Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #105 - 1997

Episode Date: March 14, 2014

Mark talks about 1997 in another of his 20 Years in 20 Podcast series.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another episode in my mega-series, 20 Years in 20 Podcasts. So, this is based on a little bit I did at World's last year, where I did 20 years of magic in 20 minutes. But I decided that a minute per year was not enough. And so I've decided to dedicate one podcast to each year of Magic's life to sort of talk about what happened that year, to sort of a little history, a little fill you in on what happened. So I've already done 1993, 94, 95, and 96.

Today is 1997. Dun, dun, dun. Okay, let's just get started. Not much happened in January of that year, so we're going to start in February. Well, I guess technically in January was the pre-release for Visions, and then in February 3rd was the release of Visions. So Visions was the small set to follow Mirage.

It was actually designed at the same time as Mirage. So Mirage, known as actually designed at the same time as Mirage. So Mirage, known as Menagerie in design, was one of the first sets ever designed. Richard knew that Magic would probably need sets, turned to his playtefters and had them make sets. One of them made Ice Age, one group made Mirage, one guy made Spectral Chaos that would, Invasion would use elements of that

later on. Anyway, so Visions came out, and Visions is well known for, it was a powerful set. It introduced what we call enter the battlefield creatures, at the time comes in play. And it had

Octavia Rangentang, and Mana War, and Necrotal, it had a few others, but those are the three that sort of drew attention. And really put on the map the idea of spells stapled to creatures and they come into play. And the value of that, that you get a spell effect but then you have a body that remains behind. It's proven to be a very

very useful tool for R&D and for design. So I'm glad that Visions brought them into the open and we've used them ever since. Okay, February 28th through March 2nd was Pro Tour LA. That's the second Los Angeles Pro Tour. In it, Tomi Hobie from Finland defeated David Mills from the USA. Although defeated might be the wrong word.

They didn't finish. In fact, it was a DQ. The only DQ in finals in Pro Tour history. What happened was David Mills was used to playing his spells before he tapped his land. At the time, even though now it is a legal thing, at the time it was illegal. But he was so used to doing it,

even though the judges kept warning him and kept upping the warnings, he couldn't stop. And finally, in game four, he was all excited because he drew the card he needed to win the game, and in his excitement. And finally, in game four, he was all excited because he drew the card he needed to win the game and in his excitement, forgot he needed to tap his mana, even though he tapped out, so there's no other way to tap his mana

than the way he tapped it. He got DQ'd because the judges had warned him and it escalated up to DQ. There's a lot of controversy. This is the one where the players kind of, we've talked about the players' riot. They were not happy it ended in a DQ. There's a lot of, I This is the one where the players kind of, we've talked about the players riot. They were not happy it ended in a DQ. There's a lot of, I talked about this in my podcast, behind the scenes, there's a lot going on.

But anyway, that was Pro Tour LA. So the second time, second LA Pro Tour, second time on the boat. And Tomi Hovi, although would go on to later win, in 98 he would win another Pro Tour. But in 97, this was his first win. Okay, I think it's in March, there was the very first Grand Prix in Amsterdam. Emmanuel Vernet defeated David Nutt. Those are both Frenchmen, by the way. So the interesting thing about GP Amsterdam was originally the very first Grand Prix was going to be in Hong Kong,

where the first Invitational happened. But it did not happen. So it's interesting to point out that we thought we were going to do Grand Prixs. It took a little while to get set up. So it ended up starting in Europe. Europe had the first Grand Prix. And it was in Amsterdam. Also in March, 5th Edition came out.

So 5th Edition is famous for being the largest core set, possibly the largest set, well, largest set we've ever made. It had over 500 cards. Most likely the largest set we will ever make. I'm not sure why we decided to have such a large set. I know that Bill Rose and Mike Elliott were designers. Back then, the designers were the people who would pick which cards would go on the set, and the developers would sort of, second set of eyes,

and we'd swap. So I was on the development team along with Scaf Elias and Robert Guchera. Fifth is famous for, probably the craziest thing Fifth is famous for is reprinting Necropotence. I don't know what we were thinking. Scaf just really likes Necropotence. We actually development put that in, designed it up with that in.

