Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #735: Matt Place, Part 1

Episode Date: April 30, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Matt Place, a former pro player and Magic R&D member.

I'm not pulling on my driveway. You all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So I've been interviewing people, lots of different people, and so today I have a very special guest, someone that I worked with for many years. He was a long-time pro player, so I would like to welcome Matt Place. Hey, what's up, Mark? Hey. Okay, so Matt, let's start in the very beginning. How exactly did you first learn about magic? First learned about magic, my little brother, Dan Burdick, who you worked with at Wizards as well, he called me from the comic book store. We were big into comics as kids, and he called me and said, there's a card game here that's Dungeons and Dragons with cards. And I didn't understand what that meant, but I knew I had

to play this game. I didn't have a card, so I couldn't get to the comic book store that day. Eventually, you know, my dad drives us there. We buy some cards. It was awesome getting into the game. We basically dove headfirst, went crazy for the game right away. How old were you when this was?

Yeah, I think we were... I had just graduated high school, so 17, and Dan was either 14, 13, somewhere around there. And what set was it? It was revised. We started two weeks before Legends came out. So we basically went crazy. We got as many Legends packs as we could, and yeah, it was awesome.

We kind of started where there was a lot of cards that were harder to get, right? All the old moxes, the lotus, everything. So we had this huge list of cards we couldn't get our hands on just because they were so hard to trade for. And so Legends coming out and giving us a way to have some cards that other people wanted kind of began the trading game for us, right? We could actually trade. My little brother, Dan, he traded an Elder Dragon for a pearl, Mox Pearl. And we all just blew our us, right? We could actually trade. My little brother, Dan, he got traded an Elder Dragon for a Pearl. Mox Pearl. And we all just, you know, blew our minds, right? Oh my gosh, we actually have one of the power cards.

Yeah, so a lot of the early game for us actually was trading. So do you remember the quirky thing about the Legends packs? Oh yeah, they each had an insert, right? That told you the rule. No, they didn't. That's what I'm talking about. There was a mess up in Legend Packs.

Do you remember what this is? Yes, A and B box. I totally remember. Yes, yes. So for those that might not have been around back in 1994, there were two sheets. The Uncommons were on two sheets. And due to an error, they didn't get mixed.

So any box either had the A sheet or had the B sheet. But that meant that any one box only had half the uncommons. And so you had to go trade with somebody that had the other box. Yeah, we actually went to the other side of Kansas City. Kansas City is like a pretty big area. And they

had the other boxes. So whatever we had, we had A, they had B. And they had never seen any of our uncommons. It was awesome. We were trading for all these old cards yeah it was great uh yeah what a crazy mix-up right it just it because you didn't have rarity back then so a lot of people thought that those uncommons they'd never seen were like ultra rare right yeah they just never seen them uh yeah kind of funny but yeah we we dove right in and uh yeah just played tons of magic and started to get a little bit competitive in those early days, right? Mostly trading.

We didn't really know about the competitive scene, right? It was still hadn't, the Pro Tour hadn't started back then yet. But we went to Gen Con that year. So, 94? Yeah, 94. Yeah. Okay. Zach Dolan's Gen Con, right?

Yeah, I was there, too. So, we were both at Gen Con. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I probably, you know, saw you there, and I just didn't know who you were at the time. Because we didn't meet until later, right? Yeah, I was there too. So we were both at Gen Con. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I probably, you know, saw you there and I just didn't know who you were at the time because we didn't meet until later, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's right. Right.

But yeah, I remember standing behind Zach Dolan. I'm just like... Did you play? Did you play in 94 Worlds? I did. I, you know, made top 64. Oh. Yeah, I didn't make...

I had this little weenie deck that was... I thought a very good deck, but I ran into two decks that were just like... Or sorry, I ran into one deck that was made to beat it and it was single elimination so I did not make it to the top 64.

Yep, same story. I faced Spirit Link and the Orc, oh, what's his name, that shoots Orcish Catapult.

