Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #789: Brian David-Marshall

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Brian David-Marshall on the many roles he's played in Magic, from tournament organizer and store owner to commentator and Magic historian.

I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. So I have a fun guest today, Brian David Marshall of many things. We'll talk all about that today. So welcome, Brian. Hey, Mark. Thanks for having me. This is gonna be fun. Okay, so I'm gonna start with a question I ask everybody. How did you first start to play Magic? How did you learn about Magic? with the question i ask everybody how did you first start to play magic how do you learn about magic so i was working for a chain of comic book stores in new york city i was doing uh marketing and promotion for them putting on signings this is like right around death of superman and the image boom and like so you know all these huge events are happening in comics and i had come out of pr and was um working for this game store.

I mean, this comic store doing like their marketing and also sort of as the guy who played games would answer questions from people who had questions about games. And so people kept coming in and asking if we had any of that magic or magic. And I first I thought they were talking about like mage. There was like a white wolf product you know and finally someone just was like grabbed me i've told the story before but it's true like picked me up by the lapels of my jacket and shook me against like the warhammer miniatures you know and he's like why can't I find this bleeping game anywhere? And so he stormed off or was arrested or something. And I dusted myself off and was like, okay, we need to figure out what this product is and we need to carry it.

And it was a while, right? This is right in between the beta and unlimited release of Magic. And there had been very, very, very little beta in New York City. Not a lot of it on the East Coast. But unlimited came out, and we weren't able to get any in the store. But me and my friends were able to buy a bunch of unlimited starters and some unlimited boosters and start playing. And that's how I got into Magic. And I've literally never stopped.

I probably haven't gone two weeks without playing Magic in the intervening 27 years. Yeah, it's funny. You and I have a lot of parallels because I also worked in a game store. I first learned about it because people asked me about it. So that's kind of funny. Okay, so you went from learning how to play. So the first thing I know of you as far as interacting with magic is you were one of the first people to run tournaments really anywhere um i mean in new york especially a high profile tournament so

you want to talk about that a little bit sure uh so the first thing i actually tried to do with magic before running tournaments was get the license to make a magic comic um actually flew out to the old office uh before you know the the original whatever that building right right the old old office now yeah yeah yeah the old old exactly with gun freedman who was my partner in gray matter and we put together four painted pages of a story called The Council of Dragons, which was about the Elder Dragons. With like, you know, I think Dennis Calero, who's a somewhat successful artist these days, but at the time was like a student. But they were really cool. But then I think Dark Horse got licensed. But anyway, that was the first thing I tried to do.

And then I was like, fine, we'll run a tournament. And so we put together a tournament in November of 1994 at the Roosevelt Hotel. R.I.P. They just announced that they're closing. At the Roosevelt Hotel for a set of Arabian Nights. You know, there had been some small tournaments. There had been a gathering at the Seaport in New York earlier that year. Had like, you know know 40 or 50 people and Paul Girardi is someone who had run a tournament on Staten Island at some point at like a but

people were still treating these tournaments as we're going to do a tournament come in play go home and coming from this marketing background and coming from, you know, remembering fondly these New York comic conventions, I really love the idea of a tournament being more of an event than just coming in for round one and leaving when you lose. So we put together an event that really, in a lot of ways looked like what you would think of as a magic fest. Now we had artists there. Uh, we had Melissa Benson, Jeff Menzies, and I think Ed Beard were the three artists who were at that first event.

We had, um, you know, we had tournaments, we had side events, we had vendors, you know, and, uh, you know, we tried, you know, we would go through the duel list and look for new formats to try, right? You know, two-headed giant at one event, but it was super cool. And we had, you know, some 200 people show up and, you know, it was kind of like, wow, this is crazy. You know, We knew nothing. I mean, we didn't have any even idea what we were doing. But we figured it out pretty quickly. The tournament ran well. People didn't believe.

And we kept doing them. We ran another one in February for a set of legends and had over 1,000 people show up. Okay, so at some point you go from running tournaments with Grey Matter to opening up a store. How did that happen? Neutral ground. how did that happen to neutral ground how did that happen so so we ran we ran that tournament in february with a thousand players um and then we ran another tournament in march that also had you know some above north of 700 people and other people are starting to run tournaments at this point you know people have certainly seen that

it's successful. But our tournament and our third tournament was really bad for us because we had a limit on the amount of time for the room. We couldn't get people to leave. We could not get people to go home when they were done. They just wanted to be around other people who played Magic. when they were done. They just wanted to be around other people who played Magic. I know of at least three couples that met and married from those first handful of events because it was this nexus of people who loved gaming,

