Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #683: Throne of Eldraine Stream

Episode Date: October 25, 2019

In this podcast, I take listeners behind the scenes into the making of the Throne of Eldraine announcement stream.

I'll pull up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today I'm going to talk all about the Throne of Eldraine. I'm not sure what to call it, but we did a video stream to promote it on the first day. And I'm going to talk about the making of that stream. Now, I'm going to be very honest with you guys. Right after I had to go to Los Angeles for that, I'll talk about that in a second. But right after I did that, I came back and I left my family to go on vacation, which ended up being a crazy two week vacation, which I will get you in the next podcast. But I forgot to record an episode about this. And so I was actually recording the episode about my vacation when I realized, oh no, I didn't do this yet. So anyway, next week when I talk about my vacation,

it'll be clear that I hadn't done this yet. So I'm just being open and honest. I'm doing these in the order, I'm releasing them in the order they happened, not in the order I recorded them. So through the magic of, I don't know if editing is the right word, since I'm just swapping the order. But anyway, when next week, I, or sorry, in the next podcast, when I'm, I had this shock of, did I do this? That's why I realized

in the middle of that podcast that although I'd meant to do this, I hadn't had a drive to work by which to do it. Okay. So let's talk about making of the Throne of Eldraine. I don't know what to call it. I guess it was a stream, stream video. Okay, so what happened was, so there's this woman named Liz Lamferro. She is in charge of doing a lot of the marketing for Magic. And that one of her jobs is to do promotional things to get people, to get people excited about the upcoming set. So there are a bunch of different moving pieces here. So let me talk about them in different parts. First off, the trailer.

So the way this worked was there was a bunch of pieces that all were going to come together. We knew that there was going to be a day which was the day to sort of introduce everybody to Throne of Eldraine. So the first thing that we were going to come together. We knew that there was going to be a day, which was the day to sort of introduce everybody to Throne of Eldraine. So the first thing that we were going to do is they wanted to have a trailer, and this would be the premiere of the trailer. So let's talk about the trailer a little bit. So Magic in the Past has done trailers. Usually the way we've done trailers is we take art from the sets and we go with a company that can help us sort of

turn still images into moving images and then we've made those into trailers. That's been the traditional way we've done trailers. But for War of the Spark, we tried something new. We went and got an actual partner and made an actual digital trailer, meaning all digitally made. It's not just, you know, like I said, the old school way of doing it is we would take actual art from the set and then sort of animate it. There's ways to sort of make it move. But this was completely different. This was full, 100% we're making this from scratch.

And the idea was that Throne of Eldritch, not Throne of Eldritch, War of the Spark was the big finale of this long three year storyline, it was a big event so we decided we would do something different anyway we made it and it went over amazingly well I assume most of you have seen it Liliana was the main character

and it was really well done anyway we made it and the trailer did extraordinarily well. Extraordinarily well. Sorry. And, in fact, at one point, one point for like four hours, we were the top video on YouTube.

That is impressive. So, anyway, once that went over really well, as I like to say, success breeds repetition. They're like, oh, the players love that. Okay, we gotta do one for Throne of Eldraine. Now, be aware that it takes a while to make one of those. And, um,

the amount of time it took to make the War of the Spark trailer was longer than the amount of time from them saying, oh, we've got to do another one, to it having to get done. So Liz, and working with a whole bunch of really talented people at Wizards, dived in, and I remember when I was at, what was it called, Mythic Championship 2 in London, same time as Magic Fest London. I got the first pitch

of the trailer. This was before the trailer existed. Just, here's our thought on the trailer. And they had this really cool idea. It went through a bunch of different changes. The earliest version was just about the gingerbread man.

Well, I guess the gingerbread couple. The gingerbread man and woman were both there from the very beginning. I think in the earliest version, the main character was the man cookie, and then it ended up being the female cookie. Anyway, things shifted as we made the film. And, like, Garrick wasn't in the original pitch.

