Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #801: Graham Stark

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

In this podcast, I interview Graham Stark of Loading Ready Run. We talk about his and LRR's interactions with Magic. ...

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition. Okay, as you know, I've been doing lots of interviews while I've been home. And today is yet another interview. So, Graham Stark is with us today from Loading Ready Run. So, welcome, Graham. Hello. So, I'm going to start with the question I always start with, which is, how did you get into magic? What is your origin story? I have two, because I feel like as many people, maybe this is just me and the people I've talked to, but as many people, I got into the game once and then got into it again, but more seriously, a second time.
Starting point is 00:00:42 got into it again, but more seriously, a second time. The very first time was my local comic shop just had the cards for sale, and I thought they looked neat. And I had heard that it was a thing that people at school were interested in and were playing, and so I bought a starter box of Ice Age. And how old were you at this point? I could not tell you. I could do some quick math when I figure out when Ice Age...
Starting point is 00:01:11 96 is when Ice Age came out. 1986? Okay, so I was... I'm sorry, 95. 95, I'm sorry. I was 11. Okay. So, yeah, it was like the 60 card. See, I didn't understand the concept that there was like the deck building aspect to it.
Starting point is 00:01:27 So I was like, well, I have this 60 card five color deck and I guess this is what I play with. Wow, that was, you played a starter deck. And not only that Ice Age starter deck, that is, I don't understand why you took some time off. I'm off. Well, it just, it's, I mean, generally speaking, I think that the other people at school that I was, again, air quotes, playing with also didn't really understand. There were people older than us who understood actually the game, but I didn't.
Starting point is 00:01:59 So I was into it more for the collecting. So I only stuck around for like Ice Age and maybe a set or two after that in terms of like buying cards because i thought they looked neat and then you know then everyone i'm using heavy air quotes here then everyone stopped playing magic right yeah magic was no longer a thing that people played as far as i was aware and then it was dead no no more magic. Exactly. So imagine my surprise years later when I heard someone mention it. And I'm sure you've heard this before as well. It was the, wow, magic. People still play that?
Starting point is 00:02:36 Huh. And then, of course, the response, yes, Graham, it's more popular now than it's ever been. And I was surprised. And that was even still years before I came back to it again, which was at, thanks to a trip to PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle. And this is something that we've talked about on our own podcast a couple times of sort of our origin story is literally we were waiting in line for a panel, and we had our PAX swag bags. I know where this is going.
Starting point is 00:03:12 Yeah, they're like 30-card, very beginner, like not starter. I don't know exactly what they were called, but they were like these 30-card PAX. Welcome decks is what we called them. Welcome decks, that's it. And so we just started jamming with the welcome decks while we were waiting in line for a panel and then we got home from packs got home to victoria and that was in september and scars of mirrodin was just about to come out and we figured well maybe we should try and do this and we tried to do a thing where it's like okay we want to keep everything fair so you can only buy X number of booster packs in a certain
Starting point is 00:03:56 number of time and that just fell apart immediately but yeah so we were coming into it when Alara and Zendikar were in Standard and Scars was on the horizon and started going to FNM at the local game store, Yellowjacket, in Victoria. And then it's been just building since then. How old were you when you returned? I mean, okay, hang on, I got to do the math again. When was Scars of Mirrodin? I'm trying to remember my years.
Starting point is 00:04:33 Scars of Mirrodin was... It was like seven or eight years ago, right? More than that. There was an eight-year gap, I think, between Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia. Is that right? Oh, no, no. There's like six years between Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia, is that right? Oh, no, no, there's like six years between Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia, I think.
Starting point is 00:04:49 No, no, no, no, Scars of Mirrodin. Oh, I'm sorry, it was New Phyrexia. Oh, sorry, I think it was Mirrodin and Scars of Mirrodin, sorry. No, no, I was gone for a while. Again, I like, I got a couple cards in Ice Age, was like, oh, these Elder Dragons seem fun, dropped the game for like a decade. Yeah, but Scars of Mirrodin, okay, I'm not doing, I mean, Scars of Mirage, okay, I'm not doing that.
