Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #674: SDCC 2019

Episode Date: September 20, 2019

As is normal, I went to San Diego Comic-Con, but this year, I got to reveal Throne of Eldraine to the world. It was quite fun. In this podcast, I fill you in on my entire trip.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about my trip to San Diego Comic-Con 2019. Okay, so actually the beginning of my trip wasn't even San Diego Comic-Con, but it's part of this trip, so I'm going to talk about it. So I actually left a day early. Before I went to San Diego, I went to Los Angeles. So I was very proud to participate in a Make-A-Wish. I've done this before. I've done a bunch of Make-A-Wish. I think this was like my maybe 10th Make-A-Wish.

So every once in a while, we get contacted by the Make-A-Wish people, for those who don't know. So every once in a while we get contacted by the Make-A-Wish people, for those who don't know. The Make-A-Wish Foundation is a foundation that allows kids with very serious medical conditions to... Sometimes terminal, sometimes not. It's not always terminal. I think people think of it as always being terminal. It can be, but it is not always. And it allows them to make a wish of their choice. It's a really awesome thing. And every time I've been asked to do it, I always say yes. So this time, the wish was for Evan.

And he was a giant fan of Jimmy and Josh in the Command Zone. And so his wish was he wanted to come be on their show, be on the Command Zone. And they contacted me because he was a fan of mine. And they thought it'd be fun for me to sort of show up and surprise him. So the idea was he had no idea I was coming. It was a complete surprise. So I think he and his family showed up the night before. And they played with Jimmy and Josh and some friends.

And then the next day they came to record the show. And then right before we started, I showed up unannounced. So what happened is then we did an episode of the Command Zone, the podcast. And the topic was chosen by Evan. I was talking about how to teach people how to play Commander. And so we had, I think the podcast was like an hour and a half. It went by really fast. But we were talking about sort of how to teach people how to play in general and specifically how to teach people Commander. And, you know, it was Jimmy and Josh and Evan

and me. And then the four of us played a game of Commander. It's not Game Nights. They do another one. I'm blanking on the name of it. But they do a video series. It's not Game Nights. It's a different one. And we are going to be on that as well. So anyway, you'll see me on the Command Zone.

And you'll see me in the video show where we're playing. Anyway, that was a lot of fun I was happy I was able to do that and then on the next day I traveled from Los Angeles to San Diego that by the way was the worst day of my trip all I had to do was just travel from a city I think it's like a 20 minute plane ride

but I was in the airport my flight got delayed I think times. I had three different gates and two different terminals. I was there all day for like a teeny tiny flight. I joked with my wife that I said I could have driven to San Diego from Los Angeles and driven back, and I think driven there a second time in the moment in time I waited to try to get my plane. But anyway, on to San Diego Comic-Con.

Okay, so I show up Wednesday night, or Wednesday afternoon. So Wednesday night is preview night. So the way it works is San Diego Comic-Con is four days long, plus there's a preview night on Wednesday. So Wednesday night is preview night, and then Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Normally I come in for preview night and I leave on Sunday morning. I'm really not there for the last day, just because I try to keep my travel as condensed as I can. Okay, so let's start. So Wednesday night was, I mean, so we had a little tiny part of the, Hasbro has a very, very big booth.

Um, I think they call it Pulse. That's the name of their, uh, anyway, so their, their Hasbro has two big booths. One is the booth that is selling things. And, um, we normally have a Comic-Con, a San Diego Comic-Con, uh, exclusive released this year. I think it was a convention exclusive that premiered at Comic-Con. Um, and our exclusive this year, I think it was a convention exclusive that premiered at Comic Con. And our exclusive this year was we took Nicole Bolas and the four God Eternals as they appeared in War of the Spark, and we did a really cool treatment with them. What we did for each one of them is we took their silhouette, and then

the art bleeds through their silhouette like everything else is black and their silhouette is what opens up so you can see the art and then you get to see art of them. And then it had a special inverse printing where there was light text on the art and it had a different premium treatment than we've done before. Anyway, it was very cool. You could get that at the show. So Hasbro has one booth that is selling things. And not only were we,

that was what Magic was selling. I believe our Transformer game had one or two unique items there. Anyway, there's a booth that's selling things and then there's a booth that's kind of showing off stuff. That's not selling things. Uh, we had a little corner of that booth. So basically what it was is, um, we had hired, uh, two, uh, Chandra cosplayers.

