Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #757: Brian Hacker

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

In this podcast, I talk with Brian Hacker about his time on the Pro Tour and how he and other Magic pros ended up on MTV.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so I've been doing lots of fun interviews, so I've dug back in the time machine to go back in the vest. And I'm talking today with Brian Hacker. Hey, how's it going, Mark? How are you? Good to be here. Okay, so I'm going to ask you the question I ask everybody to start with, which is, how did you get into magic? Yeah, how I got into magic was kind of odd. There was a virtual world, which was like this mech fighting game.

And it was right next to a game store. And I used to play this mech fighting game once in a while. And I would walk by the game store. And I saw all these people playing this game and just kind of didn't think anything of it and uh my girlfriend at the time uh really liked card games and so i like put two and two together and i was like oh oh you know hey why don't i go see what this card game is she might like it so kind of popped in and oh it's something called magic the Gathering. I was like, what? What is it? Magic?

Are you doing trips or something? I just didn't understand it at all. But I bought some cards and taught both of us how to play. And then I just got very into it and kind of ruined it for her and got way too competitive about it. Started going to little tournaments around town. And then, yeah, she broke up with me kind of because of it. And so I lost a girlfriend, but I gained a great thing in my life. So it was kind of funny.

Okay, so when was this? When did you start playing? What was your first set? My first set was, I suppose it was like revised slash fallen empires was out okay um and i think actually like revised had sold out at the time it was waiting on another reprint or more cards to come in so like the only thing i could buy at the time was fallen empire or yeah fallen empires i think is that what it's called there's a cycle fallen empires i don't know if it buys and falling apart is that right i'm trying to get the timing is that's right okay but you can only buy four empires yeah and so it was weird because you know i i wanted to buy cards

that was like and buy packs that was kind of exciting but that step was kind of known for being weak um at least in that type one environment so i kind of didn't really know what to do you know i was like i'd gotten into it but i just was like hungry to find cards and it was kind of didn't really know what to do. I'd gotten into it, but I just was hungry to find cards. It was kind of an adventure finding them back then. Didn't have the internet, things like that, to be able to easily find places to buy more packs. Yeah, it's funny. I tell stories on my podcast a lot about how in the early days,

like right now, if I want to play Magic, there's not an obstacle, which is you have to find the cards right yeah and like back in the day it's sort of like i want to play it's like oh now i have to first task is go find magic cards yeah yeah exactly yeah yeah it's weird to me to even imagine how even in like my pro tour days um yeah even just finding cards or you know i you you would it was was still a big deal. If you had a couple decks, you actually had to have the cards or had to know somebody to have the cards. I never had a massive... Some of my friends now, they'll have these collections, but I never really did.

I was kind of poor at the time. It was always having the cards for my decks was kind of, like, poor at the time, and so it was always having the cards from my decks was kind of a big thing. So let's jump back. So you're playing competitively at local stores. Yeah. So the Pro Tour gets announced. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, so this was basically back in Orange County, which I think right around this time right sort of the start of the pro tour right before the pro tour and certainly right after um i think orange county the women's club san diego or orange county women's club was like coast to mesa women's club coast to mesa women's club that's what it was and i was a regular there. Yeah, yeah. And, like, that was sort of, I think, like, magic mecca for a little while there where you had people coming as far north from, like, Santa Barbara that would come in, like, Joe Lunger or Brian Weissman.

You had people from L.A. Obviously, tons of great players from L.A., the Orange County people. And then from San Diego, you know, an hour and a half south, you'd have people coming. So it just grabbed everyone in Southern California. And, um, you know, even though the prizes weren't great, the competition was incredible. And so it was, uh, it was, it was, um, a really great time, you know, to be part of that. And that's kind of, um, what really got me into it was the competition and camaraderie. Can I stop you one second? Before we move on, I just want to talk about Costa Mesa Women's Center for a second.