Starting point is 00:05:05 I mean, Scarlet Mirage is, I don't know, 10 years ago? 2010, yes. Yes, 10 years ago, okay. Yeah, so. Okay. Mid-20s at that point. Okay, so a gap. Okay, so you start playing.
Starting point is 00:05:19 So what happens at this point? Where do you go from there? Well, I mean, like I said, we start pretty heavily just in kitchen table magic of just playing decks of like whatever cards we have cobbled together you know we the the folks at the game store are very helpful and you know in explaining formats they're like well standard is this and we're like yeah let's not worry about that let's just play whatever and then eventually you know then some
Starting point is 00:05:45 of us would get into standard and then um i'd get introduced into draft which is by far my favorite way of interacting with magic cards drafting commander but i i really enjoy limited magic just for its uh variety and the challenge that it presents inherent to the format. And then, yeah, everyone sort of... Like, eventually everybody would kind of splinter into their own formats of things that they prefer. Like, generally speaking, all of us who play Magic, because not everyone in Loading Ready Run plays Magic, but all of us who do
Starting point is 00:06:21 can sit down and play whatever format other people are playing. But some people are like, I really just prefer Commander. I really prefer Standard. I like Modern. I do Draft or whatever. So everyone's sort of my uh magic progression from that point without couching it within loading ready run because what we did at the time was so many of us got so involved in magic that we uh you know we we made a video about it because we do we make videos all the time so can we back up a
Starting point is 00:07:03 little bit i think we we jumped something that's important because we were sort of talking about magic. So in between you playing magic for the first time and you playing magic for the second time, Loading Ready Run happened, right? How did that happen? Why don't we talk a little bit about that? All right, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Starting point is 00:07:16 Let's explain what that is. That's a really good point because if anyone's listening to this and they don't know what Loading Ready Run is, they're going to be very lost. So thank you for that. 2003 is when we started Loading Ready Run is. They're going to be very lost. So thank you for that. 2003 is when we started Loading Ready Run, myself and my partner in crime and business, Paul. And he and I started Loading Ready Run as like a creative outlet for sketch comedy.
Starting point is 00:07:39 And so that was 2003. That was before YouTube, which is wild to say. There's life before YouTube? I know. Isn't it weird? It was a strange time on the internet. It seems so trivial now when you think about it, but this is around the time when there were sort of head-scratching articles being put out online about the concept of video on the web right this this notion of like but what if there were videos on the internet and imagine you know like now it seems like a baffling thing to talk about but um so we we hosted the videos ourselves
Starting point is 00:08:23 and little tiny quick time files of terrible resolution on our own web server. And one day, one of them got linked off Boing Boing and got 8,000 views, which was an astonishing number. And it killed our bandwidth and cost us hundreds of dollars for the month because we were hosting it all ourselves. And so that's the state of things we're in there. And then as it progressed, we, uh, we did the sketches. We did, uh, a sketch comedy short every week and we never missed a week and we would continue doing those sketches for 11 years. But during those 11 years, we would start branching out into other internet video content and stuff. And, um, then eventually also, uh,
Starting point is 00:09:08 streaming and then, so now in 2021, I keep writing 2020 on all my anecdotes. We are now in a position where we're making, you know, lots of video content and streaming content all the time. And, uh, a lot of it involves magic and a lot of it certainly doesn't. And it's just, you know, that's where we are now is a internet content production house comedy troupe. It's hard to describe exactly what it is that we do, but we try to make people smile.
