Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #898: 2017

Episode Date: January 15, 2022

In this podcast, I talk about the year of Magic in 2017.

I'm not pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for other Drive to Work Coronavirus Edition. Okay, so today I've done a series of podcasts where I've gone through all the various magic years and recapped each year. So I'm up to 2017. So today I'm going to talk all about everything or most of the things, the major magic things that happened in 2017. But there's a lot to get to, so let's get going. Okay, first, on January 20th, Aether Revolt gets released. It was lead designed by Mark Gottlieb, lead developed by Ben Hayes. Its codename was Stock. It had 184 cards, 70 commons, 60 uncommons, 42 rares, and 12 mythic rares.

It introduced the improvised mechanic, where, kind of like Convoke, you could tap artifacts to pay for these spells, and a mechanic called Revolt, that cared if a permit you control left the battlefield. It also made use of... Either Revolt was the small expansion to Kaladesh, so it made use of most of the things from Kaladesh.

But anyway, it was a small set and it came out at the beginning of the year. Quickly, and very soon after, February 3rd through the 5th, in Dublin, Ireland, was Pro Tour Ether Revolt. All the Pro Tours this year used Standard and Booster Draft.

So I'm not going to mention that for all of them, but all of them did. At that event, Lucas Esper Berhold of Brazil defeats Marcio Carvalho of Portugal. So at the time, for those who remember, the Pro Tours were tied to the releases

of the event. So each Pro Tour, like, long ago, Pro Tours were named after the city they were held in. And then we switched over where Pro Tours were held after the set that had come out. So it was tied to Aether Revolt. So this was Pro Tour Aether Revolt. Then on March 5th was the Magic Online Championship, won by Josh Utterladen from the United States. We'll hear his name

later in this year. It's a good year for Josh. Okay, on March 17th, Modern Masters 2017 is released. So we had done the first Modern Masters a few years before, and then we had done a second Modern Masters, and then we had done an Eternal Masters. So this was the fourth Master set and the third Modern Master set.

For those that might not remember what Modern Master was, they were all repeat sets with cards that were legal in Modern. But it was designed to be a fun draft environment, and it was a means by which people could get cards for Modern. So it allowed us to reprint a lot of different cards.

Anyway, Modern Masters had been... This is the period of time where we put out a lot of Masters sets There was a couple years where we pumped out a lot of Masters In fact, this set, 2017, has two Masters sets in it I'll get to the second Masters set But anyway, it was a fun draft environment that you could draft And it had lots of reprints of things for Modern

Next up, Duel Decks Mind vs. Might This came out on March 31st So for those that remember Duel Decks Duel Decks were vs. Might. This came out on March 31st. So for those that remember Duel Decks, Duel Decks were two different decks, pre-made decks, that had a theme and they were meant to play against each other. The theme of this one was Mages vs. Warriors. So it was a blue-red spell deck versus a red-green sort of brawn deck. So one was more spell-oriented and one was more creature-oriented.

And the idea is it was just sort of a brawn deck. So one was more spell-oriented and one was more creature-oriented. And the idea is, it was just sort of, one of the things that duel decks like to do is sort of just find different conflicts. So this is a higher level conflict, you know, the idea of sort of magic versus brawn. Although obviously all magic spells because it's magic.

Okay, next on April 28th was Amonkhet. So that was led by Ethan and I. We co-led the design. I led the first half, and he led the second half. And then Dave Humphries led the development of that set. By the way, this is back when we had design and development. We hadn't yet changed over to the newer system. Although, Vision Design will be coming up, not this year, not 2017,

but it is coming up in the not-too-distant future. Well, sorry, at least as stuff we've announced. I mean, we were two years ahead, so we were doing it by this point. But as far as sets that got released, this set still was designed under the design development process. So this was nicknamed Barrel. So when we first introduced Kaladesh, we didn't tell people that it was too, like, a large, small, large, small. So we introduced it as Lock, Stock, and Barrel.

