Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #848: Mini-Master

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

This podcast talks about one of my favorite formats, including its origin, which digs into the early days of the Los Angeles Magic scene.

I'm not pulling in my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another Drive to Work, Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today's podcast is about a format. But in many ways, it's about more than just a format. I'm going to talk about a format known as Mini-Master, or Pack Wars. I'm going to talk about what it is, how to play it, because it's a fun way to play. And then, I'm going to tell you a lengthy story about its history. And in telling you the story about its history, I'm going to tell you a lot about early Los Angeles magic. One of the interesting things about being a magic historian is really enjoying not just

how the game evolved, the technical mechanics of the game evolved, but how the game as a community evolved. And so today's is a sort of diving in a little bit, talking about my past and talking a little bit about the early days of Magic. Okay, so the format I'm about to teach you today and talk about is called Minimafter, also known as Pack Wars. The way it works is you take a single booster of magic. Normally you take a 15-card booster. All the things I'm telling you assumes it's a 15-card booster. You can adapt how much basic land you put in if it's not. We have made some non-15-card boosters, but most magic boosters are 15 cards.

So what you do is you take the booster. You take three of every basic land. So three plains, three three islands three swamps, three mountains, three forests and then you, without looking at the pack you mix them in. If you happen to know what the basic land is in the pack or you can know where the token card is you can take those out without having to look at the pack.

If not, you can just leave them in and just discard the token add card when you draw it. Okay, so the idea is, you take it, you shuffle it. Now, you're going to play a game of limited. You start at 20 life. I mean, it's a game of limited, one-on-one. I guess you could play with more than two people. Normally, mini-masters play with two people. I assume it works as a multiplayer game, but the main way to play is you play with two people. And the idea is that you

don't look at it, and you just, you play. And one of the real fun things about Mini Master, for those that have never played it, is normally in Magic, there's different levels of cards. There are cards that are so good that they matter in various constructed formats, you know, competitive constructed formats. There are cards that might be good enough that they, you know, competitive constructed formats. They're cards that might be good enough that they, you know, you play them a lot casually in casual constructed formats. There's some cards that are really good for limited, and so when you play limited formats, when you play draft, maybe we play sealed, maybe those cards show up then. But there's some cards that don't often get played by most people. I mean, obviously, there's somebody

that plays everything. And one of the really fun things about the Mini Master is that you find yourself in situations relying on cards and combinations that you've never, ever played before. Because it kind of forces your hand and makes you play everything. You know, it makes you sort of, like, use all components of the booster pack, if you will. And it's really fun trying to figure out how to win

and what you need to do. And anyway, it's a really unique and fun format. So for first and starters, if you've never played the Mini-Master format, like I said, all it requires is one booster pack of magic and 15 basic lands. And with that, you can have a lot of fun.

So first and foremost, before I dig into the history of this format, I just want to say, if you've never played the Mini Master format, it's easy to do, it's lots of fun, and it really... One of the things that I enjoy, and this really digs into not just who I am as a designer, but as a player, is it's fun to get in situations in Magic you've never been before.

It's fun to, like, it's just fun to care about things that somehow you've never cared about. It just shows you the breadth of Magic and how there's things that you haven't seen yet. And that's one of the things I enjoy about Mini-Masters. It's just, it makes me appreciate cards I might never have appreciated. And it makes me

appreciate combinations of cards I never would have appreciated. And it makes me appreciate combinations of cards I never would have appreciated. And so anyway, before I dig into the history, I just want to say, if you've never tried the format, it's a very fun format. And I'll also stress, please don't look at the pack. I mean, you can. If you want to, you can look at the pack. I mean, some people do. I think it's way more fun not to. Not knowing what's coming, not knowing, at least for the first game. I mean, you can play multiple games.

So in future games, you'll get to know what's in the pack. So, I mean, if you want to play more than one game and you can, as you start playing, you start figuring out what your deck's doing and you start adapting to your deck. And that also is a lot of fun, by the way, of going in cold, playing the first game, not knowing anything, and then as you play future games, trying to figure out what you're doing. And I think that is, anyway, very enjoyable.

Okay, but now, the crux of this podcast really is talking about how the mini-master came to be, because it's a really fun story about early magic. So let me take you back in the time machine to 1993. So magic comes out in the summer of 1993. And Wizards, at the time, was a small company. They printed as much as they were able to print. It was not nearly enough to meet demand.