Starting point is 00:09:46 So one of the things that, when I think of Loading Red Run, is that you have a very strong game element to it. I mean, not that there's not other things, but the through line to me is there's a very gaming culture sort of aspect to all the stuff that you do. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Myself and James met in high school you know playing dnd uh so um you know we have our sort of origins there and early days you know video gaming and tabletop
Starting point is 00:10:19 gaming was sort of integral to all of our social interactions and i think that was a big part of why magic grabbed us so much because you know over the years there'd be video games to be like oh this new multiplayer game is out uh you know let's all play that and so you know we'd all play it but sometimes it'd be like you know one person playing this game one person playing another game but we all really liked when we could all get together and play the same sort of thing and then when we rediscovered magic when we were at pax it was this moment of like oh it's this is something we all enjoy and are all playing at the same time that's really cool okay so what is the first magic content you guys made so the first magic content we made was an episode of a show that we do called commodore
Starting point is 00:11:11 hustle which is a i guess you'd call it a sitcom i suppose but it's it's a fictionalized account of us as ourselves right so it's us playing ourselves but like exaggerated ridiculous versions of ourselves as the comedy troupe loading ready run making those dumb internet videos and so a lot of the scripts for that are inspired by things that happen in real life and so we were all playing so much magic and we were like well we should we should do an episode about we should do an episode pardon me about us playing Magic. So we did, and it's called It's Magic. And, you know, it was just sort of a lot of, you know, a lot of jokes about us playing Magic the Gathering. And the
Starting point is 00:11:57 response online was really positive, you know from the magic the gathering community and then uh i don't know should i continue into sort of how that how that expanded from that point sure so the community manager at the time was like whoa this is so cool you know like oh this is great and like retweeted it and we're like hey can we like send you a like, oh, this is great, and, like, retweeted it, and we're like, hey, can we, like, send you a booster box of something, and, you know, they did, and it was very nice, and then it was, this was
Starting point is 00:12:31 fairly close to PAX East, speaking of PAX again, and so we went to PAX East, and the community manager who had spoken to us before said, you know, hey, you should come and say hi to
Starting point is 00:12:52 these folks who work at Wizards because they thought the video was really cool. Was this trick, by the way, just for the community manager? Was it trick? No, that was Mike Robles. Oh, Mike Robles. Okay. Yeah. And so no that was microblast oh microblast okay okay yeah and um so the i met with a couple folks uh from wizards who i don't believe are there anymore and i was basically like you know hey i heard you really liked the the video that we did and they they went, yes, we do. And I went, great. What if we made more of those? Like, I was very keen to push this notion of like, you know, we could make more things like that, but just for you, wouldn't that be a fun idea? And they went, you know what? Yeah, that actually
Starting point is 00:13:40 would because we're just starting to move into a direction where we want to bring folks on to do video content. So that same summer following that PAX East is when they brought us on to do Friday nights and they brought on Nate and Sean to do Walking the Plains. Okay. So that was all at the same time. the planes okay uh so that was all at the same time and we did uh this is so it's a funny story because like i've talked before about how great it's been working with wizards uh over the years in terms of like editorial stuff because you know people ask they're like knowing how how much you know what do they you know obviously there's things you can and can't say and you know that's that's true but we've got a great working relationship with them but uh for these first four episodes
Starting point is 00:14:29 this like initial mini-series run uh we asked we were like and so presumably you will want to you know uh you'll want to to look at these scripts and uh you know like give them give them approval and everything and they were like no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't want to impact your voice in any way. So we just want you to make whatever videos you would make. And we went, okay, well, then we will go and do that. And so we went and shot and we scripted and filmed and edited and everything, these four episodes and sent them in. We're like, here we go.
Starting point is 00:15:03 We're done the four-episode miniseries. And they were like, oh, great. We have some notes. And it was a really funny interaction because we were just like, you should have told us this when it was only words on a paper because now it's going to be a lot harder to fix. But we did and we sorted it out. And we've told that story before as well.
Starting point is 00:15:25 But ever since then, it's been, it's been much better. So you mentioned Trick because we did those first four episodes. Yeah. And it was sort of like a handshake understanding of if the response is good. Yeah. Then we'll do more. And the response was great. You know, we've had people, we've had innumerable people over the years come up and talk to us about how Friday nights is sort of how they got into magic, which is an amazing thing to hear.
