Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #693: Food Cluster

Episode Date: November 27, 2019

I'm trying something new, what I'm calling a cluster podcast, where I pick a topic and talk about a whole bunch of little topics in that category. For my first cluster podcast, I have chosen to talk about food.

I'm pulling away from the curb. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. And I'm dropping my kids off at school today. Okay, so today I'm trying something brand spanking new. So one of the things I realized is sometimes I have interesting topics, but they're not enough to fill up a whole like half hour of a drive to work. And so I'm trying something new, what I'm calling a cluster. And what that means is I'm taking a whole bunch of little things that I don't think is enough for its own podcast, but picking things that are thematically connected

so that I can do a podcast about a theme. That's the idea. So for the very first Cluster podcast, I've chosen food because I felt like a food cluster sounded like something. So today is a food cluster podcast. So what's going to happen is I'm going to talk all about many different things related to magic and food. That is my plan. Hopefully this turns out well and you guys like the clusters and maybe I'll do more of them. Okay, so let me start with food, the mechanics, since that seems like a fine

place to start. So I know I've talked a little bit about the origin of food, but I want to go a little farther back in explaining, giving some more context to where food came from. more context to where food came from. So one of the things that happened back in Shadows over Indusrod was we were trying to capture this sense of mystery because we were doing, the idea was Jace was the main character and he was solving a mystery. And a big part of the story because of the trope space we were playing in was the idea of mystery. So we wanted to convey mystery through mechanics.

After trying a bunch of different things, we ended up doing Investigate, which made Clue tokens. And the idea was that Clue were artifact tokens that had a value. You could use them. Now, we had made counters before. Obviously, we'd made a lot of creature tokens, and we'd made counters that you keep use them. Now, we had made counters before. Obviously, we'd made a lot of creature tokens, and we'd made counters that you keep on yourself. But these were a little bit different. These were, A, they were artifact tokens,

and B, it was, they gave you the ability to later use them. You still had to spend mana on them, but it was something that you could use and give you as a resource. And so we made Clue tokens. They were very popular. I'm sure one day we'll see Clue back. Then in, and that was Shadows of Innistrad.

Then in Ixalan, we were playing around with treasure, and the idea was we wanted to have counters... We wanted... We had done, I think, gold before, and we were playing in that space, and it was pirates, so we wanted to have treasure,

and the idea was we wanted an artifact token that you could turn into any color mana. So that would help you... There was a lot of pirates, for example, had a three color tribe. You wanted to make sure there were some tools to help you if you wanted to play three color.

And so unlike gold, which I think had just been a gold counter, I think what we had done with treasure was make it more of an artifact token. Actually, it was gold. Maybe gold was a token. Anyway, we then stepped it up a little bit and sort of said,

okay, things could generate treasure. And I think we might have even had one or two uses where you could use treasure in a way other than you could generate the mana out of it. Anyway, the reason I'm bringing all this up is we've slowly been carving out this space for artifact tokens that have sort of a functional use for them. And so food did not start as food. I mean, it didn't start as an artifact token. I think the earliest version of food was Peter Lee, my strong second on the set,

made a card called Baked into a Pie, which was a white card. And it basically was an arrest. The idea was you can't attack, you can't block, you can't use any activated abilities. Why? Because you've been baked into a pie. And by the way, I've mentioned this before, but baked into a pie was not referencing the nursery rhyme, which is what a lot of people think it's referencing. But in fact, there is a grim fairy tale

where I think the mother kills her son and she bakes him into a pie because the constable shows up. Anyway, we were referencing a little more of a deeper cut, referencing another grim fairy tale, a little Referencing another Grimm fairy tale. A little Grimmer of a Grimm fairy tale. So the idea of the pie originally was it was an arrest. But your opponent

gained the ability or the enchanted creature's controller. Gained the ability sacrifice this creature. Gain, I think it was two life. But the idea was, I've turned you to a pie. Your creature is no longer useful as the creature. You can't attack, you can't block, you can't use your activated abilities.

But, but, it's a pie. If you get hungry, you can eat the pie. And so the idea there was, and I think the thing that Peter was playing into is the idea, which made a lot of sense, was the idea of food equating to health. If you've played any video games, you know, elf needs food badly.