Development put in Necropotence. You know what's wrong with this set? Developmentally, it needs Necropotence. We actually, Development put that in. Designed it up with that in. Development put in Necropotence. You know what's wrong with this set? Developmentally, it needs Necropotence. Okay. Oops. Then in April, so April 11th through the 13th was Pro Tour Paris, where Mike Long defeated Mark Justice. So that was the very first Pro Tour to ever happen in Europe.

It's very funny. I remember when the finals happened that a bunch of the Europeans were worried because the idea of a Mike Long, Mark Justice final, they weren't sure if that was a good final. So I'm like, you've got to be kidding me. They're like two of the biggest stars in the game. I mean, it was one of the most star-filled finals we've had in a long, you know, we had. Eventually there was some more to come.

But it was the first really, like, two major names in the finals facing each other. And Mike Long managed to defeat Mark Justice. The famous story is Mike Long was playing what's called the Prosperous Bloom deck, which is the first real competitive combo deck. Early on, people thought of combo decks as being silly and fun, and then Mike Long showed that, no, no, no, they can be competitive. And the big story is Mike Long was playing against Mark Justice. They were friends. They might have even been rooming together at that event. And Mike normally had two Drain Lifes in his deck.

That was his kill card. But he sideboarded one of them out. And he had to discard one of them to get his combo going. And so one of the games, he shows his combo to Mark Justice without actually having the kill card in his deck. So it's like, here you go, I have it, and if Mark Justice had made him walk through the steps, he wouldn't have won that game because he couldn't win. But Mark Justice

didn't know that and conceded. And anyway, I believe Long went on to win 3-2, so anyway. Long, good at the mind games. Also, Mike Long would, interestingly, the week after that, or two weeks after that, April 26th and 27th, in Washington, D.C., he would win Grand Prix D.C. That's hard to say.

And he would be the first person, I believe, to do a back-to-back pro tour Grand Prix win. Others would do this, Tad. Others would do it. I know Bob Marr did it after he won Chicago. But anyway, he was on a hot streak, and Long was doing well. Also come out that month was the MicroPose game. It was a game for the computer in which you had an adventure game,

and then you would meet people, and you would battle, and you could win cards. There were 12 unique cards in the game called the Astral Set that were the first time we'd made cards that weren't printed in paper. Okay, that gets us to May. It's whipping through the year here.

There's a lot. It's interesting as I go along, there's more and more stuff that starts popping up during the year. Okay, so May 3rd to the 5th. I'm not going to talk about all the Grand Prixs. I'm just picking a few Grand Prixs that I thought were highlights, usually in which there were big finishes. So May 3rd to the 5th was Grand Prix Tokyo.

I believe that was the first Grand Prix in Asia, and first one, obviously, in Japan. I was actually at the event. And at it, Kenichi Fujita defeated Toshiki Tsukamoto. Those are both very big players in early Japanese. It was a big, big deal at the time. They were major Japanese players. I think it was the biggest Grand Prix we'd had at the time.

It was a huge turnout. I remember how orderly it was. They would say, okay, everybody sit, and everybody sit, and no one would talk, and it would be very orderly. And it was fun, it was fun. I had a great time. It was the first time I was in Japan was at Grand Prix Tokyo. I would later go on to be in Japan many had a great time. It was the first time I was in Japan was at Grand Prix Tokyo. I would later go on

to be in Japan many, many times, but that was my first time. Okay, later that month, May 30th to June 1st, would be Pro Tour New York. Added, Terry Boer of Canada

would defeat Ivan Stanoff of the Czech Republic. So the Czech Republic, the previous Worlds, had come in second, and they were proving to be quite the force. The Czech Republic was proving to be

a very dominant country at the time, and later in the year, another member of the Czech Republic team would do something pretty impressive. I'll get to that in a second. But anyway, Terry Boer was in contention. I'll get to this when I get to the world, but, was in contention.

I'll get to this when I get to the Worlds. But he was in contention. Winning here made him one of the runners-up for 4th player of the year. We'll get to that in a second. I guess we'll get to that when I get to Worlds. Okay. June 9th. The release of Weatherlight.

Okay. So there's a lot that goes into Weatherlight. So let me explain this a little bit. So what happened was, Mike Ryan was an editor for Magic. Mike Ryan was a friend of mine. He and I decided that Magic really needed a larger scope of story.

