Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #793: Mike Elliott

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

In this podcast, I interview Mike Elliott, a prolific Magic designer from back in the day.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive-Thru Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so for today's interview, I have one of the early magic designers, Mike Elliott. So, Mike, thanks for joining us. Hi, Mark. Hi, Mark's listeners. Good to be here. Okay, so, Mike, I'm going to start where I start all these interviews is, how did you get into magic? Oh, wow, that's an interesting story. I got introduced to Magic by one of my friends named Jeff Goldsmith.

He's a very avid gamer. I actually still stay in touch with him. I see him every year at the Gathering of Friends, which is kind of a game convention for game designers. I started playing Bridge back in 1987 and I played with a group of people from college and grad school and we would kind of travel around to all these events and all around the west coast and I was at an event in Pasadena at an event in Pasadena, like the end of May, early June of 94. And we were staying at Jeff's house. And after the events, we would basically, like the events would end around midnight, and we would go back and we would basically play games until like two or three in the morning, get up, play bridge, go back home, play games again, and repeat that for like three or four days.

And he would always introduce like all of that for like three or four days. And he would always introduce like all of these weird, like core hobby board games. Some of the ones we played were like Barbu, Acquire had just come out, so we would play a lot of Acquire. Kind of Formula Day. And one night he pulled out like kind of this deck of cards and he's like, Oh, this is a new game called magic. And I'm like, okay, this sounds fun.

And there were like five of us. And he's like, it's a multiplayer game. And he's like, everyone starts with seven cards. And he's like, and there's, there's a bunch of decks in the middle. Like you have a center deck where you can draw like land cards. And then there's one deck of each color where you can draw like white cards or red cards or blue cards or black cards. And he's like, so each turn you get to decide like which color card you want to draw. So I'm like, okay, this sounds like fun. So we kind of played a game and got like we had the attacking. It was kind of like a regular multiplayer free-for-all magic game.

And at the end, Jeff ended up winning, and I came in second. And I'm like, oh, this is fun. So when I got back to – this was in Pasadena. When I got back to Phoenix, which is where I was living at the time, I went to a Core Hobby game store. And I'm like, oh, I want to buy some of these cards. And there were some guys playing there, and I started watching them play, and I'm like, wow, that's not anything like the way we played so I like read the rule book I'm like wow this is this is a lot

different game so I learned the actual rules started playing uh and basically kind of abandoned all my bridge friends because I started playing magic so much they started getting pissed at me because I was like now playing in all these magic tournaments and not playing bridge with them anymore. Okay, so at some point, if I remember your story correctly, someone from Wizards comes to Phoenix, right? Yeah, so one of my friends there was a, that I kind of played in the local stores, was a guy named Dancer. And he had told me that some of his friends were going to be like showing up from wizards but i didn't actually like know who they were what what they're like who who they were he's like oh it's like some of my friends from wizards are gonna be out there like maybe i'll introduce

you so i was playing a tournament at arizona state university and these these guys walk up to me and they're like asking me like, oh, what do you think of the game? And I like start unloading on them about like how, oh, like no one plays with creatures and everything is about balance and fireball and control decks. And like just how like balance everything is. And like, there's just not a lot of diversity.

And they're like, oh, we work for the company. It turns out it was Joel Mick who was at the time the head of R&D, and David Lee, who was at the time working in legal for Wizards of the Coast. They're like, why don't you come on out and interview? And I'm like, yeah, that sounds like a lot of fun. I was working at a hospital at the time on the night shift. I'm like, yeah, this sounds like it might be an interesting career move. Okay, so you started in January of 1996, is that right?