That there's a long history of food being something that restores your health in video games. And so it seemed to make a lot of sense. Why would I want food? Well, I would eat it

for nutrition. Well, what does that mean in gameplay? Oh, well, probably helps your life total because in real life, eating is what keeps you healthy. So then what happened was, when we turned over from Vision, there was just the one singular card. But I think in Vision design, it started to dawn on them how many fairy tales had food in them. I mean, a lot. Little Red Riding Hood was taking a basket of goodies

to her grandma. Hansel and Gretel were dropping breadcrumbs to make sure they find it away, but they were so hungry, and then they find a house made of gingerbread that they start eating. Even the Big Bad Wolf seemed very motivated by eating. He wanted to eat, you know, Little Red Riding Hood and her grandmother, or wanted to eat the three little pigs. You have like, in Snow White, you have the poisoned apple.

Anyway, there's just a lot of things that popped up. You know, Jack trading his cow for beans. You know, there's just a lot of food that popped up. And so what we decided to do, or set design decided to do, after I handed off the set, was to make food tokens. And they spent a little bit of time,

and they knew they wanted them to be a life gain thing. They knew they wanted them to work like clues, in that you spent some amount of mana, and you got some amount of life. I think the earliest version might have been the three life. I mean, I think they, I don't know how much fiddling they did. I mean, it ended up being two sack to get three life.

I think that's what they put. The reason I think they went with three life was they wanted it to be substantial enough that it meant something. Like just getting small incrementals of life just in a vacuum by itself is not quite as useful. You know, like if it was one man to get one life, you know, you'd rather spend a little bit more man to get a little bit more life. So they did that. And then once we realized, you know, once that design put food in, there just was lots of fun opportunities to do top-down stuff with food.

The other thing they did is something that I think we'd done a little bit with treasure and hadn't done at all with clues, was the idea of, okay, we have something, you can trade it for life, but hey, maybe you want something else other than life. And so in black and green, they wove in this flavor of, that was kind of the food deck. Here are other cards that let you use food in other ways to give you other utility with food. You can sacrifice it to the big bad wolf so he can get bigger and become indestructible for the turn. The evil queen can use it to make the opponent lose life rather than you gain life.

There's just a whole bunch of different ways. You can trade in with the magic beans, trade in a bunch of food to make a giant. There's a lot of cool and flavorful ways to use it. So anyway, so the big question now is, now that we've made food and food is a thing, will we use food again? And my guess is because it's so general, like the flavor is so open-ended, food's pretty basic, and it's very straightforward, the idea that I get something that I can trade it in for life, you know, that is pretty flexible. It doesn't tie too closely, like, well, is it easy from a flavor standpoint?

How many worlds have food? Oh, all of them. And from a mechanic standpoint, how complex is it and how much can it tie into what the set is doing? Well, life always matters. Life's the win condition. So, you know, I think we've positioned food in a place where it'd be very easy for us to make use of it. Oh, another thing we did with food that was unique to food, but I think it's a harbinger of things to come, was that on the low rarities, we tend to

tell you what food tokens do, but on the higher rarities, we were willing to just say it's a food token, and then the food token itself tells you what it does. And so I think we're more willing, especially higher rarities, to just say, oh, well, hey, if you sacrifice a food, blah, blah, blah, and then what's a food? Well, go look at the food token, and the food token will tell you, where we just sort of identify it, and then make you, the counter, the token can act, you know, because we make a printed token, can act as sort of identify it and then make use, the counter, the token can act, you know, because we make a printed token, can act as sort of the rule support for what the card does. Okay, next.

Okay, so one of the questions you might ask is, are there any magic collectibles that are food? And the answer, I believe, is yes, there are three. So I'm going to talk about them. One of them was commercially available. One of them was available at a particular magic event. And one of them was only available to Wizards employees. So let's walk through those. Okay, first was the one that was available to anybody.

There's a local company in Seattle called Mother Jones Soda, and they make different flavored sodas. But one of the things that they do is they make a lot of limited run editions of things. And so we did a special thing with them. I think we've done it twice, where they made, in each case, I think they made five different sodas, one to represent each color of magic. And then I think white was clear. Blue is blue.

