Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #787: Henry Stern

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Henry Stern, a longtime member of R&D and former pro player.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today's interview, we're going way back into the past to do an R&D, a classic member of R&D from days gone by. So, Henry Stern's with us. Hi, Mark. Did I make you feel old there with... A little bit, but not too bad. I'm also from the same time period to be clear so yes um okay so uh i start the question ask everybody which is how did you get into magic

yeah uh so for me i was in college at the time i think or maybe just out of college um but i remember looking for a Christmas gift when I was in the game store, and the people this was in 94? 94, right? Well, 93 is when the game came out. That's when Alpha and Beta came out in 93. So this is...

Unlimited is 94. End of 93 would be early 94. Yeah, I think so. This was Christmas in 93, I suppose. this was Christmas of 93 I suppose okay yeah I was in the game store and people were all huddled about the

counter talking about this and that and this new card game and it was really exciting and I bought some packs and I guess so the packs I bought were unlimited

but they still had beta cards in them so maybe that you know one of those packs those early packs yeah yeah that's early unlimited

still had beta cards yeah that still had some of them were blackboarded but some of them were whiteboarded it's those early yeah yeah that's early unlimited beta cards yeah that still had some of them were black border but some of them are white border it's kind of weird but that's how they were back then and that's how i got myself and a friend into the game um and got sucked in pretty quickly to that and to the whole um a little bit of the tournament scene and there was this crazy guy that worked at a games or knew what i worked who let you trade like any rare card for any other rare card at the game store yeah so real quickly so the audience knows he's talking about me yeah um so that's how i met mark because mark worked at a game store at the time and he was

totally into magic and he was selling magic like like hotcakes to people and i don't know if you've told all those hilarious stories about how they they resented your uh doing such a good job of moving product for them um but anyways i saw mark and i became game friends as well like and that was must have been also early 94 before you but this is before you know that might have been 93 that might have actually been 93 so what happened was i was working part-time it's called the gamekeeper was the name of the store, and I would always open up some product. We were allowed to open up some product so we could demo it, so we could teach people. And what I realized was, because it was a trading card game, I said to anybody who came in that they wanted it as long as they traded for rarity,

and I knew what the rarities were. You could trade any card for the same rarity, because I didn't care which cards I was demoing with. And Henry came in and you came back multiple times. You were very excited to... Yeah, it was a great deal.

That was like the greatest deal ever because there were some very different values of some rares versus other rares back in the day. Anyways, yeah,

that's how Mark and I became friends from that. Still are to this day. And that's how I started getting into magic. And the tournament scene sort of was very mom and pop run at the time. It wasn't nearly as organized as things are now, obviously. But even back then, it was like Wizards was just starting to organize things. Right.

The DCI started in something like February or March of 94, I believe is when they like first, first started. Yeah. In fact, I remember I just had on my, on a previous podcast I had on Scott, Scott Larrabee.

And he was talking about how he had met me at some early magic convention and then I introduced him to you. Yeah, sure. Yeah, Scott was awesome. He was a really good tournament organizer back in the day. One of the first ones who was confident at what he was doing. Yeah, I remember I have a four-digit DCI number that kind of dates as to how far back. Do you remember what's your number?

Oh, 2924, something like that. Yeah, I was four digits too. Yeah, awesome. But I started with one. Yeah, very nice. And so then when you got your job at WOTC, through you, I was able to start doing some playtesting with some of the people and the sort of the high-end magic players,

such as we were back in the day. And I think the first set we playtested was Alliances. That's the first set that I worked on while I was there. So, yes, that makes sense. That was the first set. So that makes sense. And we had a lot of feedback. And that was a fun set, too.

Alliances was a fun set. Had some fun things going on. You guys had a lot of good feedback. remember i recommended you uh your team to do and then uh you guys gave the feedback back and they're like oh they gave really good feedback so yeah i know for sure um you know uh leaks like nobody's business like some of the people um were not uh i don't say trustworthy but just like couldn't keep their mouths quiet about what was coming and we're leaking cards. And they thought they were helping. Like, oh, this will be great for Magic.

I'm like, yeah, maybe, but we can't do that. We can't just give out the cards to people. But anyways, that was fun. So, okay, so while you were playtesting, another thing that happened during this period was we started the Pro Tour. Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, even before the Pro Tour,

like the World Championships, I mean, Watsi had organized tournaments prior to the Pro Tour. There was like the National Championships, which, and this is 94, I guess, or 95? Yeah, 94. Oh, no, no, 95. 95, yeah.