who loved the art. There was something going on. And I was like, you know, I feel like people are just very hungry for something that will let them be around people who have similar interests right like I mean I'm sure you have that experience of walking into a comic book store or a game store for the first time and feeling like as you cross over that threshold into the store you'd stepped into some new chapter of your life right the first time that happens you, oh my God, there's other people who like the same things I like,

who are as passionate about it as I am, you know, who are going to be here every Wednesday waiting for the new books, right? And this was the same thing, except it was not, it was a demand that wasn't being met anywhere. Yes, there were game stores, but they didn't have a place to play. Yes, there were comic stores that sold games, but you'd be playing on a bunch of long boxes. We really wanted to create a place that was, you know, we invented the term tournament center for neutral ground, right? It was called finally a place, you know, our tagline was finally a place to game in New York. It was a tournament center. We had first space was 2,500 square feet in Manhattan on the ninth floor, sometimes up nine flights of stairs, sometimes up an elevator. Right. And we, we had set,

we were open seven days a week and we had a seven day a week magic tournament schedule. We had other games going on, you know, we had role-playing sessions and, you know, miniatures and whatever else, but you know, our focus was magic. We sold singles. We were the only place in Manhattan that sold singles. And it was really kind of amazing. You know, I remember, you know, and we charged a membership. That was the other thing that was crazy. You know, you could come in and shop in the store, but if you wanted to use the tournament center, I think it was $7 a day or $35 a month or $250 for an annual membership. And that gave you full access to, you know, being able to play and do everything and hang out and discounts on some tournaments.

I don't remember. And I was just like, you know, well, this is crazy. We have no idea if anyone's going to do this. Right. We didn't even know if anyone would ever pay $7 to come in, right? And we opened, and within two minutes of the day we opened, Steve and Dan O'Mahony Schwartz walked in with a check for $500 from their mother for two annual memberships. And, you know, and it just kind of took off from there. And, you know, and it just kind of took off from there. So I often tell the story. I remember my first story of meeting you. I don't know if that's the first story of you meeting me,

but we'll see if these will line up. So there was an event in New York called The Gathering, which was for Homelands. We did a big promotional event. We rented out a couple floors, and we had tournaments in a weird haunted house thing. And anyway, we had this big event, and like the night before or the night after, one of the nights that we weren't running the thing, a bunch of us came and visited Neutral Ground, which is the first time I had ever been to Neutral Ground.

And the first time I remember meeting you, I don't know if you and I had interacted before that, but the first time I remember meeting you. I don't think so. I mean had interacted before that, but the first time I remember meeting you. I think so. I mean, I don't think you would have been, when did you start working at Wizards? This is prior to me full time. This is me when I'm just a freelancer. I'd been out to Wizards once in very early 94, and that would have been the only opportunity. Right, I wasn't there in 94. Yeah.

Yeah, I know, that makes sense. But I remember it was very exciting like the the idea of a place to play like now it's kind of that's what matt what uh game stores are but that wasn't just the thing i really i don't people they don't know their history like the idea of having place to play in your game store which is now a a staple just most stores did not do that and i remember seeing we were impressed like look at all these tables it was very exciting yeah i mean it was it was a game space first and a store second right like you know we moved around the corner after like two years we were on 7th avenue between 26th and 27th and we moved around the corner to 26th street

between 6th and 7th avenue and uh that was the second space which was on the fourth floor of a loft building was 5 000 square feet a little more than 5,000 square feet. But only about 500 of that was dedicated to retail. The rest was all dedicated to tabletops to play, maybe some terrain tables, maybe a computer area with some network computers to play games, but for the most part, you know, we could see 250 players for a tournament, you know, for a PTQ or for, you know, a Masters, whatever, the Masters Gateway tournament. Okay, so the next... One of my favorite sets of photos from coverage.

Okay, the next big thing I have here is, so in February, I think it was February of 1996, so Scaf Elias had really got the idea is, so in February, I think it was February of 1996, so Scaf Elias had really got the idea of that the next level was we needed to make something for players to aspire to. And it was Formation of the Pro Tour.

And I had worked very closely with Scaf, and I know, by the way, that your tournaments were one, like, there were a bunch of successes out there that we used as templates, and Great Matter was one of the ones I know we used as a template for things we were trying to do. And then at, was it the Puck building? So,

PT1, the first Pro Tour, and you were at the first Pro Tour, right? I was. By the way, if you've ever watched Will and Grace, you have seen the location of the first Pro Tour because Grace's office building, whenever they show the exterior is the puck building so you know i like to pretend that people are going to a pro tour

anytime will and grace is on but uh yeah so yeah no i was at the first part we had a lot of it was very exciting when people you know we had we obviously had a very tournament savvy crowd coming to our events right people who were playing at at these now two to three times a month on the East Coast, there were a thousand dollar tournaments and tournaments for a full set of power or, and so you could, and, and again, every day tournaments at neutral ground. So people, they were pretty sophisticated about competitive magic.