And so we pitched a multi-block story that we called the Weatherlight Saga, which involved this crew, this motley crew and their flying ship, and led by the Captain Gerard, and he was going to go rescue Captain Sisay, his mentor who had been kidnapped by the evil Volrath. And so we pitched this idea, we had a little PowerPoint presentation, they liked it.

The two people in charge of Magic Brand at the time, a guy named Joel Mick, who was formerly the head designer, head developer, and a guy named Rick Ahrens. And the two of them were very excited. They said, let's do it. They were so excited that even though we had planned to start in Tempest, they wanted to start in Weatherlight. And Rick got a whole bunch of artists and created an entire creative team to support this story. Mark Tadine and Anson Maddox were two of the people that were on the team. Matthew Wilson was also on the team. Anyway, it was a chock-fill of just awesomeness and cool

artists. And that's really the first time we kind of built a world. Tempest would be the first world that got built. I'll get to Tempest in a sec. But anyway, it wasn't like Rick was so gung-ho for us to get started, we decided to, even though the set wasn't designed with the story in mind, we kind of retrofit it. So it ended up being the story of Gerard gathering together his crew, so it's kind of the preamble to the story. So, you know, Sissy gets abducted on abduction

and you see him going around. They have to first go get Gerard because he's not on the ship at the time. And he reluctantly agrees. He's a reluctant hero that had left the ship for his own reasons because Rofellos died. He had two childhood friends named Rofellos and Mirri that they had studied together,

other than Maltani. And anyway, they'd all joined the ship, and after Rofellos had been killed by Mornfrind and Galibraid, who are also in the set, he left the ship, along with Mirri. And anyway, they go back to get him, and then they're forced to go get Mirri,

and they go to get help. They end up getting Ertai from Tolerant Academy. Anyway, so that was kind of the gathering of the heroes to start the story. Weatherlight, the set, was actually about the graveyard. It was a graveyard set. The dark had messed around a bit with graveyard, and later Odyssey would mess around with Graveyard.

But the Weatherlight is the first small set that really had... I mean, The Dark had it as a minor theme. Weatherlight had it as a pretty major theme if you look at the cards. There was a lot going on with the Graveyard. Also to come out in June was Portal. So let me explain a little bit about what Portal was. So the previous year, I hadn't talked about this in my 96 thing, we had released a system called Arc. And the idea was, the way we thought maybe we could teach people

to play Magic was to create a game that's like Magic, but simpler. So the ARK system had only three colors, red, blue, and green. And what we did is we put out three versions, two of which were licensed version. One was Xena Princess Warrior, and one was Hercules. And then also there was one of our own making called C-23 that was a comic book made by Jim Lee. Oh, one of my favorite things in that comic book, by the way, is the best friend of the main character, early, early on turns on him, but his best friend, and it becomes the main villain of the whole story, but his name is Nemesis. And I was like, don't prefer a man named Nemesis. It's all, can't you see?

Anyway, those were a flop. They didn't actually do what we wanted. So Portal was our next attempt to try to teach magic. I guess in 96 we also had done the pre-constructed decks, the starters stuff. But anyway, this year we tried to do something called Portal

and we would do three versions of it. This was the first version. The idea of Portal was it was simpler magic. It had all five colors, but all it had was lands, sorceries, and creatures, and all those were simple. There was no instants, no enchantments, no artifacts, no interrupts at the time. There was nothing but the basics.

And even the creatures mostly had either basic creature abilities or a few come-and-play abilities, but they were mostly in play. They mostly were virtual vanillas or French vanillas. It was pretty, pretty simple. Portal, in hindsight, didn't really work out. Although the cards... At the time, we didn't let you play the cards in tournaments,

which was a mistake, and because we had to change a bunch of things, they weren't quite compatible. You know, they didn't say blocking. They interrupted. And, you know, the power and toughness had a little stored in shield. And we divided the rules text from the flavor text. And we changed enough terminology that it wasn't quite usable in Magic tournaments. And that proved to be a big problem.

They didn't want to introduce something. And the second they tried to go to the next level, they can't use the cards that they have. So we learned that lesson. Portal did a lot of things right. It definitely taught us a lot about how we could... It made us realize that Magic has a lot going on in the simple level, and we could embrace that more.