Starting point is 00:15:53 And so the response was really, really excellent. And then we didn't hear anything. Okay. For like a year and a half. We were like, okay, that was fun. I guess that's cool. Then I got a phone call from Trick, who again was not one of the people I'd talked to prior.
Starting point is 00:16:12 And then so he introduced himself and was like, hi, I'm now in charge of this department. Would you like to bring the show back and actually continue making it? And so then I said, yes, we would. And so we made that for Wizards for the next seven years? Eight years? Seven years?
Starting point is 00:16:35 Okay, so let's, obviously we do Friday Magic. So you do some other magic stuff. Let's branch out to how some other magic-y things happen. Yeah. We started, so now we stream a lot of a variety of different things we sort of run our twitch channel which is loading ready run everything is loading ready run uh we run it like a little tv network basically where we have a bunch of different shows and there's a weekly schedule and different hosts and themes and everything like we have a show where we just play horror-based video games and one where we have a bunch of different shows and there's a weekly schedule and different hosts and themes and everything like we have a show where we just play horror-based video games and
Starting point is 00:17:08 one where we play minecraft and one where it's live improv or a diy show or something but the first thing that we streamed was once a week james and i streamed playing magic online and we were just we just did that for fun because we were like oh this seems like a cool thing you know like we'd watched um new madanami uh back when kenji was doing his 365 day challenge and we thought okay you know that could be fun so i think it was i think even then it was thursdays james and i would just draft and magic online for a few hours. And then we started doing goofy draft videos with a site called MTGO Academy. And that's where we started picking up some steam there after the success of our Innistrad plane hat draft, where we picked cards in an Innistrad draft based purely on
Starting point is 00:18:06 how good we thought the characters' hats were. Yeah, there's a strong hat theme in Innistrad for those that didn't know. Very good hats in Innistrad, yeah. And from that, we started doing our podcast, Tap Tap Concede,
Starting point is 00:18:22 because the joke there was when we played on Magic Online when it was clear that we were about to lose the game we wouldn't concede but we'd let our opponent like go to attacks or something and then we'd tap two lands to make them think we had
Starting point is 00:18:38 something that was going to save us from this obvious dead on board scenario and then scoop just to just to make them feel something, you know? Um, and we just, uh, today actually at time of recording this podcast, we've just recorded episode 343 of that podcast. Yeah. Um, and so then as we started doing more streaming,
Starting point is 00:19:03 we, uh we did more weekly magic, playing more and more magic online and that particular show, that time slot has now transitioned to Magic Arena over the last couple years we've added a paper magic
Starting point is 00:19:20 stream, which we call the Friday Night Paper Fight and obviously that's in in in these current times that's some of that is still paper we do some some amount of webcam stuff but you know some of it's arena and we're all we're all making do and then uh also we have another magic podcast called north 100 which is all about the canadian highlander format or cam lander uh which is uh just a super fun format you should you should check out north 100 if you're into the idea of like a a format that uh plays like constructed
Starting point is 00:19:58 cube is one of the ways that they refer to the refer to the format and then a couple years ago i say a couple years ago what is time probably like five years ago now we pitched wizards on making uh on doing like a a release event um in in advance of the actual pre-release and that that was how the the loading ready run pre pre-release was born that was how the Loading Ready Run pre-pre-release was born. And we've been doing that ever since. And that's a big sort of stream event. And it also goes up on YouTube as well. But it's a fun sort of celebration
Starting point is 00:20:33 of the launch of the set. I had a chance to do a pre-pre-release. Well, the line wasn't technically a pre-pre-release I think, but it was the equivalent. So for Unstable, I said the deal I struck Unstable, I said, the deal I struck with my wife, I don't travel a lot,
Starting point is 00:20:51 but I said, whenever I make an unset, she's like, okay, you can do some traveling to promote the unset. So that's the trip I came up to you guys and it was a lot of fun. Yeah, that was amazing. So I'm going to talk a little bit about what a pre-release is and we can talk a little bit
Starting point is 00:21:03 about this particular one just because I was there. So the idea is I got there the day before, and then we did a draft. Are they all drafts? Generally, they're sealed. They're sealed, okay. Because we're trying to sort of mirror the pre-release thing. But for Unstable, it's intended more to be drafted.