And when the announcement of the pro tour happened you know every single person you know basically started dialing the number to get an invite you know it was it was pretty crazy every you know pretty much everyone at neutral ground um got got in to the event uh And myself and Tony Perotti, who was our head judge at the Grey Matter event, you know, we decided that it was more important for us for the event to succeed. And we wanted to do whatever we could to help that happen

by being judges at that first event. Because, you know, we knew the players. We knew, you know, hey, check his sleeves, right? You know, we knew who was who, and we wanted to be able to provide some assistance that way. So I actually ended up judging at the first part tour. I was judging on the top floor. I judged at the jun Pro Tour. I was judging on the top floor. I judged at the juniors event.

And Tony was on the judge staff on the main floor for the seniors event. Yeah, for those of you that don't know, real quickly, a few things you had mentioned I just want to explain. A, to get into the tournament, we invited a small handful of players who had done well at certain events.

But other than that, you had a call on the phone. That's how you got invited, was you called on the phone. And then, right, there was both a normal Pro Tour and a Junior Pro Tour, the Junior I guess was upstairs and so anyway okay, so let's segue a little bit

into the Pro Tour here, I'm trying to go roughly chronologically, but let's go into the Pro Tour a little bit since you have some history with the Pro Tour so, you played on the Pro Tour a couple, I think four times. Is that right? Five times, I believe. Five times.

Okay. So once as an individual and then four times on team events. Twice at Madison Square Garden and twice in Boston. And I think my best finish was 13th. That's pretty good. Which was at the second Pro Tour of New York at Madison Square Garden, which, you know, won me essentially a TV. I won $1,100 playing in that tournament, bought a Sony Trinitron,

which I then held on to well into the era of flat screen TVs because it was my trophy from that event. I'm like, well, you know, shouldn't we get a new TV? No, no. We're keeping this 8 million pound Trenatron because it commemorates the one time I did well at Magic. Okay, so when did you transition from playing to reporting? Because I know early on you were one of the people

that did a lot of coverage of the Pro Tour. So I did a ton of coverage of the pro tour so i i did a ton of coverage um for magic tournaments and other events for the neutral ground website so one of the things that we really pioneered uh on the neutral ground site and with our events in general was this idea like no you can't keep your decklist secret right you remember there was a long time where people would choose whether or not their decklist would get published yeah if i choose to share it right there was like a lot of secrecy around it um we started running a lot of events and we were like look if you're playing if you want this decklist not to be

published it said on our deck sheets, drop right now. Because if you hand in this deck list, we're going to publish it. We would publish all the deck lists. We would publish all the winning deck lists, and we would do lots of analysis of them. So I got kind of into doing that in the late 90s to early 2000s through the Neutral Ground site. And I was at, you know, a couple of pro tours in the early 2000s where I was competing. And when I was done rather early in those events, I got asked to help do coverage. I think my first coverage assignment might have been on day two or day three of one of the Pro Tour of Boston,

where I got asked to cover a quarterfinal or something like that. How did you segue with doing written coverage to doing commentary? So I am terrified of public speaking or, or I still think I'm terrified of public speaking. I'm obviously not right. But it was something I was always terrified of. You know, a famous event in my family when I was in junior high school where I faked laryngitis for a month to not have to give a speech before class in school. I was always terrified of being out in this place where I would have to speak to people. And I was doing written coverage for Wizards

and Randy kept trying to get me to do anything with the team that was doing stuff on camera. Not even necessarily the booth, right? Because there was always Randy and someone else in the booth. But, you know, he's like, hey, why don't we do a, why don't you do a recap at the end of the day? Or why don't you do, and kept pushing. And I was like, oh, really uncomfortable.

And then, I don't know what happened, but I decided, you know, oh, to hell with it. Let me try it. And actually got a chance to be in the booth. And it was pretty exhilarating, right? Like it's, you know, no net, right? You know, you talk about the idea that this is a podcast where you don't edit it, right? Like we just go, right? It's that same thing. It's like, no, no net. Wow, this is terrifying, but kind of fun and exciting. And, you know, getting to watch these people who I've seen grow up with the game play at the highest level, you know, I felt, you know, in a great position to be able to talk about those people and talk about those players, which, you know, eventually sort of shaped the way that my career went from

doing commentary to being more of an observer of the game, more of a reporter of the game. And you did coverage for many, many years. How many years did you do commentary? So I started doing written coverage in 2002. too. Did that up until Yokohama, I want to say in 2008, where I started doing commentary. Did that until, probably did that for 10 years then until I think, I think 2000, beginning of 2019 is when I retired. So that was Mythic Championship won in Cleveland that Autumn won. So do you have any favorite story of your time doing commentary?

