Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #800: Charlie Catino

Episode Date: January 15, 2021

In this podcast, I interview Charlie Catino, one of the original Alpha playtesters and longtime Wizards of the Coast employee.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay guys, as you know, every week I've been having, while I've been stuck at home, I've been having interviews with people from Magic's past and present and maybe future. So today's comes from the past, I guess, and the present, but more of Magic's past. I have Charlie Cattino. Hello. Okay, so, Charlie, the question I always start when I interview people is asking them how they first learned magic. And yours is a very good story. So, Charlie, how did you first learn magic? Richard Garfield taught me how to play. So I was one of the original playtesters of the game, and he brought me in pretty early on.

I wasn't in the very first group of playtesters that he had, but I was in there pretty early on. I knew Richard. We played lots of other types of games together. And so I was lucky enough to be one of the people who Richard showed the game of Magic 2 very early on. So what was it like? What does he show you? This is super early. What were you actually seeing? It was a playable game. He was still iterating at the time and improving it, but it was a playable game. It was little slips of paper,

probably like two and a half inches by one and a half inches. And you would just... It was heavy construction paper, but it was different colors. And he would just hand you some cards, and you would build a deck out of it, and you would start playing. So how many cards did you get? Like, how many cards were you given, roughly? Yeah, that's a good question.

I think it was, like, each person was given around 200 cards, if I remember right. It was a long time ago, so... And you were making 40-card decks, right? I don't remember. I think it was 40-card decks, yeah. Well, Alpha, Alpha, originally, the game, when it started, told you to build 40-card decks. It later got changed to 60, but my assumption is

in play decks, you were playing with 40 then. Yes. And I, like, one of the interesting stories I remember was Richard saying, oh, I got a new version and he wanted people to help. So like, you know, we would we would go meet him somewhere and he would have these stacks of of of card sheets that was basically, you know, eight and a half by 11 pieces of paper that had like six or eight cards on them. And we would take the paper cutter and we would cut the stacks until we had the cards. And then we would basically randomize and shuffle them all up and then put them into big stacks for each player who was going to join. Did he collate for rarity? How did he handle rarity?

I don't even remember. I think he collated for the rares in that he had separate piles, but I'm not sure. Don't quote me on that. Okay, so Richard brings you into the playtest. He gives you 200-ish cards. So what was it like playing Magic? You know nothing about it. No one else is playing other than the small group of playtesters. What is that like? about it there's no no one else is playing other than the small group of playtesters what is that like yeah it's a lot of exploration and it's a lot of questions like very early on there was obviously no rules and so people would do things like uh okay i'm gonna lightning bolt your grizzly bears right and then the other person would say can i giant growth my grizzly bears and save them?

And we'd both go, Richard, what's the answer to this? Like we were learning as we were playing, as things were going on. And so a lot of people would have these spontaneous aha moments that are just part of normal magic now. It's like, can I save my grizzly bears and then like we would learn that yes you can save your grizzly bears by doing this because richard would make that thing so then somebody else would giant growth their grizzly bears and then the other person would say well if you can respond that way then i can lightning bolt your grizzly bears and they die before your giant growth right and the other way you're like i don't know richard so it was a whole lot of exploration the other thing that was very

different about the whole experience from magic nowadays is that we only had 200 cards right and there were no more and there were only a certain number of every card out there. I remember, right, in one of the iterations, there were 20 copies of every common and, like, three or four copies of every rare. So if you wanted to get all of something, it was extraordinarily hard. Something that we should explain, you were allowed to trade. You got so many cards, but you could trade with other players. Yes, and we definitely would would trade and we traded a lot and that created a different environment

as well because some people were very good at trading and so they would build good decks and because they were able to maximize their trades but then it created a whole little market and there would be rumors going around like oh no to maximize their trades. But then it created a whole little market,

and there would be rumors going around, like, oh, no, I was building a black deck, and I was trading for dark rituals. And people are like, Charlie's trading for all the dark rituals. And some people's response would be, I'm not trading Charlie any more dark rituals. Right?

Like, it was just the thing. Like, imagine not being able to get any more Dark Rituals, right? You know, a Magic player nowadays can't imagine that, but because there were so few of them, and some people wouldn't want to trade them, or wouldn't want to trade them to you or to Scaf or to Jim or whoever, right? It was a very different environment. You couldn't build the deck you wanted. You built the best deck that you could, given all of the trading and the card flow that you could get.