Starting point is 00:21:24 Correct, yes. so we did a draft right yeah yeah unstable had a not a pre-release but it had a release event and we had recommended to be drafted because it was too hard to balance it both for sealed and for draft and we're like look people just complain draft and so we made it for draft but then we drafted on the the first night before and then you you stayed up all night editing our draft. Yep. And then, I guess, during the course of the day, there's eight matches,
Starting point is 00:21:52 and so each person, there's eight people, and each person plays twice, and then there's usually four Loading Red Red people and four not Loading Ready Run people. That's a typical structure, yeah. Yeah. And then, I i guess it's been
Starting point is 00:22:06 different recently but yes right it's correct so i and i played i think each of the non uh we played one like i played you and i played what did i play i put one in a person um but anyway so it's it's hard to keep track of because Wedge was playing Cameron and called you in as his partner for Two Heads or Better. Yes, I played Cameron in the middle of a two-headed giant Shaharizad game. That also happened, yes.
Starting point is 00:22:35 Yeah, the thing there is... So the people that were invited that weren't the Loading Red Run people was me, Wedge, and then Megan Maria from Good Luck High Five. And, right, there was a... So Wedge was playing, and he used Spike to go get a Scheherazade.
Starting point is 00:22:56 Yeah. And then he... We had one. We had a copy of Scheherazade as an ornament, basically, on the set that we broadcast our stream from and Wedge was like
Starting point is 00:23:08 uh okay I want to get hand me that card and then before he cast that he had cast better than one which is
Starting point is 00:23:16 it turns you turn into a two-headed uh team so he brought me in and then he cast the Shaharazad so then we played
Starting point is 00:23:23 the sub game in the Shaharazad so anyway it was this is all on on youtube you went to track it down but uh it is one of the most yeah it was one of the silliest magic games i've ever played it was a lot of fun yeah um yeah so we play all day long everything streamed and um i got to see you guys your big all your setup and everything um and it was a lot of fun. So it was, and I dressed up like a squirrel. Well, yeah. I mean, obviously.
Starting point is 00:23:50 Because you had dressed up previously, right? Yeah, for Unglued, I dressed up like a chicken. And for Unhinged, I dressed up like a donkey. So anyway, apparently all unevents I have to dress up. The thing is, I don't even know if we had necessarily cleared that with you ahead of time. Oh, no, you did not. No. But we were like, we understand this is a thing, and we have acquired a squirrel costume.
Starting point is 00:24:13 I show up, basically, and you guys, they fly in, you guys drive us to your place, and then they go, one quick question, and they pull this out, they go, how do you feel about wearing a squirrel suit? And I'm like, okay, I game so uh and then i wore it i think i wore it for the introduction you you we we uh we did an introduction i wore it and then i wore a little bit later in the day but i didn't wear it the whole the whole whatever eight ten hours very warm but uh and i occasionally put on the hat for from time to time so yeah um and then the next day, I did an interview with you, and I did one with Megan Maria. I did a bunch of podcasts up. Yeah, because you were there, so why not?
Starting point is 00:24:54 Yeah. So I have been on one of your podcasts. Yes, that's true. So now, see, you return the favor. Now you can be on my podcast. Aha. Perfect. So in Loading Ready Run, for the people
Starting point is 00:25:06 that don't know, you do the most these days, most, at least all premiere sets and some of the supplemental sets. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did five, I want to say, pre-pre-releases in 2020, and there's more coming this year.
Starting point is 00:25:22 Actually, I'm not sure exactly when this episode of Drive to Work is going up, but the Kaldheim PPR is coming up. Yeah, this will be about two weeks from us recording it. Okay, so pretty soon then? Wait, this goes up two weeks since we record it? Yeah. It might be today. Oh, how's that?