Yeah. That shoots with Spirit Link to my weenie deck as well. But, yeah, I remember standing behind Zach Dolan and just being like,

this guy is the coolest guy in the world. He's going to win a ton of money and a ton of boxes. It was very cool. Yeah. Okay, so how did you get involved in competitive magic? Well, so locally, before the Pro Tour, they started running a few, like, $100 tournaments, which was kind of mind-blowing, right?

And, you know, I started going to college before the first PT. And a local tournament at VisionCon, it was called, they said, all right, everybody, we're not going to run the rounds for you. You guys have to do the pairings. Everybody put a $5 bill in this brown box, and whoever wins gets all the money. And so we started playing, and we're running our pairings ourselves, and I end up winning. And I was like, why am I going to college?

You can just win $255 playing Magic. What am I doing? So, and it was actually, you know, I changed my path, right? The Pro Tour came out the next year, right? Was it January of 95? I think early February 95. February? Okay, yeah.

I think it was like February 2nd or something. Okay, so yeah, I guess the semester after I started. It's been a while. Yeah, and it was just amazing going to the Pro Tour, seeing how much magic mattered to everybody there. It was such a big deal. And the idea of winning a Pro Tour just became like an obsession, right? Like this is the ultimate thing to do.

Meeting people like Scaf and all the people running it, it was great. I remember looking at the wall, and it said, oh, we're going to run, you know, it had, like, listen, I don't know if you remember this, but it said, like, here's all the other tournaments, and here's how much money it's going to give away. And it was a total of a million dollars or more for that first year of Pro Tours.

I was just thinking, how is this possible? You know, this is just crazy cool. So, yeah, went all in. Okay, so you go all in. So let's talk a little bit about mites pro tour mites oh my yeah yeah um yeah we're out there uh so it was in a castle right right it was in a castle right in germany in germany right and this is uh what 97 i could get september november somewhere on there and uh, yeah, I ended up winning the Pro Tour.

And, you know, for a long time it was, we would talk about just how great it would be, right? Like it was an obsession with me and some of my friends, you know, Brian Weitzman, one of my best friends, want to win a Pro Tour, want to win a Pro Tour. And then it actually happened. It was totally surreal. And this was one of the first 10 Pro Tours,

so it was still new, you know. And, yeah, it was awesome. I actually got there. Who'd you play in the finals? The very finals was Steve O'Mahony-Schwartz, our old friend. Yeah, it was crazy. It was a Rochester draft. So it was the version where, you know, everything's face up, which you guys don't do anymore,

for good reason, I think. So real quickly, for people that might not know, Rochester Draft, instead of keeping the thing in your hand where no one can see it, you open up one pack, all the cards are laid out, and then players take turns picking any of the cards that are up, and then you sort of snake back and forth. So you go one through eight, and then eight picks the second time, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one. Right.

And in addition, so it's crazy just to see what everybody's picking, right? But in addition to that, you also knew you were playing the player directly across the table from you. So in the top eight of the pro tour, I'm drafting Red Black. You know, thought it was good. You know, had a lot of good buyback cards back in Tempest, right? And my opponent for round one, Bishop, Chris Bishop, he was playing

COP Red, COP Black. That's what he decided to draft. Not good for a Black-Red deck. Yeah, and I was like, wow, really? This is how I go out in the top eight. My opponent's just main decking game one five COPs against me. And somehow I win that matchup.

But yeah, I remember just feeling that like, oh my gosh. Just a sinking feeling of, wow, this is how I'm that matchup. But yeah, I remember just feeling that, like, oh my gosh, you know, just a sinking feeling of, wow, this is how I'm going out. Okay, so the next, okay, I'll tell you my next big moment for you and I, see if, I think was the World Championship in Berlin. Is that right?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, so what happens in Berlin? Well, in Berlin, I, so I hadn't played Magic in a while, and I went there on my rating, right? So back then you could still be qualified for stuff on rating. So I hadn't played in a while, but my rating was still high enough. I went there, and, you know, I did Medium, right?