Yeah, for sure. I think it has a place in sort of magic history, and I just want to give a little scope to it because I don't know if a lot of people understand. So in L.A. at the time, and Costa Mesa is about, I don't know, 45 minutes south of L.A. maybe, Scott Larrabee and several others they rented out it literally was the Costa Mesa's Women's Center I think is what it was called

and it was a place where you could rent it out and have weddings or have whatever you wanted and they every Saturday night they rented for years and years and years they rented it out and it was like in the early days of Magic, the, in the LA larger area, the place to be. Yeah, absolutely.

Back then, we would have, I mean, this is before, like, when you could play qualifiers as a pro. as a pro, we would have four slot qualifiers where the ninth place person or tenth place person would sometimes make it to the pro tour. They wouldn't even make the top eight and they would qualify because so many people had already qualified that were playing those tournaments. They were really, really great, great training, like amazing tournaments back then.

It's definitely the hype. And then a little while after that, Truck and I kind of organized a Wednesday event. When you say Truck, Truck who? Truck Bowie. He was another, like he was a teammate of mine, great player. And he and I would sort of organize this Wednesday event

also in Costa Mesa. And that was more like just draft and more kind of informal, but we would often get, you know, 16, 24, 32 people, all playing drafts, very, very high level competition. And that's kind of why I think we had a leg up on drafting for a little while. And like, you know, maybe the first like two years of the pro tour, I'd say there was like, you know,

a lot of people from Southern California did really well in Limited, just because, you know, that experience playing. Yeah, so another context, I feel like today's a lot of history lessons. Yeah, sure. We, Wizards, introduced drafting because we thought it was very fun. And right now, drafting is, people draft all the time. But in the early days, there was a lot of resistance to doing it. When we first introduced just limited in general, playing sealed, playing draft, the audience was kind of like,

especially draft. Draft took a while. There was a period where Europe just didn't run drafts at all in their organized play system. And even in the U.s local people like stores i'm just gonna construct your stuff i'm not gonna run limited stuff and yeah one of the things that yeah you kind of made a name for yourself in the early days of la especially like there are people

that said we're going to draft and we're going to get good at it and the differential in the early days between the people that knew what they were doing and didn't at the pro tour was huge yeah yeah well that that brings me to the first pro ever played which was the uh second pro tour ever i believe which was uh on the queen mary yeah and um and at that time even though there was a draft somewhat it was a growing draft culture but not it still hadn't really taken off as its own thing people were still only playing constructed in terms and things like that um at that tournament i didn't i had no idea what i was doing i was terrible i was like absolutely atrocious at draft compared to like how you know good i would get and and and i was

also atrocious in a way that probably some of your listeners now, like younger ones, can't even fathom. Because at that time, there was no... It was actually tech to be able to think of like, I'm drafting a deck. I'm drafting towards a particular deck. And X card might be better than Y card in the abstract. But in this case, in the deck that i'm going to draft y card would be better than x and so like and that actually um was i think at pro tour three which i believe was like columbus yeah i was i actually uh sean hammer regnier who was like the first

person who won the the pro tour right um he won the he was he won the second pro tour he's the first one to limit it he first to win a second pro tour he's the first one to limit it he first to win a limited pro tour yeah sorry yeah first one limited event and he um and i remember kind of seeking him out and we just like started talking and um and i watched him play somebody in like a one-on-one draft um or it might have been two on two and i remember just watching and i was so so amazed because it it was like learning going from you know not like you first get into college and you take and you take like a one-on-one biology course and it just blows your mind that like oh that's how that works because it was i watched him taking like you know

these like oh seven walls and like and like weird control cards that just were you know i thought were bad but then at the end of it it was like he had a deck and the deck was good even if the cards that he sometimes were drafting into it weren't as good as other cards in the abstract but in in and and that that became tech and that and then that you know obviously went on from there with like what you know truck and and john and i and and some of the other LA people were able to figure out. John is John Yoo, by the way. John Yoo, yeah.