Black, I think, was purple. It's hard to do black liquids or do black liquids if people want to actually drink. Red was red. Green was green. And they had the accompanying planeswalker, I think. At least the first time we did it, they had an accompanying planeswalker. So I think it was the Lorwyn V at the time.

So white was a Johnny, blue was Jace, black was Liliana, red was Chandra, green was Garak. And anyway, they sold them for a limited amount of time. I actually have one of my dads. I think I have the Garak one.

But anyway, it's something that people could collect, and I know they're out there and they exist. I mean, they're sealed. So I think you probably could open one and still drink it. I mean, they're sealed. But anyway, that was something. Now, I don't know if Mother Jones. I know they sell in Seattle.

I don't know if they have much, how much business they do outside of Seattle. So as far as magic collectibles go, I don't know how easy this one was to get, but it definitely exists. I also, I'm willing, technically I understand that they're not, it's not food, it's a drink. But for my food collectors, I decided I will allow drinks, that drinks are food adjacent. And so I'm already trying to stretch a full thing of minutes in here. But anyway, so the Mother Jones Soda was the one that was publicly available. Okay, now, what was the one that was at a magic event?

So a while back, at Friday Night Magic, we like to occasionally just do fun things, do surprises that people aren't expecting. And somebody one day realized that M&Ms have on them an M, because they're M&Ms. So they have a little M on them. And someone said, oh, wouldn't it be fun if we put the magic M, and this is back, this is under our old logo. So the magic M, the old, the, what was it called? Gaudi, I forget the name of the old font. The font that's on the back of the magic cards. That M. So we thought it would be fun to put that M on M&M's and then have the five colors of magic. And I don't know,

I assume we contacted them, maybe they contacted us, I don't know. But we ended up doing a deal with M&M's and we made special magic M&M's which we gave away at F&M. So we, inside the building, referred to them as F&M&Ms. And so the F&M&Ms, there were five colors in them, the five colors of magic, so white, blue, black, red, green. And instead of the normal M, they had the magic M on them. And we gave them away.

It was a surprise, and we did it. It was many years ago. I actually still have some sealed FN M&Ms. I just sort of saved them as a souvenir. I would not eat them anymore. But anyway, so that is a candy, a piece of candy and M&Ms. So there are magic branded M&Ms that existed one time. Okay, but third thing was giving away. So employees, every December, we get a little holiday, I don't know what the right word is, a little holiday box, a little gift from the company. And usually that includes most of our products make a holiday-themed item that we give away to employees and give away to partners we work with. Magic, for example, has what we call the holiday card. We make it every year.

It's a silver-bordered card. It has some sort of, usually it's a pun name or something. Let's see if I can remember this. So we had Fruitcake Elemental. Then we had Gifts Ungiven. Then we had, uh, Gifts Ungiven. Then we had Evil Presence. Then we had, um, uh, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, was it Season's Beatings? Or was it, um, Snow, um, Snowmercy.

I think it was Season's Beatings, then Snowmercy. Then we had Yule Ooze. Then we had Naughty and Nice, which is a split card. Then we had Mishra's Toy Factory. Thopter, Pi Network. Ironically, I remember the old ones better than the new ones. But anyway, we have like 11 of them. Anyway, we give those away every year.

And usually, like sometimes D&D will do something or Duel Masters will do something. But also sometimes they'll make just cute little themed things to give us. And one year, they made Mox chocolate. And what Mox chocolate was, was a piece of chocolate that was designed to look like a Mox. And on it, it said Mox chocolate. I don't think I saved that one. I think I might have eaten that one. But anyway, that's

another. Now, that item's even harder to collect because only employees got it. But anyway, so Mother Jones Soda, F&M & M's, and Mox Chocolate are three different magic food-slash-drink collectibles. So there's a trivia question. You guys want to answer a trivia question. Oh, okay.

I mentioned Yule Ooze. So maybe I should segue into Yule Ooze. So maybe I should segue into Yule Ooze. So Fruitcake Elemental, Yule Ooze, any other of those that were food? Those are the ones that jumped. Thopter Pie Network. So we've had a number

of foods. Oh, actually I didn't. Let's see if I have somewhere. So, we, one of the big questions is what magic cards are food-related? And we've had a few of them.

