Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #101 - Torment, Part 3

Episode Date: February 28, 2014

Mark continues with the third part of the Torment discussion.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, last we left, I was talking about Torment, and I think I ended up at M. So, let's see, where were we? Okay. I left off with Mind Sludge, which was part of our black theme to get you to play a lot of black. So we had a bunch of a mini theme that said, hey, for every swamp you have,

good things happen for you. Or bad things happen for your opponent, in all instances. So next in line is Morning Tide. So, first off, I find it entertaining that there's a small subset of cards that have names of other magic sets. So, Morning Tide was not in the set Morning Tide, but it was in the set Torment. I guess you did that trivia one day. Like, what set had visions in it?

Anyway, one of these days, maybe I'll do a trivia podcast. I keep thinking maybe that trivia one day. Like, what's that had visions in it? Anyway. One of these days, maybe I'll do a trivia podcast. I keep thinking maybe that might be fun. Anyway. Okay. Morning Tide is a sorcery that costs one and a white. And it's remove all cards in the graveyard from the game. Exile all cards in graveyards. We didn't use exile all the time.

But it was exile. So the interesting thing about that is one of the things that we do is whenever we have a theme, we make a lot of cards that point toward that theme, and then we always want to give you a couple of hosers, meaning that because we know we're emphasizing the theme, we want to make sure that we are giving you tools to deal with people who are using that theme. Now sometimes, way back when, there was a period of time we went through where we wouldn't give you the hosers to the set that

followed it. Like, play with this, and then we'd give you hosers afterwards. We kind of got burned a couple times by that, and so now we're, and this is Torment, this is long ago, even back in the time of Torment, we started realizing that we needed to give you answers to the problems within the sets where we were giving you the threats.

So if the set's all about making use of the graveyard, okay, we needed some answer in case it got out of hand. And Morning Tide is a good example of a card in which, it's what we call a sideboard card, in the sense that it doesn't really do anything unless there's a threat that needs to be dealt with. Meaning, if the metagame isn't, you know, if the graveyard

aren't a major part of the metagame, this card is worthless and you're not going to play it. So there's a dynamic, I don't know what this is called, but if you take a fish tank and you fill it with piranha and goldfish, and the idea is there is this cycle that goes through where the piranha need to eat the goldfish to survive.

So the piranha eat the goldfish, so now there's lots of piranha and very little goldfish. And then the piranha start dying off because there's not enough goldfish to eat. Well, as the piranha start dying off, the goldfish start breeding again, and there gets to be a lot of goldfish. So you have a cycle where there's lots of goldfish

and not a lot of piranha, then lots of piranha and not a lot of goldfish. So you have a cycle where there's lots of goldfish and not a lot of piranha, then lots of piranha and not a lot of goldfish, and it sort of cycles. The sideboard cards are kind of like that. If we make a card that's all about this threat, well, if the threat becomes something serious in the metagame, then the sideboard comes in. But if enough sideboard cards come in, it kills off the threat. But without the threat,

the sideboard card doesn't have what it needs, and so it starts to go away. So, once again, it's, there's a similar cycle. Okay, next, Mortal Kombat! First off, it has the, We knew when we named this card. So one of the things about... The Mortal Kombat is part of a cycle. I should start there. I talked about this in the very first podcast in Torment. So we did an alternate win cycle

where the Chance Encounter and Battle of Wits was in the first set. And then the second set had Mortal Kombat. So the blue and red were the first set. Black was in the second set. And then the green and white one were in the third set. I did not write down their names. Chance Encounter and Battlewits are a little more famous,

so it's a little easier to remember. Test of Endurance is the white one. So all of them are named after the idea of a conflict of some kind. So, you know, it's a chance encounter. It's a battle of wits. It, you know, it's a chance to encounter. It's a battle of wits. It's Mortal Kombat. It's a test of endurance. What's the other one called?

I don't remember off the top of my head. But anyway, since we're talking about torment, Mortal Kombat costs two black black, and at the beginning of your upkeep, if you had 20 or more creature cards in your graveyard, you win. So the idea here was, I wanted to get a lot of creature cards in the graveyard. Now the funny thing is, black is really good at getting the opponent's creatures in the graveyard,

but it does have some means in a way to sack its own creatures. So the idea was, can I set up something where I need a deck with a lot of creatures, because I need to get them in my graveyard, but I need to make it happen. I need to get them into my graveyard. And like I said, when we name this, obviously we're aware, I mean, we didn't use the K in the combat, but we were aware of the expression. And, yeah, one of the things that is fun that I like about

mega cycles, so the idea of a mega cycle means that all five cards in the cycle, or the cycle doesn't need to be five cards, but all the cards in the cycle are not in the same set. And a mega cycle,

traditionally a mega cycle is spread over a block. That's how we normally do mega cycles. We did once do the omega mega cycle, which was one card per block over five blocks.