Did okay in some of the formats, but didn't do great. And I happened to sit down with Richard Garfield for breakfast one of the mornings, and I hadn't thought too much about it, right? the idea of working at wizards was always like a wouldn't that be cool but didn't really focus on it so i just threw it out you know like hey richard what should i do if i want to get a job there and he's like oh you should talk to my mark and randy and so i did you know we knew each other of course from all the all the days back in the pro tour day and uh yeah so i i end up doing the spotting for the tournament and chatting with you guys.

And yeah, and then after chatting with you, eventually got the job. So real quickly, so Randy and I used to do the video commentary at the time on the last day. I was the producer and Randy was one of the commentators. And I remember you coming up to me, it was like at brunch. This is my memory of it.

I think the hotel we were staying in had like a free breakfast or something, like a little buffet. And you came up to me during that and you're like, I want to work at Wizards. And I'm like, okay, that sounds like a good idea. I'll see what we can do.

And I was a big advocate for you, because you and I were friends, and I thought you would be a great contribution, or a great addition, which you were. Well, thank you. Thank you for being an advocate for me. It is crazy how much that changed the trajectory of my life, working

at Wizards. What was it like coming to work at Wizards? You're a pro tour player. I mean, magic's been part of your life for a long time. When did you start? What year did you start at Wizards, yeah. Okay, so what was it like coming to work at Wizards? You're a pro tour player. I mean, Magic's been part of your life for a long time. When did you start? What year did you start at Wizards? Started September of 2003. 2003. So you started playing in

94. Were you at the first pro tour? Yeah. So you were at the first pro tour in 2005. So eight years later, past that, you start working with Wizards. What was that like? It was amazing. It was also nerve-wracking.

So I was working for Brian Schneider, you know, who worked for Randy, right? And I came in basically to be a play tester was my role, right? Build some decks, try to break things so that the balance that we, you know, eventually ship is better. And it was nerve-wracking, right? I didn't know game know game design you know wasn't sure how i was going to do uh and i show up and brian schneider good friend as well to this day he uh he's like okay let's build some decks we hit dawn was still in uh it was in pencils down mode we called it right so uh you weren't supposed to change things but you could right

and uh so i'm playing and i'm like oh hey i think uh this ironworks card um is too good what's up the cost and shiner's like yeah we'll change it to four uh turns out turns out still very good at four uh the other one that i only changed two cards in the set right and the other one was uh serum vision okay used to be an instant. And it's still tier one, so. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel good about that. Okay, so it was Fifth Dawn was your first set? Yeah, Fifth Dawn was the first set I actually got to make an impact on, yeah.

So it's interesting. One of the people I interviewed relatively recently was Aaron Forsyth. And Fifth Dawn was the first set that he had done work on, because at the time he was running the website, and we brought him on Fifth Dawn to, quote-unquote, write an article, but he ended up sort of proving his chops, and we ended up hiring him in R&D. So you and he must have started around the same time in R&D.

Yeah, he was there, I think, maybe not a year, but many months before me, because I was at the very tail end of Fifth Dawn. I don't think he was in R&D during Fifth Dawn, or did he come in at the end? No, right, yeah. When I started, he was still on the web team. Yeah, okay. And it wasn't too long.

I feel like it was within the first couple months that he moved on. Yeah, yeah, he moved pretty quick. Yeah. Also, 2003, just to try to give people some time frame, December of 2003, I mean, you started earlier in the year, but December 2003 is when I became

head designer, so... Okay, yeah. That's all I remember is you being head designer, I guess. Well, I mean, I was head designer most of your time there, but... 98% of the time I was there, yeah. Okay, so you worked a fifth time. So what was the first set, the first team you were on?

The first team was Kamigawa, I guess, right? Is that right? Were you on the design or development? It might have been ninth edition. They're close, right? You were development, I assume, right? Right. I was not on initial design.

