.

And anyway, I wanted to talk about the Alpha playtesters. So today is all about a little more in-depth about the Alpha playtesters. So I'll talk a little bit about the system and sort of who they were and how they did what they did and what sets they impacted on. And we're going to talk through all that today. So more than if I ever wanted to know about the Alpha Playtesters. My caveat here is this is all information that I've gleaned over the years. So I first want to start with the, I believe everything I'm saying is true.

But I've noticed, for example, often when I write an article, or even this year at San Diego Comic-Con, when I gave a speech, one of the people, a guy named Chris Page, I'll talk about in a second, often will write to me and tell me that, oh, you were incorrect about this or that. So I'm doing the best I can to tell you the information, but this is, none of this that I experienced firsthand. So all of this is second and third hand information. None of this that I experienced firsthand.

So all of this is second and third hand information. Okay. So when Richard was making magic, he was working at the University of... Actually, he was... He was... Was he a graduate student or was he getting his doctorate? Anyway, he was at the University of Pennsylvania. At least that's where he did a lot of the play testing. He must have been getting his doctorate there, is my guess.

did a lot of the playtesting. He must have been getting his doctorate there, is my guess. Anyway, what he did is, in order to test magic, he made use of a group of people that he had met through various places to playtest the game. And I'm going to talk a little bit today, actually, let me first get into what he did, and then I'll introduce the people. So what he did was he really wanted to test the concept of a trading card game. So what he did is he made a whole bunch of magic cards, and I think it was something like eight of every common, and three

of every uncommon, and one of every rare, something like that. He actually had rarities to them. I knew there was only one of every rare in existence. And then he went out to all the people that decided to play, his playtesters, and he gave them a collection of cards. And the idea was, you

could make whatever deck you wanted, but you only got these cards, and if you wanted other cards, you had to trade with other people. And that part of the game was the metagame of, if you wanted to make a certain deck, you had to go get the cards to make the deck. And so, because he really wanted to test sort of a larger ecosystem.

And remember, one of the things that Richard had always assumed was that people weren't going to buy a large number of cards. The thought process is he wanted to make sure it worked with a smaller number of cards. And if people bought a lot of number of cards, okay, the game's a big success. We'll solve that problem later. So what he did is he made the playtest cards were on cardboard. They're about an inch wide and two inches long.

Literally printed on, when I say cardboard, I mean like a paper stock, like a thicker paper stock that you'd get at a copy place. It was on white. The early playtests was on white or gray. I think the earliest ones might have been on gray. And then the first version just had

words on it, and then very, very soon after, Richard started putting pictures on it. In fact, maybe they all had pictures. The only ones I've ever seen had pictures on it. Maybe they all had pictures on it. And fact, maybe they all had pictures. The only ones I've ever seen have had pictures on it. Maybe they all had pictures on it. And they were things that Richard had. I think Scaf helped him. We'll get to Scaf in a second.

But they were just different pictures from different places. A lot of them were just cut out of magazines or comics. There was a lot of pop culture references there. And it was just sort of a little bit of an image to give you a little bit of flavor of what was going on. One of the famous ones is the original version of

Healing Sav was just called Heal, and Scaf took a photocopy of his heel, and it was a picture of Scaf's heel. That's what it was on, H-E-A-L, but it was Scaf's H-E-E-L. Anyway, so Richard made the early versions, and then he distributed them, and he didn't tell the playtesters anything about it.

They didn't know what was in, like, trying to recreate the reality of sort of how the game would work. Nobody knew, all people knew is what their cards were, and then whatever cards they saw somebody else play. And so the idea was you were experiencing the game in the way that Richard wanted you to, which is you had to learn about it from other people. And a lot of the fun stories about the playtesting was people slowly figuring out what was going on. The other really cool thing about this, and in some ways Alpha was kind of like this as well, is nobody knew, especially in the playtest, nobody knew strategies yet.