So another big difference, for those that know their Magic history, is you guys were playing for Ante, right? When Magic started, that was just how Magic was played. Yes, and that was the rules of the game. And so that, of of course also led to some card flow and it led to some deals you know you would play your anti-cards out before the game started and you know maybe you'd like make a deal like hey can can if i lose this can i trade back for it or things like that so we had all sorts of issues like that. And then some of us would do things because the game was for ante. We would play the metagame of ante magic,

which is I would build a deck of all commons. The deck wasn't very good, and it would probably only win, you know, like a quarter of the time, but every time I played somebody, I had a chance of getting one of their rare cards to appear in the ante, and if I won, I would get a big haul and a big score, and I knew that the worst I would lose was some 1-1 creature or a land, right? And so it changed the environment in a different way because we were playing for ante. Was land part of that 200 cards, or were you allowed any basic land?

Land was part of the 200 cards. Remember, we were chopping up big pieces of paper that Richard was printing out. Land was valuable. Okay, so you also had to trade for your land when you needed more land. Yep. Okay. Okay, so one of the, I've heard a lot of stories about you in playtesting. So I'm going to share, well, let's start with you.

Do you have any of your favorite stories? And then I'll share some of my favorite stories that I've heard about you okay sure so the probably the the

the most interesting story that shows that my play style in early magic was the story that when we first started

working on Mirage we decided to do a special type of league and we allowed people to build their deck and they had three cards that were rares in the deck and that's it limited and they couldn't do any duplicates and something like you know eight or nine or ten uncommons in the deck and you could only have two copies of each of those. And then the rest was all commons, and you could only have three copies of any one common. And so most people built decks that were, you know, normal, standard-type decks, but I decided to build a Charlie-type deck.

And the deck had three Lano RLs, and those were the only damage sources in the deck. The rest of the deck was incredibly defensive, counter spells, creature removal, things like that, and I had two creature removal spells, which were my two sourceords to Plowshares. And then my rares, I used a Time Twister and a Regrowth. And so basically the general plan was stay alive early on, gain control of the situation, Swords to Plowshares a couple of the opponent's creatures, and then play a Time Twister. And so then we would both start over, except my opponent would have more life, and he would have two less creatures in his deck.

And then I'd play for a little while longer, eventually source the plowshares a couple more of my opponent's creatures, so he'd have even more life, and then I'd play Time Twister again because I had regrown it with my regrowth. And so repeat the process, repeat the process. Basically, after an hour or so of playing Magic, my opponent's at like 50 or 60 or 70 life and has no more creatures left in his deck, and then my Llanowar Elves can start attacking him.

So the upshot of all of this was we were in a league, and the idea was to play 10 games against every other person in the league. And I won quite a few of my games by the fact that my opponents refused to play against my deck. That's a typical Charlie deck. Yeah, most of the stories I heard about you in playtesting were you just built decks that nobody else was building and usually they were quirky,

very quirky in their nature. And often controlly. Yes. Later on when I was working on Magic, I would build those types of decks, and my purpose for building those types of decks was to make sure those decks weren't too good. So the idea was, let's make sure that Magic doesn't have these types of experiences. While I was building those decks before working at Wizards, I was doing it because it was fun for me. But when I was working for Magic, I wanted to make sure that people weren't doing that kind of stuff.

You had to Charlie-proof it. Yes, I did. Another quick example is we were playtesting one early version of a Time Walk-type card, and I was playtesting against another R&D member, and I had one of those decks that basically just tried to recur over and over again and just keep taking infinite turns and didn't have very many damage sources. And so I'm in the middle of playtesting against one of these uh one of the one of our co-workers and um he recognizes what's going on he looks at me he reaches under his desk

for his sleeping bag he lies down on the ground in his sleeping bag and he says wake me up when it's my turn was that scaf that was actually william. Oh, it was William. Okay. Yep. Okay, so you're joining the playtest. So how long did the playtest go on? How long were you playtesting early Magic? Oh, there were multiple iterations. Richard did it a couple times, three times, four times.

I don't even remember. It was a couple years that we were playtesting Magic, and it was a whole lot of fun. It was a ton of exploration, a ton of learning. Yep. Okay, so now you've been playtesting for a couple years. Okay, the game's going to get made, right? Wizards making the game. Were you there for any of the conventions where it got premiered?