And so we then ended up making, well, we get to, we get to, our devastation, I'll explain that. But anyway, this was Barrel, because we didn't let you know that it was two separate sets. So we just showed you,

we told you the names of the first three sets that sounded like they all went together. So Amiket had 269 cards, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares, 20 lands. That mix was what we, for many, many years, was... For a bunch of years, I guess 2017. But for a good chunk of years, that was the size of our large sets. So it introduced a bunch of years, I guess 2017. But for a good chunk of years, that was the size of our large sets. So it introduced a bunch of things. The three named mechanics introduced was Exert, which is a mechanic where you could spend,

you could choose to not untap the creature. Usually it was on creatures, and that allowed you to gain an ability. But the cost was the creature wouldn't untap on your next turn. We had Embalm, which were creatures that, when they went to your graveyard, you could cast them out of your graveyard and they would come back as a token, but as a zombie.

They would be sort of mummies, if you will. And then Aftermath were kind of like split cards, except you could only cast the first one from your hand and only cast the second one from your graveyard. So it's kind of a cross between split cards and flashback. The set also had a minus one, minus one counter theme. We introduced brick counters.

There were trials. The real quick flavor of it was, in Kaladesh, we had started the previous year, we'd started what we called the Bolas arc, which was a three-year... We didn't tell you how long it was at the time, but it was a three-year storyline where the Gatewatch was up against Nicole Bolas.

And so they had gone to Kaladesh. They had had a run-in. Who did they have a run-in with? I'm blanking on his name. The guy with the metal arm. It'll come to me. They basically went there. There was shenanigans going on.

They figured out that Bolas was behind the shenanigans. So they ended up coming to Amonkhet because they wanted to put this to rest because they learned that Bolas was... They believed he was on Amonkhet. So when they got there, they were a little surprised. So it turned out

there was a civilization there that thought of Nicole Bolas as a god. And they were very happy and content with where they were. But the more that the Gatewatch, and the Gatewatch at this point was Jace and Gideon and Liliana and Chandra and Nyssa. Uh,

I think Ajani had joined in Caledon, but he, he refused to come with them. He thought it was dumb for them to go to Amonkhet. He thought that they needed a better plan. Uh, they should have listened to Ajani. Uh, anyway, um, they get there to find out that it's this world built on these trials where people basically make themselves as good as they can, but then go on these trials where people basically make themselves as good as they can but then go on these tests where they get killed and it seems very weird to the Gatewatch, but the people, that's the world that they know

and so, um, but they have to investigate and they learn there's shenanigans going on behind the scenes that Bolas is involved in. Um, so, also with Amonkhet, there was, we at the time did this thing called

Masterpieces, which was similar. We later would do Booster Fun. The big difference was Masterpiece showed up in a much smaller percentage. Basically what we do

is we took a bunch of cards that were a little more vicious to have sort of a Bolas feel to them. And we gave them this, we changed the cards so it looked like they were in hieroglyphics. It turns out that if you look really closely, it was English, but it was hard

to read that it was English. Um, it was supposed to be something that you would discover later. We wanted you to look at it and think it wasn't in English, and later it turned out, oh, it secretly is in English. Uh, but it just ended up being cards that were hard to read. Um, they look really cool, but they are not super functional.

It's hard to tell what the cards are. But anyway, Amonkhet Innovations came out in Amonkhet as part of the Masterpiece. Also, at the same time we put out Amonkhet, we put out the Deck Builder's Toolkit, the Amonkhet Edition. That was part of what we used to do to help new players learn how to play. And we'd give you a whole bunch of cards, and you could build some themes, um, and then we put it out with the large sets at the time. Um, okay, so Pro Tour Amiket was May

12th through the 14th in Nashville, Tennessee, um, in the U.S. Uh, Gary Thompson of the U.S.A. defeats Yuya Watanabe, two-time Player of the Year from Japan, um, in a dramatic final. And

what else to say about that? Next up, June 9th, we put out Commander Anthology. So what had happened was a couple years before, three or four years before, we had put out the very first, I think four years before, we had put out the very first Commander

decks. And it turned out the very first Commander decks. And it turned out to be a big smash. Like, originally we had done it, we had this innovation slot. We had done it as the innovation slot for that year. It went over so well that it immediately became its own product line. And we started doing Commander set every year. Commander Anthology took one deck of each of,