Yeah, I came out in December and found a place. And that's kind of an interesting story, too, because the weekend that came out was the Black Friday weekend. Yeah. So like I come out and I'm being introduced around and they just had a layoff where they'd laid off like 100 people or so. And Mike Davis, who was a head of R&D at the time and sadly passed away a few years ago, was introducing me around and everyone's like, you're like a new hire. They just like fired. So I wasn't like particularly well received the first few days. I had been working at a hospital and I was under contract. So I came out like as soon as my contract ended and then

started working the first day of January in 1996. So one of the interesting things, which will tie into the next part of our story, is so both you and I, I started in October, you started in January, the following January. You and I were both hired

not as designers, but hired as developers. And you and I used to gripe to each other all the time that we wanted to design. That's what we really wanted to do. And so I finally, I convinced them to let me do a set because Richard said he'd be on it. And they said I could pick my team.

So I had you, so this is Tempest we're talking about. And you and I talked all the time how we wanted to design. So I had you join the team because I had great faith in your design. So talk a little bit about Tempest. Yeah, that was one of the first teams. Other than the Weatherlight Saga, that was the first team where I actually got to throw in some stuff that actually got printed.

was the first like team where I actually got to kind of throw in some stuff that actually got printed. I have very fond memories of kind of the sessions you and I had where we would kind of sit and bounce ideas back and forth. You were kind of what I called like the spigot, like you would just throw out like idea after idea after idea after idea. And I would like just listen to a bunch of these ideas. And it was, it was just really like, just like spurred me on creatively to like come up with some of the stuff. I mean, a lot of some of my better cards I came up with, like after listening to some of the stuff you were proposing. So working with you on the first team was really fun. And certainly working with Charlie and Richard was great as well. One of the things that's funny, just behind the scenes for people is, so Mike and I, this is our

first team, we just poured out so many cards. Like, I think for what was, I think for the next seven years a card we designed in Tempest Design showed up in one of the sets. Like, there were mechanics that showed up and cards had showed up.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about Astral Ways. Do you want to talk a little bit about Astral Ways? Yeah, sure. So as I mentioned, I didn't start until January, but they actually, like, offered me the job in August. But I had been, prior to working at Wizards, I had been working on, like like a kind of a fan set because I'm like, oh, this is kind of a fun game. Like it would kind of be cool if you could do like some of these things as well.

And so I made like a set of about 300 cards and I called it Astral Ways. 300 cards and I called it Astral Ways. And the concept of the set was it was about this, this massive creature that was kind of caught between these two dimensions and the door, the door closed while he was like holding the dimensions apart and half of them ended up in one dimension and half ended up in the other. And that's kind of was the inspiration for slivers, which, which were kind of evolved from

uh the richard's car plague rats from from alpha uh i was like what if you had plague rats but instead of just adding stats they they gave everyone other abilities and so that's kind of where the the slivers came from and that was kind of the basis. And then I had like other stuff like licids and shadow and a few kind of other things that were kind of based on this whole idea that there were like these two dimensions that were set apart. If I'm right, wasn't Echo also in that set? No, Echo came later in Urza's Saga. No, but what I mean is... Was it originally? Yeah, it might have been originally.

There was a number of things that were kind of half-thought out there that we kind of later developed. There were a lot of kind of one-off cards that eventually... That's kind of one of the things that I did a lot. I mean, when you have to do like hundreds of cards a set, it's like, oh, I've got this idea. I'm going to expand it out to 20 cards.

And there were kind of a lot of kind of hidden gems that I kind of considered one card at the time. But after I kind of got more experience as a designer, I'm like, you know, I could probably do like 20 cards out of this. Yeah, one of the things that always is, how can I make more cards out of this one idea rather than one card? It's like, oh, I've got a mechanic. Let's, uh, blue has a flying version, white has

a defensive version, red has an attacking version. Okay, so you brought up Weatherlight. I just want to explain to the audience real quickly. So what happened is, Tempest was a large set and Weatherlight was a small set. So Tempest started earlier, but obviously you had a lot of success on Tempest and they asked you to work on Weatherlight do you want to talk a little bit about Weatherlight because that was your first release set yeah so I mean the first set I worked development on was uh Mirage like I I got there just as uh as alliances was kind of going to to uh to press uh and you and i worked together

on the mirage development team and that's kind of what was one of the first uh right when when we just for the audience a little history when mike and i started at the same time william jockeys started and bill rose started and the four of us were the development like we did development for everything because there wasn't like teams like we just for the first couple years we did development everything Henry Stern would get hired a year and a half later and he would then join that

team but early on it wasn't like there was different development teams it was just the four guys that did Magic did it because like it's like well all four of us are new it's like who was doing this before? Well, they all went to do other stuff. They're like, we want to make new games. That went into management mostly.