I was on development. Because it's funny. Champions of Kamigawa, I was on the development team. I did no design in the Kamigawa block, but I was on the development team for Champions of Kamigawa. Oh, funny. So we were on the team together. Yeah, that might have been our first team together. Yeah, I got to be on a lot of, you did development teams, what,

at least once a year. Oh, yeah, back in the day, well, way, way back in the day I did a lot of development teams, but around the time you were there, I'd maybe do one a year. I'd do a bunch of designs, but I wasn't at that point, once I became head designer, I did a little less development, but

the funny thing is, Champions of Kamigawa, both, like Splice was mine, and that wasn't introduced until development. And flip cards didn't happen in development, because Richard had an idea.

He and I had been talking about something, and he had an idea, and I expanded upon it. And so I did some design for the set, but all of it was done in development. None of it was done in design. Right, right, right. And so I remember that before it went into development, it was one of the craziest that I experienced, just like the turmoil with the main set, right, during the initial design. Yeah, it went through a lot of changes. It went through a lot of changes.

And different leads on it. Yeah, it was crazy. But, yeah. Okay, so you were on 9th Edition. You were on Champs of Kamigawa. What was the first design team you were on? You remember that? Oh, first design team was a while.

It wasn't the first few years. What was the first design team? I was on Zendikar. Okay, was Zendikar your first design? Technically it was 10th edition, I guess. That doesn't really count, right? Corsets at the time didn't have new cards. Right. It wasn't until

Magic 2010 that it had new cards. Being on a core team in the early days, design-wise, was not you were picking where cards went in, but. Yeah, yeah, it was actually the lead for the initial, which was basically just, hey, architect this, right? Yeah, yeah. It was also doing a lot of the beginner products back then, so, you know, kind of tying that together and then trying to make the draft possible and fun, too. Yeah, but not like a real initial design.

Yeah, so Zendikar definitely. So what do you remember of Zendikar design? I ran the team, obviously, but what do you remember of Zendikar design? Zendikar design was one of my favorite experiences there. I know for years you had been talking about, you know, making lands matter, right? That had been a plan that you've had, you know, for however long. You can tell me. But I know you've been mentioning it for years.

And I like to tease you, right, because you would say, well, we're going to make a set where lands matter. I'm like, finally. Finally, lands are going to matter in Magic the Gathering. But yeah, no, the set was awesome, right? We had a pretty clear direction from the beginning. Maybe you remember it differently. Adventure World, right?

Well, Adventure, it didn't start Adventure World. Oh, where did it start? It started with Lands. Lands are going to matter, and then we spent a couple months figuring out how to make Lands matter, and then once we solved that, then Doug had the idea of making Adventure World, but it didn't start Adventure

World. Okay, gotcha. I used to call it Lands of Palooza for a while. Right, right, right. Yeah, the design on the set was awesome. We had, I think, a good camaraderie. Graham Hopkins was on the set as well, I while. Right, right, right. Yeah, the design on the set was awesome. We, you know, we had, I think, a good camaraderie. Graham Hopkins was on the set as well,

I remember. Yeah, Doug Byer was on the team. Graham was on the team. Who was the fifth person? I remember the terrible version of Lands Matter we had at the beginning

was discard lands to do stuff. Turns out just playing them is a lot more fun. Oh, yeah, we had a mechanic where, like, don't play a land this turn and you get to do something. And then just, you had no land and a lot more fun. Oh yeah, we had a mechanic where like, don't play a land this turn

and you get to do something and then just, you had no land and it was not fun. We did the opposite of fun and then we audibled in two. Right. Well,

the funny thing is we did that and then we said, what if we did the absolute opposite of this? Yeah. Turns out way better. Yeah.

It was a good set. It was a good set, yeah. So what do you, what is your, is your contribution to Zendikar? What's the thing you remember sort of like, here's the thing I was proudest of in Zendikar? Well, at the same time, it was basically Zendikar was our first set.