So, let me run through them. So, Yule Ooze was one of the holiday cards. So it was two red green. It was a creature. It was an ooze, 1-1. At the beginning of your upkeep, destroy another non-land permanent chosen at random. Then put a number of plus one, plus one counters on Yule Ooze

equal to that permanent's converted mana cost. And then for red and green, eat some food. Regenerate Yule Ooze equal to that permanence converted mana cost. And then for red and green, eat some food, regenerate Yule Ooze. So, this card, normally when we make the holiday cards, we tend to make them based on their name. We start with their name. And I think Yule Ooze,

which sounds like you lose, obviously, was something that Mark Gottlieb would come up with. Like we had the name for years but we kind of knew we wanted to do it as a red green card and we were we started by doing a cycle of monocolor cards so we knew we needed to finish the monocolor cards so once we did the five monocolor cards the sixth year we decided to do a Gold card, which was Yule Ooze, and we did that. Now it's interesting that Yule Ooze,

until you get to the activated ability, everything, the random destroyed creature and it grows equal to CMC, Black Border could do all that. It's a little random for Black Border, but I mean, Black Border rules can handle just fine. So we added on the Eat Some Food

to Regenerate as an additive thing to give it a little silver border. Now speaking of which, speaking of eating food, Yule Ooze was actually inspired by a card called Fat Ass. So Fat Ass was a card from Unhinged. The brand team had asked me if I could make the humor a little bit more sophomoric, believe it or not. And so, I decided to do Donkeyfolk, which all had ass in their name because an ass is a donkey. And so, I made a cycle of ass creatures. So, white was Cheap Ass, blue was Smart Ass, black was Bad Ass, red was Dumb Ass, and green green was fat ass. So the card was a top-down

card called fat ass. So okay, so fat ass is four and a green. It's a creature, a donkey shaman, two, three and a half. So its toughness is three and a half. Fat ass gets plus two plus two and gains trample as long as you're eating. Okay, so let me go through a couple things. First off, the reason it has fractions in its power or toughness, in this case toughness, is that all the donkey folk had fractions. It was one of the themes of the set. And it just

made the donkeys have a little bit of identity. I made all the donkeys have either power or toughness that had a fraction in it. And by fraction, I mean a half. That's the fraction we had unhinged. This particular one was a donkey shaman. I think they were all donkey, because that was their race. They were donkey folk. And then some class. And this one was a shaman. So the idea was, I wanted you to eat.

But the premise here was, the idea was, in order to play Fat Ass, you kind of got to be constantly eating was the idea. That was the joke. And the way it works is that when you eat, he only gains, Fat Ass only gains the bonus while you're eating. So you have to be careful when playing Fat Ass that once you get into combat, meaning once

it matters that you have plus two, plus two, you need to keep eating until the end of the turn, because if you stop eating, it'll lose the bonus and it'll die. I've watched a lot of people like crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch, attack, they block. And then they stop eating before the turn ends. And it's like, wah, wah. Sorry, it loses its plus two, plus two. I've made a whole bunch of rulings on fat ass.

Probably the most famous ruling was, is gum food? on Fat Ass, probably the most famous ruling was, is gum food? So one of the things that happens is I have to write the FAQ for all the unsets. And so I have to answer the questions about, okay, well, how does this work? And what would it do and such? So is gum food came up. So there's a bulletin board that we used to have near R&D where we'd write questions. And so I asked, is gum food? And I got all sorts of answers. In the end, I ruled that gum wasn't food. It doesn't have any nutritional value to it. And it really, like technically speaking, I sort of dived into it and discovered that it wasn't really food.

It doesn't meet the nutritional requirements that food have. And just saying to play fat ass, all you got to do is chew gum felt like a cop-out. But the whole point is that you're constantly eating with it. So I ruled, no, food is not, gum is not food.

So that was the official fat ass ruling. Dawn on me, by the way, I wrote down Yule Ooze. I did not write down Thopter Pie Network, nor did I write down Fruitcake Element. I guess Thopter Pie Network is Thopter's delivering pies. So I guess there's a pie theme there, so it's food related.