Yeah, they went to management. Okay, so do you want to talk a little bit about Weatherlight? So Weatherlight was your first release set. Yeah, so Weatherlight was basically the first kind of one where the whole, like Mirage was kind of one of the story blocks like back then the whole idea was kind of like let's make magic more about story in addition to like just like instead of just mechanics and game so we had kind of a lot of uh kind of set things like you have to do these characters so there was a lot of kind of top-down design which is uh there's kind of two i mean i'm

sure you've talked about this many times about top-down versus uh bottom-up for story design versus mechanics yeah i've done a whole podcast on this i guess so yeah so for weatherlight we were basically just trying to follow like come up with interesting twists on things that we'd done previously uh in the in the block and kind of make it feel like it was like that was like one of the first like really thematic blocks like you had kind of uh uh prior to that like most of the sets were kind of just one of us like you had fallen empires was sort of related to ice age but it was all quite different and there wasn't really a lot of thematic ties uh homelands was

a one-off uh and like legends arabian nights all of those were just one-offs so yeah and it was it was basically i mean it's a small team. William was on it. And Dan was on it, right? Dan Cervelli and Taewon also. And it was, so we would get together and meet. We'd come up with card ideas. And then eventually we kind of locked the set down and then it went on to development. Eventually we kind of locked the set down and then it went on to development.

But it was always the first kind of magic set where I kind of got to step in and kind of lead toward the end. Okay, so the first set that you led the whole way through, I mean, the first set you led was Stronghold. You led both Stronghold and Exodus, which were the second and third sets in the Tempest block. You want to talk a little bit about Stronghold and or Exodus? Yeah, so Stronghold was very easy because as you mentioned, we had just so much stuff from Tempest that it basically filled out the next

two sets without even really doing a whole lot of work. I just basically said, okay, here's the 700 cards we didn't use in Tempest. What can I pull out here to make a 165 card set? So it was like one of the easiest sets to kind of pull together. It just had kind of extensions like, well, here's how we're twisting slivers.

Here's how we're twisting shadow. extensions like well here's how we're twisting slivers here's how we're twisting shadow and you kind of like set out like little goals and then just try and make sure there's enough hooks in the set um and that there's just enough interesting cards oh so one of the once again i'm just trying to get the audience up to speed some behind the scenes stuff so another thing that happened with tempest was mike and i had been hired as developers but then Tempest happens and it went very well and then all of a sudden Mike and I thought of his designers and they let us start designing things.

It was almost like a switch flipped and it's like, okay, you're designers now. After Tempest I think I led like four sets in a row. You did, you did. And then you led a set and it was kind of like we were rotating for a while where each

of us would do like I do a set, you do a set, I do a set, you do a set. It went on for that like for like three or four years. Yeah, it did, it did. Okay, so you did Stronghold Exodus. Okay, then comes a whole new block, Urza Saga. Urza Saga.

So there's a very interesting story on Urza Saga. So Urza Saga had probably like one of the loosest design teams of any magic thing. At the time, Watu was trying to put out three products at the same time. They were trying to put out Urza Saga, they were trying to put out Portal 3 Kingdoms, and they were trying to put out Unglued. So, Mark, you were in charge of Unglued, Henry was in charge of Portal Three Kingdoms, and I was in charge of Urza Saga.