There was no, like right now if you learn to play Magic, you can go read all sorts of articles and like, you know, you can get from a zero strategy to a higher level strategy by reading and learning from people that have already sort of learned the basics of Magic. But when the playtesters were playtesting, they didn't even know what all the cards were. So there was no... They were sort of figuring it out as they went along. And a lot of early strategies got figured out

by people who just tried things. One of the stories that gets told in the video is about how somebody was trying to get a Mox Emerald. And the person he traded it with just said, well, just give me a Forest. Oh, because the lands, by the way, not only did you have to trade normal cards, you just couldn't get whatever land you wanted.

If you needed a land, you had to trade for the land. Like, you had enough basic lands to make a deck, but you didn't, if you wanted to concentrate, you would need to trade your lands to get other lands. Anyway, so the, I forget who it was. Was it Don or Barry? One of the ones, so in the interview, if you want to watch it,

it's called Enter the Battlefield, Alpha Playtesters. He interviews three people. Barry Reich, Don Felice, and Joel Mick. I'll talk about all of them today. And one of them, wasn't Joel, it was either Barry or Don, talks about wanting to get a Mox Emerald. And the person said, well, just trade me a Force for it.

Those are the same, right? So there's a lot of learning to be had. You know, a lot. One of the things that I often talk about when playing Alpha is the Internet was pretty young. And magic wasn't really widespread yet. And like, A, you didn't know what all the cards were. And B, like things that we now know definitively are bad, people thought were good just because everybody was a beginner.

And so the things that tricked beginners kind of tricked everybody because nobody really had learned the strategy yet. So things, like I joke a lot, like the Hive or Clockwork Beast, neither of which are particularly good cards, would have thought of in the early days as being very powerful because from an early player's perspective, they seem good. And comparative to other things that existed, like the Hive was the only thing that made a repeatable token.

So like, well, that's got to be good. Every turn I get a flying 1-1. You know, that seems like it's really good. Every turn I get a flying 1-1. That seems like it's really good. So anyway, the playtesters definitely worked in a system in which they had these little cards. And one of the reasons Richard knew that he felt the game was going to be a success was the playtesters just went ape for the game. They really, really enjoyed the game.

And I think Don in the video talks a lot about how it was the most fun of Magic he's ever had. This sort of experimental, you don't know what's going on, everything's kind of crazy, you know, you have to trade for everything. Just how much fun that was because it was really a time of exploration. Nowadays, like, you guys see the cards before they even come out. So, like, there's no no in the early days of Magic there was definitely this I don't know the cards and when I play people I would see cards I'd never seen before. That sort of has gone away in the

age of information. Okay, so let's talk about the actual play structures. So first we're going to talk about Barry Reich or Bit as Richard would call it, as Barry's nickname. Barry has the claim to fame of being the very first person to play Richard in a game of magic.

So Barry, I think they were neighbors, and they both went to school together. And Richard would often come to Barry to playtest things. And when Barry tells the story about playing magic, it wasn't like this was the one time Richard ever had him playtest something. Richard all the time would say, do you want to playtest something? And Barry goes, sure. So Barry was a frequent playtest partner for Richard.

And they played a lot of different games. And the story they tell of this game is that they start playing. Richard comes over and they're in the lounge at school, I think. And I think there aren't any windows where they're at. So they're playing and playing and playing. And when they finally stop, they realize like the sun had just come up. They'd been playing all night long. And, you know, Barry says how like, kind of like from the first game, they knew that it was something special, just that they so immediately sort of got enthralled in playing that there was something really special there.

So one of the things that would happen is when it was clear that Magic looked like it was going to need expansions, not, this is before they knew how fast it was going to need expansions, but Richard was aware that eventually they would need expansions. So he asked his playtester to work on sets that they could release. Barry ended up working by himself on a set called Spectral Chaos. Spectral Chaos is best known when Bill Rose and I and Mike Elliott made Invasion. I'll be getting to Bill in a second. He's one of the playtifters. When we got to Invasion, what we did is we started by looking at Barry's Spectral Chaos,

which was a gold set. It was the first designed gold set. Not the first set with gold to come out. That would be Legends. But it was the first set that was ever designed with the idea of multiple colors in the spells. And Barry really was playing around with the idea of playing lots of colors and things that required more than one color. I think Spectral Chaos