The wall had a giant picture of Chandra cause, uh, core 2020 just come out. Uh, and then they made a big standee of the Chandra, the Planeswalker Pack Chandra. The art was cut out so you could stand there, and it's just a giant card so people could sort of pose in the card. And one of the Chandras was always there, so you could always pose with Chandra. I did take some pictures, if you follow me on any of my social media, especially Twitter. Probably where I posted them. Anyway, the, and at the booth we were handing out little

headsets. Oh, hold on a second. There is somebody trying to get by. Ambulance. We're going to try to let the ambulance by so the ambulance can get where it needs to go. Not only safety first, but safety of others first as well. So give me one second.

I'm getting out of the way of the ambulance. You can hear it going by. Okay. The ambulance has gone by. Okay. Sorry, where was I? Oh, at the booth, we were handing out little headsets

that were little like Chandra that you put on your head. Kind of like a Burger King crown, But, oh, at the booth, we were handing out little headsets that were little, like, Chandra, that you put on your head. Kind of like a Burger King crown, but it was Chandra. It was Chandra's hair and her goggles. So you could put that on your head. And then, we were handing out other stuff. We were handing out little promo packs, I think.

The kind that you would get in stores as prizes. And then I think we had an arena card that was redeemable for someone in the arena. Anyway, we had some handouts. Okay, so on Wednesday, I swung by, said hi to everybody at the booth. I was not working the booth. I have some responsibilities, but other people were working the booth. Anyway, and then I had a chance to shop. Like, one of the fun things about Comic-Con for me is I get stuff for myself and for my family.

And so Wednesday was mostly just for me. Uh, okay, Thursday morning, I had an autograph signing. So that was at the booth. That's at the Hasbro booth. Um, and so we set it up, and it was quite crowded. I will say that when you have a signing, I've had signings in the past where, like, at some point, just it runs out of people, and then you're sitting there and, like, waving it past their buyers because there's no one in your line.

But that was not the case this time. There was a long line. In fact, at one point, we had to cut them off. And then for each person, we had made an invitation. Oh, I should explain this. So Thursday mornings at Comic-Con, there is a press breakfast. So we had made these special invitations that announced Throne of Eldraine. At the time, no one knew the name of Throne of Eldraine. And so what happened was there were these purple invitations that announced Throne of Eldraine. At the time, no one knew the name of Throne of Eldraine.

And so what happened was, there were these purple invitations, and it said, like, the Royal Courts of Eldraine would like to invite you to, and you open it up, and it said Throne of Eldraine, pre-release, and they had a date for the group, I think. And then there were some pictures of one or two fairies on it.

So we had done that at the... Hold on a second. It's very aggressive. two ferries on it. So we had done that at the... Hold on a second. Very aggressive. We had done that at the press breakfast knowing that we wanted to announce something at the press breakfast so we announced the name of the set. A lot of people somehow thought that was like a leak

or something, but it was at a press breakfast where we pre-printed invitations. So it was not a leak. It was something we had meant to do. So the name got out there Thursday morning, and because the only thing on the thing was a picture of a fairy, the audience does what they tend to do, which is, this is the only information we have. Oh, it must be all about fairies. And it wasn't, as we'll get to that. But I had to sort of say, like, there's fairies in it.

It's not like there's not fairies. The art you're seeing on the card is art from something in the set. But it is not all about fairies. Fairies are an opponent of many things. So anyway, I was at the signing. I was handing out the invitations. And then I was also signing them. And then people could bring cards for me to sign.