That's right. That was in Philadelphia, I think. And I wound up coming in second place to Arc Justice at the time. Yes, yes. That was fun. And then from there, it got to Little Worlds Philadelphia I think and yeah I wound up coming in uh second place to uh Mark Justice yes yes um that was fun and then from there got to go to Worlds and Worlds did really well and came in I think third or fourth in that year's Worlds in 95 um and then again in 96 World Championships again came in like third or fourth in that year's World Championships and And that's, 96 is when the Pro Tour started, I think. The Pro Tour started in 95,

in February of 95. 96 Worlds was held at Wizards. The actual Worlds was held at the Wizards offices. And I had been asked by R&D, do I know any other people that might be good fits for R&D? And so I gave them your name. Yeah.

Well, it makes sense too. I mean, look, any game that's, and we get this all the time building, like I make mobile games now, a lot of them are like strategy games. And look, any game that is sufficiently complex, the best players of that game are not going to be the people that make the game. It's going to be the people that play it and think about it more than the people that make it. Like, for example, I, I can guarantee you the world's best, like say Overwatch player probably does not work at Blizzard. He's some guy in Korea or somewhere else, you know,

who's really good at the game, but if Blizzard is smart and I know they are, they're probably looking to hire some of those best players to come help them make the game better for players like that. And so that, I mean, at least that's what I see that like WotC best players to come help them make the game better for players like that and so that i mean at least that's what i see that like watsi hired me to come help make magic be better for players like me and you were the first r&d hire off the pro tour essentially you were the first sort of pro we hired yeah for sure and like and sort of like i was bringing a very different perspective on things and a much fresher perspective on things. And then like, look, we repeated that when later we hired Randy and hired Worth and Mike Turian, a lot of people.

It really does make sense. Now, unfortunately, that Pro Tour edge kind of like gets dulled off over time. And as it should, because I think as a game maker, you need to grow to understand not just, hey, what does Spike think about this card? Because that's what the Proton player is thinking, right? But like, hey, what does Timmy think about it? What does Johnny think? What does everyone think about this card? And that sort of led to a lot of growth.

Which makes you less apt to know exactly what the new hotness is. And therefore, you need to hire new people. So one of my claims to fame is, by the way, is I believe I'm one of the few r&d people that i when i leave r&d i will be a better magic player than when i started r&d yeah i can believe it that's funny okay so uh so you come at wizard so the first set you led i mean you were on some sets but the first set you led was the first set i led although i led the design and you led the development, which was Tempest. So what's your memories of Tempest? I remember Slivers. I remember the – was that from – Tempest was interesting because while you were the designer,

it had a lot of Mike Elliott's mechanics. Yeah, Mike was on the design team. And what happened was Mike and I both really wanted to be designers. And so this was like i i convinced them to let me lead us out and then i brought mike on the team and then mike and i just fire hose of designs we just made infinite cards so yeah i remember i seem to remember it also like during development that we had to cut a bunch out too um yes we had slivers we had uh kickers which were awesome. And there was Poison.

No, Kickers Invasion. You're getting ahead of yourself. Kickers Invasion. Am I getting ahead of myself? Sorry. I'll run through what it was. Tempest had Slivers. It had Buyback.

It had Shadow. And then it had... I mean, those were the two major mechanics were Shadow and Buyback. And then it had Slivers and it had... What else did it have in it? Those were the major mechanics. Did it originally it had Slivers, and it had... What else did it have in it? Those were the major mechanics. Did it originally have Poison?

I think it had Poison. It did. Oh, yes, yes. It originally had Poison. And that's one of the things the development team, which I was leading, we were like, there's just too much stuff

going on here. There's just too much stuff to think about. And that was one of the things, like, look, this could be its own set instead of Cut. Also, both Echo and um cycling both were in the set and got pushed off and the next year

urza saga those were the main mechanics from urza saga so yeah well i mean listen it's nice when you're sort of leading a development team to have you know a uh a plethora of riches from which to choose from and to sort of like having that problem of like look there's too much stuff we need to cut back because we've got more than enough is way better than like you know there's not enough here this is kind of dull we need some more some more things to go on okay so go ahead it was tempest sorry was tempest the uh no it was weatherlight was part of that whole, like, trying to tell a story. Well. Right, through the cards.

Yes. What happened was Michael, Ryan, and I pitched the Weatherlight saga. The story started in Weatherlight, and then it ran for four years. Although, Michael and I weren't there for the full four years. I know. I understand. It was like Tempest, like, the first part was like a big part of it. Like, was it kind of dabbled in Weatherlight and major in Tempest, or was it major in both?