And that was a big thing to actually figure out, like, oh, we're drafting towards something. We're not just taking a bunch of cards. Yeah, one of the things that is hard for modern people,

like, because magic is, this is the 27th year, I believe, of magic, like, so many things are a known thing that when you learn how to play or you learn how to draft, there's just basics that are a known thing that when you learn how to play or you learn how to draft,

there's just basics that are taught for you the moment you learn how to do it. But what people don't realize is, in the beginning, no one knew that. Someone had to figure that out. And yeah, a lot of the early deck tech was, like, for example, the level one strategy of a draft is just take the best

card, right? That's the level one strategy. It's like, oh, this is the best card of the pack. I'll take the best card. Or maybe I take the best card right that's the level one strategy it's like oh this is the best card of the pack i'll take the best card or maybe i take the best card in my color or whatever um yeah and what you're saying is kind of the next level you learn is oh i'm i want to make the best deck i can make and this card might be worse than the other card but it's better in my deck and so it's the best choice because it'll make a better deck overall and that that had to be learned that was was not something that, like, I mean, one of the things that's fun talking with you is you were one of the, I mean, there are many, many early pioneers,

but you were one of the real early pioneers on the pro tour of saying, look, this is how draft, this is how really draft works. And I think a lot of just success is right, was from understanding this before a lot of people understood the nature of really what what was drafting yeah and i think um a lot of that actually was um like some of these things like what really truck dewey was like very very instrumental and i feel like figuring out he would not necessarily he would be more intuitive so you couldn't actually pick truck's brain that well about it because i'd go, why did you take that over this?

Why did you take this over that? You have some explanation that didn't make sense to me, and it actually didn't make sense. But what he was able to figure out intuitively was he would basically, it was the first person I saw that figured out what is the best deck even possible in this draft. Oh, it's black-red, and it kind of looks like this and as creatures like this and he would reverse it and go well if i force my you know my opponents to deal with the fact that i'm going to take that what happens psychologically and how do you right how do you you know what cards are going to be cards that people are going to want you know to that would that would they would fight you for and so yeah like he would force these situations where like he'd go okay i'm drafting this is the best the best deck and then because he was able to figure that out and i was often drafting against

him um i then kind of was forced to figure out well okay well what's the counter to this strategy okay well if you if you take like that maybe with the second best deck that beats the best deck you often are in an even better spot you know and then we then we were, and then, you know, from there, we had a good enough amount of people in Southern California that were pros to be able to, you know, work on, like, you know, have drafts that were at that level at that time, which may sound crazy, because that's probably like a very, it's still pretty rudimentary level now. But at the time, it was huge. And, and it was enough to like, you know, land you in top eights and stuff, if you're able to think at that level. Yeah, a lot of the fun for me of going back to the early pro tour is that i mean both the pro tour was trying to figure out what the pro tour was and the players

were sort of like this is the first time the pro tour was the first time we got the best minds of magic from across the globe and brought them all together you know and it was fun so talk about walking on the boat so um we are all our pro tours in los angeles in the early days were on the queen mary which was a literal cruise ship that was like permanently docked that was like a hotel um so talk about like walking in a pro tour for the first time what was that like it was honestly kind of intimidating um weirdly because i i had uh i don't know it just i never played in a tournament that had like what 250 people there are all these people from all over the world and and at first i was a little intimidated because it was just it's just kind of overwhelming like i i i didn't feel intimidated in terms of like the people I played against in,

in our, you know, at the Costa Mesa women's club. Cause it, and even though some of them had like finished in the top eight, I think in New York and stuff. And I just kind of thought, you know,

I can beat that guy, but I just thought, wow, there's so many people. And, but then you just kind of settle in. And when you actually play and it just becomes just another tournament in that sense, like you just got to beat the person in front of you.

You just, you know, you got to do your thing. And then I kind of like the jitters and stuff went away. But it was it was it was it was it was very exciting, though. And then the idea of like, especially as a young man, when you when you think, oh, you know, there's prize money here. And, you know, I might not have to get a job, you know, if this goes well. Which is very tantalizing, always. And so, yeah, it was great. It was a great competition.