Okay, in July was GP Toronto. I bring this up because a major player comes on the scene. This is the first event, major event, won by Brian Kibler, future Pro Tour Hall of Famer. And in it, in the finals, he defeated Eric Lauer, who now is the head developer of Magic. So the interesting thing

is, I asked Eric Lauer about this, and Eric Lauer's story is that the tournament went late, and they shut down the concession stand, and so Eric wasn't able to get any caffeine, and he's like, I lost because I couldn't get any caffeine. So that's Eric's story, sticking to it. But anyway, this is Brian Kibler's first major win.

Brian Kibler really wouldn't put up most of the numbers to get his Hall of Fame entry until his return. He actually left Magic and came back. At the time, I think he was playing in the juniors on the Pro Tour, and he was definitely a good player, and he was making a name for himself. But this was what first put him on the map. Okay, that summer, we used to have a thing called Arena that would run through stores, and there were seasons for Arena based on the actual seasons of the year. So during the summer season of that year, we introduced a new thing called Vanguard.

So what Vanguard were were oversized were, each one represented a character, because the Weatherlight saga had just started. Series 1 and 2 that came out this year were Weatherlight characters. So, you know, Gerard and Sisay and Tongarth and Squee and Hannah and such. So each Vanguard card did three things. It gave you a starting hand size, a starting life total, and it gave you an ability you could use. For example, your hand size, maybe instead of seven cards, it's six cards. Or maybe instead of seven cards, it's eight cards. Your life total maybe starts at 15, maybe starts at 25.

And your ability, maybe you can tap any color for mana. Maybe your creatures get plus one, plus one. Maybe other creatures have haste. It just gives an ability that you can build around. And the idea was you're supposed to take one of your Vanguard cards, choose which one you want, and you got, I think, eight, and then you would build your deck around it. And it was very, very fun.

And they would later on the next invitation, which I believe was in 98, we used Vanguard as one of the formats. We'll get there. Okay. Vanguard is one of the formats. We'll get there. Okay, next in August, from August 13th to the 17th, was 97 Worlds. So what happened at the time was Wizards of the Coast, I talked previously about how we got into game stores for a while. We made Wizards of the Coast game stores, and a big part of that was providing places to play. I talked about how the previous year Wizards had opened up a tournament center in Wizards

to practice and learn about it. Well, in 97, we opened up one in the University District, University of Washington. It was a major store, and the entire basement was for organized play. So we ended up having the World Championship at our tournament center. We also rented some room nearby

because it couldn't fit everybody, but that was where the 97 happened. The winner was Jakub Schlemmer of the Czech Republic, and he defeated Janusz Kuhn, who I believe was from Germany. Janusz, I apologize if I got your nationality wrong. I think he's German.

Anyway, it's very funny because at the time we started shooting for ESPN2, we would edit the videos and then put them on ESPN2. One of the stories was I was in charge of helping do the videos, and so I was asked who we should do pre-interviews with. And I said, oh, we should definitely preview Jakob. I think he could win. And then he did, and we had the pre-interview.

So that's one of my few times I sort of called it. Anyway, in the team event, the U.S. team, which in the first, I think, eight years would win every single team event but one, this is the year they lost. Justin Gary would become the team champion. He would win

U.S. Nationals this year, and his team would not pull it out and be the first. Not only didn't they win, they didn't even make it to the finals. The finals was Canada won versus, I think, Finland. If not Finland, it was Sweden. I did not write this down. I believe they played Finland, but if it was Sweden, I apologize, Sweden.

I was for sure skating even country. And the story was because we thought they were going to be on camera, we rushed around and had someone find these American shirts with American flags and got them for them, and they didn't end up even making the finals. On the Canadian team, by the way, was a guy named Mike Donet,

which would go on to work for Wizards R&D. And in fact, there's a number of people in Wizards R&D who were on a winning Nationals team. Aaron Forsythe was on the winning U.S. team in 2000. Matt Place was on the winning team in 96. Zvi Mausiewicz, who was an intern for a while, was on the winning team, I think, in

1999. That's the year that Kaibuda won and became world champion. Anyway, that world championship was exciting. I believe Jakob won with, was it Five Core Green? Is that what he was playing?