I guess this must have been the fifth year, because it took one deck from each of the previous four years and sold it together as a product you could buy. So it was very popular. Okay, next up, on June 12th, I wrote an article in Making Magic called Metamorphosis 2.0. So I had written an article called Metamorphosis a couple years before, talking about the change from the traditional block system, which was large, small, small, core set,

to a system that we called the two-in-two system, which was large, small, large, small, and the core sets had gone away. Well, we were changing things again to what I then referred to as the three-in-one model, which was three large sets that could be on their own worlds. They could be in the same world, but we introduced the idea that each set could be on their own worlds. They could be in the same world, but we introduced the idea that each set could be on its own world, that no more small expansion, every set would be a large expansion, and that the core set was coming back. So this was me announcing that. It was, in general, my Metamorphs articles, my articles where I announce big things usually go over pretty well,

and people like hearing the thoughts behind this. So that article obviously went pretty well. Okay, next, on June 16th, Arch Enemy Nicole Bullis. Okay, so we had done Arch Enemy many years before as one of our innovative product lines. one of our innovative product lines. So the idea is that one person gets to play the Arch Enemy, and they have these giant cards that give them special abilities. And the idea is it powers them up so that one player can play against multiple players.

So previously in Arch Enemy, we just sold Arch Enemy packs, and you could... I think we made Arch Enemy decks, and you could buy the decks and then play against the Arch Enemy. And then each deck came with different Arch Enemy cards. I think that's how we did it originally. Anyway, this time it was one product. You got one Arch Enemy deck for Bolas, and then... I forget whether it was three or four. You got a...

Basically, you got decks for some members of the Gatecrash. And anyway, so it was just us bringing back Arch Enemy. We had not printed Arch Enemy since we had done the original thing, and it's us bringing Arch Enemy back. Anyway, so one of the things we had started doing was theming some of our products to the larger line. So, for example, this was one of the products assigned to Arch— it's not Arch Enemy—assigned to Amonkhet.

And so this was—it came out a little bit after Amonkhet, but it was thematically tied to Amonkhet, because in the Amonkhet storyline, Amonkhet slash Our Devastation storyline, they end up fighting Bolas. And so this was us sort of showing that fight. So for those who don't know the story, I guess a real quick recap.

The Gate... I say not Gatecrash. Gatewatch. The Gatewatch... I said Gatecrash. The Gatewatch goes to Amonkhet to try to stop Bolas because they have learned in Kaladesh

that Bolas is up to something. They think they're going to go and crush him. They've been very successful the last couple missions, and they get horribly defeated by Bolas. He just crushes them. And what we thought might be the end of the story is just the end of Act 1. So one of the

things we had fun with is we didn't tell the audience how long the story was, and so the previous year's story had been a year arc. And so we're like, okay, this looks like we're setting up another story where we recap the end of the year. And we didn't. And the story went on a little longer. So Bolas was a little more dangerous than people realized. In Arch Enemy, we thought it was a really good way to let people sort of experience that moment of the Gatewatch fighting Nicole Bolas.

Okay, then, in July 14th, Hour of Devastation came out. So, lead designed by Sean Main, lead developed by Ian Duke. So, its codename was Lass. So, what happened was, we had Lock, Stock, and Barrel, and so we ended up tying this over the Barrel of Lass. So, we tied this to Barrel since it was

too small. It was a small set to go with the large set. It had 199 cards, 70 commons, 60 uncommons, 42 rares and 12 mythic rares with 15 lands. Normally small sets don't have basic lands, but we did the special thing where we did these alt art. In Amonkhet, we've done these full art lands that showed Amonkhet with like boluses horns. And then we redid them and some of them showed the devastation.

So what happens in our devastation is Bolas leads an attack onto Amonkhet and destroys Amonkhet. And then we have a big fight between the Gatewatch and Bolas. Bolas crushes them and we learn that Amonkhet, the master

plan for Amonkhet was he was, Bolas was building an army of, what he called the Eternals, which was this zombie army that he was using as tests to build the ultimate fittest army possible. And he had built this Why? Why would he need a zombie

army? Well, we're not going to find that out in 2017. But it will. They would later come. I guess in 2019. Well, we're not going to find that out in 2017, but it will. They would later come. They, I guess in 2019. Eventually, there is a big event that culminates in the War of the Spark, and they play a role there. There were two new mechanics in the set, or one adapter mechanic, one new mechanic. So Eternal Eyes was an evolved version of Embalm. It worked like Embalm, but instead of them coming back at whatever their power toughness was. So like when you did Embalm. It worked like Embalm, but instead of them coming back at whatever their power toughness

was. So, like, when you did Embalm, it was literally exactly a token that was a copy of the creature. But Eternal Eyes, they always turned to a 4-4. And the cards were designed such that you had a more upgraded effect. It cared about their power. So the cards became more powerful when you brought them back.