So my favorite story of doing commentary is actually, doesn't, I mean, you know, all my favorite stories are about hanging out with people, right? And getting to watch players grow in the game and, and, and succeed. And yeah, I mean, it would, it would be hard to narrow it down, but I think my, probably my, my favorite moment in the booth is like the Frank Karsten, Terry.

So kind of bluff double bluff which was also my first event that i covered where it's just like wait a minute what's going on is he bluffing is he double bluffing what and you know and just uh for me that's just a favorite moment because i felt like oh okay you know even if i'm maybe wrong here or not i i felt comfortable building the excitement and and talking about what was going on and sharing that space with Randy, which was, you know, intimidating because Randy's such a huge presence in the game. And yeah, I just, I would say that the bond, you know, the corny answer is the bond with the people who make coverage. That's a family to me um you know that that as much as you know when i talked

about that finding that family when you go into a comic store or game store finding those people who who tell stories you you're you're in that circle mark you know um there there's a real bond there and and something that uh feels so special to me and and i feel so grateful for the opportunity you have done for so many years. Okay, well, segue from that. So another role you've filled, you've filled many roles over the years, is you are the MTG historian.

So talk a little bit about how did that happen? How did you become the historian? How did that happen? I like to call myself the Pro Tour historian emeritus now. But yeah, so in 2005 uh i think was that was that the yeah 2005 right away ravnica um chris galvin and a couple of people at wizards came up with the idea of the magic gathering hall of fame at the time called the pro tour hall of fame yeah and um you know we're looking at like the, the idea,

I mean, it seems crazy to think now, right, especially since the game was not that old. But we had players who were just no longer playing the game. Some of the game's biggest stars had moved on, had grown away from the game, didn't have the time necessarily as, I guess, you know, functioning adults to go out every weekend and grind their way back onto the pro tour at a PTQ or, you know, that, and, and so the idea of a Hall of Fame came about, you know, and, you know, there were some,

some pretty big names and there was a lot of stuff that went into the Hall of Fame, a ceremony, pretty big names. And then there was a lot of stuff that went into the hall of fame, a ceremony, talking to the players, you know, creating profiles, collecting deck lists, getting photos. And I basically got contracted to be the curator for that and did that through from, from 2005, right up until whatever, whatever the last induction was with Reed. I think that was 2018. So 13 years of Hall of Fame inductions. And it was great. I got to induct John Finkel, who's someone I've known since he was a kid.

I got to induct Zvi Mosiewicz, you know, Rob and Darwin and Dave, who used to come to my events. It was really cool to see. And then, you know, pulled those players back into the game. I think without the Hall of Fame, John Finkel, you know, still probably plays a little Magic once in a while with his friends, but he doesn't rediscover the game as an adult and then, you know, still probably plays a little magic once in a while with his friends, but he doesn't rediscover the game as an adult and then, you know, put together another two careers that each individually would be worthy of Hall of Fame induction, right?

It really changed the face of the game. My memory is whenever we would have a Hall of Fame, you would come to Wizards and then you would interview people so you could put together the things. And so I always like, okay, what can I say about so-and-so? And then it'd be. Right. There's so much pressure, you know, and I have my checklist of the things I want people to say, you know, we need something about not blocking the wolf here. Right.

Yeah, no. So it was, yeah, it yeah it was that that was a lot of fun i really loved doing that um i don't know what the hall of fame is going to look like moving forward um would love to still be involved with it it's you know something that um you know i feel like i've been involved with magic for all but its earliest Blackboarder days. You know what I mean? And I just, I love celebrating that history and being around the people who've had the game be such a big part of their lives.

Yeah, I mean, I share a love of magic history. So it is fun to look back at all that. I mean, part of the reason I'm doing all these interviews fun to look back at all that i mean part of the reason i'm doing all these interviews is to interview all these people that have had a big role in magic okay so let's talk another thing that you did um you spent some time as a columnist so um oh yeah yeah so uh back in 2002 uh i helped get aaron forsyth hired uh and then he and i really made the the magic website. And I don't think you weren't one of the initial columnists,

but you came along pretty soon after. Yeah, I was doing some stuff for the sideboard. I was writing a column about going to a PTQ every weekend and my attempts to succeed there. But then once I was out of the event would kind of chronicle who made the top eight who won what the decks were and was doing that for the sideboard uh like like every other week or so um had been started and that ended up leading into doing some coverage at a couple of pro tours. And then in 2003, I announced I was selling Neutral Ram. I was I was ready to do something else.