So they made what they thought was a six-month supply for Alpha and sold it out, I think, in three weeks. Then they made what they thought was a six-month supply for beta, sold that out in a week. And it took almost two years, or a year and a half, for Wizards to get to the point where, like, someone who wanted to buy a Magic set... Like, when I first got into Magic...

So, well, I'll jump into that in a second. But when I got in very, very early, I used to have... If I knew a format, sorry, a set was coming out. Like, I remember when Legends came out, which is the summer of 94. I had a local game store that I liked. I knew they were getting in, you know, they were getting some Legends. I had to go to that store before they opened, get in the line, and there was a line, and wait till the store

opened on the day it came out to guarantee that I would be able to buy some product. You know, like, for example, when beta came out, I bought a whole bunch of beta because I knew if I waited, like, I knew if the next day I came back, it would be gone. And I was getting, so here's my real quick story for those that don't know my introduction to magic, if you will. So in the summer of 1993, I was working at a game store called The Game Keeper. I was part-time. I was, I was writing in Los Angeles, but I was, I was going a little stir crazy. I was in between gigs as they were, and I just needed to interact with people. Writing's pretty solitary. You sit and you write by yourself. And so I decided to take a part-time job I just needed to interact with people. Writing's pretty solitary. You sit and you write by yourself.

And so I decided to take a part-time job that just had me interacting with people because I was going a little crazy not interacting with people. So I chose a game store because I really love games. I've always had a passion for games. My dad really infused in me a love for games. You know, all my youth, I played games with my family.

And anyway, I chose to work at a game store. So that summer, people kept coming in the game store saying, not all of them even knew the name of the game. Not all of them even knew Magic. Although a few of them did.

But a lot of them were like, do you have that Magic card game? And I didn't even realize at the time when they even used the word Magic that some of them meant that's the name of the game. But it was just,

you're a wizard and the cards are your spells. And people would describe it to me. Now, we didn't have it at the time. I would later fight to get it in the store, but we didn't have it at the game. But it was just, you're a wizard, and the cards are your spells, and people would describe it to me. Now, we didn't have it at the time. I would later fight to get it in the store, but we didn't have it at the time. And it just sounded fascinating. So that July, I went down to San Diego Comic-Con, in San Diego, obviously, and for the first time, I saw the cards. I wasn't able to purchase the cards, because they weren't for sale. I couldn't find one for sale. But I found people that owned a deck, and I could actually look at the cards for the first time. And it just drew me in right away.

It was really exciting. So a couple weeks later, I go to... This is when I lived in Los Angeles. There were three big game conventions. I think the one that I went to was called OrkCon. But anyway, there were three conventions. They were all at the airport right by the, I'm sorry, they're all at the, at one of the hotels right by the airport, and I remember I went to the one that was in August, and for the first time, there were people with packs of magic for sale, and I, it's funny, at the time, I think

I bought a starter and three boosters because I felt like that was about what you spend on a game I would later go buy boxes and boxes of beta because I fell in love with the game and I just wanted to get more and play more and I wanted I needed to buy but the other thing is the reason I bought

so much was I got some so I could give some to friends because I needed people to play. So one of the problems with Magic early on was it was this phenomenon that it just sold out instantaneously but it was actually really hard to find someone to play with. I mean, my early

Magic, I remember building two different decks and playing both sides of the decks. Because I really loved the game but I needed people to play with. So early Magic, there were a couple, like, people would throw sort of impromptu tournaments at times. Sometimes game stores would throw something. I remember going to UCLA for, like, this random,

it was this funny thing, it was a tournament that somebody just set up at UCLA. I show up, my first opponent It was a tournament that somebody just set up at UCLA. I show up. My first opponent puts down a deck that must have had 800 cards in it. He called it his Leviathan deck. I thought it was because it was so big, but it turned out in those 800 cards, he had one

Leviathan, which he managed to get out and kill me with. And for those who don't know, the color Leviathan is not the strongest of cards. It came out in the dark, I think? get out and kill me with. And for those who don't know, the card Leviathan is not the strongest of cards. It came out in the dark, I think? So those that have never heard of Leviathan, it is one of those

giant blue monsters. Early Magic had a lot of just big, you know, giant monsters at rare. And I have to try to remember the stats of it. I mean, it required you to, like, sacrifice islands to attack with it. It was kind of nutty. Anyway, I remember going to the tournament and losing to that deck.

But there was not a lot of organized Magic back in the day. The closest to it was, there were a few game stores. I remember there was a game store I found that was nowhere near me, but I would go there, and on Fridays, they would have a tournament. And what it was would vary from week to week. Sometimes it was a constructed tournament. Sometimes it was a limited, although limited just meant sealed back in the day. Draft did not really become a thing until the Pro Tour started.