You know, there's a bunch of things changed as is normal in the process. But I remember hearing the pitch and I thought it was very funny. Because War of the Spark had been a very lyrical, I mean, a very sort of serious, high emotion sort of thing. And we knew that Throne of Eldraine was a bit lighter.

It wasn't, I mean, War of the Spark, one of the reasons we like to mix it up is we like to change what we're doing so the magic sets you know have different tones and stuff and we knew as a general rule that the Throne of Eldraine was made to be a bit lighter you know I'm saying just on the kind of source material the kind of cards we were doing I mean not that you couldn't do a dark version of fairy tales but we sort of opted into doing a little lighter version of it and we already had Innistrad which was um kind of went down that dark path. And we were trying to not be Innistrad.

So we knew this was going to be a little bit of a lighter set. So we wanted a lighter trailer. And the idea... One of the reasons I think that... This is me completely speculating. One of the reasons I think they liked The Gingerbread Man is they had to animate it and there was less time than normal

because it got made a little faster. And the gingerbread man was something that was a little bit easier to animate, I think. And, anyway, this is me all speculating. But it really did a great job of setting the tone and saying, look, this is a little bit lighter.

They decided then to put Garak in so, so they introduced the idea that Garrick is coming back. That was a big deal. So anyway, we knew that we were going to do the trailer, and so that was the first piece that got set in motion. And then Liz has really been a champion of the idea of announcing out sets farther along. And so she had this idea of, let's do something where we announce a year's worth of sets. Not a lot of detail, but just a little bit of detail.

And so she wanted to do that there. And, look, we were doing Throne of Eldraine. It was the introduction of Throne of Eldraine. You know, we could show off a few cards and talk a little bit about Throne of Eldraine. So Liz approached me at some point saying, I want to do this video. Can you do this video? And I said to her, yes, just I'm going on vacation. It just has to happen before I'm on vacation. And she's like, okay, no problem. No problem. So we ended up, decided to have three people in the video. So, Jimmy Wong, you guys might know him. He does the Commander Zone, and he does Game Nights, and a bunch of other things.

We've worked a lot with Jimmy. I think I first met Jimmy when we were doing a video for Shadows Over Innistrad, I think. Where we were doing this kind of little talk show thing, and he was interviewing me. Jimmy has done a lot of stuff on Magic, and he's done a lot of videos and stuff, and so I think we worked with him there, and then when we did the big show for Kaladesh,

he was the host. Anyway, I've had a lot of interactions with Jimmy. I've also been on game nights once. He and I did a Make-A- a wish thing where the podcast has happened but maybe by the time this comes out we also played with the kid and that's coming out as a video

anyway we've interacted a lot with Jimmy he's great and so I think she brought Jimmy on to sort of be the host and then she asked me to be on, and then she asked Cynthia. So Cynthia Shepard is the art director for Innistrad. Cynthia's been with the

company a couple years. But I think Innistrad, not Innistrad, Throne of Eldraine was her first, I think, her first being the lead art director of a set, I think. Anyway, regardless, she was instrumental in making Innistrad,

and she and I worked very closely together. And one of the things that obviously we talked about in the stream was everybody was very on board with the world built around Arthurian themes, and I really was trying to imbue that with the fairy tales. And it took a little time to get there. Eventually, everybody got on board. Cynthia got on board. And, you know, Cynthia and team did a wonderful job bringing it all to life and making it very visual and fun and cool.

But anyway, so she wanted. So the idea was it would be me and Jimmy and Cynthia. I was the lead of the set from the vision design. Cynthia was the lead as art director and world building. And so that would bring us down. So I think Liz was the one that came up with the idea of doing the cooking show motif, because we knew that there was going to be gingerbread people in the, we knew there would be gingerbread

people in the trailer, and so it felt like a cool extension. So she went and got, so what happened was, the reason we, we shot it in Los Angeles, and the reason we shot it in Los Angeles was, that the production company we were working with, I think the guy who owns it, we were at his home in his kitchen, that he had this really nice kitchen,

the kitchen that we used in that, and it proved to be the best shot, the best place to shoot the video. So we all had to go down to L.A. So we actually, I was down there. We went down the night before, and then we were there all day long. We shot all day.