And then it had the Afflict mechanic. So the Afflict mechanic was a mechanic where it had a number on it that if you blocked the creature, you would lose life, whatever the afflict number was, even if you blocked them. So it was trampoline sort of feel.

And sometimes the afflict number could be bigger or smaller, but it just meant even if you blocked them, you're still going to get some amount of damage. So you kind of couldn't stop afflict creatures dealing a certain amount of damage. So you kind of couldn't stop a Flick creature dealing a certain amount of damage. Interesting, a little side story real quick. We originally designed a Flick thinking that this would be the mechanic. Like, we wanted to introduce the Eternals and then have a mechanic

and then bring back the mechanic in War of the Spark. We ended up not being that happy with the Flick. All said and done, it ended up doing a different mechanic. We did the amass mechanic instead to show the Eternals. So we ended up, our master plan didn't quite work out, but that was the plan at the time. And then, let's see, in July 28th through the 30th, there was Pro Tour Hour of Devastation in Kyoto, Japan.

So Paulo Vitor D'o de Rosa of Brazil defeats Sam Pardee of the US. So, Paulo, for those who don't know, is one of the best Magic players of all time. He's won numerous Pro Tours. He's won the World Championship. Anyway, this is also a good year for

Paulo, as we will see. Next, on August 25th, we released commander 2017 uh so as i talked about a little earlier uh commander become a product line we've done every year uh so every year we put out decks so this year was four decks uh they were focused on a creature type so we had a five color dragon deck a green white cat deck a red white black vampire deck and a green-white cat deck, a red-white-black vampire deck, and a blue-black-red wizard deck. And it introduced the eminence mechanic, which granted an ability

while the commander's in play or in the command zone. But anyway, as always, the commander decks were quite popular. Okay, then in September, September 8th through the 10th, in Providence, Rhode Island, was Hazcon. So far, the only ever HazCon.

So HazCon, Haz stands for Hasbro. So Hasbro decided to do, they wanted to do their own convention based on all their properties, of which Magic is one of them, because Wizard of the Coast is owned by Hasbro, for those that might not know that. Anyway, they said they really would like me to attend, so I did. And I was theirs. It was a really fun event. It was one of those things, I did a whole podcast, if you want to hear me talk about this.

I did a whole podcast on this event. But going into it, there was a lot of concerns. They hadn't run one before. And so, you know, the first time you're ever doing something, there's a lot of wrinkles to work out. I know we had, our people that had done our convention stuff worked with them. Anyway, it ended up being a wonderful event. From a magic perspective, the two key things that happened there, one is there were some Hazcon promos.

It's the first time people saw the, what's it called, the Sword of Dungeon Dragons, which we'll talk about in a second as well, or at least the product that comes out in a second. And then there also was a Nerf card and there was a Transformers card. And the Transformers card actually, in fact, you had two sides to it. Anyway, so you could buy those promos,

which were only at that event. They were all silver bordered. And there also was a blind pre-release of Iconic Masters that would come out later in the year. So what I mean by blind pre-release was you got to play with Iconic Masters knowing nothing about the set. So Iconic Masters was another Masters set.

It was an all-reprint set, but had a fun draft environment. And anyway, it's not often you can sit down at an event, open up cards, and have no idea, literally zero idea what's in the packs. It is hard these days to do a blind pre-release because we let people know the cards before a normal pre-release. So normal pre-releases aren't blind.

You know what the cards are. But this, we could do one. So it was kind of a very special event, and I played in a couple of them. And they were a lot of fun. Okay, next up. September 19th, Ixalan comes out. So the design was led by me and Cam.

We co-led the design, and Sam Stoddard led the development. Its codename was Ham. So we started doing two set blocks in which we were naming things after food. So I think this is ham and eggs. So this was our breakfast. Anyway, and there were,

that naming thing would get messed up with time because we switched things over. But anyway, so Ixalan had 279 cards, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares, and 20 lands. Once again, the sort of staple large-sized set

at the time. The set had four factions. The Sun Empire, which was red, green, and white that features dinosaurs. It was a tribal theme. The Brazen Coalition, which was blue, black, red, which featured pirates. The River Heralds, which was green and blue, featuring merfolk. And the Legion of Dus Coalition, which was blue, black, red, which featured pirates. The River Heralds, which was green and blue, featuring merfolk. And the Legion of Dusk, which was white, black, featuring vampires.