We don't do that all that often. I think we've done it once. But, so anyway, well, I guess one could argue the A-Tog was a Mega Cycle, kind of. We did five A-Togs, one in each color, although the first one happened way early and the other four happened somewhat close to each other.

So I'm not sure how to... But anyway, we like doing mega cycles. We like, you know, having like the cycles not all within one set. So that you... One of the things I find more and more is when you design a set or design a block, that a lot of the fun of the block is doing things in the first and second set that make people anticipate things coming. I talked a lot about in my communications theory how completion is important, you know,

and that part of us doing completion is sometimes it's purposely setting up patterns so we can complete them, you know. For example, if you got a blue and red card in, you know, Odyssey, and you got a black card in Torment, and you kind of know the third sets about white and green, you anticipate the finishing of the cycle. You're like, oh, I see it. I see the patterns. This is going to happen. And then people spend some time going, oh, well, what's the alt win condition for white?

And what's the alt win condition for green? You know, and that, I think it is fun that part of the job of a game designer, especially on an ongoing game like ours, is that you want to sort of create excitement for things ahead of time as well. That you want to sort of lead where you're going.

It is very fun for the audience, for the ones that care, some people don't care, but to sort of anticipate where things are going and you want to fulfill some of that. So cycles do a great job of saying, hey, we're going to do this, but how are we going to do it? Okay. Sorry.

I'm yawning. I'm tired today. But I will carry on for my podcast. Now drink some water. my podcast. Now drink some water. It's raining again today, but the traffic does not seem bad, so I do not seem to have the same traffic issues I had in the last podcast. Okay, so after Mortal Kombat, next is Mutilate. So Mutilate is two black and black. It's a sorcery. All creatures get minus one minus one for every swamp in your... that you control. So one of the questions I get all the time is

Can black do Wrath of God effects? So I mean Wrath of God is an old version Wrath of God is the alpha version of Destroy All Creatures. It was a white card. So the question is can black do mass creature destruction? And the answer is absolutely. Black is the creature killing color. It is supposed to be the best creature at just doing terror effects. But what's mass creature removal but just killing lots of creatures? So yes, black should be good at killing lots of creatures.

That doesn't mean white doesn't still get to do that. White does get board sweepers. We try to be careful not to give white and black board sweepers in the same set. But there is room. Every set does not need a white board sweeper. I do think that black board sweepers are good for the game, and I think that it's super flavorful. So yes, we do do them, and we do them on purpose,

and that's something you will see from time to time. It's something we do a little bit more in white than we do in black, because we give white the sweepers, but, you know, it is something that you will see in black, and we'll continue to do in black. Next is Nantuko Shade. Okay, so Nantuko Shade is black, black for a 2-1 creature that's a shade, which means black to get a plus one, plus one to end your turn. Shades go all the way back to alpha with Frozen Shade, the first shade.

And so anyway, it's interesting. One of the things people ask me is, why are shades black? Why is black get activated, you know, plus one, plus one until end of turn? Red gets fire breathing that pumps up its power. White gets toughness pumping, although we don't do that as much as we used to. But black gets plus one, plus one. And green gets like a root wall where it gets temporary larger bursts. And really, it kind of got grandfathered in from alpha.

That Richard made a shade, people liked the shade. There are definitely some finesses to the game that just kind of, certain things happen and sort of set things in stone. And now, like, shades are a thing. Like, if you're in black and you're pumping plus one plus one for black, or more than black, usually you're a shade. That's're in black and you're pumping plus one plus one for black, or more than black, usually you're a shade. That's kind of what black does.

I like the fact that we've carved out different activated boosting so that different colors can do it differently. It's quirky that black has the plus one plus one. It is one of those things that I think the reason that Richard liked it,

and the reason we continue it is the same thing I was talking about last time, which is that black begets black. That black definitely, like, says, hey, if you're going to play a little black, why don't you play a lot of black? And shades fit perfectly into that. The shades are sort of like, well, I'm good. But if I'm mono black, I'm better. You know, and it perfectly into that. The shades are sort of like, well, I'm good. But if I'm mono black, I'm better. You know, and it really encourages that.