No, I was not at any of the conventions where it got premiered? No, I was not at any of the conventions where it got premiered. The one thing I remember is that when the game was first out, Richard visited Philadelphia again because he was out on the West Coast with Wizards. He visited Philadelphia with some product, and he gave us all some product, and he sent us all some product and he sent us all some product and when he visited he had this big meeting about what the future plans for Magic were going to be and then my favorite

part was at the very end he gave us all a rare card and I got a balance a balance, very cool one of my favorite cards okay so when was the first time you actually got to play with real Magic cards? When was that?

So basically right after Magic started, Richard sent us some cards, and he sent us a decent amount of cards at the time. And so I was just playing with real Magic cards, and yeah, that was a whole lot of fun. So here's one of my favorite stories, and I'm not sure, you'll tell me the exact version of this, but in the Alpha rulebook, was your name purposely misspelled

or accidentally misspelled? No. So the actual story is it was misspelled. And when I noticed, I gave Richard a call and I said, you know, hey, you know, you misspelled my name. He's like, oh, Charlie, I'm terribly sorry. And then he's like, I'll get it fixed.

I'll get it fixed. And then the next rule book came out and then it was misspelled in a different way. And after that, I talked to Richard and I'm like, hey, it's a tradition. Let's keep it going. And so the tradition now has been to misspell my name in multiple different ways. Yeah, so here I have a little list. Here are different ways that your name has been misspelled. So Alpha, you're Charlie Cantino, E-E.

Normally it's an I, not E. You've been Charlie Cantina, Charlie Cantana, Charlie Encino, Charlie Catuto, Charlie Cantana, Charlie Encino, Charlie Catuto, Charlie Katsura, Charlie Cantini, Charlie Catropino, Charlie Kildano, Charlie Tincano, Charlie Cantana, Charlie Hasbrino, Charlie Catuto, Charlie Katsurasi. A lot of these names start making, like, they start leaning into whatever the set that was so that, you know, it was making fun of whatever the set was in. Charlie Catmandu. Yes, I love a lot of the cleverness, especially when it's related to something like the set

that came out with Cantrips. I was Charlie Cantripo. Oh, so MLB Showdown, you were Charlie Bambino. Yes. And for Pokemon, I was Charlie Katina-chu. Yeah, Katina-chu, that's right. Anyway, the funny thing behind the scenes is this has been an ongoing thing forever,

but it's one of those things when I bring up, I don't think every person has any idea that this has been going on for years. Okay, so let's continue the story. So magic comes out. So Wizards realizes that Magic is selling better than they expected, that maybe they need some more Magic sets.

So talk a little bit about Richard talking to you and your fellow people about making a Magic set. Sure. So one of the things about that was Richard already had been thinking about before Magic came out, he'd been thinking about what are we going to do for the future. So he had a lot of ideas and he was talking with the playtesters about it. Right.

And what spontaneously happened was that playtest groups loved the game so much, they started making cards that they wanted to make. Right. And so Richard kind of leaned into that and worked with them. And so there was a group that did the Ice Age cards, and they were working on Ice Age before Magic came out. And there was a group that did Mirage and Visions, and I was in that group. And we were working on those cards before Magic came out.

So it was already kind of happening and richard had been thinking about hey we need to make more cards and what should we do and and what what what is the future of magic so that just kind of happened so let's talk a little bit about mirage so i believe the code name was menagerieie, right? I think so, yes. Okay, so when you designed it, you designed both what was Mirage and what was Visions was designed during that period. We started with Mirage, what became more of Mirage. But at the time, what we were doing is we were updating Magic. So it had many of the reprints from the original Magic set and a lot of new cards. It was kind of a mix at the time when we first started working on it.

The original sort of vision that Richard had was that Magic would be out for so much time and then just a new version would come out, and it wasn't expansions as much as just, this is version 2.0. Yeah, correct. So what was the inspiration for Mirage? We wanted to make cards. We were players and we were budding game designers and we wanted to make some cards. We wanted to make a set.

We wanted to do it the best we possibly can. And so we just spent a lot of our free time doing all of this. Because we loved it. Do you remember, were you involved in the coming up with the story? What inspired the mechanics and stuff you chose? I was not involved with coming up with the story. In fact, that was not as interesting to me as the gameplay stuff,

so I focused way more on the gameplay stuff. I'm not even a great person to ask about story-wise. And I know the group didn't talk a lot about the story, and that more of the story for Mirage happened at Wizards than it did in the original game design group. The mechanics were just stuff that seemed fun to play with. And I know some of the game designers on the Mirage team were thinking about flavor in addition to mechanics. But at the time, I was one of those players who just cared about what the cards did. And that's what I was always focusing on. Can we make fun cards? Can we make interesting

cards? Can we make balanced cards? Is the set cool and exciting and fun right but i looked at it purely from a gameplay point of view at that time um we all grow as uh game designers and learn and and evolve but at that time that's what i was focused on with the gameplay were you involved either flanking or phasing uh both of them uh i it was a big group of people and i wasn't the primary person who came up with those ideas but like i was definitely one of the people who were was talking talking through all the concepts with both of those uh yes so what what is your favorite card that you designed that got printed in mirage that got printed in Mirage. Wow.