was the first thing that had off-color activations as well as multicolor cards. Once again, this is the first that they got made that had them, not the first that they got released that had them. The other thing that Barry did in his set is what we now refer to as the domain mechanic, where there are

spells that say, okay, for each different kind of basic land you have in play, your spell goes up by one. So it's like do end damage where it's equal to the number of unique basic lands you have in play, or different basic lands. I mean, the idea of how many different types, not

unique ones, I guess. So you have a mountain in play, you have a forest in play, you have a plains in play. And you count those up, so you can do up to five damage, obviously. We, in playtests, called it play, do a planes in play. And you count those up. So you can do up to five damage obviously. We in playtests called it the Barry mechanic because Barry had made it. So if you've ever heard of domain called the Barry mechanic, I've talked about that in articles, that's

because it was made by Barry Reich. So Barry, I'm going to tell stories about people of what they did in Magic beyond being a playtester. Barry, I've met Barry once or twice, and I've definitely corresponded with him through email a few times. He never came to work for Wizards. And like I said, he worked on Spectral Chaos, and we definitely used elements of Spectral Chaos in Invasion.

But that is the most amount of influence. I mean, he obviously, as a playtester, had lots of influence, but as far as, one of the things I want to talk about is where, how later on some of these people went to affect magic. But Barry worked on Spectral Chaos, and he was a playtester. Okay, so now let's get to the East Coast playtefters. So these were four people that Richard had met also through school, but a different, I think he met them, most of them were in

some kind of math or science. Richard was studying combinatorics, which is math. Scaff was studying math. So anyway, there were four people that he met through school. So Scaff Elias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, and Chris Page. So Scaff Elias and Jim Lynn, well, first off, the four of these guys got referred to as the East Coast Playthefters.

They went on to design Antiquities, Fawn Empires, Ice Age, and Alliances. The first set they worked on was Ice Age. When Richard asked each of the groups to work on a set, the set they chose to work on was Ice Age. But when Magic started selling so well and they know they needed some faster sets,

they went to them and they ended up doing Antiquities. So Antiquities is famous for a couple things. One, it's the first kind of mechanically themed set. Arabian Nights was like a top-down set that Richard had done. But the second set ever was Antiquities and that was the first mechanically themed set. It also had the first story in it.

Like, I mentioned this in another podcast. Richard had, like, Alpha had mentioned the names Urza and Mishra, and I think Ashnod, right? Was Ashnod in Alpha? Anyway, actually, I'm not sure if Ashnod was in Alpha. Anyway, at least Urza and Mishra were mentioned. They took those names and did something with them and turned them into the brothers of the Brothers' War.

But that was the first real story they got told. And there's a lot of innovations. East Coast play gestures were very inventive. Ice Age is kind of famous for the number of cards that show up as a one of an Ice Age that later become mechanics. It's pretty big. Anyway, so the East Coast play of thrusters, the majority of them actually did come work at Wizards.

So Scaffolife, Jim Lim, and Dave Petty all worked at Wizards at one point. Chris Page did not. Chris Page, I think what happened was when Magic kind of broke, they were in the middle of school. And a bunch of them chose, instead of finishing school, I believe, to come work at Wizards. Chris chose to stay at school. Dave Petty would move out and be in R&D for a year or two. Then he ended up going back to school, I believe.

I worked with Dave for just a little tiny sliver of time. I think Dave came out in 94 and I started in 95, the end of 95. And he left not too long after I got there. He and I overlapped by maybe six months, maybe. So I worked a little bit with Dave. I don't, I, my memories of Dave are very slight. Dave was very analytical and very, had a and had a very mathematical mind and definitely sort of thought things. One of the things I always joked about was when I got to R&D, I was a person who studied words in a team that had studied math, that most of the people I was working with studied math or sciences.