So I signed magic cards and play mats. I signed some of the San Diego Comic-Con exclusives. I signed all sorts of things. And I signed the invitation. And I had a black marker and a silver marker. So what happened is I'd say hello to people I'd greet them, I'd give them an invitation, welcome them to Throne of Eldraine I would sign whatever things I liked to sign and then most of them I would then take a picture not that everybody took a picture but pictures were pretty popular

so basically it's greet, give them an invitation, sign, take a picture and I don't know how many people there were but it lasted the entire hour in fact we at the end were rushing through the people at the end because I only had an hour for the signing and the time was up and there were other things on the stage so I was just quickly signing things

for the last batch of people I wasn't allowed to take pictures just because I had to go really fast so although I think most of what we did for them is instead of posing for a picture, I just would smile while I was signing the card, and they could lean over and then we'd get a picture. So they did get a picture. Anyway, we did the signing. The signing was fun. The thing with signings is they're just so fast, and really the signings are mostly like me saying hi,

them saying how much they love magic, and then I sign stuff. I like to talk to people during the signing if I can, but when there's a lot of people, I just got to keep it moving. So it's very fast conversations. But anyway, it is always fun meeting fans. And for those of you that have never had people want your autograph and or have a picture with you, it's pretty cool. autograph or have a picture with you. It's pretty cool. Like I said, I think I have the right level of celebrity where I get the time and moments where people are really excited to see me and want to take pictures of me and get me to sign stuff. And no one bugs me in the grocery store when I'm shopping. So I feel like a good level of celebrity.

Okay, so then my other responsibility on Thursday is we have a bunch of press. And so I'm one of the spokespeople for Magic. And so some of them are video, some are audio. And so people would come. And so what happens is I work with our PR people and with Hasbro's PR people. They line up the various interviews and stuff they want to do. I was there also. Nick Kellman was there.

We obviously had announced the Netflix show. He's sort of the exec producer, one of the exec producers on our end on the show. He was there to talk a little bit about Netflix because Comic-Con very much is about media.

He was there to do some interviews about the Netflix show. I was there to talk about just magic in general. One of the tricky things is all my interviews happened before my panel. And so a lot of people wanted to ask me about the fall set, but I hadn't announced anything about the fall set yet.

So I could say the name because we announced that. And then I said very exciting things about it without really saying anything about it since I couldn't give the details yet. And then Thursday, the rest of Thursday was my time. So I basically, my main thing is, my biggest responsibility at Comic-Con is doing the panel. And then I have interviews and I have the autograph signing.

And I also did one other thing I'll talk about in a second. But anyway, those are my main responsibilities. I did one other thing I'll talk about in a second. But anyway, those are my main responsibilities. And, oh, the one thing I did do on Thursday is there is a magic area at Comic-Con. We have our own room to play magic. Tim Shield, his team runs the magic room. And there's all sorts of events.

And there's a prize wall. And, you know, it's very nicely run. It's next door in the Marriott. So for those that have never been to San Diego Comic-Con, San Diego Comic-Con has gotten so big that they sort of expand beyond just the convention itself. So on either side of the convention, one side of the convention is the San Diego Hilton Bayfront, and The other side is the Marriott. And both of those hold events. There's things there. So the convention is so big that it's grown beyond just the convention center

and it's absorbed numerous hotels in the area well. So I mean, obviously hotels are filled with people who are coming to Comic-Con, but the rooms are filled with things for Comic- to Comic-Con, but the rooms are filled with things for Comic-Con. There's a lot of events at Comic-Con. Oh, the one other thing

that I got to do on Thursday was I got to go see my friend Justin Gary. He was in a panel talking about the tabletop, the state of tabletop business. So, as somebody who works in the tabletop business,