Weatherlight was like the precursor, like watching them get together, like, let's gather our team. Like, Sissy gets kidnapped, let's gather our team. But the kind of start of the adventure was Tempest. Yeah, that was kind of different, too. I call the results mixed. There's some awesome things. I call the results mixed. There's some awesome things.

Some things were like, wow, it really was tough to put this square peg in this round hole to make it work story-wise. Has that still continued as much? I mean, I know we stopped it a little bit after, but has that continued? The story, it's an ever-going wave of... It's a lot in the cards. It's not that much in the cards. It's a lot in the cards. It's not that much in the cards.

So we've gone back and forth. I did appreciate... in Tempest we did this little thing where we made a a storyboard where you could sort of see the story and it was all the cards

put in order to show the story it was in the duelist so I was very proud of that so but anyway if you want to hear if you want to hear me talk about

the Royal Saga Mike Ryan and I did a bunch of podcasts on it you guys can go listen to that okay the next set you led and this was I think think, just you. I think you were the only person to work on this,

was Portal Three Kingdoms. Oh, yeah, Portal Three Kingdoms. That's an interesting one. So this came from Bill Rose, came to me and said that they wanted to make an introductory set for the, call it Asian market, you know, China, Japan, Korea,

Hong Kong, Taiwan, et cetera. for the call it asian market you know china japan korea hong kong taiwan etc um but they wanted to make it like a version of portal that made sense for that market and like while the western fantasy of magic is okay it maybe wasn't resonating quite as well um and there was the thought that maybe we could do a version of magic based on the three kingdom saga and for those of you that don't know the three kingdom saga is like think of it it is to asia kind of like what the atharian legends are to the west but it's also it's like one third history and one third fantasy and well i don't know what the other is maybe history and half and half fantasy these battles really happened there really were these three different kingdoms but um there wasn't necessarily magic and the other stuff going on there but the the social impact of those stories is way more important even than the arthur legends are to

the west like people still think about those leaders they still quote the proverbs and things from those stories um but uh learning those um if you didn't grow up with them there's quite quite a lot to learn there was a um like a read the there was like a 10 book graphic novel to go through and after that the actual translated real novel which is like uh paperback that was like yay yay thick uh full of hemorrhage inches, which they can't see you. It's a way thick. I recommend anybody who's interested in sort of Chinese culture or Asian culture.

It's an unbelievable resource. And there have been, if you know about these things, like a million video games now have been based on the Three Kingdoms. There's all kinds of strategy games and fighting games. There's all these characters. three kingdoms there's all kinds of strategy games and fighting games since there's all these characters there are a ton of three kingdoms uh games out

there almost all of them exclusively done by by asian companies okay so go ahead sorry so the task was like all right how do we get that into magic like how does that work like with the mechanics of like what magic is and portal which is kind of like magic but maybe not quite as complex as normal magic so the first thing is like all right how do we deal with flying like hey yeah they have birds maybe you can stretch and say dragons are there kind of sort of but not really um so what we settled on was uh horsemanship that like there's a lot of people riding on horses all the time. So people riding on horses, if you're not on a horse, you can't block someone like that. And that actually kind of sort of works okay.

But now it turns out if you put horsemanship into real magic, it's even better than flying, right? Because the horsemanship said they can only block by other creatures with horsemanship, and nobody in real magic has horsemanship. So they're like super flyers almost when you take them into real magic. Yeah.

And also deciding what colors represented which kingdoms was a little bit tricky to do. And I think we settled on blue, white, and black were the ones that made sense. And green was nature, and red was kind of like destruction and fire is how we wound up doing it. Okay, so the next set you worked on was Urza's Legacy, which was the middle set of the Urza Saga block, which is famous for being a somewhat broken block.

Broken bad or broken good? Here's the fact I'll give. I led the design for Urza's Destiny, and so one day we were talking in the pit about which is the most broken of the Urza's Saga sets. And Eric Lauer said destiny and so one day we were talking in the pit about which is the most broken of the urza's saga uh sets and eric lauer said that if you go by percentage meaning obviously urza saga is bigger the other two are smaller sets but he said by percentage like percentage he thought urza's

legacy was the uh most broken of the three sets so was broken or most exciting is that what he said the most exciting well it's also the most exciting. It has a lot of very memorable cards in it. Yeah, no, for sure. Yeah, that wasn't great. It's... I think that was the time, at least in my memory, that we stepped most over the line in a set.