And so I definitely came from a very different mindset. Anyway, so Dave and I overlapped just a little bit. So Scaf and Jim I worked with a lot. So Scaf Elias, so have you ever heard of the stories of Scaf? Scaf was the one, his most famous story is he used to sleep under his desk from time to time. That he'd work so late at night that Scaf had a sleeping bag that he'd sleep under his desk. Scaf did all sorts of things at Wizards. I mean, he was in R&D the whole time, but he was an executive, he was a vice president,

might have been like a senior vice president, but he had his hands in a lot of things. For a period of time, he was the brand manager of Magic. had his hands in a lot of things. For a period of time, he was the brand manager of Magic. Both Scaf and Joel Mickle, I get to, both were brand manager for a while. So two different playtesters ended up being brand manager.

They were kind of in between brand managers and Scaf filled the role while they were off looking for another brand manager. Scaf also is famous for starting the Pro Tour. Scaf is the one that convinced them that, in fact, Scaf was a real big proprietor of events in general. And really, for a while, I think he oversaw or heavily advised on events.

And he was the person that convinced Peter that there needed to be a Pro Tour. That part of selling magic is making competitive play aspirational. And so Scaf, when I first got to Wizards, Scaf was in the early stages of setting up the pro tour. And I had had a lot of experience running tournaments. Because I had worked for Wizards since early 94, I wasn't allowed in tournaments because I was seeing upcoming magic cards before they were out. So I'd grab my articles and do my puzzles. So I wasn't allowed in tournaments because I was seeing upcoming Magic cards before they were out, so I'd grab my articles and do my puzzles. So I wasn't allowed to play in the tournament, so I would help run the tournament. So I had done a lot of judging. So when I found out they were doing the Pro Tour, I asked Scaf if I could be involved. And so technically, for a bunch of years, I was the liaison to the

Pro Tour from Wizards, from R&D. And so I worked a lot closely with Scaf. Scaf is a lot of fun. Scaf definitely is. He is quirky. One of the stories, there's a lot of Scaf stories. I always said that if I ever,

if I ever left Wizards and went back to Hollywood, that I think that's happening. But I always wanted to, thought it'd be fun to make a sitcom about a game company. And Scaf is one of those people that just is begging to be turned into a character.

Anyway, so Scaf is famous for a bunch of things. He definitely was very playful. He and Richard were very, very playful. Like, I remember for his birthday one year, Scaf got Richard stilts. And Richard occasionally would walk around in the office with these stilts on. And anyway, Scaf was famous for he was willing to eat any leftovers that were in any state of being. And like, um, like I remember one time there was a pizza that it had like, it had been

in the fridge long enough that there were, had, there was like, you know, mold on it. And so Scaf like scraped off the mold and then nuked it and then ate it. Um, and then he got a little bit sick. And so the next day he nuked it longer and then ate more. He wasn't going to let the pizza win, I think is what he said. Anyway, so Scaf

had a lot of different roles, oversaw a lot of different things. He and I had worked together on a bunch of different projects. He and I were on 5th edition together. And we did a few other, he and I were on one point edition together and we did a few other he and I were on at one point we made a Dungeon Dragons

trading card game that never got made he and I were on the team for that but anyway Scaf was a lot of fun oh Scaf was also famous for wearing shorts

regardless of what the weather was like I remember PT1 I did a podcast on PT1 talking about like we're walking to the event from the hotel which was like

a decent little walk and we're walking to the event from the hotel, which was a decent little walk. And we're going through an absolute blizzard. In fact, the pro tour got delayed because of the blizzard. And we're walking through a blizzard and Scaf is walking in shorts in a blizzard in January. Anyway, that is very much a Scaf thing. So Jim Lynn, so Jim for a while, I mean, Jim worked in R&D. He worked his way up. He was the VP of R&D for a while. Um, and Jim, I worked, I worked a little with Jim. I worked more with SCAF than I worked with Jim. Um, Jim definitely was, uh, super

analytical as well. Um, but he had a, he had a general good sense. I mean, all these guys were gamers. All of them, like they started, the reason they were playtesters in the first place was they loved gaming. And then they got to a company and R&D really sort of became the heart of the company. I think because all the people in R&D

were really worthy audience. Like these are all people that would play Magic if they were not working at the company. So it was a very good means by which to sort of capture what our audience wanted because R&D was not the totality of the audience, obviously. I spent a lot of time

learning about who are the players that aren't quite who R&D are. But R&D very much was an audience and really championed the game early on. And they were definitely the people who sort of fought to sort of make sure that the spirit of what Magic was stayed alive. And they did a good job of it.