Starting point is 00:25:39 That would line up. That would line up incredibly well. What's two weeks from now? You know what? Let's not worry about it okay um okay so uh i'm not i'm not too far away from work but there's a uh one or two more things i like to talk about um so this next thing i want to talk about is not actually a magic thing but it's such a cool thing that i said to talk about anyway um so talk a little bit about Desert Bus. How did that happen? What is that?
Starting point is 00:26:07 Oh, yeah. Okay, Desert Bus. Okay, I'll give you the quick version as much as I can. So Desert Bus for Hope is a fundraising charity marathon that we at Loading Ready Run and a bunch of other folks combine forces to organize every year that raises money for Child's Play, which is a charity run out of Seattle that
Starting point is 00:26:35 supports children's hospitals all over the world to make it be less awful to be a child in hospital. less awful to be a child in hospital. And we do that by entertaining people on this 24-7 marathon that runs for about a week. And the conceit of it is that we're trapped in this space, essentially, playing Desert Bus, which is the worst video game ever made. It was a minigame designed by Penn & Teller on an unreleased Sega CD Penn & Teller video game. And in Desert Bus, you drive a bus from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada at 45 miles an hour in real time. So it takes eight hours. And it's a perfectly straight road, there's no traffic, there's nothing to do, you just drive. But the bus has a slight pull to the side, meaning that you have to hold the controller down and keep correcting with one of the directional buttons to stay on the road, or you will drive off the road and your engine
Starting point is 00:27:42 will overheat. So you can't just tape the controller down, you must interact with the controller for the entire eight hours. And when you get to Las Vegas, you are rewarded with one point, and then the bus turns around and drives back. So the game literally doesn't end, it just goes for an infinite amount of time. And so the bit is that we play this game until people stop donating money. And we started the first one in, oh gosh, this was what, our 14th? I need to double check this. But we started the first one a very long time ago. And 2007 was the first one. All right.
Starting point is 00:28:25 Because we wanted to do something... The Game Desert bus had just been... Because it was never released, but a review copy had been found and put online, and the Sega CD doesn't have any copy protection because the system was out before people had CD burners. Right. And we wanted to do something funny with that,
Starting point is 00:28:44 and we figured that we could do something to raise money for Child's Play. And then Paul, who I mentioned earlier, was like, what if we did both of those things? And so we just figured we'd turn on the stream for one weekend. This is before streaming
Starting point is 00:29:00 was as big as it is now. And we're just like, okay, let's see if we can raise $5,000. And we raised eight hundred and five dollars in the first year and we were like well i guess we're doing that again next year and then we just did the uh 2019 one in or sorry the 2021 in uh 20 in november and uh we uh once all the final numbers came in, we raised over a million dollars in the 2020 edition. And how long? How long were you driving the bus?
Starting point is 00:29:34 We went for six days, 20 hours. Wow, that's great. Yeah. We do take turns. So, you know great. Yeah. We do take turns, so people get to sleep. But yeah, it was a wild event. But it goes as long as people participate.
Starting point is 00:29:54 Is there a time in the future where that's all you do all year long? The way that it works is through the magic of compound interest. The first hour costs $1, and then it goes up by a percentage every hour okay to mean that it's self-limiting and to reflect that as it gets worse for us right it costs more to keep us going sure and so you know by the end of it it's like you know like we
Starting point is 00:30:21 just crest to earn one more hour and it's's like, okay, now the next hour costs $45,000. So it's self-limiting in that way. It can't really go for much more than, like, I think if it went for a full, like a full solid seven days, then we're earning like one and a half million dollars for the charity, which we would do, but we would also like to sleep. All I know is some billionaire one day just gets fascinated to see how long he can have you drive and then we'll...