And it's funny because originally we were going to shoot up here in Seattle, but didn't realize that the place we needed to shoot was Los Angeles. And I don't travel a lot. I only travel, the deal I struck with my wife is I travel twice a year. So this was an extra little bonus trip. It wasn't very long, but I had to clear it with Laura just because I try not to travel too much. Luckily, because it was a very quick trip, it wasn't a big deal.

But anyway, okay, so we fly down the night before. Cynthia and I actually flew down the same plane. We get in, we go to sleep, wake up the next, and we, it's like a mansion. It's this giant, so we get buzzed in, and we spend some time trying to figure out where we're at. We eventually find it, and so they have breakfast set up.

They have what they call craft service for those people that don't know the movie industry, or movie TV industry. So the idea is there's shooting going on, they're doing setup and there's food laid out. So there was breakfast food. They had like breakfast burritos and some various other stuff. So anyway, we, first we have to get into, we have to get into our outfits.

So normally what happens is I like to wear my flannels because that's my look, if you will. So Liz had got t-shirts for me and for Jimmy that were new Eldraine t-shirts. So Jimmy had one that shows the outline of Garak's mask with the little gingerbread woman with the fork. And it says, what was it? I forget the line. It was like, no crumbs, no glory or something. And then I had, it's the planeswalker symbol but it had fairies around it it looked kind of like the invitation that we had done originally for Thorn of Eldritch anyway and then I brought a couple different flannels

it was a purple shirt or it was a black shirt with purple on it so I brought a bunch of purple flannels yes I have a variety of purple flannels and they picked the one they wanted Jimmy then brought a shirt that he could wear with his shirt. And then Cynthia wasn't, Cynthia tends to wear black, but for the shoot they're like, they asked her if she could wear a little less black than normal.

She likes wearing black. And so she brought a couple of outfits to try. So we picked out our outfits. And then the first thing that we were doing in the video was they wanted a countdown clock, but they wanted something cute for the countdown clock. So what they did is we spent some time baking cookies. So Liz and I did most of the baking. I mean, most of the, not really baking, decorating. The cookies had been pre-made. And so she and I spent a whole bunch of time decorating and they shot a lot of close-up. Um, and so she and I spent a whole bunch of time decorating and they shot a lot of close up and, um, I'm not sure how many people could tell that it was me doing the cooking, but,

uh, there was a close up of my ring, my little smiley face ring, those that know that. Um, but anyway, so it was, it was I and, um, uh, Liz who were doing the cooking. Uh, and so there's also, I didn't even actually see the final cut of the, I saw the final cut of the main trailer. I didn't see the countdown clock. So there's 60 minutes of countdown. The idea was that we were going to give preview cards during the day to different sites and it was going to count down, I think, I'm not sure what it started at, but it counted down to one. So as the day went along, there were more preview cards that each had a number and it counted down and then it gave the address, I think it was on Twitch, so it gave the address on Twitch

and you checked in and there's just a countdown clock with cookie making going on. Oh, by the way, Liz had hired a cookie expert to make all the cookies. And so she produced the cookies, and not just the gingerbread cookies, but also I'll get you later, the cookies that had the symbols of the different sets that we were going to talk about, she made all those as well. Anyway, we then Liz and I decorated a bunch of cookies because while we were doing our whole sequence for the countdown, we did a lot of cookie decorating. Now, I don't know if you take a look at some of the cookies, you can tell my cookies.