it was fun to see that. And he and a bunch of people, he was on a panel, so it was very cool. Justin, by the way, is a longtime Magic Pro player who made his own game company, he and our friends. So I had a chance to see him. That was cool. Oh, also, Wednesday night, by the way,

to see him. That was cool. Um, oh, also Wednesday night, by the way, um, one of the fun things about, um, the convention is getting to see old friends. I got a chance to have dinner with Pat Chapin. Uh, Pat's another, um, magic pro. So anyway, I got it. I got to see a lot of different people. Um, uh, so Thursday I got to see the magic room, uh, and I got to, um, talk to a bunch of people there. Uh, anyway, um, that is most of Thursday. Um, oh, I, I did it with my friend Natasha on Thursday. Um, seeing a lot, seeing lots of magic people at, at Comic-Con. Okay.

Then we get to Friday. So Friday, um, I had some interviews in the morning, so I went in and did the interviews. Then, oh, is Friday the day? Oh, I think this was, I think I'm missing my days. I think Friday was just interview day. Yes, Friday was just interview day. So I did all, Friday was probably my heaviest interview day. Yes, Friday was just interview day. So I did all, Friday was probably my heaviest interview day. I did a few interviews on Thursday and I did one on Saturday, but I think my,

most of my interviews were on Friday. So I had a block of time from like, I had like a two hour block where I did a whole bunch of interviews. And it's fun. And you know, I like doing interviews and I've done a lot of interviews.

It's just, you want to have a lot of energy, but luckily I have a lot of energy, so I both know the things I have to say, and the things I don't have to say, so I was able to do that, a lot of Fridays, I did interviews for a couple hours on Fridays, and then I actually got off and go to see some panels, one of the nice things about Comic-Con that I enjoy is, obviously I have some amount of work that I do, but I also have some amount of getting to see Comic-Con. So I sat on a panel on The Boys, which is a new show on Amazon Prime based on a Garth Ennett comic.

And then I also saw Carnival Row, which is a brand new original show. And then I had a few other panels with various people. Entertainment Weekly likes to make panels where they just get a lot of different stars from different kind of geeky shows and put them on stage together, so those are always fun to watch.

And then Friday night, I had dinner with a friend of mine who lives in Los Angeles. Um, okay. Uh, so anyway, it was fun. The one thing that's really nice is, uh, I just had a lot of chance to see people, um, between, you know, Pat and Justin and Natasha and my friend Scott.

I just got a chance to see a lot of friends and stuff. Um, so that was cool. Um, okay. Now we get to Saturday. Saturday is probably my friend Scott. I just got a chance to see a lot of friends and stuff. So that was cool. Okay, now we get to Saturday. Saturday is probably my biggest day. So Saturday, first thing I did is I did my last press interview. I think I had one or two. And then we had a on the stage, we had a magic cosplaying not really a contest, no one won, but...

A chance for all the people who are cosplaying in magic costumes to come. It was really cool. So, let's see, I remember who we had. We had... First up was Liliana, who had a really nice costume and spent, like, hundreds of hours on it. After Liliana, we had an Ajani. Then we had Nissa. And then we had, um, uh, Dana Fisher as Nissa. So, uh, we Nissa. Um, then after that we had, um, if I remember correctly, we had. We had Young Pyromancer. We had Soren.

We had Nahiri. We had two Shondras. I'm not forgetting anybody. And the costumes were really good. Obviously, cosplaying has become a really big thing. I mean, it's funny. If you ever go to a magic convention, like a magic fest, you see tons and tons of cosplaying.

But still, for Center Comic Con, the fact that we had, like, you know, 10 cosplayers show up to our cosplay thing was pretty cool. And one of the neat things about walking around the floor is how often, you know, I mean, not constantly,

but I would occasionally see a magic cosplayer, which was pretty cool. I think that is neat to see Magic reach the point where at a general kind of convention like Center Comic Con, you will see people in Magic cosplay. That was really cool. And so I was up there. Whenever someone came on stage, I would explain who the character was to the audience and give some trivia facts about the character.