Starting point is 00:30:54 Yeah. I would like to see that. But anyway, so we're almost wrapping up here. Is there any magic aspect I didn't hit? Anything you want to touch upon before we wrap up for the time? I mean, oh,
Starting point is 00:31:06 actually, hey, fun fact, one of the Magic the Gathering pieces of content we've made that most people
Starting point is 00:31:11 don't know about is there is a series of how to play Magic the Gathering videos starring Jimmy Wong that you can find on the Magic website
Starting point is 00:31:20 and we made those videos. Yeah, I also know we had done one of the, i think it was the rise of the old drossy um uh we did a show when we uh when it came out at uh we were at pax and we did a big presentation and you were you you were you put that together so yeah the the the stage thing at pax for Battle for Zendikar
Starting point is 00:31:45 with Will Wheaton and Ashley Birch. Yes, yes. And yourself. And myself and Doug Byer. Yeah, and Kathleen and I wrote the script. Yep. Yeah, that was super fun. Yep.
Starting point is 00:31:56 Anyway, so last question before we wrap up today is, I always try to remember the first time I meet people, and what I learn is, it's the first time i meet people and what i learn is it's the first time i remember meeting them and there's a previous time they met me that i just don't remember um for example so you went to the party at um it was the innistrad right the the packs that you are talking about would have been the innistrad that by the way that was the party where we did the reveal of the double-faced cards and nobody understood what we were explaining yeah like we showed a card we flipped it over it was another card they're like yeah we don't By the way, that was the party where we did the reveal of the double-faced cards and nobody understood what we were explaining.
Starting point is 00:32:27 We showed a card, we flipped it over, it was another card. They're like, yeah, we don't understand what's going on. And I'm like, they're both on the same, they didn't quite get it. That was an amazing party. I don't know, the people I was hanging out with understood it because they physically spun around. We did, they did spin around. But I had physical copies of the cards so I could show people. That's the first time I remember.
Starting point is 00:32:47 I think I met you. I think I met you at that party. Well, so I guess following on with your lead-in, it depends on whether or not that was before or after the Community Cup. Oh, you were at the Community Cup. Did I play in the Community Cup you were at? Yes. We actually, you and I played. Oh, did we?
Starting point is 00:33:06 Did we? Okay. I beat you with an Infect deck. Ooh, that's good. That's some style, Wayne. That was the Community Cup that Modern was introduced at. Okay. Yeah, I only played in one Community Cup, I believe.
Starting point is 00:33:20 I mean, I... Usually they were there and I came to say hi to everybody, but I think I actually played in one of them. That was the 2011 Community Cup. Uh, so when did Innistrad come out? I think, I think that beats Innistrad.
Starting point is 00:33:32 I think Innistrad came out like 2013. Right. So yeah, I guess, I guess we would have met there, but that was a wild weekend. Yeah, that was,
Starting point is 00:33:40 I was on a team with Marshall. Okay. Marshall Sutcliffe and LSV was on the community team as well. And we got, like, we did eventually, the community team did eventually win, but it was a little touch and go in the team constructed portion because a young Gavin Verhey had made all the team,
Starting point is 00:34:03 had made all the decks for the Wizards team, and they were very strong. Yeah. Yeah, I remember the R&D would spend time on the construction stuff. That's where they'd spend their time, is building decks. Yeah. Well, anyway, it was fun having you on the show. But I can see my desk, so we all know what that means.
Starting point is 00:34:23 It means it's the end of my drive to work, so instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So we all know what that means. It means at the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. So thanks, Graham. I'm glad you were here. And it was fun talking with you. Thank you so much. And sometime soon, maybe today.
Starting point is 00:34:34 Well, I don't know when. But you guys, there's going to be a pre-release. So if that hasn't happened yet, tune it in. And if not, there'll be another one in Strixhaven or whatever. And one day, hopefully hopefully i'll be back hopefully i can make another unset and then i'll get a return again so oh please yes and you can find out all of that on our twitch which is loading ready run we have a non-magic comedy youtube at loading to Run and a magic YouTube at LRRMTG and yeah, come and
Starting point is 00:35:08 say hi. We've got a Discord. We're a welcoming, positive community and we would love to have you. Okay, well thanks everybody. I'm glad you could be here, Graham. And to everybody else, I will see you all next time. Bye-bye.

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.