Although the card itself is not food. Although I guess Yule Ooze isn't food, it just makes you eat. So it makes you eat food. It references food on the card. I would guess that Fruitcake Elemental, I mean, whether you consider Fruitcake food,

I guess there's that argument. I don't remember exactly. It's a green creature that you keep passing back and forth between you and your opponent. It was the very first card we ever made. In fact, the goal of the holiday cards were they were silver-bordered, and Fruitcake Elemental is definitely

one of the ones where the whole card mechanically could be black-bordered. To make it work, you need to flavor it as a Fruitcake Elemental, and I don't think we would do that in black-border, so it's one of those silver-border cards that, like, only with the proper flavor does it make sense

mechanically as a top-down card. And that flavor we would never do in Black Border. So I don't know. It's loosely a Silver Border card. Okay. There is one other card I wrote down here that clearly is a magic card that clearly represents a kind of food, which is Hot Soup. So Hot Soup

is an artifact. It costs one. One generic mana. It is equipment. Equipped creature can't be blocked. Whenever equipped creature is dealt damage, destroy it and equip three. So hot soup was designed by a man named James Earnest. So James Earnest was somebody who, when I first came to Wizards, worked at Wizards. He did not work in R&D. But James, his great quest was to work in R&D. He ended up never working in R&D at Wizards. But when he left Wizards, he later started his own company, Cheap Ass Games. The whole premise of their thing is that they sell you the games as cheap as possible,

and they don't include things like dice and markers and things. The idea is, yeah, you have those in other games. Go get those. And then the games are as cheap as they can be. James really, really likes to make super flavorful top-down games. Probably one of his most famous was, I think it's called Kill Dr. Lucky, where it's the game of Clue, except instead of trying to figure out who killed Mr. Body,

you are trying to kill, I mean, in this case, it's Dr. Lucky. And so instead of trying to figure out who killed Mr. Body, you were trying to kill, I mean, in this case, it's Dr. Lucky, but instead of trying to solve the mystery to who murdered this person, you're trying to be the one that kills them. So it's kind of like a reverse clue. Anyway, James, when he first worked at Wizards,

managed to illustrate a magic card, a card called Reality Warp, I think it is. Reality Warp? It's a reality twist or reality warp. It's in Legends. Anyway, so he did illustrate a card, which I'll bring up in a second. And then years later, during 2015, we did a promotion where we had game designers that weren't magic designers, but game designers, weren't magic designers, but game designers designed magic cards. And

James did one, and Jordan Phan did one, and Stolen LeBrandi did one, and what's his name who made Minecraft? Ah, I'm looking for his name. He made one. Anyway, we had a whole bunch of people who made one. There was a lot of people that made cards. And anyway, we had a whole bunch of people made one. There's a lot of people that made cards. And anyway, James turned in hot soup. And hot soup, which is a very James kind of card, is super flavorful. You're carrying a giant bowl of hot soup. So no one wants to block you because they don't want the hot soup to spill on them. Oh, but if you ever take, if anything ever happens to you, it spills on you and then burns you and you die. what happens to you,

it spills on you and then it burns you and you die. And so when it was first turned in, I think we were more willing to do silly things than we were at the time this got made. I know the creative team

was a little skeptical about it because it wasn't something that we at the time would have done. But the idea was we had guest artists. James was known for doing really flavorful,

top-down design stuff. And so we left it in. And so Hot Soup made it into the set. And so the interesting thing I brought about him doing art is there are not a lot of people that have both designed a magic card and done a magic illustration. Although, depending how you count the cards in the

Mystery Booster, that number is about to go way, way up. But, counting sort of official, you know, official cards, not the playtest cards.

I had done, obviously, look at me on the DCI. Yes, Premier Force had designed cards and illustrated cards. He even, he and I had done, obviously, look at me on the DCI. Yes, Premier Force had designed cards and illustrated cards. He and I had the honor of having illustrated the card we also designed. It was Elza Deep Shadow.