So, Urza Saga, like, you provided me with probably like 100 130 cards for urza saga and i i kind of folded in the stuff that you provided that bill provided and we had like a few informal meetings but it wasn't like there was a full kind of set down like let's let's do like solid design stuff it was more like here's some stuff put this together with what you're doing. And so the set kind of got not quite hastily put together, but it wasn't, it didn't have kind of the full design method

that most of the other sets had. So it was kind of... Yeah, also I want to point out to people that so the two main mechanics in the set were Echo and Cycling, both of which were in Tempest design. Right. You had made Echo. Echo, I thought was from

my memory was it was from Afterways, but maybe it was your mechanic. I don't know where you got it from. I always thought it was in Afterways. Maybe that's wrong. And then Richard. There were like, there was the original version of kind of the Cycling stuff in Astral Ways

before Richard did the version that went to the graveyard. Okay. I had three cards in the early one where when you played in there, you could pay R. They were only in red. You could pay R and they went to the bottom of the library. Oh, that's cool. Yeah.

And then when I was talking to Richard about it, he's like, well, why are you having them go to the bottom of the library? They should go to the library. Oh, that's cool. And then when I was talking to Richard about it, he's like, well, why are you having them go to the bottom of the library? They should go to the graveyard. And I'm like, yeah, that makes a lot more sense. That's a way better version. And so that's the version we ended up using. At the time, I was

kind of super paranoid about Animate Dead. There was this whole time frame when everyone's like, well, you can't put stuff in the graveyard because people will just animate it and bring it back. And that's going to be a disaster. And then we finally realized like, well, oh, well, you can kind of control that with things like disenchant and like just having a lot of anti-enchantment stuff. So those were kind of the two major mechanics. But as I said, kind of the interesting thing was how quickly the set came together. I kind of tell a story like, oh, well, it came, the set went from, like, not being there to complete in, like, over a weekend. I mean, a lot of the cards we'd made in previous times, I mean, just so the audience understands, it's not like, in a weekend we made all the cards. In a weekend, you sort of put everything together to make the set.

But then it went to, like, development. And as I said, like, the whole company was under a crunch then. So a lot of the development team was just me and William playtesting while everyone else was working on their individual projects. Yeah. So a lot of stuff kind of... That was one of the more less developed sets

that we put out. That's an entertainment yeah so I I'm sure you've told the story about like how Peter called us in and all that I just want to say that I have told the story of us getting chewed out by Peter so

so this is a good lead into the next part so Peter had said to us if you do this again if the next set is broken, you're all fired. So let's talk about the next set, Mercadian Masks. So we got kind of mixed messages out of Peter's thing. It's like he called us in. He told us like, oh, like we've got six or seven cards that people are really unhappy with, like Tolerant Academy and Windfall. We had a card that was banned the first day.

I mean, that's never a good sign. That's probably one of the most broken cards I've done. So he called us in. He's like, oh, don't do this again and then like everyone's real dejected and then a few seconds after that he's like but we haven't even gained these reports that all the stores are selling it really well and went on for like five more minutes after chewing us out for for 20 minutes about about how excited he was about sales. And so I walked out and I was talking to Bill and I'm like,

well, that was kind of a little mixed message there at the end. So on Mercadian Mask, we still tried to do, like, push things, but we erred more on the side of caution than we do normally on sets. So, like, we had mechanics like the Rebels, but we weren't able to kind of push some of this stuff. And so some of the mechanics were a lot weaker, and the set wasn't as well received. We still had a few kind of broken cards,

like Rashad and Port was a problem for the environment for a while. I think that was a Mercadian mask, but I'm not positive. Yeah, that was a Mercadian mask. I made that card. That was a mistake. Yeah, but like at the end, everyone was kind of like pushing like, oh, can we make this more powerful, more powerful? And then everyone's like, well, we don't want to have

the same thing happen that happened with Urza Saga. So we were kind of forced to dial it back a little bit. Okay, so after Mercenary Master, you did Nemesis, which was the second set. That was a fading set.

Right. One of the things we used to do was whoever did the large set often would do the small set right after a large set. We did that a lot. So do you have any nemesis any nemesis stories uh that had fading which was was a fairly popular mechanic uh mostly because of the green four five blasted urn blasted urn yeah

that's uh that's and uh there was another one where you could take the... It was kind of like a slow icy, I think. Oh, it was that one. I remember Blastoderm. But yeah, that was the fading set. Okay, so... I mean, I'm just trying to... I want to get through all your sets before we run out of time. Yeah.