9-11 had had a pretty profound effect on our business and on everybody's mindsets about about what you're doing. And I really wanted to be back on the creative side of my of my life i started my career out making comic books and and was was looking to do more of that in fact was writing comics for marvel at the time that this happened uh and so i announced that i was going to be leaving neutral ground and sort of moving into this new chapter of my life where I was going to be trying to support myself as a writer. And I, I think I hit send or publish on the website. And then an email came in from Aaron saying like, Hey,

we'd like you to do like a once a month column on, you know, daily MTG or whatever it was called at the time. And, you know, where which referenced Beth Morsland's old was Deconstructing Magic. So I was I was I was doing Deconstructing Famous Decks or something like that. And I was taking Famous Decks and then trying to build some new version of them in the current standard format. So Ponza or, you know, whatever, Hatred or whatever the deck was and trying to find some modern equivalent of

it. And then that led into me taking over after Alex Schwartzman left, Alex was doing the sort of weekly competitive magic column. I don't remember what it was called at the time. The week that was. No, it wasn't called that. Okay. So it was called something else.

I took that over. And then at some point we changed the name of the column to Swimming with Sharks. Oh, right, right, right, right. And then after Swimming with Sharks, I think, got handed off to Mike, And then after Swimming with Sharks, I think, got handed off to Mike, then my sort of weekly magic synopsis kind of branched off and that became The Week That Was, which interestingly kicked off with a fake The Week That Was about the first Pro Tour. Okay. I think it was like the 10th anniversary or something like that of the first Pro Tour. And so that was like 2006 when I started doing that,

the week that was. And then I did that for a long time until whatever that last big move away from having all the daily columnists on the website was. Okay, well you mentioned

Mike Flores, so we'll get to the last role that I know you've done, is that you have a podcast you and Mike have been doing for a long, long time. We've been doing it for 15 years. Maybe 14 years. Probably less if you account

for frequency, because we don't do it on a regular basis. But Top 8 Magic is a podcast that Mike and I started when I was publishing books about magic. I published a collection of Mike's early, um, internet writings from the dojo and the Usenet groups and Star City and all these different websites where he'd written over

the years. We published a book called Decade. Uh, and so we started doing a podcast to promote that and you know the book did okay but the podcast lived on and we did that I've been doing it for 15 years I would say I probably do about 20 episodes 25 episodes a year at this point in varying frequency part of the appeal of the podcast for Mike and I is very similar to what you do with Drive4. We like to be on a street in Manhattan and just talking into a recorder. We like the ambient noise.

We like jackhammers and fire trucks and people randomly asking us for directions in the middle of a podcast. So it's been a little difficult. Mike and I can't do this. It doesn't work for us. So I've actually been using, leaning very heavily on Zvi, Hall of Famer Zvi Mosiewicz, for the last year or so. And he's been, you know, taking a more spiky approach than Mike as we've done the podcast over the last year.

So anyway, I can almost see my desk here, so we're close to done, but I wanted you to sort of do you have a final sort of thought looking back at, you know, 27 years of interacting with magic? You know, I mean, my final, I just

I am amazed by, you know, the profound effect magic has had on my life just in terms of friendships, opportunities, you know, both in the game and around the game. You know, the opportunity to be randomly recognized on the street sometimes. That's, it's all been, it's all been kind of amazing. And, you know, again, I talked about that idea that I was, I was a very shy kid. And I don't think that's an image people have of me now. And I think that is in large part due to magic sort of drawing me out of my shell and giving me a soapbox to yell about something that I'm passionate about. And so I'm very grateful for that and grateful for the lifelong friends I've made in the game. Really, it's kind of amazing. I love the idea

that I could go anywhere in the world, you know, open up Facebook and go, oh, okay, you know, here's this person I know, let's meet for coffee, right? Like, I mean, there's almost no country in the world where I can't do that. So it's been a phenomenal experience. You know, and one of the things I love about Magic is it doesn't feel even remotely close to, like, you know, normally you do something for 27 years and you're like, okay, and that's been great. But, you know, I still play Magic every day.

I still think about Magic. I still build decks. I still make plans to see friends. I still look forward to going to events when we're allowed to go to events again. So, you know, we're just getting started. Okay. Well, I see my desk. So we all know what that means. It means this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. But I want to thank you for joining us. This has been great. Thank you,

Brian. Thank you, Mark. I'm really thrilled to have been here. Thanks. Okay, guys. Well, see you all next time. Bye-bye.