But I wasn't as close with other people as I would be. So, you know, some of the friendships that came, you know, from future Pro Tours would be the things that also stuck out to me like obviously my friendships with um with truck and john you truck bridge on you and and and like some of the guys in the east coast different things like and and the cool part you know there when you're able to see the same people um over and over and how they you know that they become like someone significant in your life so that was that was something that would come later but at first it was mainly just like just kind of jitters and and uh i'm being a little bit um intimidated by the just sheer size of the tournament itself my great players were how did you finish your first pro tour um i missed the cut um it was kind of uh weird i think the way the cut worked it was like games won and uh i think this

might be the only time i've actually ever cheated in an event was uh there was i i played uh uh bertram lestrade and we and it was like we were we i think we had you had to like win out and so basically we were like he just kind of like looked at me and when it was like, well, if, you know, whoever wins this, you know, whoever wins, you know, the two of three should win three of three, right? Or something like that. And I was kind of like, oh, okay, yeah, I guess. Yeah, sure. And I kind of thought, you know, I understood what he meant. He beat me two to one, but I gave him three zero.

So that was my one time cheating is I actually gave him a game result that wasn't totally fair um but yeah it was like so i think i missed the the cut there um and uh and then just kind of like that was yeah that was the end of it so the first part is a little bit of trivia for everybody the first limited pro tour was actually not a booster draft. It was what we called a Rochester draft, which is another way to draft that we've since... We don't really do much anymore. You lay

all the cards out and pick them. It's a different animal. They're not in your hand. Okay, so the next pro tour, you went to Columbus. What's the first pro tour you did well at? What's your first? That was Dallas, which was, I mean, Columbus I made top 64. And then Dallas was.

Well, then there was Worlds that you would have been invited to, right? And then was Atlanta. Did you play Atlanta? Yeah. It was kind of weird because, oh, yeah. Yeah, I played Atlanta. And dallas was your first top eight and yeah atlanta i finished um i think i did better there maybe top 32 and i and then i was off to yeah dallas was where the first time i kind of like just like felt like that was probably the

first time weirdly i felt like i had an advantage on the field um i was playing just a very fast uh black like necropotence deck it wasn't even necropotes it was basically just like black meanings but it was um for the metagame that would be pretty strong because people weren't expecting to go as fast as it was and so um i kind of raced out to the number one seed and then and then made the made the top eight pretty easily it was kind of raced out to the number one seed and then made the top eight pretty easily. It was kind of weird because I think in those days it was, I think it was almost like a two-day event or something. I think we just played like just or it was, I feel like I didn't have to win that many rounds to then make the top eight. It was like 9-0-2 or something like that.

It was an intentional drawing. But I don't remember exactly how it went but yeah i made the top eight and then i uh i played olorade in the top eight which was very fun because he had won previously and um in columbus yeah yeah in columbus and he was like um yeah he's obviously a great player and it was fun to beat him and it was really that was a very strange thing because we were like sequestered in this room and uh um i remember that like he played uh a card that i was like winning the game but he played a card and it kind of made him it switched into like he was now winning and i remember i heard because it was on closed circuit tv all of a sudden i heard this roar of people going and even though we were like sequestered you could hear it through the walls yeah and then

i don't think they were showing hands and so then when i played my card it switched it back to my to me winning and i don't remember it was like bomb bomb and and when i played that i heard everyone go oh so it was like oh i guess it's weird to be like actually i mean you know i'm used to just like a couple people watching my games you know and it was like oh i guess it's weird to be like actually i mean you know i'm used to just like a couple people watching my games you know it was like you know hearing a crowd where it was pretty wild uh okay so you beat ule um and then i played paul mccabe ended up winning and i actually just got man screwed in in every game so that was kind of unfortunate but i was i was running what would be now in uh if you were playing, like, now

I think would be, like, probably, you know, one or two fewer lands than I should have been, and, you know, it kind of caught up with me there, whereas I'd been, I probably had gotten lucky the other direction previously. What format was that, was Dallas? That was, it was basically a Type 2 constructed, I guess. So a Type 2 standard, but we would not call it standard. Standard, okay, yeah. I'm so out of it, I don't even Type 2 constructed, I guess. So a Type 2 is standard, but we would not call it standard. Standard, okay, yeah. I'm so out of it, I don't even know the name.

I know, well, back in the days, for the audience, Magic used to just have one format, which was play all the cards, and then we introduced a format, which was just the last two years worth of cards, and at the time we called it Type 1 and Type 2. We were very good at naming back in the day, and so Type 2 is what we now call standard, and Type 1 is what we now call vintage. But some of the old-timers will...