A lot of we kind of retro this in, but you and I worked together on something that was basically, where should we write new complexity, right? How do we do complexity in a way that we keep all the depth without making cards that are, you know,

ice culture, right? Ice culture being an example of like, I don't remember exactly what it does, I read it twice, I still don't know what it does type of card, right? Well, real quickly for the audience, Matt is talking about New World Order. Matt and I were the creators of New World Order, so let's actually, we'll back up

a little bit, because Zendikar is Pat, so this is important, let's back up. So, do you remember the impetus that led to New World Order? Yeah. Aaron actually talked about this in an interview. Yeah. Do you remember what it was? It was Lorwyn.

Yeah, what is your answer? Well, the employee pre-release for Morning Tide. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes. Where, like, everybody played a game and left, because, like, I can't handle it. Because what we had done, this was all my doing, by the way, Lorwyn had tribal, race

tribal, and then Morning Tide had class tribal. Oh, my gosh, yeah. I thought it was a good idea, but it was a little overwhelming from a mental standpoint. Yeah, all we could do is get better, right? And then, real quickly, what had happened was Time Spiral Block had happened the year before, and we had gone a little crazy on complexity. and we had gone a little crazy on complexity.

My joke was that Future Sight had almost as many mechanics in it as existed in Magic before it. Right. And so we pulled back on sort of what we call comprehension complexity, so the cards weren't that hard to read, but Lorwyn, we made a completely different mistake, which was the board complexity was crazy.

It's like all these cards interacted, and I have 10 cards in play, and 18,000 things could happen. How can I track what's going on? And I think Morning Tide was kind of the absolute crux of that, because not only do you have to care about races, but you had to worry about classes,

and every card was both a race and a class, but they weren't all the same. And it just became mind-melting to follow. So you and I, this was something, you and I talked a lot about it. So how did we get to New World Order? Well, we knew that there were a lot of designs and cards in Magic that had all the depth, right? That might be short text boxes, right? That might be very comprehensible. It didn't go hand-in-hand, right? The idea of high complexity means depth. Sometimes it means that,

but we wanted to explore how do we do that without, how do we get all the depth without the complexity and what would that mean? And basically we retrofitted those ideas into the Alara block, but Zendikar was the first full-on from the beginning we are trying to do you know the depth without the problems of complexity yeah and yeah and so you know word count the size of minions was also part of it that you know we were talking about just like how do you what does it feel like to go from common uncommon to rare and then you know we just introduced mythic and and wanting that to feel like it's scaled up in complexity as well, right? Avoiding the

and this one was very controversial I think for, you know, reasonable reasons, right? Avoiding the Samite healer's economy, right? Samite is a perfect So real quickly, Samite healer, just once again, not everybody, not every old timer like us Matt. Samite healer is a 1-1 creature that you can tap to prevent

one damage to any target, basically. Right. So he has complexity. It's not at all in the concept, right? Do you understand what this card does? Yes. Right? It prevents one damage. It's great. Right? Cool design. But, you know, when you're playing, what are the possibilities that can happen when

somebody has a Samite? What if you don't pay attention to Samite? What happens? Well, you send your 3-3 near your Hill Giant into their hill giant, right, and you just lose your hill giant, right? And how much do I need to think about your side of the board when I'm making these plays? And it rubbed a lot of people wrong inside of R&D to say that Samite's actually a big offender, and maybe he's not supposed to be a common anymore,

right? Maybe he's supposed to be higher rarity so that we stop making such complex boards. And so we did that, right? We started moving stuff up to let the complexity be a bit more, you get into it at higher costs or higher rarity, right? Yeah, so one of the big, real quickly, one of the big things that I think, I mean, you and I spent a lot of time on this problem, and the big, like the eureka moment was,

it's not that we didn't want Magic to have complexity, moment was it's not that we didn't want Magic to have complexity. We just wanted to make sure that the complexity ramped up as you got into the game so that when you first started playing, it wasn't as complex as it was in your tenth