I have one that you did, but I was curious if you named the one I'm thinking of. I don't remember where all the cards I did are from anymore. I'm going to talk about Lion's Eye Diamond. Yeah, that's Mirage. Is it Mirage? That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah, Lion's Eye Diamond. Yeah, that's Mirage. Is it Mirage? That's what I was thinking of. Yeah, Lion's Eye Diamond's in Mirage. Right.

And so one of the reasons I like that card was I felt that Magic benefited from having cards that were different power levels, and that we needed to have some cards at the hard-to-get rarities that were quirky and different and maybe not as good as some of the other rares, so that when you did get one of the best rares, it felt even better. Oh, no, I got this. Oh, yes, I got that. It turns out that Lion's Eye Diamond actually switched on me because we changed how the rules work, and it actually turned out in a certain deck to be really good, which is also a very cool thing to have something that looks kind of bad and in most situations isn't very good,

but then occasionally is a really powerful card, and I liked that one as well. So do you remember my contribution to that card? Was it turning the mana to colored mana? Yeah, yeah. So when you designed it, it was three colored mana. And I said in development, I'm like, well, if it's going to be a bad lotus,

shouldn't it be a bad lotus? Yes. I wanted it to be a horrible lotus. So I made your cards slightly better. Yes, you did. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about Wizards. So you're a playtester, and obviously you guys worked outside designing a magic set. So how did you get from being playtester and magic designer outside the doors of Wizards to getting inside the doors of Wizards?

Sure. So some of my team members were actually Mirage team members were talking to Richard about the process of getting Mirage made by Wizards of the Coast. And Richard had been mentioning, hey, you know, I need help here at Wizards because, you know, we're trying to put out a lot of stuff and we need play testing, we need game design. And my team members both thought of stuff and we need play testing we need game design um and they uh the my team members both thought of me and recommended the rich to richard that i i do this so uh he asked

if i was interested and and i responded with the rhetorical question of wait let me understand this correctly you want to pay me money to play a game? And, of course, the answer is yes. And so I interviewed, and that's the only time, by the way, right after the interview process, is the only time I ever played in a competitive Magic tournament outside of the playtest groups. Because very early on for Magic, I didn't feel like it was fair for me to play against people.

So I never went to a Magic tournament. I just played a whole lot of Magic with my friends. But during the interview process, people were happy with me, but the people who were game designers at Wizards of the Coast at the time wanted me to play my balance deck they knew the deck they wanted me to play my balance deck in a tournament so that's the one and only time I had ever played because I started working at Wizards of the Coast in 95 very early 95 that's the only time I ever played in a competitive tournament in magic so you

started in February of 1995. So actually, you have the record at Wizards of being the oldest... What's the word? That's been at Wizards continually the longest. Yes. And so I think I'm like three or four. I mean, you're ahead of me, Bill's ahead of me, and I think one other person ahead of me.

I started in October of 95, so. Yeah. But, yeah, you definitely have the record for the longest, so far, the longest wizard stay. Okay, so, let's get on,

the one other thing that you and I worked on together, I mean, we were on some various teams, but the one big one that I remember is I got hired as a developer, but I really wanted

to be a designer, and I convinced Richard to be on a design with me, and I got Joel to greenlight it because Richard was going to be on it. And then he said, I could pick whoever else I wanted to be on the set. And so I tapped Mike Elliott and you to be on Tempest. Yes, I

remember Tempest. So what is your memory of Tempest? So, I remember Mike was very early on at Wizards of the Coast also, and he, just like you, was so gung-ho about designing cards. And I remember the first meeting that we had on Tempest, and if my memory is correct, we went down to Richard's parents' house in Portland for a while. And we sat down and we were just going to chug through it.