And I remember we got yelled at a lot for that, too. Yeah, we got chewed out by Peter. Yeah. But as I look back on it, really, it's like, listen, if that's not happening from time to time, then you're not really doing your job as designers, too. Like, you're not sort of finding out where that line is. So now, you can argue, yeah, that was too much of a leap over the line instead of a stroll over the line. But I really don't look back with a lot of regrets because I felt like we as a design team, as a development team, we learned a lot as well.

You know, I think that led to kind of the second wave of Pro Tour R&D hires. Yeah. Like I think Urs's legacy is what led to Mike Tyrion coming in, was what led to Randy Bueller coming in. Yes. What led to Worth coming in. Well, 100%, yes. The response to us

is to go more full card and hiring a lot more pro tour pros that would keep us from having broken stuff like that. Do you remember anything else about Urza's Legacy?

Not specifically. Like, I'm trying to remember if there's any cards that were, that, like, stood out. That wasn't, like, Dodecapod was from that, was it?

No, no, no. I was going to say it was that later. That's later. Okay. Okay, we'll move on. Next set you did, it was Mercadian Masks. Oh, yeah. Well, I'll set this one up and then you can...

So we get chewed out by Peter, who was the CEO of the time for Urza Saga. And he says to us, if the next fall set is as broken as Urza Saga, we were going to be fired. So we made sure that the next large set was not as broken as Urza Saga. No, it was not. And that's why, like, I think, yeah, I mean, that was not a great set.

You know, I'll just maybe leave it at that. Even from the name, you know, like the name was bad too. In addition to the, like, it's kind of funny that like, I'm not sure quite how you rank names, but like, that's not a good name. And the theme was weird. Like, you know, carnival sort of, you know, a Venetian carnival kind of theme-y thing. It was all, yeah.

So I'll tell a little behind the scenes story the audience might appreciate so when they first named the set we didn't name it i already had nothing to do with the name uh and they spelled masks m-a-s-q-u-e-s and we were like could we just spell it m-a-s-k-s please and no no they mean different things and we're like but no one's gonna know what so we went in the file and and we, every time the word K appeared, we replaced it with a Q-U. Do you remember this? Yes. And so...

And just in the file, just, like, weird things, and we're like, it just was, we thought it was funny, and so whenever we were doing it, so, anyway. Because it was funny, because we were kind of jerky back then, but... We were a little jerky, that's just true. Yeah. Okay, the next set, this is a good set. Now we go to a little better set.

You had mentioned earlier, so we have Invasion. This was the multicolor. This is where Kicker was. Yeah, Invasion was awesome. This was, I think, honestly, maybe my favorite set of all the sets that I worked on when there. It would probably be between that and Tempest, I suppose. But yeah, Invasion was awesome. Kicker was, I think, maybe the best mechanic

that I worked on or that, not that I created, but that was handed to me and I grew into something that was awesome, to put it that way. Yeah, Bill made Kicker. I mean, Kicker's only problem is it's so expansive. Yeah, it is really the err mechanic. Yeah.

That, like, you can have anything. Like, Kicker could do, like, I'm sure that you've thought, like, oh, well, Kicker, you know, da-da-da, and you have this other mechanic, right? If the Kicker is instead of extra mana, but the Kicker is, like, you know, discard a card, okay, now you've got an alternative casting card, whatever. Yes, it is.

So here's a fun story that has to do with you and me, is you and I independently each went to Bill and pitched the same idea, completely unaware the other person had gone and pitched it. Do you know what the idea was? No, no, no. What was it? Was Apocalypse. So let's save the enemy stuff and put it at the end of the block.

Oh, yeah. The colors of the... Colors and Harmony versus the colors of the block. Oh yeah. The, the, the colors of the, the colors and harmony versus the colors. Right. Originally invasion was all the colors and it was too much. And then you and I each independently went to bill and goes, it's just too much. What if we just save the enemy stuff for the end of the block?

And you know, that's good. I, you know, I hadn't remembered that, but I like that. Great minds take a life. Uh,

you know, credits to bill too, for being receptive enough to listen. You know, he's always been good in that way that he will listen to people. Oh, no, no. Bill, actually, that's one of Bill's strengths, I think, is he actually, like, listens to what everybody has to say and, you know, feels very, very, I mean, he's been our VP forever or so, but.