And then at some point I started making lots of puns because that apparently was the thing we were doing. And I like making puns. Okay, so now we get to the main crux of why I was there was the panel. So the panel was at 630. why I was there, was the panel. So the panel was at 6.30. So this was the fourth year in a row that the Magic Panel was Saturday at 6.30, 7.30 in room 24 ABC.

I think we've proven that it's a good slot for us. So we filled up the room. I had told we had over 400 people in the room and we had to turn people away. We were at capacity and they were quite excited so the interesting thing is so the quick story here is

I used to go to Comic Con on my own just for fun and one year I asked the person who was the head of magic at the time if they minded if I had a magic panel and they said sure and they ended up setting a whole bunch of people down and for a number of years we had a magic at the time, if they minded if I had a magic panel, got a magic panel. And they said, sure. And then they ended up setting a whole bunch of people down.

And for a number of years, we had a magic panel where there were, you know, four or five people on the panel. And then at one point, they decided to stop doing the magic panel. So I went back

to the same person, actually, and said, look, I'm going to be there. Could I just have a magic panel? Do you care if I have a magic panel? And they said, sure, fine. And then they came back to me and said, well, if you're going to be there, do you mind doing some interviews and an autograph session, this and that? And I said, oh, sure. And then they paged me to fly down and paged me her mail. So it has

worked out quite well. So anyway, the last couple years, I've been doing Blog Talk Live, which means it's just me answering questions from people. It used to be when all of us would go down, there'd be a larger panel. We'd always premiere information. But the last couple years, other than the fact that I was able to premiere some unstable stuff two years ago, I haven't really had a chance in my panel. My panel was more question and answers and less, here's the thing you don't know.

But Liz, Liz in charge of magic marketing, came to me and said, we would like to premiere Throne of Eldraine at Comic-Con. Are you okay with that? I'm like, am I okay with that? You know, I'm very fond of the set. It was something that I've been trying to do forever. It finally got made. I'm really happy with how it came out. So I was like, I'm excited to do. It also turned out that at the same time, Throat of Eldraine was going to

be the start of a bunch of new things. And so I was planning to write an article about it. And then we realized that, okay, since I'm doing Comic-Con and I'm introducing Throat of Eldraine, I'll introduce all that stuff as well. So it turned out that my panel, about half my panel, was just me just running through a bunch of information and then the second half was me answering questions. So, real quickly, I mean, a lot of this is online and obviously this is eight weeks later, so by the time you're hearing this, you probably know

all of what Throne of Eldraine is, I assume. But I'm not quite sure when this goes up, so I will not give away, I'll just say what I said at the panel. So anyway, I introduced Throne of Eldraine. I really hammered home that it is Camelot meets Grimm's Fairy Tales. So I had done something that I thought was pretty fun, by the way,

which was, I had a whole bunch of pictures. I got permission to show 24 pieces of art. So what I did was, for part of it, as I said to the audience, the most important part of this is that you get across the idea that it's Camelot meets Grimm's Fairy Tales. So what I'm going to do is you guys are going to say Camelot, and I'll show you a picture that's from the Camelot part, the Camelot-inspired part of the set. And then I'll say meets, and then you say Grimm's Fairy Tales, and I'll'll say meats. And then you say Grimm's Fairy Tales. And I'll show you a picture that's from the Grimm's Fairy Tales part of the set.

And they were all in on this idea. So I start them. And they scream Camelot at the top of their lungs. I show them a Camelot picture. Then they yell meats. I'm like, no, no, no, no. I say meats. Because I needed to, like, I wanted them to see the picture for a while before I went to the next picture.