If you ever hear someone say Type 1 or Type 2, that's what they're referring to. And then Type 1.5 was what Extended was called for a little while. And Extended is a format that isn't played anymore. So a lot of history lessons today. So, okay, so you do well in Dallas. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the formation of a team.

You had a team. I did have a team, yeah. So let me set it up and then you can explain your team. So back in the day, one of the things that happened is different pros would gather together and they would sort of form a team. And so you were well known for your team. So let's talk about the known for your team so let's talk about the creation of your team sure um so yeah basically it was it was it was actually um

when i was in dallas like i i didn't know like that many people even though i'd been a few pro tours and stuff i i didn't really know that many people and so when i saw um truck buoy and john you um like just wait like the night I, they were just, like, friendly faces, and we just were like, hey, you know, let's talk tech, and what we're, you know, thinking of playing, and we just started playing, and it was, like, the first time that I had actually had other pros that I thought were at a high level, and I was, and, you know, I was, like, just playing with them towards an event rather than playing just a regular event. It was like actual practice for an event, weirdly.

And so that day, I don't know, it was like they were probably feeling the same way I was. It was like, oh, at least I might compete against you on the weekend every time. But now we're competing against everyone else. so let's band together kind of thing and so and we also had a bit of a chip on our shoulder because at that time there was like a team called pcl civic coast legends which was like the first the first team and it had you know mark chalice and mark justice and these guys and we were like we and we kind of thought of ourselves as like we played those guys because they were they were all from you know except for mark justice but they were all from southern california and we we felt like we were better than they were and so we were kind of like we had a

little bit of a chip on our shoulder like hey man let's form a team let's be the three of us and and and we ended up grabbing jason zila and we're to be like, you know, we'll, we'll have our own flair to it. That kind of, um, can I say the name of the team or is that, uh, is that kosher on this podcast or should I go by the second team name? How would the second team name? Okay. So the second team name was DKLA. And for those of you out there who remember our first name, um, yeah, you'll know why it's, it abbreviated there and so um so yeah so

our our team basically um and it came out i think from um the tournament reports that like truck and i would write that we had a kind of different uh take on what was interesting about the game and what was interesting about the pro tour then i think a lot of people were thinking at that time and so at the time there was there was a very like let's talk about just the games that we played and um and in these tournament ports to me they always read as like super boring they were like so boring because it was it was just how how interesting is it to read you know a very narrow recap of a game? Well, I played, you know, these two white knights, and then the guy, you know, played, you know, Necropotence. And I was like, oh, God, you know, I just can't read this.

And so what I thought was interesting was that there was a whole other life to it of the personalities and what you do afterwards or before and the stories of camaraderie that you had with your friends and especially like as a young man it's kind of i feel like it's kind of a big thing and um to to have those friendships and be doing those you know and and when i would write about it it kind of got a little bit of popular response i guess because like it was tapping into something that people weren't tapping into at that time or weren't talking about as much, which wasn't the game itself, but everything around the game,

like the fun times that you'd have with your friends and all that stuff. And so, and also with that was, like, Truck at that time thought magic was kind of like, he he sort of loved it and loved playing it loved the game but he also thought it was like this very like nerdy activity and so he had a little bit of like kind of like i don't know if self-loathing is the right word or whatever but he just thought like oh this is nerdy niche activity. You know, a part of them wanted to always be, I want to be in the club, you know, hitting on girls and having a good time. But there was part of him that was also like, you know, I'm drawn to this other thing and I can't, I don't really, I think it's maybe a little too nerdy for what I should be doing.