Yeah. So. Okay. Next that you worked on was Torment. So this was us trying something a little different what if one color was more in the set than every other one so there was more black than anything else and there was less white and green i think red and blue were the same as normal do you remember this now theoretically that should have worked in theory like okay yeah there's more black and if you draft yeah more people will be

drafting black but that means that the other cards you know there'll be fewer people drafting them that means they'll be deeper in what they get but it really that's nice in theory but i i think in practice uh at least in terms of drafting it really yeah was more of a miss than a hit although we did have some fun cards there There were some very fun cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was the, there was like the, I forget its name, like BB for a 2-1,

and it was B plus 1 plus 1. It was like the... Oh, yeah. You know what I'm talking about, right? I know what you're talking about. I'm also bad at remembering names. But the audience, whenever I do this,

I know they're screaming at the thing, yelling out the name of the card. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, it was the shade. It was the shade. It was... Yeah, Isshun Shade. No, no, Isshun Shade's from Homeland.

It's not Isshun Shade. Oh, okay. Gosh, I thought Isshun Shade did. It is... Well, it'll come to us. That guy was good. That guy was really good. He was.

He was very good. There's a lot of... Everybody's playing a lot of black. Okay, so next set you worked on was another middle set, was Darksteel, which was in the Mirrodin block. Yeah. So that... Urza Saito was us doing broken things, but it wasn't the only block

of us doing broken things. Mirrodin block also was us doing some broken things. Yeah. When was that? Darksteel had introduced, Indestructible was introduced in Dark Steel. It had the

nightmare mechanic where creatures came in and removed something as long as they were in play and they came back. Richard made that

mechanic. What else was in that set? That's the main ones that come to mind. I know the big problem with it

was we made Mirrodin and it was broken, and then we had to make the next two sets, and we were trying to, like, not make as broken things, but... Oh, um, Modula was in that set.

Artifact creatures came with plus one, plus one counters, and when they died, you moved the plus one, plus one counters. Okay, sure. Yeah, I don't specifically remember, like, a ton. Is that where... Is that where Dead Deadcapod is from? Which one? That one, the

Mirren? Or the... Which card? Dodecapod. What is Dodecapod from? I don't remember where Dodecapod is from. I can look it up. Let's see. We'll see where Dodecapod is from. I can look it up. Let's see. We'll see where Dodecapod is from.

I remember the card. So Dodecapod... This is something I can't do when I'm driving. I can't just look things up. It was from Apocalypse. Okay. So it wasn't even in a set you led. Yeah. I just said it was on, though. I mean, we're just talking about the sets that you led. You were on lots of other sets. Yeah, I just said I was on, though. We're just talking about the sets that

you led. You were on lots of other sets. Yeah, a lot. Okay, so there's two more sets here. Next set that you worked on was Guildpacked. So this was from Ravnica Block, the original Ravnica Block. It was the middle set. It was

Ravnica Guildpacked Descension. So this was the middle set. So I had just taken over. I became head designer during Ravnica, or right before Ravnica. And I pitched the idea of a block in which the whole block was kind of chopped up.

I called the pie model at the time. Chop up the pie, and this set gets this part of the pie. And I know that going into this, Mike Elliott was the lead designer for Guild Pack, and he wasn't really bought into this whole idea that we were going to continue what we were doing in Ravnica. And so I know you had a lot of work

to kind of adjust to make sure that it... For sure. Were these like the little three guilds, right? We did... Yeah, the three guilds in yours was Black, White, the Orzhov. It was Red, Green, the Gruul. And it was... Black, White, Red, Green, Blue something.

Not Blue, White, not Blue, Green. Oh, Blue, Red, is it? So it was Blue, Red, White, Black, and Red, Green were the set you were on. Yeah, that was a fun set. not blue white not blue green oh blue red uh is it so it's blue red white black and red green were the the set you were yeah that was a fun set like i mean the whole ravnica block was fun and obviously you guys are like to that to that guild land yes yes we before i mean that was like i mean it was nice because like we're trading sort of i mean this wasn't the first multi-color set that we'd ever done, obviously, but it felt like the first time through the whole Ravnica thing

that we'd really gone deep into multicolor, or at least to me, it felt like it was in a much deeper way than previously. Well, chopping it up also, like saying this set is just these three color combinations really lets you go really deep because it wasn't everything. It was just these three color combinations.

Yeah, it's better too. It's way better because you can go deeper. It's kind of what we talked about before three color combinations. Yeah, it's better, too. It's way better because, like, you can go deeper. It's kind of what we talked about before. When you have too many things to do, you kind of get, like, a sprinkling of all the little things. And you can't really – it's hard to, like, do a lot of the cars that you'd like to do in a setting like that. Okay, so the last set you worked on, interestingly, was Zendikar. And our third trip to Zendikar just came out. So what do you remember about original Zendikar?