And so it was based upon a lot of Mesoamerican influences, and it introduced a couple mechanics, had enrage, that triggered when things that have enrage get targeted. It had raid, which we had brought back.

It was a mechanic we had done before, but it rewards you for having attacked. And then explore was a mechanic where you could look at the top card. Creatures that, when they came in the battlefield, looked at the top card of a library. If it was a land, it went to your hand. If not, it went back on top of your library,

but you put a plus one, plus one counter on the creature. Also, while this is not a new mechanic, there were, in this is not a new mechanic, there were, in this set, lands that transformed. So you could, you had cards that transformed

into lands, the lands on the backside. But there were powerful lands, the things that transformed into the lands, playing into the exploration aspect of it.

We also, treasure counters, I think got introduced here, have become pretty deciduous at this point, but this is the set that introduced treasure counters. And there were other vehicles and stuff like that. There were a lot of boats and things.

Okay. Then, at the same time that that came out, on September 29th. Or, sorry, a week later, or ten days later, on September 29th, the Deck Builder's Toolkit came out. So, just as we had a Deck Builder's Toolkit for Amonkhet, we also had one for Ixalan. Okay, then in October 6th through the 8th in Boston, Massachusetts, here in the USA, was the World Championship, the 2017 World Championship.

So in it, Billy Jensen, William Billy Jensen of the United States, defeats Javier Dominguez of Spain to become the World Champion. So Billy had played forever, really good, one of the best players to ever play, and he finally managed to become the world champion. He had won a Pro Tour,

but this was his first chance winning a world championship. Also, I believe, this is more up to date, but Billy is coming to work at Wizards. Sorry, I've not actually had a chance to interact with him as an employee yet, but I will soon. So I know he's coming to work at Wizards. Sorry, I've not actually had a chance to interact with him as an employee yet, but I will soon. So I know he's coming to work at Wizards.

Okay, next up, Pro Tour Ixalan with November 3rd through the 5th in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the U.S. Seth Manfield, former world champion Seth Manfield of the U.S.,

defeats Pascal Maynard of Canada. Also at this event, there was a Hall of Fame introduction. So Josh Utterladen of the United States and Martin Huza of the Czech Republic I think it's Huza. I said Huza of the Czech Republic got inducted into the Hall of Fame. Very exciting. Then on November 10th

was dual decks, merfolk versus goblins. So it was a blue merfolk deck versus a red goblin deck. Then, on November 10th, was Dual Decks, Merfolk vs. Goblins. So, it was a blue Merfolk deck versus a red Goblin deck. Obviously, it was a tribal theme, and so it leaned heavily into tribal Merfolk vs. tribal Goblins. Okay, on November 17th, Iconic Masters gets released. So, once again, that was a set that was a blind pre-release at HazCon, but the set finally gets released for everybody else, because not everybody came to HasCon on November 17th. Then on November 24th,

November, by the way, a lot of stuff got out. There was the final From the Vault, From the Vault Transform. So it's 15 double-faced cards. One of the things we had found with From the Vault is they were really cannibalizing a lot of other products, like Masters products and other reprint products that we wanted to do. And so what we found was double-faced cards are very hard to do in normal supplemental products. So we did 15 double-faced cards here.

But this would be the sun setting, as we say, of the From the Vault, the last From the Vault product. And we would transform into some other leg products to fill a similar void. Also November 24th, Explorers of Ixalan came out, which was a board game which had let you play... Magic was a component of the game, but it was a board game in which Magic played... The cards from the set could play a role.

Okay, then on December 1st of the 3rd, in Nice, France, was the 2017 Magic World Cup, where Japan defeats Poland. So at the time, we had separated out the individual world championship from the team world championship to make the team,

the Magic World Cup is what it was called. Or sorry, the World Magic Cup. Sorry, I said it correctly. The World Magic Cup. And that was held there, and Japan was the winning team. Okay, and then for 2017,

the player of the year was Paulo. Paulo Vitor D'Amadoroso from Brazil became the player of the year. And then the rookie of the year was Ben Hall from Canada. Okay, there was one last event in 2017,

but I've saved the best event for the last. So on December 8th was Unstable, the third unset. Many, many years in the making. I think like 13 years. There was a 13-year gap between Unhinged and Unstable, and I believe we were working on Unstable for like seven years. It took a long time to come out. So there were 268

cards, I'll put an asterisk on that, I'll explain that in a second, 102 commons, 90 uncommons, 61 rares, 15 mythic rares, and 5 lands. The reason there's an asterisk is there were a bunch of variables, so a bunch of different cards. Some variables had art variables, some had rules text variables, some had name variables, some had flavor text variables, some had a combination of those.