And my memory is showing up thinking, hey, I've got a few interesting ideas for mechanics and things like that. And Richard, you know, chatting with Richard, and he's like, yeah, I've got a few interesting ideas for mechanics. And my memory is sitting down at the table with you and mike and each of you um taking out this like big humongous pile of paper with all of the ideas both you and mike had and and like that's my impression and my memory it was like it was like overwhelming tide of ideas from both you and mike because you had so much pent-up design, and you were both so looking forward to contributing to Magic Design. I'm sure that there were a thousand card ideas between the two of you in the first week. The stat I would tell is, for seven years after Tempest came out,

every set for seven years had a card that had been in Tempest Design. Probably, probably. Yes. I had been at Wizards long enough that I didn't feel like I had to get all of my ideas in because I'd already had Mirage and plenty of other sets where I was able to get ideas in, so I didn't feel like I was at the same level as you and Mike. But I could just recognize, like, you and Mike just so badly wanted to get all of these card ideas into magic.

And I saw myself from two years ago in that. Yeah, yeah. It's funny. I just interviewed Mike not too long ago, and so I just shared that same story from Mike's perspective. But yes, your memory, we went down to Richard's parents' house for a week

and we didn't shave for a week, I remember that. We didn't shave for the whole week and we just, we worked on magic. I mean, I think we like went out to dinner a couple times and saw a movie, but like we mostly just worked non-stop for a week. Yes, that much I remember as well.

I didn't remember the no shaving part, but. Yeah, well, you had... By the way, we didn't shave for a week, and you had by far the longest beard. The lesson we learned there was you grew hair faster than anybody else of the design team. So I'm almost to my desk, so we're wrapping up here.

Is there any other magic memory you have at Wizards you want to share? Any other magic story? I'll share the magic story of my first and only tournament. And it kind of shows what very early magic was like. We had a broad variety of levels of players and types of decks, and everybody was just kind of learning and exploring in it.

So I brought this balance deck, and everybody knows what the balance deck is now, and it was a typical Charlie deck in that it had only two damage sources in the entire deck, two jade statues. And so my very first round, I got paired up against somebody, and I sat down, and my opponent sat down and plopped down his really big deck. And so I was like, oh, I'm just going to feel bad because this person's new to Magic,

and it's not going to be a good experience for them in their very first tournament, their very first deck, their very first round. And so the game's process went, first turn, he plays a land, I play the strip mine and strip mine his land. The second turn, he played a land, I strip mined his land, and then the rest of the game, he didn't draw any more lands, and eventually I got out a jade statue and attacked with a jade statue seven times to win the second game went

he played a land I strip-mined it and then for the rest of the game he didn't play a land and I eventually got a jade statue out and seven times attacked with it to win the game right and I felt know, I'm sitting here feeling really bad about the whole process because I know it's not a good experience for him. And I love Magic so much I want it to be a great experience for everybody, right? So after the game, you know, I talked to him a little bit. I asked him about his deck, and he's like, oh, I just loved all these cards, so I put them in, right? And so I helped him learn how deck, and he's like, oh, I loved all these cards, so I put them in.

And so I helped him learn how to build decks better. It turns out he only had like 12 land in a 97-card deck or something like that. And so I just helped him improve his deck-building skills. The other thing I'd mention briefly is I was the person who At Wizards worked on Magic the Puzzling Oh that's right yes You were my editor Or not editor but you were my

Contact there that I would send the puzzles in Right and I was definitely one of the people who drove Wizards to hire Mark Rosewater Oh that's nice well thank you yep um so real quickly just to wrap up for we um charlie uh you and i both celebrated 25 years at wizards um you went on to do many things um you were involved in judging you were the head judge

of the pro tour for a while you uh ran the organized play department for a while. But mostly what you've sort of settled into Wizards is you're in charge of a whole other game. Not Magic, but we make other games at Wizards. People may not know that. Correct. How long has Duel Masters been going now? How long has Duel Masters been going now? So we're looking forward to next year celebrating Duel Masters' 20-year anniversary in Japan.

Holy moly! So the other thing, I mean, Duel Masters is a game... So Charlie and I were both on the design team for this set, and we made it many, many years ago with the idea that we'd put it in Japan to try to make a new trading card game expecting it to last, what, three years, four years or something?

Well, that was certainly the... We were hoping that it would last many years. But you're right that the many years was probably in the three to five range and not in the 20 year range. Man, 20 years. Now that makes me feel old. So, anyway, I see my desk.

So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. But I had great fun with you, Charlie. So thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you, Mark. It was awesome. And anyway, guys, I will see all of you next time.

Bye-bye.