There wasn't really anything super remarkable about Nemesis. It was just kind of a small set with like one. We tried to do kind of an anchor mechanic in every set at the time. And that was the mechanic for that one. Yeah. Interesting. Early on, we used to do two mechanics in the first set. And then just we would do those mechanics throughout the block.

But then as we advanced, we started wanting to introduce a new mechanic for each set. And we started doing new mechanics that would change. It was all about, which was one of your big things you were pushing was like, every set should have some sort of easy hook that you can kind of point to and say, this is what's going to sell the set. Okay.

So after nemesis is, uh, you worked fifth edition, which I think is the only course that you, you, you led. Do you have any memories of fifth edition? Just the rules.

I mean, I, that was really painful sitting through like hours and hours of rules meetings on what the rules changes were going to be and all of that. The set itself wasn't like, it was just kind of picking like which cards

from all their sets you're going to put in here. But like having the rules meetings with beth and and tom and was just like uh painful okay so it's not one of the areas i enjoy next up is actually a uh interesting product so vanguard um you led vanguard so explain to people what vanguard is so vanguard was the big oversized cards where you put them in front of yourself and you have kind of a special power that you play when you're when you're playing during the game uh we originally did eight and then there was the first set was eight of them and there was a second later set of eight of them

but we had done like all of the designs for them in the original uh things and we just said like well here's the other ones we can do kind of later. We actually did a third and fourth one, by the way, as well. Oh, okay. But yeah, I think Vanguard was... I mean, I think you're the one that came up with Vanguard. I was in charge of making Weatherlight Saga. We decided

there would be all the characters in Weatherlight Saga and I had done that. So I was like, who's going to be Gerard? Who's going to be... It was an idea that I've been pushing around. I mean, other people had been kind of discussing it as well. So I can't take, like, full credit for that one. But it was the idea that, like,

oh, what would happen if you had kind of this static power that only you had and your opponents didn't. The biggest problem was that some of them were much more powerful than others and it was really hard to balance those. Yeah, they were. But the thing that's important, I just want to stress here, one thing is you were the idea

of magic has many different ways to play. You know, like Vanguard's a very early version of what we now call supplemental sets where hey, you can play Magic in this way. And, you know, you were one of the people that was very pushing for, hey, look, there's lots of fun ways to play. We really should push different ways to play Magic.

Yeah, part of that actually ties in with, like, one of the non-Magic designs that I did. When I used to play back in Phoenix, we would play booster drafts, where we would basically each take a couple of boosters, we'd shuffle them up, and we'd play a game. And there wasn't any land in the boosters. So we would play, when you had a card,

you could either play it as a land of that color or you could play it as the card itself. And so that's how we kind of got around the fact that there wasn't any land in these early boosters. It's like, oh, you've got a six-cost thing that you're never going to play. You put that down, that's your mountain. And now you can use that to cast your goblins.

And I later used that as kind of a basis for a trading card game I did called Duel Masters. That was kind of like, hey, this would make a great, like, this magic round would make a great actual game. The real quick behind the scenes is we had

Wizards had been selling Pokemon and then we stopped because they had their own company. But we wanted to make a game for the japanese market that's the dual masters right um and and it went on it's still still played today in japan and uh yeah no it's a that's yeah like uh that after uh i mean the after i left wizards i basically kept working on trading card games i've done like 20 trading card games now. The most successful ones are Duel Masters and Battle Spirits. Yeah.

But I've done like, that's kind of been my bread and butter for many, many years, even as a freelancer. Yeah, me too, just I stuck to one game. But, okay, so after 5th edition was Plane Shift, so you, Bill, and I

were the invasion team. Right. And we did the initial work in my dad's house in Tahoe. Yeah, that was really fun, going to Gene's place.

That was, like, one of my other really fond memories was hanging out and kind of living together. Like, it's... Yeah, well, we would, like, design for a couple days and go skiing for a day and then we'd design really fond memories when I was hanging out and kind of living together. Like, it's... Yeah, well, we would, like,

design for a couple days and go skiing for a day and then we'd design some more. Right. And it was only for a few days so we didn't get kind of the roommates hate each other stuff.