For me, I thought like there isn't inherently anything nerdy about it. It was like, to me, I kind of thought there was a bit of a war for the soul of magic at that time. Because it was so new, and the Pro Tour was even newer, that it was like, what was this thing? What were we doing? Was it going to be something like this sort of nerdy kind of niche activity that people thought of more like dnd or was it going to be this other thing that was like maybe a little more glamour to it or sexiness where hey you're going and you're visiting these exotic cities and and traveling and seeing all your friends and that kind of thing and so for me i partially i think my my writing and stuff was about my turn reports were about trying to show that side and trying to push it towards what I thought magic could be,

which was like more like looking at it almost as like a lifestyle of like, you know, you're playing this game. You might, you know, if you're at a high level, you might win some money from the pro church. Which is great. And also you have this great camaraderie and friendship with, with, you know, your friends and stuff. And so my efforts there to write articles were, in a sense, like trying to show that side of it. And so that led to things like when we got to be on MTV and stuff like that, like something that would just probably never happen now. Oh, the beach house. Talk about being on the beach house. This is great.

happened now you know the beach talk about being on the beach house this is great so this was actually one of the more surreal things of my entire life was so i there had been a um there had been a uh invite for me to go to the mdb beach house with three other magic players and do these um skits and the other magic players were like very famous at the time like like hammer mark justice and mike long and when we went like i was at the time, like Hammer, Mark Justice, and Mike Long. And when we went, like, I was at least from Southern California, so I knew, I kind of, and I also dressed a little bit, I don't know, more like stylishly or whatever. And, but like Mark Justice and Mike Long and Hammer were like from colder weather places. And so they all came in like black jeans and black t-shirts and kind and kind of, um, weren't, weren't really addressed to the MTV beach house. They were more like dress for a tournament, but, um, but it was funny where we,

so we go to this MTV beach house for shooting these skits. And, um, of course the first thing was we had to figure out in the skits, like who won, who would win these games because in these mock games, they, they had written up, um, A, like, very unrealistic, but also they had, like, me winning two games and Mike winning none or something, and Mike was, no, no, no, we all have to each win one game, it has to be fair, this kind of thing. So then we filmed these sort of skits, and then it led to two quick stories I'll tell, which was, like, why it was the most surreal thing in my entire life was um uh the the conversation i actually had with the producer because i was very curious like how did this happen like because this was to me was like this was where it should be going we

should be on mtv we should it should be cool like and so i and i and she told me that uh this story that it still strikes me as something that's like isn't true but like this is what she told me that this story that it still strikes me as something that's like isn't true, but like this is what she told me. And it blew my mind was she said that the that her brother read my tournament reports and thought they were funny. And like he and he played magic. So he told her as a producer at MTV, hey, you should check this out. This guy's actually pretty funny and you could maybe do something with it. So she read the tournament reports,

thought we were funny, and actually originally, I guess, had wanted to invite just DKLA as the four people. So it would be me, Chuck, Jason, Selah, and John Yu. And I guess like wizards, you guys over there, stop this. No, no, no, no, no. We're not letting the four of them be the face of magic.

It's unfortunate for you guys. Bad decision. But, you know, you guys can't bat 100%. And instead you replaced it with just me and three other people. But this was like so surreal to me when she told me that like i was the impetus for this and i and and like and i was like just dumbfounded because it was like to me it was like that anyone anyone liked my turn reports beyond the like you know 10 or 20 people i was writing for it was crazy and that and that actually got us invited to do this thing was kind of crazy and you can watch if you haven't uh heard

of these or seen these before you can see some pretty embarrassing uh skits yeah they're on youtube i believe yeah yeah yeah and then the second quick story was it they they um they edited it like very fast and that i think it was the next evening i was out of bar and there was a guy um who like i see him looking up at like behind me and then he he like goes hey man is that you and i went what and i like it's kind of a strange question to hear is that you what does that even you know does that you and i went what and i like it's kind of a strange question to hear is that you what does that even you know is that mean but i turned around there was a tv like right over my head and it was the skit and the volume was like turned off because it was at a bar but i

could see like this you know action happening with like i think it was me and hammer playing and i was like it was just a very bizarre thing because you don't ever think like i'm actually going to be on television or something like that and so, but it was very cool, very fun experience. Okay, so before we wrap up, because I'm almost at my desk, there's one story that I wanted to tell that is a story that, it means a lot to me.