The Pro Tour started in 95, in February of 95. In fact, it wasn't even until the second Pro Tour, which was in Los Angeles a few months later, that introduced drafting for the first time. And I think there's two big drafts that Wizards proposed at the time, Rosh Etch A Draft and

Booster Draft, which people know. Rosh Etch A Draft where you lay all the cards out ahead of you, and the first person takes one of the cards, and you keep taking a card until you get to the eighth person, they take a second card, then the seventh person takes a second card, and then the sixth person, you snake back. Anyway, way back

when, we're talking about 94, 95, before the Pro Tour, I'm sorry, the Pro Tour wasn't 95, Pro Tour in 95. Pro Tour was in 96. Pro Tour started in 96. So in 94 and 95, there was sealed play. There was limited play.

Limited was sealed. Draft wasn't really a thing yet. But anyway, there wasn't... Playing Magic was... You had to scramble a little bit to find places to play. And the community was in its very early stages. For example, the internet as we know it really was in its infancy.

It was what was called the Usenet at the time. So it was kind of like a bulletin board. Like, you could see threads of things, and you could write something, and someone might write back to you later. But, I mean, it wasn't, it was something where, I mean, it was an amazing thing, and you could, like, I, there was a Usenet for magic, and so I could talk to people that liked magic. But it was, it's a different animal than now, you know.

The kind of community and stuff we can do now is light years ahead of what it was back then. But anyway, I was very eager. I loved playing Magic, and like I said, the best I could do at the time was I did find a store that I think, I'm not even sure it had something every Friday. I think it had it once a month or twice a month, but like, there was a Magic event I could go to,

right? I don't think it was every week. I think it was like, I think it might have been once a month. But anyway, I was itching, as. I think it was like, I think it might have been once a month. But anyway, I was itching, as was most people in Los Angeles, was itching for more magic. So I remember,

I don't know when this was. My guess it was late 94 is my guess, but I'm not sure exactly on the time. It might have been early 95. I heard that down in Costa Mesa, which was about a 45 minute drive from Los Angeles, a group had opened up and started this all day long magic

thing. It was an event where you could go and they would have multiple tournaments. And you could play in one tournament and then when you're finished, play in another tournament and they were there most of the day. So, real quickly,

Scott Larrabee, who I've worked with at Wizards Forever, who does a lot of tournament managing and stuff, Scott and some friends, I don't know their names, so sorry, opened up, decided they wanted to start a magic event.

And so they were down in Costa Mesa. So they found a place called the Costa Mesa Women's Club, which was a building. I mean, that's why it was the Costa Mesa Women's Club. They owned a building. And it turned out that they didn't do anything on Saturdays. I think they had events on Sundays. They occasionally had events during the week,

but they didn't do anything on Saturdays. I think they had events on Sundays. They occasionally had events during the week, but they didn't do anything on Saturdays. So Scott and his friends were able to rent it very cheaply. So anyway, the Costa Mesa Women's Club was the hot spot of early magic. They would open up, I think when they first started doing it,

it was at noon, and eventually it started getting earlier than that. It was just all-day magic. And the idea was that you could go down there, and if you think a lot about what a Grand Prix is right now, or any sort of all-day magic thing, maybe you take it for granted that those things existed. But until, at least in L.A., until the Costa Mesa Women's Club, that wasn't a thing. You couldn't just go play magic all day.

Until the Costa Mesa Women's Club, that wasn't a thing. You couldn't just go play Magic all day. Maybe, maybe, maybe, you know, once a month at your local game store, they had an event that they chose and that you could play in. But the idea that there were multiple events, and you could choose what you want to do, and you could play, when you were finished, you could play again. And all around you were people that were into Magic.

The other big thing about Magic was, I was really into Magic, but I didn't have that many friends that played Magic. The one friend I did have was, Henry Stern had come into the Gamekeeper to buy a game or something, I think, and he and I, I discovered the fact that he played Magic, or I told him about Magic. I think it the fact that he played Magic or I told him about Magic.

I think it came out that he played Magic. Maybe I had sold him Magic. I'm not 100% sure of this one. But anyway, I had a thing I used to do. I convinced the store to carry Magic and I had an open Magic deck that I could demo people with. And I was selling as much Magic as I could because I loved the game. And the one thing I would do is

I would trade with people out of the starter deck I opened to demo with. And I had figured out the rarities. So I would trade you same rarity for same rarity. And so some people, Henry being the biggest one, would constantly come and trade with me. And Henry and I became friends.