I tended to put a lot of icing in my cookies, so I had a lot of like, you know, his whole shirt is one color rather than having just dots or something. You know, his whole shirt is one color rather than having just dots or something. Where Liz was a little daintier and slightly better at her cookie decorating. I mean, my cookies had a look to them, but they were a little wilder. So between my cookies and Liz's cookies, there are some cookies made by the woman who made the cookies. Those are the cookies we used in the shoot okay so the first thing that happens is after the countdown is we show the trailer

I don't know if I had seen the trailer through various versions one of the things to be aware of is there are a lot of component pieces to making it there's a lot of like the different visual elements

require some different treatments and stuff. Like, for example, at one point in the trailer, there's a jug that tips over and spills out milk. Well, that's liquid, and liquid moving is its own, like, field they have to do. And then, like, when you show Garak, there's some facial stuff, and, you know, you have to, he had a beard, and there's some stuff there you have to do. And then, like, when you show Garak, there's some facial stuff and, you know, you have to, he had a beard and there's some stuff there you have to handle. The cookies, for example, were their own field. And there was just a bunch of different things that had to be put together. And there was a lot of music that

had to be done. I know that Liz went down right before we did our shoot. And I think the LA Philharmonic I think did all the orchestra music and Liz had to go down and oversee that. And then, I'm not sure, they got someone, they had to figure out what cover to do for the song. And anyway, they did a lot. Liz especially, like I said, working with a really dedicated team at Wizards put together the whole video.

And I had seen it in different forms along the way. I'd heard the pitch before it existed. I saw an early, what do they call it, schematic, where it's like frames. It's not everything fleshed out yet. And then I saw it a bunch of different times. I actually didn't see the final version

that you guys all saw. I didn't even see until it aired because they were putting the final pieces together while I was off on vacation. Anyway, so we showed the trailer

and I'm not sure whether we showed it once or twice. We talked about maybe show it twice but I think we just showed it once. Anyway, I think we showed it once or twice. We talked about maybe we'd show it twice, but I think we just showed it once. Anyway, I think we showed it once and put it up on YouTube

so people could watch it to their heart's content. And then you come in, and there's Jimmy, and Jimmy introduces everybody, and then he brings Cynthia and I in. So what happened was we didn't have a script. We had more of an outline, and the idea was there were things they want.

We had done some pre-interviews where I sat down, Cynthia and I sat down with Liz and said, okay, well, here are cool things we could talk about. And we made a list of all giant number of things we could talk about. And we then shot a whole bunch of, like, I saw the final cut. So there's a whole bunch of, like, I saw the final cut. So there's a whole bunch of things we talked about that never aired. I mean, I think they were trying to keep it tight. The one thing that did not air

that I think I might have put in my article, but I'm not sure. Just in case I didn't. My cake metaphor, which I thought was a great metaphor. We talked a lot in the video. I talked about sort of how I'd wanted to do a fairy tale set and how I tried for years and years and couldn't get traction.

And then Sean Main had pitched an Arthurian set and people seemed more excited by the Arthurian set. But I felt the Arthurian set needed something to sort of give it a little extra something. And so I convinced Aaron that I thought it was a really good match that you can marry the fairy tales with the Arthurian stuff. And anyway,

we talked a lot about that. But my metaphor was trying to talk about the importance of each of the components. And the reason I talk about a cake is I think the fairy tales is like the icing. Which is it's bright and sexy and fun and really sells the cake. That we look at a cake, the thing that really gets you excited about the cake is the icing.

And the icing is sweet and it tastes good, but you don't want a cake full of icing. fairy tales is the fairy tales was more about one of some things that we wanted you to be able to have you know the wicked stepmother or the cow you trade for the magic beans or you know we wanted all the components but uh as cynthia put it in the video you're not going to have an army of cinderellas you know that those are individual concepts that we need something to build the world around and that the arthurian stuff allowed us to make the courts and make the other five monochord courts and gave a lot of the world building came out of the Arthurian side of things. And so the metaphor is that the fairy tale stuff is the icing, but the Arthurian stuff

is the cake. It makes the meat of the set. It's the structure of the set. And you don't want just icing. You don't want a cake full of icing. You need the cake. And I think the Arthurian stuff really, while it's not the splashy part of the set. And you don't want just icing. You don't want a cake full of icing. You need the cake. And I think the Arthurian stuff really while it's not the splashy

part of the set, I think the fairy tales are much splashier. And partly because the other issue was we just do a lot of Arthurian type things in Magic. I mean, original Magic. Alpha had Black Knight and White Knight.