And so what happened was we were trying to encourage mono black. And so the lead developer of, well, the lead developer of Torment was Henry Stern. But the head developer at the time was Randy Buehler. And so one of the things that Randy did during his sort of duration as the head developer is he tended to push cards that he knew we understood. And so part of the way that Randy wanted to make sure that we didn't end up with problem cards is that, oh, well, if we're more aggressive on cards that we

completely understand, we're less likely to end up with cards that cause problems. I think we have decided that is the wrong strategy, or we have decided that's the wrong strategy. And the reason is that we kind of want to push the new thing, and we kind of

want to push the unknown from time to time, that what's exciting about a new set is not the tried and true you've seen it already. Like, Nantuko Shade might have been the most powerful card in Torment, but it's like, but it's, nothing about it is new, you know, it's like, it's Torment, and it's black, and it's a black set, so it's a good black card, but it's a shade. We've seen shade before. Fine, it's an aggressive shade, but there's nothing particularly innovative about it. What people want is, here's a new set with new things you've never seen before, and they want some of those new things to

be pushed. They want some of those new things to really, you know, and that, I think the idea now, and I know Eric Lau, who's the current head developer, definitely has this feeling of what is the most exciting thing about the set? That's what you should be pushing. You know, now you've got to be careful. Some things you can't push and, you know, maybe there's something new and exciting that can't be pushed. Just because it's new and exciting doesn't mean it is pushed.

But you should push things that kind of play into what is exciting about the new set. And so we definitely are much more aggressive now about being experimental and pushing newer things. Does it blow up in our face more often? Yes. I think what Randy was trying to do is make sure that there's less mistakes. And the route that Eric has chosen gets us more mistakes in the sense of, hey, when you play with unknown, there's a higher percentage chance that something happens you don't anticipate.

But kind of if we never push, like one of my sayings I like to say is the greatest risk to magic is not taking risks. You know, if I have a designer just play it safe, that's much more dangerous to Magic than me trying things. I think development's the same way. I think development, you know, trying power level-wise to push some things and try new things, the game is in a much better shape than us never doing that. And Two-Spot Shade was definitely one of our big lessons

where we sort of chose a card to push, and then the audience was kind of like, okay, we'll play it, it's good, but nothing special. Not super exciting. And that was a big lesson. That was a big lesson of Torment. In fact, I talked about this before. I feel Odyssey Block, while it had a lot of ups and downs,

one of the things is, when you make mistakes, you have a lot of opportunity for learning. And I feel like Odyssey made a whole bunch of mistakes, but we learned a lot from it. I feel like if I could go through time and pluck Odyssey out, I wouldn't. A, because never mess with time travel. But B, or never mess with time. But B is we learned a lot from it. There's a classic Star Trek The Next Generation episode where Jean-Luc Picard is the captain,

and in his youth he did something that was reckless, and somebody got hurt, and he has the opportunity, through a super powerful being named Q, to change his past. And what happens is, by taking away that thing, by taking away his great mistake, he ended up not becoming the great man that he was.

He was no longer a captain in this new universe. And that is the same kind of lesson for me, is that Odyssey was a big mistake for us, but we learned a lot from it, and that I would not want to remove it, because then we wouldn't be Jean-Luc Picard. We'd be just whatever he was when he wasn't the captain. Okay, next card, Insist and Overmafter.

I went quickly out of, I didn't decide to talk about this until Overmafter, which is why it's a nose. So these are two cards. They're paired together. They're both cantrips, which means you draw a card. The green one says the next creature spell you cast can't be countered. The red one says the next ancient or sorcery

you cast can't be countered. Can't be countered was something I first did in Tempest on... What's the name of the card? It was called Greased Weasel in Playtest.

It is... See, everyone's yelling. Whenever I forget a name, I know people are listening to my podcast just yelling out the card name. I'm not sure whether that's frustrating for you or exciting that you can name a card that I'm blinking on.

But there was a card in Tempest that had protection from blue and it could not be countered. It was very hard for blue to deal with. Skragnot. It was Skragnot. And for a while, I couldn't get anybody to do more Campy Condor.