But Henry was kind of like my only magic friend, the only person that I could play magic with that I really knew. I mean, I went to my local game store and I wasn't even my local game store.

I went to a game store that was a bit far away to play like once a month and I met people there that every time I went was often there. So I slowly was making friends there, I guess.

But Henry was a real sort of someone I would see on a regular basis that played magic. So anyway, I heard rumor of this thing going down in Costa Mesa. And so I decided

I had to go. Like I said, it was a little bit of a drive, but I was just itching for magic. Itching for places to play. I think there had been one convention that was like a magic convention and I don't know, like 50 people showed up, you know, it was a very small turnout, but that was so exciting to me because I got to sit and talk about magic and play magic. And, and that was, and I just, I wanted to have that, that I could do once a week. Um, so anyway,

I drove down to Costa Mesa, um, and I adored it. I loved it. Um, you know, the Costa Mesa Women's Club really became kind of the center of sort of serious, the magic community of Los Angeles. Oh, another thing I really want to explain is, back in the day, um, Wizards, for example, wasn't sharing deck lists at the time, and um, really, like, your community was kind of, and your metagame was built around the community you played in. So, for example, Los Angeles had

a very different metagame than, say, um, San Francisco. In fact, there's a real quick funny story. Um, so my friends that I made down in LA, oh, and I should stress that, um, one of the cool things about, sort of, going every week is, I was meeting down in LA, oh, and I should stress that one of the cool things about sort of going every week is I was meeting, I mean,

a lot of people that defined the early Magic scene, Frank Gilson, Myra Bina, Mark Chalice, Truck Bui, John Yoo, Henry Stern, me, like a lot of the people that I became friends with really became a lot of the dominant early players of the LA Magic. I'm sure I forgot some names, but anyway, a lot of the dominant early players of the LA Magic. I'm sure I forgot some names.

But anyway, a bunch of us were... There was a tournament up in San Francisco, and the prize was like an unlimited set or something. And so we all drove up, and one of the things is I had heard rumors that up north there's a card in Legends, because this must have been after Legends came out, so this is sometime in Legends, because this must have been after Legends came out, so this is sometime in 94,

called Moat. And in Los Angeles, nobody played Moat. But in San Francisco, I heard they really like Moat. So I brought a whole bunch of Moats up. I traded for a bunch of Moats so I could trade Moats when I went up to San Francisco. Because up there, I would later learn, Brian Weissman had introduced the deck, which was really this first

early white-blue control deck. And moat was a big part of it, so everybody was playing it up there, and so moat was very valuable, you know. But that's one of the ways early magic functioned, is the metagame in Los Angeles at the time was much faster, and the metagame in San Francisco was slower. Just, there were different things going on. And if you look in the early histories of Magic, one of the cool things about it is that each city kind of had somebody. Sometimes it was a game store, sometimes it wasn't.

In New York, for example, it was Grey Matter, which would later become Neutral Ground. They were running things. I know Your Move Games in Boston was doing stuff. There was a couple stores up in San Francisco. Really what happened was somebody sort of took it on themselves

to realize that there was this hunger, if you will, for Magic play and started building something there. The Costa Mesa Women's Club really was that in Los Angeles. And it was really neat. I would go every Saturday. I would drive every Saturday, every Saturday.

Now, at the Costa Mesa Women's Center, they would play various things. Now, constructed, so, Magic, for a long time, there was one constructed format known as Magic. Like, just, you played with the cards. Pretty early

on, in early 94, Wizards sort of started laying down some constructed rules and like the four of the four of rule officially took place

although a lot of people were doing it casually before that and then at some point I think in 95 they introduced what's called

well they introduced standard at the time what they did is magic was just magic and then they said okay now there's two kinds of Magic. There's Type 1 and Type 2. And Type 1

is what we now know as Vintage. And Type 2 is what we now know as Standard. And Type 1 was like, okay, Magic, the format you already knew. And Type 2 was only the last two years worth of cards. And people were like, what? Like, there's cards you couldn't play anymore in the format. And that was very radical.