There's just a lot of things that Magic has done. You know, we did, we did Bant when we were, you know, we did Dominario. We've done, we've just done a bunch of worlds that have a lot of high fantasy. That wasn't the part of the set that was going to be the innovative new part of the set. But it's recognizable, it's familiar, you know. And so, anyway, I talked about the metaphor of the cake, but I think it got cut. We actually had a lot of fun. We shot I'm surprised how much they cut it down to because we shot all sorts of stuff.

Maybe one day they'll do outtakes. There's a lot of fun stuff we did. Oh, the other funny thing that you guys will never see, although if it was up to me I would cut this together. I was the head, I'm sorry, I was the lead vision designer. I'm head designer of Magic, but for Eldrian, I was the lead vision designer. And Cynthia, I think, was the lead world builder, in addition to being the art director, the lead art director. And so when he, Jimmy introduces us, he has to being the art director, elite art director. And so when Jimmy introduces us,

he has to say our titles. And he got it wrong so many times. There is a very, very funny outtake video of just Jimmy. And the funny thing is, sometimes he'd get one of them right and he'd get the other one wrong. And he'd get messing them up back and forth. Like sometimes he'd call me head designer,

but even though I am head designer in this thing, I was lead designer, lead vision designer. Or he'd say lead designer but not say vision. He messed up Cynthia's a bunch of different ways. But anyway, we got all that to the introductions. Cynthia and I had lots of stories to share. The director was very excited for us to talk to the camera. So I did a us to talk to the camera. So I did a lot of talking to the camera. I think Cynthia did less.

And so I realized when you watch the video, if you're wondering why I'm constantly talking to the camera, it's because I was giving tips to talk to the camera. So I did a lot of talking to the camera. I think Jimmy and Cynthia did some, but not as much as I did. I was very into talking to the camera. And anyway, we shot a whole bunch of different versions of that. And we were there all day long. The funny thing was that one of the things you care the most about

when you're shooting something is light. And so they had a lot of mirrors and stuff. They were trying to bounce sunlight in. And they thought that the best time to shoot was going to be the early evening. So we did a lot of shooting early on as kind of backup shooting. But then they realized that they thought the light was good enough that we didn't need to shoot it again. So we shot a few things in the golden hour, but most of the stuff you saw was not there. Okay, what else was going on?

So we showed the video. We do a little bit of introduction. So a couple other things were going on. One was, oh, Brawl was going live on Arena. So we were announcing the official date of Arena, and the Arena team had made a new commercial that has Billy Dee Williams in it, and I don't know the actress but she was in it

I think and Jimmy has a little cameo. So we premiered that commercial. You'll see that commercial again. I mean, it's a commercial we're doing. So Arena was officially

like, it's been in beta for a while but we announced the official release date of Arena. We also announced that Brawl was officially online at the time. The funny thing about Brawl was officially online at the time.

The funny thing about Brawl was we always knew that we were doing Brawl decks for Throne of Eldraine, but the Magic the Gathering arena team, somebody there had really wanted to play Brawl and had coded in a Brawl to show what they could

do. And people got really excited and we knew that we were going to do brawl. I mean, Arena had decided they were going to do brawl. But we didn't know the time frame. And so, like, when I wrote my article,

I wrote my article all about the Project Fun article, Project Booster Fun article. I was kind of vague about when it was coming because we didn't quite know. But we figured out that we got it online and we synced it up so it started the day we did that video. So we were able to, like, right now, go play.

And that was kind of cool. Also, the novel... What's it called? The Wildered Quest? I can't remember the name of it.'s it called, The Wildered, The Wildered Quest? I can't remember the name of it, I think it's The Wildered Quest, I think that's right.