And Jim, for a long time, when I first got there, what happened was all the original playtesters went to work on other projects. And so they hired me and Bill Rose, who I'll get to in a second, and Mike Elliott and William Jockish and later Henry Stern to sort of oversee Magic. And then all of them were working on other projects because Richard was off making other trading card games. In fact, for a while, Jim was in charge of all the non-magic games.

Scaf had always kept his toes in magic, but was working on bigger projects. He didn't work on individual sets all that often. Most of the rest of the ones they'd brought on, we had done most of the work at that point on the sets. But from time to time, you know, we'd bring in Richard or Scaf or

Charlie or whatever. Okay. That's East Coast Playstuff Church. Next is the Bridge Club. So the next batch of people Richard met through a bridge club that he played. Richard really liked playing bridge. So he met Bill Rose, Joel Mick, Charlie Cattino, Don Felice, Howard Kallenberg, and Elliot Siegel, which are the six people that made Mirage and Visions. It was called Menagerie, I think was the playtest name.

But they made Mirage and Visions, and they did the story, they did all the mechanics. And so those are the people responsible. Those are people... So Richard had... His playtesting were not all from the same place and I think the playtesters got to know each other because they all

once they started participating and had to start trading it kind of forced them to start to get to know one another So all these people started to learn about each other but early on Richard met Barry sort of separately had met the Ecos playtesters separately and met the Bridge Club separately I believe

that they were different pockets of people. And that's why those different pockets made their own sets when Richard wanted to make sets. Okay, Bill Rose is probably the most famous of all the playtesters as far as me mentioning his name in this podcast. So Bill gets hired the exact same time. Bill started three weeks. Bill and I both started October of 1995. Bill started early October. I started late October. So Bill has gone on to be the VP of R&D. In fact, Bill originally was the, before there was a head designer, there was a job in which head designer and head developer were all one role, and Bill had that role. And then he became the VP of R&D, which he still is now.

He's the VP of R&D. So Bill is somebody of everybody on this list, of all the people I've worked with the most, Bill is the person I've worked with the most. I've worked with him for coming up on 23 years. And so Bill, I think before he was running some, he was running some college lab, I think. He was doing finances. I think that's what Bill was doing before he came here. Bill came out a little bit later because he had a job. And so he eventually, the rest of them had come out in,

most of them had come out in 94. Charlie came out early in 95. We'll get to Charlie in a second. And then Bill came out late 95. But Bill and Charlie, of the original playtesters, the only two people that still work at Wizards, that have worked at Wizards, are Bill Rose and Charlie Coutinho.

I'll get to Charlie soon. Anyway, Bill slowly worked his way up. Like I said, he's one of the major players now and if i had a list like the you know top five people that have the largest influence on magic bill's definitely in my top five um bill wrote the uh or bill and joel together wrote the sixth edition rules and um bill led all sorts of he led the design for Mirage and Visions. He led Invasion. He led Shards of Alara.

He led Planar Chaos. He did a bunch of different sets. And Bill is one of the handful of people that have both led design teams and led development teams. Bill has done both. And he was a head designer. He was a VP. So Bill has been super, And he was a head designer. He was a VP. So Bill has been super, super involved in Magic. And Bill, in fact, Charlie doesn't work actively on Magic, but Bill does.

And so Bill has been the person who continuously, if you think I was the person who worked continuously on Magic the longest, you're wrong because Bill has worked longer than me because he started three weeks before me and he was a playtester. So Bill's been playing Magic longer than the game has been out. So Bill, there's probably no person who's been more involved in Magic for longer than Bill. Next, Joel Mick. Bill and Joel co-designed Mirage together.