He illustrated and designed. Matt Cavada has illustrated cards and designed cards. James Arnold, I believe, he does our frames. And he's an artist, so he's done some art. I think Cynthia's designed a card, she's for sure has done art. So anyway, James is on a small list or if you contemplate it as cards, a slightly bigger list of people who've designed cards and illustrated cards. But anyway, that is, so those are the ones that jumped to mind. I'm sure there's a few more food cards that I forgot, but those are the ones that jumped to mind when I thought about it. Okay, next. Oh, let's talk a little bit about, so Magic had a birthday. So one of my favorite food memories was HazCon. So Hasbro had a convention called Hascon. It was in Rhode Island.

So far there's been one. There's talk of other ones happening, but another one hasn't happened yet. So the idea of Hascon was we brought together all of Hasbro's different games all in one place. So there was Nerf, there was My Little Pony, there was Transformers. Hasbro had lots and lots of properties. So Magic was at the event, and it turned out that it coincided with the beginning of our celebration of our 25th anniversary. And so it was the very first place we did any celebrating. So we had a special party at HasCon, and we did this cool thing where we made five cakes, one of each color of magic, and each cake was a different kind of cake. Now I did a podcast on HazCon and because it was right in the moment, I talked to all of the cakes and I remember exactly what they were. So I know the red

was a red velvet cake. I think the white was an angel food cake. And I think the white was an angel food cake. And I think the black was a devil's food cake that was dyed so that it was dark. Oh, it might have just been chocolate. It might have been a chocolate devil's food cake, and it was just a very rich dark chocolate, so it red is black. The blue and the green cakes were dyed. I don't know what kind of cakes they were um the blue was my favorite cake i think the blue was the blue was my of the five cakes my favorite um

i really like a vanilla cake and it was a it was a vanilla cake dyed blue um Anyway, so it was, that's one of the things I remember of as far as like, now, if you went, we did have a bunch of, I think there were four conventions that we had that were birthday conventions. I went to the one in Las Vegas, but there was one, I don't remember exactly, but there was one in Japan that they made cutouts of me, that you could push a button and hear me speak in English or Japanese. There was one in Europe, and there was one, I believe, in South America. I think there were four of them on four different continents.

And at those, well, I know they did this at the Las Vegas one. I don't 100% know they did in the other ones. But I think each one of them had birthday cupcakes. I know for sure that Las Vegas did. I think they all did. Because each one was probably done locally, how exactly they were and what they looked like might have varied a little bit.

But in Las Vegas, we had... And I don't know if the different flavors... There were five different colors of cupcakes. My gut was that I think they were all... Well, maybe some were chocolate, some were... Yeah, I think some were chocolate and some were white. But I think the way it worked was we had white ones of all five colors and we have chocolate ones of all five colors.

So I think when you went to get your birthday cupcake, you could get vanilla or chocolate, and then they were frosted of all the five colors. And I think, not only were they frosted, I think they had the manna symbol on top, if I remember correctly. I think. They were really nicely done, and they were actually very tasty. So if you happen to go into the birthday things, you could have gotten yourself some birthday cake. Okay, next, let's talk a little bit about a weekly R&D tradition that involves food, which is the R&D Tuesday lunch, which now we might call the Studio X Tuesday lunch.

So for those that don't know, internally, we repositioned how the company works. And so we became project-based, meaning before it was by the departments were by what you did. So like R&D was its own department. But now instead of being based on like kind of what you do, it's what you work on. And so now there is a tabletop magic team. There is a magic online team. There's a magic gathering arena team. There's a franchise team.

There's different teams that work on different aspects of things, and they're responsible for that product. And then we work together to make sure that there's overlap and synergy between what we do. And the former team that sort of was known as R&D became part of a larger thing that is now, right now

we don't have a real name yet. We're calling ourselves Studio X, so we come up with an actual name. We're still outside the building. We're calling ourselves Studio X, so we come up with an actual name. Still outside the building, we refer to ourselves as R&D just because it is confusing to the public to constantly be changing terminology. But if you ever hear us refer to Studio X, that is what's going on.

Studio X is sort of what was R&D. And sometimes, if I want to refer to that group external to the larger group, I might refer to R&D, even though we don't use that internally, I guess. And then more people who work on Magic, including people who do packaging and graphic design and the brand work and marketing. And the team is now just much bigger, rather than before where marketing would be its own team and R&D was its own team. So anyway, it's a change.