Oh, no, no, it might have been Paul McCabe. Anyway, oh, the Pro Player of the Year that year went to Paul McCabe from Canada, who had won the previous Pro Tour at Dallas. Interesting thing is, Terry Boer, had he not made the mess up of the previous year's Atlanta with the Do You Have Any Fast Effects, where he lost the match against Darwin Castle and he would have won, would have been Pro Player of the Year had he not made that mistake. Another little bit of trivia is, if we did Pro Player of the Year then, like we do now,

which means we counted Grand Prixs, because at the time, Grand Prixs were not counted. But if you had counted finishing in Grand Prixs in, the pro player of the year would not have been Paul McKay, but in fact, Mike Long. A little trivia for you there. Okay. Next, on October 4th, was the Tempest pre-release. The important thing about the pre-release was

it was the first time we ever had a pre-release card. The card was Dirt Cow Worm, a big green creature. And that was the first time we had done a pre-release card. And it was... And now we do that. Also, Tempest was the first time we did pre-constructed decks. So Tempest had a bunch of firsts to it. So, before that, other than the one beginner product we had made, where we had decks that people could, like, play their cards in order, other

than those two decks, we had never really done pre-constructed material before. We were like, you just buy a deck and play it. Especially one that had more advanced themes that were seen in the set. So, October 13th, Tempest came out. out so Tempest was my baby I mean first of all it was my first design so you always remember your first but also I was super super involved

so not only was I leading the design but I was in charge of the story that was really making its debut in Tempest the idea I mean technically Weatherlight was the beginning

but the real story started in Tempest and the interesting thing about it was that the philosophy at the time was to try to show as much of the story on cards and so the characters showed constantly on cards you allowed the scenes if you ever saw the Duelists

we took all the outcomes from the cards and made a storyboard to show you in order what happens in the story because most of the story points were shown in it. I was very, very proud of that. Obviously, in 98, I would be taken off the story. That's 98.

Anyway, but Tempest came out. It went to rave reviews. People really, really liked Tempest. I was excited. Tempest was, the design team for Tempest was myself, Mike Elliott, Richard Garfield,

and Charlie Cattino. Mike Elliott and I would go on to be the major designers for the next six, seven years. And both of us got our start in Tempest.

So really, it was a changing in the guard a little bit for design that Mike and I went from being thought of as being developers to thought

of as being designers. And Mike and I, or Bill, would lead the large set for the next eight, nine years. It wasn't until Time Spiral where, oh no, Chems Kamigawa. Chems Kamigawa, Brian Tinsman, the first time someone that wasn't me, Bill, or Mike would leave a large set. Anything else? I mean, Tempest introduced, obviously, buyback. It had Shadow. It had Lissids. It had Slivers,

which were going to be very popular. It introduced the Kingdome mechanic. It introduced Spikes that would show up later. I mean, there was one Spike drone. The mechanic would show up a lot more later in Stronghold. But anyway, it was definitely... I think it did a lot to sort of show

how you can mix flavor with design. We would move away from that for a little while, but it was a set where things were very entwined. I mean, we now learned a lot since then, and I feel like the elements of the story were there, but also the emotional content was not as strong in retrospect as I now would have built in. But anyway, it definitely was...

At the time, it was a major stakeholder. If you talk about sets that really made a major impact and changed things, I think Tempest is one of the major sets. And I'm very, very proud to have been responsible for a lot of it. I'm very proud of Proud Papa. Okay, in December,

December 5th through 7th was Pro Tour Meitz. That is in Germany. It's near, I think, Cologne, I think. Anyway, Meitz, Germany. We actually had a Pro Tour in a castle. Literally, it was in a castle. It was very cool.

And the winner, Matt Place, would defeat Stephen O'Money Schwartz. So Matt Place would go on to be one of my favorite developers of all time in R&D. And Stephen would go on to be a Hall of Famer who got inducted into the Hall of Fame. So Matt, by the way, the reason Matt never made it into the Hall of Fame, I mean I'm not sure he would have made it or not based on his merit, but was when he quit to join R&D he only had 97 pro points and the cutoff for a long, long time was 100. And we used to joke if only R&D gave like experienced pro points, like every year you got a pro point, that Matt would be on the ballot.