Joel worked in R&D for a while. Before Bill was the head designer, Joel was the head designer. And then Joel went on to be the brand manager of Magic, which he served for a bunch of years. Joel's responsible for things like rarity symbols and premium cards, foil cards,

and collector numbers. That's also... Joel, along with Bill, also did the 6th edition rules. He cleaned up the rules. Joel is one of the people that gets interviewed. So Barry gets interviewed. Joel gets interviewed. Don, he'll get to in a second.

I'll get interviewed in the video I'm talking about, Enter the Battlefield Alpha Playtester. So you get a chance to meet Joel in the video. Joel is a lot of fun. I interacted a bunch with Joel. A, because he ran design for a while. And then even when he was Magic Ram Manager, I interacted a bunch with Joel, A, because he was in design, but he ran design for a while, and then even when he was Magic Ram Manager, I interacted with Joel quite a bit. Joel, nobody I'm talking about, everybody I'm talking about who worked at Wizards is no longer there,

with the exception of Bill and Charlie. Joel left many years ago, but Joel, like I said, definitely had influence on Magic, collector numbers and premium cards and rarity symbols and stuff. A lot of that things happened during Urza Saga-ish time. That was Joel's doing. Next is Charlie Catino. So Charlie has been at Wizards. He has the record of being the person longest at Wizards. He started in February of 2000. I'm sorry, it's February of 1995. As far as people who've been at Wizards continuously the longest,

there are some people who came to Wizards from TSR that had been at TSR longer than Charlie had been a Wizard. So if you count their TSR time, have been continuously working longer than Charlie. But Charlie's the longest person to work at Wizards continuously. On the books, I'm the longest because part of my... When I got hired, I asked for a start date of January. So on the record, on the books, I'm technically the longest, but really I'm not

because I started in October. So Charlie has the actual... I have the record on paper, and Charlie has the actual record. Charlie... One of Charlie's famous things is I think they misspelled his name in the Alpha rulebook. And so from then on,

there's a running joke that Charlie's name is always misspelled, but always misspelled differently in every product he works on. So if you go look through Magic, you'll see also, you know, Charlie Cantina, Charlie...

They're always... Whenever they can, they make it relevant to the product it's on, but a lot of times it's just different misspellings and things. Charlie now works... We make a game called Duel Masters. We used to sell Pokemon, and then when the Pokemon license left, we decided that we would make a game to go to China...

Not China, to Japan first, a kid's trading card game, with the idea that eventually we'd bring it to the U.S. We ended up being very successful about having the game in Japan, not so successful to bring it back to the U.S. We tried twice. Neither time was a great success. But the game in Japan is a huge success, and so Charlie oversees the Duel Master team.

Every once in a blue moon, Charlie will peek his head in on Magic, but he hasn't really worked on magic in a while. Charlie was on the Tempest Design team when I, my first ever team,

I could pick. So Richard was on it. Mike Elliott was on it and Charlie was on it. So I've worked with Charlie on a bunch of things. In fact, I've worked on Charlie

on some stuff that isn't magic. Most recently, my project with Charlie is he asked me to work on the Transformers trading card game. We hadn't really

made a trading card game in a while, and there weren't a lot of people in the building that were used to making a brand new trading card game. So Charlie asked if he would mind if I could join in. There was a team of us. It wasn't just me. But anyway, I joined in, and I did a lot of the early work. There was later team of us. It wasn't just me. But anyway, I joined in, and I did a lot of the early work. There was later work after I left.

So there's a lot of the foundation. I helped build some of the foundation. But the main game itself, other people worked on that. But anyway, Charlie oversaw that. So I got to work with Charlie. That was my recent working with Charlie. Charlie's a lot of fun. Charlie is one of the people in the playtest

that was known for making really crazy decks like he had one deck where what he would do is he would play with you, he had a lot of swords to plowshares and he would keep removing your things from the game and then

he'd do something was it time thrifter? Something where he'd shuffle things back in so he would keep going through the deck again and again, but each time he'd remove stuff with his Swords of Plowshares, so eventually he just... Your deck would evaporate. You'd have no deck left.