Anyway, the novel was also released the same day, like we did a lot of, one of the things that Liz and team did really well is, not only would we announce stuff, but all this stuff happened, so it's like, oh,

okay, here's a trailer, you can watch the trailer, here's, here's the commercial announcing you know arena and you can right now play Brawl in arena and the Brawl had some Throne of Eldraine

cards in it so for the first time let you play some Throne of Eldraine cards and here's the novel and right now you can read the novel and so all those component pieces um came together okay now let's get to another thing that we were going to do is we wanted to announce the upcoming set. So there's a

lot of talk about what we were announcing. In the end, we decided we'd announce the four standard legal releases of 2020. Yes, there's supplemental. There are other things we were putting out, but we decided Liz thought it was best to focus on the standard legal stuff. So because we had a cookie theme, Liz thought it would be fun for us to introduce them with cookies. So at one point they were talking about

maybe we would do the logos, but that ended up being hard to do. And they realized in the end that, okay, we'll do the expansion symbols. And so Liz had brought the expansion symbols and the woman thing was we, it took her a while to be doing it, so while we were shooting our stuff, she was making up the cookies, and she got done just before, I think we had to do the cookie part,

so, and then, we decided, one of the things that's interesting about that was, we knew we were doing the four sets, but we we sort of that day figured out what we wanted to say about them. I guess they had talked and gotten some notes from some of the brand people. But and then we decided that we Cynthia and I would go back and forth. And so Cynthia really wanted to talk about she had been the art director for Core 2021.

And I had led the vision for both Ikoria and for Diving. So like, oh, can I talk about those two? So we had her talk about Theros Beyond Death. Anyway, so we, the goal there was to tease a little bit, let people know a little bit what's coming. And the goal there was to tease a little bit, let people know a little bit what's coming. And both Theros and Zendikar Rising are returned. So, like, there's not a lot we have to say because we knew, like, the audience has, like,

when we say we're going back to Theros, especially when we say we're going to see the underworld, I mean, we don't have to say much. That implies a lot. So, but mostly Theros is just about, hey, we're going back to Theros, you know, and hey, we're seeing the underworld. People can fill in what's going on there. Zendikar, I really wanted to stress that we were kind of going back to original Adventure World.

I think when we returned to Zendikar, going to original Zendikar, when we returned to Zendikar the last time, there's this giant battle with the Eldrazi, and not that there weren't a lot of the elements of Zendikar there, but it was very, very

it didn't get to kind of be Adventure World because it was all about this giant war. And I kind of want to say that, you know, for people that love Zendikar, look, the war is over, that's done, you know, we get to get back to some of the stuff that people really enjoyed about Zendikar the first time, and that one of the reasons that we're going back, and some people are like, wow, it seems like you're going back rather quick, and we're like, well,

we're kind of going back to original Zendikar, not sort of Eldrazi war Zendikar, and so we're going to kind of recapture something a little bit older. Zendikar is super popular, and so we thought that'd be fun, and like I said, we're doing some neat stuff with that. It's a little early to talk too much about it. Ikoria was a tricky one because it's the brand new world. No one knows anything about it.

And so I really wanted to push the idea that it's Monster World and that you're playing with and building monsters. I thought it was kind of cool. I also hyped a mechanic that I'm really excited about. Although there's many exciting things in the set I just was kind of cool. I also hyped a mechanic that I'm really excited about. Although there's many exciting things in the set. I just was focused on, because we're

talking about Monster World, I was focusing on the most monstery of them. Anyway, and then we talked about, we didn't have a lot to talk about Core 2021 just because of the core set. I mean, there's always a focused character and it's going to be Teferi, so we talked about that.

It's funny, online, a lot of people were very concerned because there have been some recent Teferi cards that are very powerful and annoying, I think is the way people have been putting it. And so Teferi being the face does not mean the whole set's about being powerful and annoying. I mean, maybe powerful, not annoying. Anyway, so we've got to do that. Oh, people asked me whether or not we ate those cookies.