And it's funny, like, whenever Wizards announced something new, I wasn't part of Wizards at the time this happened, like, everyone went wild. Like, what do you mean I can't play my cards? Like, well, then play the other format. You can play all your cards. But anyway, there was some constructed formats. And one of the things that the Customized Wisdom Club did

is they weren't restricted to what existed. You know what I'm saying? They would make up formats at times, and they were like, we're gonna play a constructed event where you can only have one of every card, or you can only play these sets or whatever. But anyway, there were a lot of constructed formats, and I was

known for, I was at Johnny, so I would build strange decks that just won in strange ways. And my friends loved borrowing my decks from me to play in tournaments because they were fun to play. Some of them were like, don't even tell me how it wins. You know, they'd play and try to figure out as they're playing

how the deck would win. My decks won in really weird and strange ways. But anyway, there was constructed. There was sealed. There were... One of the main ways to play limited back in the day, really before the Pro Tour started, was sealed play. You just open up, you know, some number

packs, build a deck. But anyway, Scott and friends had come up with a brand new format. What they called Grandmaster. So to understand Grandmaster, first let me explain something that some of you might not know. When Magic first came out, there were booster packs, but there were also what was known as starter decks.

Starter decks were 60 cards. I think originally they had two rares in them. Later we get three rares in them. They have a bunch of uncommons, a bunch of commons, and land. And the idea was that if you got a starter deck, you technically could play the starter deck. I mean, it was not the most organized or balanced thing, and what lands you had versus what color spells you had weren't always lining up wonderfully.

But anyway, the idea was that you could... Like, the Booster Facts at the time didn't have land in them. They were supplementing, but a starter deck is what you started with, and that's where you got your land. And, you know, if you bought a starter deck or two, it really gave you enough to maybe start playing. So the idea of Grandmaster was you took a starter deck.

Grandmasters usually had eight people in them, but we did, there were sometimes 16, 32, I think there was once a 64, it was a giant big event, but normally on a normal Saturday, they do an eight person, eight or 16, whatever they could get, but normally just an eight.

And the way it works is, okay, you open up your starter deck, you have 60 cards. You then got to thin it down to 40 cards. And so the idea was that you could choose what you wanted. I mean, you had the lands you had. So like sometimes that would kind of dictate what you could play. Like sometimes maybe you had a lot of a certain color, but you didn't have a land to support it. So anyway, you would make a 40 card deck. Then you would sit down and you would play. Like, sometimes maybe you had a lot of a certain color, but you didn't have a land to support it. So anyway, you would make a 40-card deck. Then you would sit down

and you would play your opponent. And then, the winner of that match got the cards of the other player. You see, the prize for a mini-master was all the cards. Because every time you won, you got the cards from the loser. And then, you would rebuild

your deck for the semifinals. And I think you then had to go to 60 cards. And then you would play again, and the winner got the loser's cards. And obviously, you had two decks. Now they had two decks. And then you would win, and you'd usually go to the finals.

And then you would have a 60-card deck made of the four decks you had won, or had. I guess you had the first one and won three. And then you'd play against your opponent. And the winner would get all the cards of a loser. Anyway, that was called Grandmaster. It was played every Saturday.

It was my favorite format. I loved Grandmaster. Grandmaster was just really exciting. In fact, I remember there was a pay phone. This was before cell phones were a thing. There was a pay phone in the Costa Mesa Women's Club. And I would call

Scott on it, and say, hey Scott, I'm coming down, save me a slot, because the Grandmaster was always at a certain time, and I'm like, you know, I didn't want it to fill up, because often it was eight person, and once they had eight people, they'd stop. And so I'd call and reserve a spot, because I didn't want to miss out, because I always

would come down, and I loved playing the Grandmaster. So anyway, one week, there are starter decks. There's no starter decks. And so Henry Stern and I come up with this idea of, okay, we'll just play with, we'll get the equivalent in booster packs. So instead of getting a starter deck, we're like, okay, we'll get three booster packs and 15 land. We'll make the equivalent

of a starter deck. And then, after that, we wanted to do that again because we had a lot of fun, but they didn't have that many booster packs. And so Henry and I say, okay, what if this time instead of playing with three booster packs, we play with one

booster pack. We take one booster pack, add them to lands, and all you're playing is the booster pack. And we called it Mini-Master because it's a mini version of Grandmaster. If you ever wonder where the name Mini-Master comes from, it's because it's a mini version of Grandmaster.

Now, the original version of Mini-Master, you played the Grandmaster rules, which is, you played against your opponent, then you got their card. It played just like Grandmaster. So the original Mini played against your opponent, then you got their cards. It played just like Grandmaster. So the original Mini Master, it kind of changed over time to just be the format where you take the cards and you play with them.