I think it's sort of better. I think it's allowing us to do cooler things and it is definitely allowing us, for example, on tabletop to really dig in there

and if you notice, we're not sitting by twiddling our thumbs. We're really trying to improve the product and make cool new things and so anyway, there's lots of cool things coming your way.

Some of which you know about, some of which you don't. Anyway, on Tuesdays in Studio X, we have what we call R&D Tuesday Lunch. Maybe now it's Studio X Tuesday Lunch. So the way it works is we, one of the things that came up was we play a lot of magic, but a lot of magic we play is the magic we're working on. So, for example, I play lots and lots of magic. All the magic I play is on playtest stickers, or I mean mostly is on playtest stickers, because I'm playing exploratory design playtests and vision playtests,

and I'm playing magic in a much more proto state than you guys play it because I'm testing very early stuff out. So one of the things we realized is we'd like to make sure that we had time to play Magic as you all play it, the finished project, the finished product version of Magic. So on Tuesdays we have Tuesday lunch. We cater lunch in. We bring lunch in. And we vary it up. You know, one day, one week it's pizza.

Then it's Chinese. Then it's Greek. Then it's Thai. Then it's breakfast for lunch and various things. And then we play, we will shake up what we play. We play most of the time

we play Magic. Every once in a while we might play, for example, we might play... Why am I blinking on the name? We make another trading card game. I just said their names. Transformers. So every once in a while we'll do Transformers for lunch.

I think we might have once done Duel Masters, although Duel Masters is only in Japanese. So it's a little trickier have once done Duel Masters, although Duel Masters is only in Japanese, so it's a little trickier to play with Duel Masters. But anyway, most of the time we play Magic and usually it is the latest Magic, so that, you know, like, you know, Throne of Eldraine, we'll play Throne of Eldraine. And the idea is just get us more

experience playing with the finished final product. Just so, because we interact with all of you, and you guys, that's the magic that you play, right? That's kind of the official magic. That's what magic is. And we want to make sure that we have enough time playing with the finished product.

So on Tuesdays, we have lunch, and we play with the finished product. Sometimes, by the way, every once in a while, we'll bring in something special. Like one week, we played with Japanese War of the Spark, for example, because that had the promotion with the Planeswalkers. And it was really fun because

everything was in Japanese and so it is tricky playing a game. I have played a lot of War of the Spark. I haven't played a lot of War of the Spark with the final product and I'm not used to the art. I've not played a lot with the art. So it was definitely a challenge for me to remember what all the cards product and I'm not used to the art. You know, I've not played a lot with the art. So,

it was definitely a challenge for me to remember what all the cards were and stuff. I mean, I was able to do it, but it definitely was a challenge.

And, I know, like, I know, I was involved in this, but like, they, sometimes they'll do

advanced stuff and they want to test stuff. Like, I know the Mystery Booster got drafted one lunch. Anyway, but it is a chance for us to play

with a lot of whatever's out now and it's a chance for us to play with a lot of whatever's out now. And it's a lot of fun. And it's a big part of R&D slash Studio X culture. Okay, next. Okay, so this is a little bit of... I'm not sure if this counts as magic, but I thought I would share with you. So I am a sucker for traditions.

If anyone's heard about my birthday dinner, like every birthday, for example, I have crab legs on my birthday. And my birthday party is always a seafood restaurant, and I have crab legs. So, for example, if you've ever seen me, whenever I talk about my birthday, I usually show pictures. And as is tradition at my birthday, it always has a superhero theme using usually children's decorations. So the people serving on us always think it's my son's birthday. And usually it's tied to whatever the movie's coming out that summer just to make it easy to get decorations. But anyway, so like every year, for example, I will have crab lids on my birthday. There's two other things that I do that are food related that I do every year that are tied to holidays. And I do that, I do it at work. One is on Valentine's Day. On Valentine's Day, I always

hand out little tiny conversation hearts. Those are little hearts that say things on them, like, love you, or, you know, be mine, or whatever. I, all these traditions go back to me being a kid. In fact,

all of them go back to me being under 10. All three, I think, the crap legs and the Valentine's and the Halloween stuff I'm going to talk about

are all, go back to me being pretty little. And I just, I like tradition. I'm a big, I'm a big stickler for just doing things that I've always done. Anyway, so every Valentine's Day