This is one of my favorite stories from back in the Pro Tour that has to do with me and you. I don't know if you remember this or not. We'll see. So one of the things that's interesting is I would see the cards ahead of time because I was making the cards and sometimes

I would go to a pro when the card first came out and I'd go, what do you think of it? And normally it's something that I thought was up their alley. Like, you were known for being very aggressive, especially in Limited, and I showed you the card Goblin Bombardment. And your first take on it was you didn't think it was any good.

And I played a game and was like, well, let's play a limited game and I'll count how much damage I do with my Goblin Bombardment. And in one game I did 13 damage to you. And then you said, okay, you're right. I think this is better than I thought. Yeah, I don't remember that well. I mean, the thing that's so funny is it's such your kind of card. Yeah, that's funny, though. Yeah such your kind of card and it's such a show. Yeah. Yeah.

But, uh, yeah. That's funny though. Yeah. I don't, I don't remember that at all. I do believe it though, because a lot of times, um, uh, like I remember in some invitationals, I don't know if you guys do these anymore, but in some invitationals, like all-star games, we would get to play like some cards that we, that were before they came out and, uh, Or I would make them up.

Or yeah. Or they're made up ones. And, um, I remember that even, you know, it's like the basically, you know, 16 of the best, you know, probably 30 players in the world. And, um, there would often be very large disagreements that would get resolved over the board, like very clearly in one person's favor or the other. Because it's like, oh, those cards are really bad, and it's really good, or vice versa. So sometimes it's hard to tell until you play.

It's definitely true. Yeah, one of the things, just a little background on this, is in the Invitationals, I used to often either make brand new cards, or I'd take existing cards, and I would change their cost or something about them. And part of it was I was trying to test them and like, you don't know this already. Okay, what's your thoughts on this? And some of the pros were very, very good at that. And some of the pros were not good at it.

Because some of the pros were very intuitive and some were more like, I practice a lot. And so the ones that were more intuitive tended to quicker figure out what was good. And the ones that needed to practice a lot were a little slower because i was it's the first time they had a chance to play with them so yeah yeah yeah no there's definitely a difference and i i would assume this is probably true even until now about people that can kind of figure things out over the board versus like people that would they could just drill themselves over and over and over again like like definitely truck was the type that was like very like he could intuit it john was the person that would have to like get it drilled into him but once it was drilled into him he was like scary how good he was and so like um and it was a big thing like back then like like someone like eric lauer versus randy buehler were like

you know randy would play at a better level if he knew the cards but if he didn't know the cards back then he'd play at a worse level you know compared the cards, but if he didn't know the cards back then, he'd play at a worse level, you know, compared to, like, Eric Lauer, you know, his teammates. Yeah, it's actually funny. Randy played at one of the Invitationals, and, like, Randy was well known for the way he got good is he would study something, and that when

you threw brand new things that he had no chance with, it would take him a little while, you know, and he struggled a little bit with that, because it didn't play to his strength as a player. Yeah, for sure. Which Invitational did you go to? I went to a couple, actually. I went to...

The first one was actually Brazil. In Rio, okay. A quick story with that. So, Jason Zila was supposed to be my teammate, and he was going to be my group at the event, and then he ended up having an issue with his family and couldn't go

and so I guess there was very little hotel space so they actually said okay well this guy Scaf Elias is going to be staying with you I didn't know who Scaf Elias was I interviewed Scaf a few weeks ago or so and then Scaf

like it was funny because i knew all these sort of sordid stories about uh the players that he didn't know about and he knew all the sort of behind the scenes stories of wizards of the coast people and so literally we had just met and that night i think i got like an hour or two of sleep because we were up till like you know six in the morning just literally telling stories back and forth about all these people that we kind of knew a little bit about but we didn't get to know the sort of behind the scenes stuff so it was great fun. Oh that's cool. Yeah Scass is a

cool guy so anyway I noticed that I'm arriving at my desk so we need to wrap up. Any final thoughts before I get to my get to work? No no it was fun. It was fun. There's so much to talk about.

This old-day stuff could go on for quite a while. But no, it was fun to be on. Thanks for having me. So anyway, guys, I'm at my desk, so we all know what that means. It means it's the end

of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So I want to thank you, Brian, for being on the show. Thanks for having me, Mark. And guys,

I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.