Yeah, so I took over for Zendikar. Someone else had taken it and took over. Yeah, I think Devin started Zendikar, and then you took over for Devin. Yeah, but then I think someone might have taken over for me. Yeah, Aaron took over for you. Three different people worked on the set.

It had three lead developers. It was a running joke for a while, how many lead developers that set had. Yeah, Aaron took over for you. Three different people worked on the set. It had three lead developers. It was a running joke for a while, how many lead developers that set had. Yeah, but still, I feel like it turned out, in the end, actually, the product wound up being quite good. Oh, yeah. Zendikar's one of our most popular worlds. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, like, the whole

model that WotC uses for designing cards and having a design team that hands off to a development team, it makes me wonder if, like, would things be better if that development team handed it off to the final development team? Well, we've changed how we do things, Henry. We kind

of do that now. Oh, do you really? Yeah, we have a vision design, which hands off to set design, which hands off to play design. So we... Okay. You on your own have created the system we've now got to. Interesting. So what is... Sorry, people probably know this, but I don't, so you get to tell me.

Maybe people don't, but what is the responsibilities of vision design versus car design versus... Well, I mean, vision design, we work on four months. It's setting up basically the main thrust of what the set is. We're making the blueprints for the set. We pick the themes, we pick the mechanics. We're sort of... If we're building a house, we're making the blueprints for the set. We pick the themes. We pick the mechanics. We're sort of...

If we're building a house, we're making the blueprints. Set design is actually building it. They're the ones that are actually making and building it. And then play design is doing all the testing and balancing and, you know, making sure that...

So the first design, are you guys actually making cards or you're not making cards? We make cards as a template to show what we can do. They're like proof of concept and they're free to keep them, but often they change a lot of the cards.

And then the actual set design team, if it's a big set, they still do their thing of like, hey, here's our vision. If this was done, we think this is good. Here's our full set. Right.

Set design will build the house that, I mean, the metaphor I always use is vision makes the blueprints and set design builds the house. But, you know, the bluep always use is vision makes the blueprints and set design builds the house. But, you know, the blueprints do a lot to guide you of what kind of house it is and what it's going to look like and stuff like that.

For sure. And then the play design actually makes, I don't know if you said furniture or... Interior design is what we said. It's like, they're making the house look nice and make, you know, there's a lot of touches, a lot of... So.

Yeah. I think that undersells it a little bit because a lot of times or at least in the old i think you're underselling interior designs but i think you're yeah uh maybe um because you'd be like this you know who is the architect this wall does not belong here you know like this wall should be here but yeah whatever it's the thing is, like, it's tough because, like, this process is a really good process. And I've tried a lot of the software companies that I've been at to institute a little bit something closer to that. But a lot of times the cycles are just so much faster that it doesn't work. It doesn't happen.

And often to detriment, honestly. it doesn't happen and often, often to detriment, honestly. Um, or, you know, sometimes, you know, companies will let their players be their set designers sort of, and use testing on players to try to find out what's best, which is, can work, but it's fraught with peril as well. Okay. So Henry, uh, as we wrap up, um, I I'm almost to work here. So, uh, what is your thoughts? I mean, you spent how many, you were wizards for 10 years?

Yeah, a little less, maybe right around that much. Yeah, no, I'm super thankful for everything that I learned at WOTC. I mean, it's really how I became

a game designer. Prior to, we didn't mention it, but prior to working at WOTC, I was happily working as an aerospace engineer, you know, designing and building spacecraft.

Fun job. And through WOTi and the uh your uh encouragement and the vision of uh you know richard and peter and scaf and the other people who understood they're like oh hey you know it's a person with a engineering background can come in here and become a good designer and sort of like opened the world of design to me and i learned i i mean i learned a lot of other jobs since then, but I learned a ton about what makes a game good and good processes for making games. And even things like Color Pie.

Like I talk about Color Pie now with people at my work and they get what I'm talking about. Like they understand, like Magic has given us so much sort of common vocabulary as game makers too, that it's super awesome. And I'm very proud to have been a part of it well anyway it was great talking to you henry um but i see i'm at my desk which means i've gotten to work so we all know that means this is the end of my drive to

work so instead of talking magic it's time for me to be making magic so thank you for coming with us henry thanks for being here thanks mark good talking to you okay everybody else i will see you all next time bye