So they could enjoy the picture. But it took us a little while to get down the they say camelot, I say meats, they say grimfigs. We got it down, but everybody was screaming top of their lungs. So anyway, I showed off a whole bunch of art. I then showed off the basic lands, or one of each of the basic lands. Cynthia Shepard is our art director. I had her pick her favorite of each of the basic lands and show thatepard is our art director. I had her pick her favorite of each of the basic lands and show that. And then I talked a little bit about,

we've done a lot of high fantasy before, you know, the idea of Arthurian. We haven't done exactly Arthurian influence exactly, but we have done a lot of high fantasy, knights and castles and kings and queens and stuff. But we really hadn't done a lot of fairy tales yet. The only card I could come up with was, there was a card in Innistrad that was basically Red Riding Hood and she

becomes the wolf. It was a werewolf. That's kind of cute. But we really haven't done much with Top Down, you know, playing into fairy tales at all. And so, I explained that we were handling this a lot like we handled Innistrad, where some of the fun of doing top-down, you know, genre tropes is that you could do stories that people know. And I explained that one of the things when I was trying to sell the set was, there's a stat I heard, which I thought was really interesting, that if you're an American, by the time you die, you will have seen ten different movies with the plot of Cinderella. That is just

something that keeps getting retold again and again and again and again. And anyway, they, I explained that we are going to treat the top down a lot like we treated Innistrad, where we did a lot of known sort of horror tropes and played into them, and we're doing a lot of that here. So the one nice thing about fairy tales is the audience knows them well, and so it's very easy. And then I, for example, showed a card called Flaxen Intruder, which was a Goldilocks-inspired card, except in

our version of it, uh, she hunts bears. So on the back, on the back wall behind her, you see three stuffed bear heads. Um, and I started explaining that we're going to do the tropes, but we're going to put a magic spin on them, you know? And, um, so anyway, it was, and then I showed off a little more artwork. Then I got into explaining, basically last year Wizards had changed how we do the, we had a reorg, and a lot of what you guys know as R&D teamed up with some other sections, and we became what's called a studio model, where the teams are built around a product, and the studio was, for us, was tabletop, aka Paper Magic.

And we work, obviously, we work with digital, you know, we work with the Arena team, Magic the Island Arena team, and the Magic Origins team, because obviously the cards that we produce goes in those products, so. But anyway, I explained that we were trying to figure out how to make tabletop magic even better. We were looking for ways to make boosters more exciting.

We came up with two ways. One was surprise, which is just put more exciting things in the boosters. I had commented that players always talked about whenever we did really neat variants that why aren't they in the booster packs? So this was us addressing it. We started a thing called Project Booster Fun, where we came up with a bunch of different ways to do it, and there's three different cards that we're going to start showing up in various packs. There's Borderless Planeswalkers, like we saw in Mythic Edition. So, every Planeswalker in the set will have a

Borderless Planeswalker version, a normal version at a higher rarity and even higher, a premium, a foil one. We'll have Endless Art. Endless Art? I think it's Endless Art. Yeah, Endless Art. Kind of like the box stoppers from Alternate Masters where the art goes all the way to the left

and to the right off the side of the frame. And then we have Showcase Cards. Showcase Cards are, for each set, we come up with a theme that we think is kind of a neat theme. The showcase cards get new art and they get a new frame. Then I show it off without text.

I show it off flex and intruder without text, the normal version without text and the showcase version without text to sort of show what the showcase cards would look like. Given each set has its own look, but that was the look for Throne of Eldraine. I then talked about agency, and agency is the idea that

giving you more choices of controlling what you open by letting you dictate the kind of pack you want. And so I talked about how we're going to have draft packs, which is the packs that you guys already have, just named them draft packs, theme, or draft boosters, sorry, theme boosters are something we started last year that usually there's five variants of them,

they have 35 cards in them, and they cost a little more than a draft booster, but you're guaranteed all the cards being of the same color, or usable in a mono-color deck of that color. I think Smart effects show up there occasionally. But anyway, we have themed decks. And they were introducing a collector deck. And a collector deck was something that was depending on where you lived,