Yes. So Planeshift was the middle set, right? Right. Do you have any Planeshift stories? Not that I can remember after 20 years. Okay, okay. We'll move on.

Next up, okay, the next block was Onslaught. So you did both Onslaught and Legions because, once again, often we do the first

and second set would be done by the same person. Do you have any Onslaught or Legion stories? Legions was the all-Creature set. That was one where we were specifically given a goal of let's do a creature set.

Right, Legion was all creatures. Right, so we did a lot of stuff where you have creatures with comes in a play effect so that we kind of simulate the spells without actually having spells. So there's all kinds of things in the set where it's like, you play this and you get this happens. Right. Or we had static abilities and I mean, there's a lot of way to make creatures kind of like other card types. So that was kind of an interesting design

parameter because it was the decision going in was making an all-creature set, and so we kind of had to live under those parameters. Yeah, and so for a long time, Legion was the best-selling small set. I mean, it's since been passed, but for many, many years, for like 10 years, it was the best-selling small set, and it was one of the, interestingly,

behind the scenes, once again, it was one of the things that kind of showed us that there was a very big what we called the invisibles at the time, but like this casual crowd that really enjoyed you know, they weren't necessarily tournament players, but enjoyed casual play. Right, they were really having them do tribal decks. Yeah, and so legions really showed us that group

for the first time. Okay, so next is Betrayers of Kamigawa, which was the middle set in the Champions of Kamigawa block. What is your memory of that? So that was one where we were kind of trying to do a like an

Asian theme on the set. So we had things like the ninja mechanic and Ninjutsu was a ninja mechanic. But again it was kind of like a small set building on a previous set so we didn't do like a whole lot of kind of new innovative stuff it was just kind of like we did bushido and some of these other things in the first set and we kind of expanded them out and like i think ninjas were the thing

right that was the thing the set had we didn't put ninjas in the first set the ninja showed up in the second set right we we saved ninjas for the second set. Right. We saved ninjas for betrayers so that we'd have a hook in the second set, and they went across pretty well. Okay, the last magic set you led is Guild Pact, which was the second set in the Ravnica block. What's your memory of Guild Pact? So that one, there were ten guilds,

and they were broken up 4-3-3. Yeah. And we had the middle three. So we basically did a mechanic for each of the three guilds, and then all the cards in each of the guilds was kind of themed around those particular mechanics. And it was almost like we were making three themed decks and then

building, throwing some extra cards in around those decks. So it was kind of an interesting way to build a set. But it was a fun one to work on. Yeah, it is. Ravnica's gone on, I mean, I assume you keep up with Magic,

but Ravnica's gone on to be one of our most popular, I mean, I assume you keep up with Magic, but Ravnica's gone on to be one of our most popular, I mean, if not the most popular setting we've done. So, the audience loves Ravnica. No, I know.

You've gone back several times. When you do something for 25 years, you have to keep going back to the well a lot of times. Okay, so that's all essentially. Is there any,

I mean, I'm almost to my desk here, but is there anything else from your time at Wizards that I didn't hit? Any other memories you want to touch upon before we wrap up? It was just interesting seeing the company kind of develop out from kind of like a

garage band to a like a major touring company. Yeah. It was kind of fun being there during those years. I mean, we had a lot of days where we'd come in at 9 and we wouldn't go home until like 1.30 or 2 in the morning. Yeah. And we'd kind of take a few breaks for like dinner.

It was a really fun experience. I still keep in touch with a lot of people from even though I haven't been at the company for 15 years it's still like I still have very fond memories of my time there and it kind of made me who I

am today so like I can't really have any complaints. And then one of the things I want to stress is just for people who are... I like to think of myself as a magic historian. Mike, you contributed so much. There's so much stuff that's just a part of what magic is that you really contributed.