I hand out little, I put little bowls of Conversation Hearts out for people to eat. I think once upon a time I used to do the little chalky ones, but then I learned that Sweet Tart made Conversation Hearts. I'm a big fan of Sweet Tarts. Especially as a kid, I was a big fan of Sweet Tarts. So I

switched over to Sweet Tart Conversation Hearts when Sweet Tart Hearts were a thing. And anyway, every Valentine's Day, I will hand those out. And then every Halloween, so if you guys have ever had candy corn, technically candy corn is made out of what they call

mellow cream. It's the, I don't know the name they call it. And they make pumpkins out of that material. So they're orange pumpkins and then they put a little, they color the top green to look like the leaves of a pumpkin. And they call those mellow cream pumpkins. And mellow cream pumpkins are only put out in the fall, usually around Halloween. Anyway, I always give out mellow cream pumpkins on Halloween. So on Valentine's Day, I always give a little Conversation Hearts.

And on Halloween, I always give out mellow cream pumpkins. And I've been doing that for quite a while. Oh, one other tradition that's charted in R&D is I give away a lot of candy in my house every year. I give away a lot of candy in my house every year. I give away a huge amount of candy. In my house, the tradition is we fill up this giant, when I say giant bucket, I mean a pail. It's a giant pail. It is two feet high and multiple feet across.

It's a giant pail. And in my house, when you come to trick-or-treat, you are allowed to grab as much candy as you can grab with one hand without scooping. Overhand, like the claw. And so I normally buy a huge amount of candy, a good mix, a nice mix of candy. And usually, because I buy so much candy,

there's some leftovers at the end of the year. And then, as the holidays happen, you know, Christmas and Hanukkah and Easter and Valentine's Day, we'll get my kids candy and not all of it goes eaten. And so we slowly over the course of the year build up this candy residue. And then come Halloween, I need to get rid of the candy so I can fill up the bucket to do that year's Halloween. And many years ago, I asked R&D, I said, look, I have this excess candy. Some of it's old.

Some of it's as old as last Halloween. Some of it's newer, because it could be anywhere within the last year. It might have been for my birthday. It might have been for Easter. It might have been for Christmas. It's from all during the year. I'm going to throw it out, but if you guys want it, I'll bring it in. And they said, bring it in.

So every year, right before Halloween's about to begin, I bring in bowls of my candy, which I mark, I identify as being from the Rosewater Candy Bowl. And then I explain that it could be up to a year old. And there's a few candies that they sort of learned not to eat out of the bowl. Some of them I don't even put in the bowl. Like Twizzlers don't last a year. So I will throw the Twizzlers out. But anyway, every year I bring in the Rosewater Candy Bowl for R&D to eat during the month of October.

So that is another tradition. So there's a bunch of food traditions. Like I said, I don't know how magic he is. It's more me than magic. But it's my podcast. And I said, I don't know how magic-y it is. It's more me than magic. But I, it's my podcast. So, I will, and I needed to fill up the time. So, there was a limited amount of magic

food-related things I could find. Okay, so I'm almost to work. Let me see if I've forgotten anything else. I wrote down a list of things. There's a lot of little things I wrote down here. Like, back in the day at the Pro Tour,

there used to be a period of time where we used to do a platter dinner. We eventually phased that out many, many years ago. But we would do the platter dinner, and that would always be the night before the first day. And then we would shake up what kind of dinners we would do. That was something that we used to do. And then I think, oh, we still do it now. I believe we still do it now.

Every year in the Hall of Fame, we invite all the new inductees and then often some of the existing Hall of Famers to a dinner. We have official sort of Hall of Fame dinner every year that's like a little thing. I think that's it. I think I've covered

all the different things I've written down. So hopefully, anyway, so one of the big questions is do you guys like this cluster idea? It is me talking about

a lot of little things and, you know, stuff that might not have room or space. I'm not sure when I would talk about the FNM&Ms, but having a food one lets me do that. So anyway, I'd like to hear from you. Did you like this? Would you like more Cluster podcasts? If you would, let me know.

If you don't, also let me know. But anyway, I'm now at work. So we all know that means instead of talking magic, it means it's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.