cost somewhere between $20 and $25. And it was just, it gave you a much higher chance of getting all the, the rare variants and stuff. The, the, the premiums, the foils, the, um, different, the Portals of Planeswalkers, the Endless Art, the, the, um, um, the Showcase cards, and the Collector, the Collector Booster was the only place where the, uh, the, um, the, the Endless Art goes. Is Endless Art? I forgot the wrong word. But it's the art that goes all the way to the box stoppers,

that goes all the way to the end. Extended, sorry. Extended Art it's called. Extended Art. So the Extended Art is unique to the Collector's Roof Tour. And then I talked about how we were doing, you know, Planeswalker packs, how we were doing Brawl decks. And that Brawl was coming to Arena. I talked about how we were doing a bundle, which had changed up a little bit. How we were doing promo packs that had changed up a little bit.

And, anyway, it was just, there was a lot of information there. And so, it was received quite positively. Most of what we were doing was additive. It's like, if you liked Magic the way it was, well, the draft boosters aren't going anywhere. You can still buy the draft boosters. The only thing that changed is there are now borderless planeswalkers and, um, showcase cards in it so you can get extra cards, you know, nice cards that you couldn't get before. Um, but theme boosters and collector boosters just gave people more options of how they could buy magic cards.

And so the fact that we had the booster fun and all the, you know, the various boosters to choose from, we thought was pretty cool. But, oh, and then it was time for questions. And I got lots of questions, um, no holes barred, lots of questions, it's funny, one of the things that, that can be tricky when I'm answering questions is, I can speak from my area of expertise, but there's a lot of areas that I, are not my area of expertise, and this particular one especially, I got a lot of questions that were

just completely outside my area, got a lot of arena questions. I mean, Magic Arena, I mean, obviously I work on the cards, the cards go into Magic Arena, so I mean, I'm somewhat connected, but I don't day-to-day work on that project, so when people are asking me about stuff, I can give very vague answers, so I'm like, well, you know, of what I know, here's what I know, but a lot of times it's like, I'm not sure. It's not what I know. But a lot of times it's like, I'm not sure. It's not what I do. But it was fun. And then after I did my panel, I went

outside in the hall and I signed autographs and took pictures and answered questions for everybody. That took about maybe half an hour. And then, the final part of Comic-Con is what's become a tradition that I started, but it's not become a tradition, that after the panel on Saturday, we always go and have seafood.

And I get crab legs, because that's my favorite thing. My favorite thing to eat. And so, all the staff gets together, and we had a nice staff dinner, and chatted about the show, and heard lots of different stories. During that, because that's right after the panel, I'll also check the social media to see how.

So the panel went over really, really well. People seemed very excited about Throne of Eldraine. Like I said, you guys probably are playing with Throne of Eldraine. But it was... I say this all the time, but when you work on something, in some ways, this was many, many years in the making because it took me a long time to convince them to do it. And then once we did it, there was a lot of work to sort of get my vision across and capture what I wanted. And I got there and people were eventually able to sort of follow through.

And I really like what Throne of Eldraine became. I think it's a really good set. And people got my vision and really leaned into it and really played that up. And thus far, I mean, I can go off the audience as of now, but everyone seems very excited. And like I said, I like that Throne of Eldritch is pushing in slightly new directions and doing some stuff that I think people will respond to.

Anyway, and then after that, then I came home. So that was my trip to San Diego Comic-Con. So I had a great time. I both enjoyed the Comic-Con and got a chance to do some Comic-Con stuff, and I got to see a whole bunch of friends. I got to meet a whole bunch of friends. I got to meet a whole bunch of players. I took a lot of pictures. I sent a lot of cards.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun. I mean, San Diego Comic Con's always a lot of fun, but it continued to be a lot of fun and it was particularly fun getting to premiere Thorn of Eldraine. That was extra fun. So anyway, I had a great time. To anybody who was there, I was glad to meet everybody.

And I'm now at work. So we all know what that means. It means it's 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.