I think when we first started it, you did look at the packs because you were trying to figure out what you were doing. But later on, what we found was it was a lot of fun not to look at the packs. And that started becoming the thing where game one, you wouldn't look at the pack. And usually we played a match two out of three. So all the Grandmaster mini-matches were two out of three.

Um, so the idea was game one, you wouldn't look. And then game two and game three, you could look for game two and game three. Um, but anyway, it's funny that I'm very, I'm very proud of the mini-master format. Um, I mean, I, I've invented a few formats in my day. Like, for example, when I used to do the Magic Invitational, I'd often make up new formats. And, like, Rotisserie Draft, for example,

is one of mine, where you have a whole set, and you put the whole set out, and then you draft it. We did that for, like, I think that was for Cape Town, the Invitational Cape Town. Anyway, it is really neat how this particular format, like, the creation of the format was necessity,

was we couldn't do what we wanted to do, but we were magic players and we wanted to play, and we wanted to play in the way we liked to play, and so we just adapted. But anyway, it's gone on to be, like I said, it's kind of funny that, I mean, Henry and I made that in, my thought is 94, maybe early 95, but like, I mean, long long ago, right? You know, 25 plus

years ago, and it's still played! You know, it's still, it's still, I get a kick when I see people playing it, because it just pulls me back, and that one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast was... I really have fond memories from the early days of Magic. Like I said, I mean,

I was a Magic player before I was a Magic designer. I would go... In 94, I started freelancing, writing for The Duelist. And then that led to other freelancing opportunities with Wizards. And then eventually I got hired in October. I started work in October of 1995, becoming an R&D member.

But before that, so there were two years before I worked for Wizards where I got to be a player. And I got to be part of, I mean, not that I'm not part of the Magic community working at Wizards, but I got to be on the player side of things, and like, one of the things that really drew me in, one of the, like, I had planned to be a television writer in Los Angeles, and instead I made a major change

to become a game designer up in Seattle. And one of the reasons I did that, I mean, A, I did love, I mean, I enjoyed games, I'd been an amateur game designer up to that point. So it was something I loved. I loved games. But I think the thing that really tipped me over the edge, the thing that really made me sort of decide to do it was how much I recognized what the community of Magic was.

I loved going to the Costa Mesa Women's Club every Saturday. I really adored the interaction, the people, and just seeing what magic could do and how it could shape and affect people's lives and seeing the kind of closeness. You know, I really bonded with a lot of people. I think that was the thing that sort of pushed me

over the edge that said, hey, magic is something really special. I mean, I always appreciate it as a game. It's an amazing game, my favorite game. But I think my love of the community was the thing that really... Because my life was in LA. I was going to be a writer. And, you know, I really had to make this big decision

to go a different path and do something different. And I think that my love of the Magic community, as well as my love of the game, really were the things that pushed me to say, you know what? I'm going to completely change what my life is going to be because I see something in this. I see something in magic. And I think a lot of that came from my weekly visit to the Costa Mesa Women's Club, that that early magic scene really lighted a fire in me that really made me really, really fall hard for magic in a way that made me willing to

change my life and take a path of becoming part of magic. So I think there's a good chance if the Costa Mesa Women's Club never existed that I wouldn't be where I am today, that I wouldn't be working wizards. You know, the ripple effect that I think that Scott and friends started all these years ago has led to a lot of things, because I obviously have been very instrumental in making a lot of things in Magic happen. So through that, you know, it's kind of fun to look at that, like, Scott and friends start something long ago, and that

trickles into a whole bunch of stuff now. And so anyway, mostly today's podcast was, I wanted you to get a sense of, A, I wanted to teach you a new format, which is really fun, so if you haven't played Mini-Metric, go play it. But B, part of the point of this I wanted to teach you a new format, which is really fun, so if you haven't played Mini-Magic, go play it. But B, part of the point of this podcast is to introduce you to things

you might not know, and the early Magic scene, and I want to talk from experience, my early Magic scene was in Los Angeles, is a really wondrous time, and it's really fun watching Magic kind of find itself, and things that are now for granted, things that, you know, the idea that I can just go to an event and play all

day long, that wasn't always a thing and watching Magic sort of make that a thing and being part of that thing and being part of that community really, really was one of the things that so ingratiated me with the game that made me realize how much Magic was capable of, not just as a game

but as a lifestyle, as a community, as something that was bigger. Bigger than just the pack, as they say. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed the story today and learned about a new format if you haven't already played. I'm sure some of you have already played Mini-Masters. But if you're not, go play it.

It's super fun. It's lots of fun. But anyway, I can 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. Thanks for listening today. I'll see you next time.