Like, what makes Scragnoth less exciting or less special? I'm like, that's fine. It was a tool I wanted to use. My goal wasn't to have one card of magic that did it. I wanted to have more cards. So eventually I convinced them that Campy Condor is important. And so what we ended up doing is green gets Campy Condor on creatures, and red gets Campy Condor on spells.

Blue gets it tertiary every once in a while. And then we do the cycle, obviously, and return to Ravnica. Anyway, these cards didn't end up being super strong, but thematically I like them. And they do a good job in casual play, which is if you're playing at your kitchen table and your friend is playing a control deck, this is a nice way to break through a control deck if you know they're doing it. Okay, next, parallel evolution. So parallel evolution costs three colorless, a green and a green, and you get to copy all

tokens in play. And it has a flashback of one green, green, green. So this is the evolution, or the, not evolution, the beginning, the first glimpses of where doubling season would come from, where, not replicate, populate would come from,

and some level where proliferate, I mean, proliferate was increasing a different thing. But you can see my love of double encounters starts here. One of the things that's very interesting is this idea of blue and green. The blue is the cloning

color, but every once in a while we give green some ways to clone. Sometimes you get to go through your deck and find a duplicate of a card you have in play and put it in play. Sometimes you can duplicate tokens. We don't make green cloning quite as easy as blue cloning, but we do like the idea of

that there's some replication in green and that one of the things we look for is, we say, well, who are the colors that will be doing this? And I feel like blue cloning is kind of an unnatural cloning and green is a more natural cloning. And I believe both kind of exist. I believe that there's some cloning in nature, but blue's trying to replicate that.

And so to me, cloning is primary blue, but it's secondary in green. Next, Petrodon, which is six red red for a five six. But when it comes into play, it's a nightmare. You have to nightmare away. You have to exile two of your lands. And then when it dies, you get your lands back. So what we had done in red and blue,

although I think the blue ones might not show up until Judgment. But we wanted to make some nightmares. The idea was, black is the mean color in the set, and it exiles your opponent's stuff. But that red and blue, what they do, is they allow you to exile your own stuff to get

an advantage, because getting a 5, 6, or 4 mana is pretty good. I'm sorry, getting a 5, 6 for 4 mana is pretty good. Um, I'm sorry, for... Oh, that's, okay, it says 6 RR, that can't be right. Um,

Petrodon must be, maybe it's 1 RR, maybe it's 1 RR. It's got to be cheaper, because you, for, uh, my handwriting coming to betray me. I don't think paying 8 mana for 5 is particularly exciting, so it must have been cheaper. Maybe it was just one RR. Okay, but Petrodot. I mean, one of the things about, by the way, when we make mechanics, that we want to sort of twist on how we use the mechanics.

And Nightmares, the idea was, well, most of the time I use it aggressively on my opponent, but it was kind of neat to have one that uses it a little differently. I mean, one of the key things about doing design and getting new mechanics is you want to always sort of think about different ways to approach it. Now, one of the things that we've definitely, I think one of the shifts that Magic has gone through is early on, we free did mechanics like one and done, which was, okay, here's the set that's going to do Mechanic X, and we're never going to see it again, so we better max it out. You know, we better make sure we get all the nooks

and crannies of the mechanic, because this is our one chance to use it. We really, really changed our attitude, and now we think of mechanics as being tools. So when I introduce a new mechanic, my goal isn't to use as much of it as I can, in fact, the reverse. My goal is, what is the least amount I can do to get done the job I need to get done? You know, I want to make the set exciting, I want to do stuff, but I now think in the reverse. Before, it was like, how can I use as much stuff as possible? And now it's like, no, no, no. If it's good, it'll come back.

You know, if we do something and it's popular, we'll have time to do more. And if it's not popular, well, hey. So we really have shifted how we think about expanding on mechanics. And part of it also is, when you rush to get everything done, you miss some of the nuance. And to me, I'd much rather spend some time sort of mapping out stuff before I get to the more complex stuff. Especially because sometimes a lot of the simpler stuff is also very cool.

I think there's this false dichotomy or there's this false thought that somehow more complex makes it more cool. And that's just not the case. I mean, I can make chess and give you 100 pieces. Does that make chess cooler?

I don't think so. There's more complexity. Complexity is not scale with quality. You're not scale with interest. And I believe there's people who falsely associate that. Okay, next is radiate. So radiate is three red and a red and a spell copied. So it's an instant.