I, in fact, did eat. I ate the Theros Before Death cookie. So after we were all done. So Cynthia really wanted to have one of the gingerbread cookies. So if you watch in the stream, at the very end, she eats one of the cookies. I just picked up. There's a golden egg. There are a lot of fun props. I don't know if you paid attention, by the way, if you eats one of the cookies. I just picked up, there's a golden egg. There are a lot of fun props.

I don't know if you paid attention, by the way, if you look around in the kitchen. There are all sorts of really fun fairytale-themed props. There was a golden egg, which I picked up at the end. That was in one of her eggs. There was these three little bear cookie cutters. And there was these little pig shakers. And there was a red cloak that was hanging in the background, and there was, there's a whole bunch of stuff.

Fibble Fip is there somewhere. Anyway, there's a lot of fair, I mean, Fibble Fip I guess is more magic, but. There are, there are, sorry, let me take a drink. There was a lot of little fairytale Easter eggs hidden along the set. I don't know if you looked in the background, but there's a lot of fun stuff in the background. Anyway, Cynthia really wanted to eat one of the gingerbread cookies, and I wanted to eat one. I'm not a big gingerbread fan, but I really like sugar cookies. So I wanted to eat one of the ones that showed off the future set for all sugar cookies.

So the story is, at the end, I say to them, I want a sugar cookie. Can I eat one of the cookies? And I have to make sure that we're done shooting, because we made one of each and like if we had to reshoot something and I ate the cookie, that would be a problem.

So once I got clear that we officially were done, that we were wrapped, I was saying I could eat a cookie and then I'm just about to eat the cookie and someone comes running up, they go, is that the Ikoria cookie?

Is that the Ikoria cookie? And I'm like, no, I had the Ferris cookie. They go, don't eat the Ikoria cookie. So what had happened was they were trying to finesse the Ikoria cookie to look right, and so they ended up using marker on it, sharpie on it, to make the lines a little clearer.

So I was like, don't eat the Ikoria cookie! So I did not eat the Ikoria cookie. Luckily, I had the Theros cookie. I think I chose the Theros cookie because there was the most icing on it. Because it's a pretty big, the expansion symbol is filled in. So anyway, it had the most icing on it. So I chose the Theros Beyond Death cookie. Which was excellent.

So for those wondering, I did not eat I asked Cynthia, she said the Jennifer cookies were very good. I ate the one with sugar cookies and it was very good. So for those wondering if the woman who made the cookies knew what she was doing I mean, I guess her job was to make them look good

but she also made them taste good. So clearly she was someone who made the cookies knew what she was doing. I mean, I guess her job was to make them look good, but she also made them taste good. So clearly she was someone who knew her cookies. I think that was it. That video took all day to shoot. There was a lot of... And we shot, like I said, there probably is... I don't think we're cutting the outtakes or cutting extra footage or anything,

but there's a lot of... We shot a lot of footage. I did watch it, so I think I know all the stuff that was actually in it. I'm trying to think of stuff that we shot that wasn't in it. I had a little bit more fun with the story of me pitching the fairy tales. I had a longer... They cut that a little bit shorter. I had a very funny longer version about me pitching.

I mean, you saw part of it. They cut it shorter. I had a very funny longer version about me pitching. I mean, you saw part of it. They cut it shorter. But my story of trying to get the fairy tales made with the fairy tales that in the end, I have maybe a 30 second version of the story that you guys saw, but I my original version is like a minute and a half.

I think I had a much more drawn out. It was funny, but I think they were trying. What happened was we shot a lot of stuff, but they didn't want their stream to go too long. You know, they wanted to kind of get in and get out. And we had a lot of things to say. So I think some of the extra stuff that Cynthia and I talked about, they kind of just

wanted for running length. We knew that everything we shot was not going to be used. So anyway, we shot it, by the way, I think exactly two weeks before it aired, which for those that know anything about production, that is mega fast. That is very fast. Editing that whole thing,

props to the people that had edited that. There was a lot going on there. And I would say, by the way, the crew that we worked with was awesome. There was a lot of fun shots we did there. We did a lot of cool stuff with the countdown timer. In fact, that might have took the longest to shoot.