year. And the big Eureka moment we had was that it was about rarity. That really that commons that when you open a Magic pack, most of the cards you open are a common. So if I've only opened up three or four packs, mostly what I have is commons, and what we realized was if we could control the complexity of common,

if we could really monitor it, that really is what New World Order is about. It's not about lowering complexity of the whole set. In fact, some of the higher rarities get more complex, but common gets less complex. And that was, you and I, when we first pitched this, it took Ardendi a little while to get on board, because what we were saying is,

there are things that we always do at common that we shouldn't do at common. Samai Healer was a good example. Like, you know, Tim style effects is another thing. Like, anything in which I'm doing combat and if that thing exists, I have to do all this math

to understand what's going on. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I think a lot of the discussion in R&D was helped by, you know, us saying, yes, at higher rarities, we could even,

like you just said, we could even be more complex because we're not trying to dumb the game down at all, right? If we have an awesome design that could be tons of fun for the advanced player, we should put it in the set, right? We should never say no to cool stuff, right? Right, but, I mean, it really made us rethink about commons, the role of commons. And a lot of people, I think, when they hear New World Order, they assume a lot of things that's not what it is.

And really, the crux of New World Order is, how do we control complexity at Common to help the newer, less experienced player sort of make the game not quite as complex for that person? Because the big idea here is if I buy four packs,

mostly what I have is Commons. But if I buy hundreds of packs, I'm not focused on Commons anymore. And that is, I buy four packs, mostly what I have is commons. But if I buy hundreds of packs, I'm not focused on commons anymore. And that is you buy more packs, you change your focus on what rarity you focus on. And so anyway, I remember we made a big document. This was for the behind the scenes here. It wasn't like Matt and I said, let's do this.

And everybody's like, okay, let's do this. We had to kind of sell it. And we did a big presentation, and we wrote a giant, there's a document somewhere that you and I wrote together, and it really took a while to sort of, I mean, R&D did come around, they did get it, but I mean, it took a little bit of salesmanship on our part to sort of explain to everybody why this mattered, and why it was important, and what constitutes a red flag. And, you know, it took a while to get there. Yeah.

And I think over the years, it was just so healthy for Magic to kind of have that almost reset in terms of how do you look at complexity? Because I'm sure we were wrong about a lot of the stuff we were saying. And, you know, more learning was yet to be done on like, what's the right way to do it? I think it was just really good because we kind of, we've certainly lost our way in, in Lorwyn and, and Timespire, right? Like the joke I like to tell, you know, when we're designing Timespire is it's specifically,

specifically future site is, you know, we come up with something like, Hey, isn't this a bad design? Isn't this too complex? And the answer was like, yeah, but what if it wasn't? This is future site. What if it wasn't? What if we did this? And it's like, uh-oh, and then we ship those. Whoops. Yeah, so... Yeah, the funny thing about

Time Sparrow Block was on some level, it was us playing at a very high level. Like, Planar Chaos is a good example. Like, if you really, really understand the color pie, there was some neat experimentation we were doing Like, if you really, really understand the color pie, there was some neat experimentation we were doing. But if you don't, it was just like,

we were just messing with the color pie, and now we confused you what it meant, you know? Even to this day in my blog, people all the time are like, but this card exists in Planar Chaos. And I'm like, no! What have I done? Okay, so you were on the design for Zendikar. Did you work on anything else in Zendikar block? Say it again, sorry.

Did you work on anything else in Zendikar block? Yeah, let's see. Right, so the third set, Rise of Eldrazi, I was the lead dev. Was that your first lead dev? No, my first was all the way back in Ravnica, original Ravnica, believe it or not. Okay, what was your first lead dev? Dissension. Dissension, okay.

Oh, that was Aaron's first lead as a designer, right? Yeah, yeah, we got to team up. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so your first lead, when I say dev, we mean development. So before the current system right now, we have vision design, set design, play design. Before that, for many, many years, we had design and development is what we called it.