Matt by the way is an guy, and I miss him. He was both a good friend and an awesome developer. So he's gone on to do other things, but I do miss him. So the Protormites was a Rochefter. It was Tempest Rochefter. For those that might not know their history of Magic formats, Rochefter Draft was a format where you would take a pack,

open it up, lay out all the cards, then the first person would pick a card, the second person would pick a card, all the way to the eighth person, then the eighth person would pick a second card,

then the seventh, then the sixth, then the fifth, and it would snake back. And so out of every pack, at the time, there were 15 cards, I mean,

there weren't the land in the 15th slot, so everybody but the first person to pick would get two cards, and the person to pick first would get one card. And you would do it so everybody got

an equal number of packs to draft from, and there were three packs per person drafted. Originally, we thought Rochester was going to be the way, like,

it was going to be the limited format because we thought there was so much more skill testing that ended up actually kind of biting into the butt, which was,

it was so skill testing, there was so much information, that it made people feel bad because people could see them making mistakes more openly. And Booster Draft

hides your mistakes a little more, so it's a little less obvious if you do something dumb. Where in Rochester, if you just make a bad pick, everybody saw it. And then people in,

I mean, in the Pro Tour it wasn't a problem, but in normal stores, people shied away from that. It's important, by the way, in game design to let people hide their mistakes to a certain extent. That, you know, when you have to deal with other people, being embarrassed and stuff like that really does come out and can affect how people learn and play games. That's why, by the way, I think Duel of the Planeswalkers does such a good job because you can learn by yourself

and not be judged until you know what you're doing. The other reason Rochester Draft got dropped was the time it took to run it. You had to open up each pack at a time, so each pack was done separately. Where in Booster Draft, eight packs are opened at the same time. So essentially, you're drafting eight packs at a shot, so you're only drafting three packs in that regard. Where in Rochester, you were drafting all 18 packs. Not 18 packs, 24 packs.

Eight times three. Math is not my friend. So, anyway, that, my friends, kind of wraps up 1997. It was definitely a very interesting year. I think what happened was that we were starting to get our groove on. I feel like Mirage the previous year was us starting up the block model, and I think Tempest was us really sort of hammering home what we could do. We were really telling the story in a much bigger way.

We were doing pre-constructed decks and we were doing things like Vanguard and the Pro Tour was up and running smooth. We had the Grand Prix started. I mean, really, 97 was a year I think we were starting to get a groove on and as a company really starting to hit our stride and

a lot of the early years had a lot of hiccups and 97 was the first year without major hiccups. Like, nothing horrible went wrong in that year. We didn't overprint something or have printing errors. This was a year where everything kind of went pretty smoothly. And like I said, there was a lot going on. I'm just listening to all the stuff I've been writing off in the last half hour. It was a busy, chock-full year.

You know, we had, like I said, we had Visions and Weatherlight and Tempest. We had 5th Edition. We had Portalisions and Weatherlight and Tempest. We had 5th Edition. We had Portal. We had lots of Grand Prixs, a whole bunch of Pro Tours. You know, it was a fun year. And the thing, to me, that's interesting, one of the things I'll always remember of 1997 was I was still single at the time, and I traveled a lot.

I traveled a lot. Like, I talked about being at the time, and I traveled a lot. I traveled a lot. Like, I talked about being at the Grand Prix for Tokyo. I was at, I think that's the year I went to Korean Nationals. And I went to all the Pro Tours all around the world. And it was fun. That was my phase where I was just constantly traveling and seeing magic and seeing people all around the world. And I also want to point out, like, this was the first year we had a European Grand... Sorry. Both a European Grand Prix

and a European Pro Tour. It's the first time we, you know, had the Grand Prix in Tokyo. You're starting to see the international part of the game, that Magic was starting to spread and starting to become a real part internationally.

Worlds that year had a real good turnout. I didn't write down how many teams, but it was a record, obviously. And I believe there was, like, 40 teams maybe represented in my memory. So anyway, it, but it was a record, obviously. And I believe there was like 40 teams maybe represented, is my memory. So anyway, Magic was becoming a global game.

The cards were being printed in other languages. I believe that by 98, Magic was in French and in German and in Spanish and in Portuguese. It was in Korean. It was in Japanese. I don't think it was yet in Chinese. It was in Korean. It was in Japanese. I don't think it was yet in Chinese. It was definitely starting to become a real, true international phenomenon. Anyway, it was a fun, fun year, and I remember it fondly.

But anyway, I'm now at work. And so I had a great time sharing with you all the awesomeness of 1997 look forward for future podcasts not the next one necessarily but where I will be talking about other years like 98 and 97 so anyway as much as I love talking about magic even more

I love making magic so it's time for me to go talk to you next time guys