And what it does is it makes a copy. So one spell, instead of hitting one target, hits every legal target. So one of the things we like to do from time to time, usually most sets, especially every large set we try to, is just have a wacky red rare that just does crazy things that, on some level, makes chaos. I mean, now, in this case, once again, like I talked about, I think I talked about this last time,

is that we've shied away from red showing chaos by itself being uncontrollable because that ends up not being good gameplay. And more what we've done is we just do something where no one's expecting it, and maybe Red is the prankster who's expecting it, but no one else is expecting it, and Red is making chaos. If you cast a spell and it targets every legal target

and you were not planning for that to be true, that's chaos for you. Crazy things are going on. And I like Radiant. I think Radiant's a fun spell. We've definitely messed around. You've seen Radiant influence other spells. It's the kind of spell we've come back to and done tweaks on. Next

is Singer Vampire. Okay, so Singer Vampire's interesting. So Singer Vampire appeared in Alpha. It was uncommon in Alpha. So it's three black and a black for a 4-4 flyer that every time it kills a creature, it gets a plus one, plus one counter. Now that ability sounds cooler than it is,

and the reason is that your opponent, because of the ability, very rarely sacrifices. You know, it doesn't chump block much. And the reason is normally the reason you chump block is to prevent damage. But if in preventing the damage, you're just making the thing bigger, you're less inclined to want to do the chumping.

And so Sanger Vampire has this kind of cool ability that never gets used or seldom gets used. You can tell our naivete in bringing it back. Now that we bring it back, we put it on the packaging. It was part of our ad campaign, which is kind of funny because Sanctum Ember was never... I think it was popular in that it was a cool

creature and people kind of liked the essence of it. Anton Maddox, the art in the original was really cool. I think people liked the essence of the card, but it was never a super popular card. So us bringing it back was definitely us going, hey, hey, check it out, Sanger Vampire, and like, people weren't that excited to see Sanger Vampire, I mean, some were, it had some following at the time, but anyway, it's funny, I mean, I definitely think we were, the idea at the time was, let's bring back a fun black reprint

that we thought people really liked. And I think we thought people would really get excited about Singer Vampire. I think we misjudged it a little bit. I think people were less fond of Singer Vampire than we thought they were at the time. Like I said, back in the day, we had a lot less market research.

We have a lot more research now to be able to sort of look and figure out what cards people really like. Also, I have a lot more social media, which means that I just have more interaction with the public, and they just more blatantly tell me what they like and dislike. So. It is a... What is it? It's a 3-3, and when it dies, you get to place three minus one, minus one counters on any combination

of creatures, and they last until end of turn. So that's weird, right? It is a quirkily done template, meaning why didn't we just give minus one minus one to under turn

why minus one minus one counters my guess at the time was it was a simpler template and it was easier

to write and that we thought people would understand it even though it's weird nowadays I think our templating is a little better

that we probably would just do minus one minus one the funny thing is there's some interesting rules about plus one plus one counters do minus one minus one the funny thing is there's some interesting rules about plus one plus one counters and minus one minus one counters and so um this version actually is a little bit more powerful given the current rules that rule didn't exist at the time so um and by the way it's a flavorful card it's like a creature made up of

like bees and like when you disrupt it and the bees go off and sting people i i think that's pretty cool so i like i like the flavor a off and sting people. I think that's pretty cool. So I like the flavor a lot of Shamblin Storm. I think it's pretty cool. Next, Strength of Isolation and Strength of Lunacy. So Strength of Isolation costs one W, one and a white, and Strength of Lunacy costs one and a black.

The white one gives a creature, they're both auras, it gives a creature plus one, plus two, and protection from black, and the black one gives plus two, plus one in protection from white. So the interesting thing about this is this is what we call the mirrored pair.

Richard did a lot of this in Alpha. When you make two cards, usually they're enemies, and they're made to be the opposite of each other. That's when they're a mirror of each other. So notice here, the white one is plus one, plus two, and the black one is plus two, plus one,

which, by the way, is mirroring a famous alpha set of auras, holy strength and unholy strength. So this is riffing off something from alpha. And then the pro-black, pro-white, it sort of riffs off of. So it's interesting. Obviously, plus two, plus one is much better than plus one, you know, it sort of riffs off of. So it's interesting. Obviously, plus two, plus one is much better than plus one, plus two,

but protection from black has more ramifications than protection from white. There's the occasional white destruction spell, but there's a lot more black spells that can kill you and hurt you. So I still think plus two, plus one is enough better than plus one, plus two, that the pro white is not that

much worse than pro black. So one of the things we'll do in mirrors, and this happens a lot, is it's hard to balance in mirrors, meaning if one is plus X plus Y and one's plus Y plus X, one of them's probably better. It is hard to make it so they're equal. So mirrors have to be,

I mean, we do mirrors and they're fun. And some mirrors, sometimes you can balance them, but usually one of the mirrors is just better than the other one, as is normally the case. And here, I believe Strength of Lunacy is just a better card. I mean, neither one really is a constructed card, but in Limited, I think you're more likely to play Strength of Lunacy.