So there were 268 cards that were unique, but there were variances of some of those cards. And like I said, some of those cards had rules variances, so there are more than 268 mechanical cards. But I think we said 268-ish when we released it. Okay, so Unstable introduced contraptions. So what had happened was, in a set called Future Sight, we'd made a card called Steamflugger Boss. Oh, by the way,

because my memory's not great, Tezzeret, earlier in the podcast, I was trying to remember who in Kaladesh, who the planeswalker, who the bad guy was. It was Tezzeret. For some reason, I cannot remember Tezzeret's name, but before we end it,

I wanted to say that I do remember it. Anyway, Steamflugger Boss was in Future Sight and it referenced the assembling of contraptions, which was something

that we just made as a joke. We had no intent to ever do. Then Aaron wrote an article where he admitted we had no intent to ever do it, which meant the audience said, no, you must do it. And so I spent years trying to find a place

to do contraptions. And one of the things I realized was that in order to kind of do them in the way that seemed to be what they wanted to be, I needed to stretch a little more than sort of Black Border would let me. So by going into an unset, I was able to make an extra deck of contraptions.

And so the idea was when you built it, you had a separate deck of contraptions and you would assemble them from that deck and then there were like three zones you would build in and then every turn it would change, sprockets I think they were called, it would change between the sprockets. And so essentially every third turn,

each sprocket would go off and you could sort of program where you put things. But anyway, contraptions came out. We also introduced host augment, which is a mechanic where hosts were all creatures that had entered the battlefield effect, and then you could augment where cards that you could sort of stitch onto them

to make a larger creature, and it changed the right side of them. And so it changed its... Sorry, it changed the left side, not the right side, changed the left side of them. So instead of having an enter the battlefield effect, it gave them a different, the effect had a different

trigger. And so you could, you can combine sort of triggers and effects. And there are all sorts of combinations you can do in lots of different hosts and augments. It also introduced something we called outside assistance, which wasn't named, but where you go outside the game and ask people whether they're high-fiving you or answering

questions or doing all sorts of things or maybe making decisions in the game for you. We had Outside Assistance. It also introduced, not introduced, sorry. It also brought back stuff like die rolling and things that at the time were very un-things. Later on in future years, other sets were introduced

stuff like die rolling into Black Porter Magic. The other big thing about Unstable was it was a faction set. So there were five factions built into it. They were ally color factions

because we really wanted to get steam floggers and they ended up being red-green. White-blue had our cyborgs. Blue-black had our villains. I'm just saying, blue-black had our spies. Black-red had our villains. Red-green had our cyborgs. Blue-Black had our villains. I'm just saying, Blue-Black had our spies. Black-Red had our villains. Red-Green had our goblins.

And Green-White had a race of creatures that like to stitch all sorts of animals together. And so it was lots of different animals. It was the people who kind of were the number one host augment tribe. kind of were the number one host augment tribe. Anyway, that, my friends, in 30 minutes is everything that happened in 2017. Whew! It was, a lot happened, but luckily I was able to talk all about it in 30 minutes.

So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed hearing all about this. There were a lot of funs. Obviously, the highlight for me in 2017 was Unstable, because I wanted that to come out forever and worked on it a long time. But we had a lot of fun sets. I really think Amonkhet was a lot of fun, and Ixalan was fun. Anyway, there were a lot of cool worlds we built that year. I think both Amonkhet and Ixalan were very, very cool worlds.

I mean, looking back on it, there are some things I would fix up such about Ixalan. But anyway, it was a fun year. Lots of Pro Tours, Metamorphosis 2.0, Commander Dex, Hazcon. Anyway, it was a chock-full year full of lots of fun things. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed

our jaunt through 2017. But I can see my desk. So we all know what that means. And this is the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.