We spent a lot of time shooting all the cookie stuff in the beginning because they needed an hour's worth of video to be able to cut together. So the most time, interestingly enough, was spent shooting all that stuff. Now, I did some of it. So I was on set doing decorating cookies. So the guy decorating cookies was me. So you could see me. I think, did Jimmy step in for any of it. So I was on set doing decorating cookies. So the guy decorating cookies was me. So you could see me. Oh, I think, did Jimmy step in for any of it?

Jimmy might have stepped in for a little of it. I had to go do makeup and stuff at one point. I think that is all. I'm trying to think. I'm almost to work. I'm trying to think if there's any other little pieces. I was happy it all came together. The trailer came out awesome.

I thought the commercial for Arena came out real fun. Also, by the way, there's a longer cut of that commercial, which we showed, I think, the shorter cut. There's a longer cut that eventually will air. And the longer cut in it has some fun Easter egg-ish things. What else is there? We also previewed some cards. Oh, we showed off that Garak was there.

The plan had always been to, the plan had been that was where, but for the very first time, we were going to say that Garak was in the story. I actually, so for those who come to my blog, I had done a lot. One of the things that I try to do when I can is, I like being,

one of my jobs sometimes is to try to hide information, but what I try to do when I can is I like being one of my jobs sometimes to try to hide information, but what I try to do is, I never lie or anything. I don't want to tell people things that aren't true. So when people ask if Garrick's in this, I can't say no, because he is. And I had said that because I knew when Garrick wasn't in

War of the Sparks, a lot of people would ask about Garrick. So I had said, look, he's not in the War of the Sparks, but he's coming soon. I was vague. I didn't say what soon meant. Soon didn't necessarily mean Throne of Eldraine. It could have meant a later set. And so one of the things that I did was

I wanted to give people enough information that they led themselves to believe that Garruk wasn't there. Not that I said Garruk wasn't there. And so the very first time we were making a Planeswalker card that was two Planeswalkers in one, it made a lot of sense. The Kenrith twins, Will and

Rowan, share a spark. You know, they Planeswalk together. And so it seemed like a great opportunity to do it. People have been asking for a shared Planeswalker card. And we talked about it during War of the Spark, back when I thought I didn't get that shared Planeswalker card. And we talked about it during War of the Spark, back when I thought I didn't get that many Planeswalker cards.

But anyway, this seemed like a great place to do it. So I knew that they were in the set, and I knew that Oko was in the set with the new character. So I said to people, people had asked, they saw Rowan because Rowan was in the image I showed off at Comic-Con. So people asked if Will was in the set. I said, oh yeah, Will's in the set. And I also had mentioned there was a new Planeswalker in the set.

So, giving out the information that Rowan's in the set and Will's in the set and there's a new Planeswalker in the set, I also then said there's only three Planeswalker cards. All of which is true, but it was done so that people might go, oh, well, I guess Garak's not in the set. I never said Garak was in the set, but it led people to think that. So,

we could surprise you. That was the plan, that we were going to surprise you in this video. And then, I think a chapter or something of the e-book got leaked accidentally. Anyway, people knew Garrick was on the set before this. Not too much before, just a couple days before, but that was meant to be the giant reveal. Like, when you saw him in the trailer,

I mean, I know this happened for a lot of people that weren't up on the leak or anything, but the idea was when you saw Garrick in the trailer, that was you going, oh, Garrick's in the set! So, anyway, that was the plan. That, my friends, was the shooting of the stream. So, I hope you guys enjoyed. Those that watched it,

those that don't, I think it's on YouTube. I think you can go watch it now. I think it's, I don't know if you can watch the 60-minute me and Liz making cookies part, but you can watch the actual now. I think it's, I don't know if you can watch the 60 minute me and Liz making cookies part, but you can watch the actual, the thing with me and Jimmy

and Cynthia. Anyway, that was the story. That's the making of the Throne of Eldritch stream. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, but I'm now at work,

so we all know what that means. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.