But anyway, we definitely were... This set, more than most most was playing up a conflict and while green definitely also hates black it's clear that the white black conflict is a little stronger than the black green conflict as far as, not as far as color wheel but as far as clarity what we found is if you look at the five

conflicts that the strongest conflict that resonates the most with people is white black followed by blue green not blue green, sorry, followed by blue-green. Not blue-green, sorry, followed by red-blue. So, anyway, it is... I like the mirror.

I thought it was a good mirror to do. Next, actually, the last thing I plan to talk about today is the tainted cycle. So, tainted field, aisle, peak, and wood. So, I talked about this two podcasts ago. So Tainted, Field, Isle, Peak, and Wood. So I talked about this in two podcasts ago. So they're a cycle of cards, a cycle of four, which is sort of fun, and what they do is they tap for one, but

if you have a Swamp in play, they turn into dual lands and now tap for black and the appropriate color. I think the idea was we were trying to enable decks to be black and another color that the idea of the set was we wanted to make a black set

we wanted to enable at least a mono black deck and we wanted to enable some multi-colored decks that involved black and so one of the things we've learned is if you want to sort of dictate the kind of cards people build by color the kind of decks people build by color the mana is one of the things we've learned is if you want to dictate the kind of cards people build by color, the kind of decks people build by color, the mana is one of the cleanest and easiest ways to do that. If you want people to do something, we'll enable them with the mana base to let them do that.

That's really what the Tainted Cycle was trying to do, was help people play black X decks a certain way. People have asked me all the time, they're like, okay, well now that I've seen this, when are the other four cycles of four, like, that's the joy of this. Like, we made one cycle that weighted toward black, and like, I want to see the other four four card cycles.

I'm not going to say you'll never see them, only because I don't know what the future holds, and these are clean design. So somehow we get in a, you know, blue centered world that I can imagine it, it, it, uh, it's something we would consider. Um, I don't anticipate them meaning off the top of my head. I don't see us doing it in the near future, but that doesn't mean we won't do it. If the right situation came, came up. Um, anyway, I'm, I'm sitting in my parking lot or a parking lot. mean we won't do it if the right situation came up.

Anyway, I'm sitting in my parking lot, or a parking lot. So, I'm wrapping up Torment. Torment was a noble experiment. I like the fact that we tried it. I think we learned from it. I think we learned some stuff we don't want to do again.

But, I think that, like I said before, you know, when... It is important to look at not just your victories, but your mistakes. And Odyssey block, while not just mistakes, has more mistakes in it than the average block. And I think because of that, it's a block I learned, and design development learned more than the average block. And I think because of that, it's a block I learned and design development learned more than the average block.

But I'm still proud of it. I mean, like I said, I made a super spiky block and there are people that do appreciate it. And I think it is fun. It is something that we are shifting away from a little bit in that A, we've learned that we want players to do something they enjoy doing and we have to be careful how much we make them do stuff they don't want to do. And B, you can get too fiddly.

There can be too many things to keep track of. And while there are some players that enjoy that and soak that up, that is not the majority of players. That's a minority. And that magic has so much to think about that I don't feel like we have to layer on top of that even more things to think about that there's decision paralysis

at a point. Anyway, I want to end finally, one of the things I've decided is I begin every podcast with,

I'm pulling my driveway, we all know that means it's time for another drive to work. And I've been sort of just randomly ending, I always end with making magic,

but I've been thinking that maybe I, this is my 100th podcast for those who don't know, that maybe it's time that I come end with making magic, but I've been thinking that maybe I this is my 100th podcast for those who don't know, that maybe it's time that I come up with a phrase to just end my podcast with. And so, I'm going to experiment a little bit. We'll see how it works. If this doesn't work

out, maybe I'll change it. But, guys, it's been great talking magic, but it's time to be making magic. See you all next time.