Oh, maybe he did Share His Odds? Maybe he did Share His Odds. Maybe he kept going into sub-games and exiling your cards so they would disappear for the main game. Anyway, he ended up making this thing that would beat you by just making your deck disappear. And Charlie definitely loves

doing the goofy fun things. And Charlie's always been a big champion of bad cards. In fact, what's it called? Lion's Eye Diamond Charlie designed because he thought he was making a bad lotus. I convinced him to... It originally tapped for colorless,

and I convinced him to be three of any color. I said, if it's going to be a bad lotus, it should at least be a lotus. It went on to be an amazing card. But anyway, Charlie did try to make it bad. Next, we have Don Felice. So Don is one of the other people interviewed in the video.

Don never worked for Wizards. My favorite story of Don is one of the other people interviewed in the video. Don never worked for Wizards. My favorite story of Don is Don wanted to get his name in the set, and so they made a card called Felden's Ice Cane. Felden's Ice or Felden and Ice are anagrammed to Don Felice.

And then when they made it, it didn't get drawn out of ice. I guess the artist didn't put ice in it or didn't make it out of ice. So it ended artist didn't put ice in it or didn't make it out of ice. So it ended up just being called Felden's Cane. So later they made Deleth's Cone, which is an anagram for Don Felice. So I met Don a bunch of times. Don, in the early days, came out to Wizards a few times, and I met him at some events.

Fun person to talk to. But Don never actually worked at Wizards Howard Collenberg I know very little about Howard I met him one time at an event early early in Magic and then the final person is Elliot Siegel

so the only story I know of Elliot Siegel both Howard and Elliot I think I met once at an event I know of them more than I know them Don I've actually interacted with a bunch of times. All the East Coast play structures, I either worked with, or something like Chris, who I've spent a decent amount of time talking with.

And even Barry, I've had some longer conversations with. Both Howard and Elliot, I met, how you doing? Nice to meet you. So Elliot's story, the one story I know about Elliot is that Elliot wanted a nickname.

And they were joking about how Perry, the football player, the Refrigerator Perry, what's his first name? And he wanted a nickname like the Refrigerator Perry. And so, I don't know if it was Bill or somebody said, okay, Mr. Toilet. And so that was his nickname and they used to call him Mr. Toilet. So in Mirage there's a character named

Talimtor. And Talimtor is an anagram of Mr. Toilet. So that is Elliot's how Elliot shows up in magic as an anagram, Mr. Toilet Talimtor. Anyway, that, my friend, I'm almost to work,

that is all the alpha playtesters that I that, I mean, there are other people, these are not the only people that ever playtested magic. I'm sure there are other people, but these are all the people that went on to do specific magic things, meaning they

all went on to make sets that either in whole or in part ended up making it to print. So Barry Reich, Scaf Elias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, Chris Page, Bill Rose, Joel Mick, Charlie Cattino, Don Feliste, Howard Kallenberg, Elliot Siegel. Those are the Alpha Playtectors.

So I hope today fills you a little bit in when I saw that video I liked the video and I would recommend go and see it enter the battlefield Alpha Playtesters

but it just I mean part of it is the video can only be so long so you couldn't interview everybody but when I saw that it was fun to see

to see Barry and Don and Joel get interviewed but I'm like oh there's so many more Alpha Playtesters so anyway I hope today filled that in a little bit and maybe encouraged you to see Barry and Don and Joel get interviewed. But I'm like, oh, there's so many more Alpha Playtesters. So anyway, I hope today filled that in a little bit and maybe encouraged you to see the video

and told you a little bit more about the early days of Magic and how it got playtested. But I'm now driving into the parking lot. So once again, I hope you guys enjoyed. I love doing podcasts all about the history of Magic. This is the history of magic that predates me. I've been around a long time, but not since the very beginning. So it's fun to sort of share with you guys some super early magic history.

Anyway, I'm now parked, so we all know what that 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 soon. Bye.