And Matt was on the development team, so Matt led development teams. He also was sometimes on design teams, but you never led a design team, I don't believe. Yeah, it's just a base set, not a real set. Right. Okay, so your first lead development was Dissension. What was your second?

Second? Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Before we get to that, what was it like leading, like, you led a Ravnica set. What was that like? You led development of a Ravnica set. Well, honestly, it was an honor, right? Like, if you look at the sets surrounding Ravnica, Ravnica's a total gem, right? Like, it is the Shining Star relative to other sets that were made back then.

But, yeah, it was awesome. It was a total gem, right? Like, it is the Shining Star relative to other sets that we were making back then. But, yeah, it was awesome. It was fun. It was, you know, first experience for me. There were so many things back then that I understand now that I didn't know then. But it was actually probably one of the easier ones, right, because the Ravnica block in general was so structured. And because it was the third and we knew what cycles and where we were at with the other sets,

a lot of the slots were plug-and-play, right? Okay, now we need the hybrid uncommon for this new color pair, etc., etc. Well, also, notice that the set had its first-time design lead and first-time development lead. The structure was, we felt more comfortable letting people sort of, you know, it was a good first set to work on. Yeah. It makes sense to what the noobs do. Yeah. And we added a little bit, right. We wanted a twist. So we came up with the split card gold cards, right.

Yeah. Yep. Kind of showed on it. Yeah. And that was a lot of fun working on those. Those are fun cards. Yeah. Yeah. They definitely work. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. They definitely work. It's a good player, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so what was your second?

By the way, it was crazy, too, you know, like hearing from Dan just how R&D works these days, which I don't totally understand anymore. But just the size, right? Like, is it, like, how many times bigger is R&D now? Oh, it is infinitely bigger. So Studio X, we reconfigured how we... Studio X, which is the tabletop magic group. Now, given it involves printers and graphic designers,

so it's more than just old-school R&D. But, I mean, we're well, well over 100 people. I don't even understand that. Yeah. Because if you were to say how many people in r&d when we were on our you know when it was when i was there it was you know eight to nine maybe ten full-time r&d when i started there were four of us that just did every set that that's what that was magic r&d yeah crazy so we had doubled or more yeah i was there but yeah it was you know

not a dozen people right and then there was the other people that worked on, you know, maybe other projects in the company that would also be team members on set. Yeah. You kind of count too. Right. Right. Back in the day, R&D also, we made more games. There's a point where we made more games.

And when I was talking to Aaron, we chatted about this a little bit. Like he, he did the G, the G.I. Joe TCG and stuff like that. So. Yeah. With Devin Lennon. Yeah. G.I. Joe TCG and stuff like that. Yeah. With Devin Lennon. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So, okay, so we're almost, I'm almost to work here, believe it or not. I'm almost to my den. So as a wrap up here, so I'm going to, what was, let's finish by talking about dissension. What was your favorite part of dissension? What was the thing that you were like proudest of? Um, let's see. What was I proudest of? Um, I mean, I love the draft format of the whole block, right?

It was super fun. People loved it for years and years and years. People would name it as their favorite. Uh, yeah, I'm, I'm proud of a lot of things. I like the core mechanics that we did for each of the pairs, right? Rakdos and all the other ones. Yeah, Rakdos and Azorius and Simic. Yeah, and, you know, could have done better maybe in hindsight with Azorius.

But, yeah, you know, yeah, it was fun to work on. You know, it's hard to remember everything we went through so many years ago. It's crazy. Is that like, yeah, it's, it's a long time ago. We're old men. We're old men. Maybe you don't know that. Oh my gosh.

Yeah. So, so anyway, Matt, I am, uh, pulling up to the den as they say. So, um, I want to thank you for being here. And hopefully the audience enjoyed hearing about a lot of old school magic. But anyway, unfortunately, since I've arrived to the den, we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic with Matt here, it's time for me to be making magic. So thank you for joining us, Matt.

Thank you. It was fun. And we'll see you guys next time. Bye-bye.