And like I said, we hit upon some of them, stuff like slivers and the stuff that, you know, but a lot of early magic, so much of what we built upon was a lot of the work that you did. And, like that, you know, but a lot of early magic, so much of what we built upon was a lot of the work that you did, and like when you go back and look at these early sets and watch a lot of the evolution, a lot of that was due to you. So I,

the reason I wanted to have you on is, you know, you were a very, very big part of early magic, you know, early and middle magic, and so I just, I'm trying the best I can in these interviews to pull all these different people in. And I've been interviewing lots and lots of people from all across the

thing, but I believe you still hold it. I mean, you're, I believe you are number two in most design sets led, which is impressive. 15 years later, that's impressive.

Well, I'm number one. I got you beat by a bit, but. Oh, those fighting words. So you were number one for a while, but I did manage to pass you, so...

But like I said, one of the reasons I wanted to bring you on is you were super influential, and I... If you play Magic and there's things you enjoy in Magic, Mike has his fingerprints on a lot of that, so I... Hopefully I just... A lot of the audience might not know you just because, you know,

15 years ago for a lot of them was a long time ago. Some of them not so long, but for a lot of players. So anyway, I'm glad to have you on. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I think probably the ones that seem to be most popular, like Slivers and Madness are probably like the two that were most. Madness wasn't even my set. That was just like a kind of a magic mechanic i threw into to torment and by the way i was i was unaware of this till this meeting i i always thought

cycling more of being a richer thing but that you had your hand in cycling and that that we've used that mechanic for the i mean as far as not an evergreen mechanic we brought that back you know five times so far whatever so um yeah that was the uh but the uh as i said it's kind of like like crafted my life i mean i'm sure i'm sure it's crafted your life much better but like i would i wouldn't be the designer i am today if it hadn't been for working with richard garfield bill, and you. I mean, I learned from you, I kind of learned like how to just throw out a bunch of ideas and see like, even if some of them seem like really crazy, it's like one of these crazy ones

might actually be something that is something that you could make a game out of. Yeah, and also sometimes the less crazy version works. Let me last tell, I want to tell one of my favorite kind of design stories that goes back all the way to Mirage. Okay. So, during

Mirage, they had this idea that, like, we should put in kind of, like, a marquee card. And you and I, like, immediately glommed on this. We were like, well, what can we come up with that's a marquee card? So you and I immediately glommed on this. We were like, well, what can we come up with that's a marquee card? So you and I had probably several hour-long jam sessions where we went back and forth on, well, what can we do for this and this? And on one of them, we were kind of sitting over by Karn's desk,

and we were throwing ideas back and forth. And we had this idea, well, what about if you had something where you kind of messed with your opponent a lot? And you pitched this idea of, well what about if you had something where you kind of messed with your opponent a lot and you pitched like this this idea of like well what if you just took over your opponent like you just took over their hand and took took over took over like what what they were doing and and like you just played their hand for them how cool would that be and like well i don't think you could do something like that. What if you, like, maybe, like, stole one of their cards and you could play, like, one of their cards? And you're like, well, that's not nearly as exciting.

And I'm like, yeah, well, we might be able to, like, do that one with the rules. So the funny thing was that one ended up kind of morphing into Grinning Totem. But the other card, I think you ended up doing, like, 15 into grinning totem yeah but the other card i think you ended up doing like 15 years later yeah mindslaver in my mirrored yeah but i i don't know if a lot of people realize that like mindslaver was actually designed way back in during mirage yeah yeah it's i have a history of trying things that i mean told you can't do that and then i

wait and like 10 15 years later later, how about this card? Oh, yeah, sure. Sounds good. But that was kind of one of the funny things is because it was just like going back and forth, like just like some of the ideas we were throwing out were just like so crazy. And then yet later on,

some of these actually ended up getting published. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, Mike, it was great talking with you, but I can see... I'm going to start talking with you again too, Mark. I can see I'm at my desk, so we all know what 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, but I want to thank you for being here, Mike. This was great. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on.

And guys, so Mike, thank you so much for being here, and to all the rest of you, I will see you next time. Bye-bye.