Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #112 - 1998

Episode Date: April 11, 2014

Mark shares a look at 1998 with his 20 Years in 20 Podcasts series.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is another one of my series of 20 years and 20 podcasts. So for those that have never heard this before, I did a thing at Wirtles last year where I, it was the 20th anniversary of Magic. I talked about each year in one minute. But that wasn't enough time, so I'm dedicating a podcast to each year of Magic's life. So I could talk about what happened. And so far I've done 93, 94, 95, 96, and 97. Which means today is up to 1998. Okay, so 1998 started in a very nice way.

In January, from January 29th to February 1st, we were in Rio de Janeiro for the second ever Duelist Invitational. So, the previous year we had been in Hong Kong for the very first Duelist Invitational, and this was the second one. The first one had come about because there was supposed to be the very first Grand Prix was supposed to happen. It fell through,

and we were called in at the last minute to come be the event, or one of the events. And it went really well, so well, that the South American office contacted us and said, we would love to host you in Rio de Janeiro. And what were we supposed to do?

Turn down Rio de Janeiro? So off we were to Brazil. So at the event, Darwin Castle, a future Hall of Famer, defeated, and Darwin is from the United States, defeated Jakub Schlemmer from the Czech Republic. So Jakub was a former world champion. In fact, at the time, he was the existing world champion.

He had won in 97. And it was a very hard-fet battle, although Darwin was sick as a dog. I believe we had to stop the game multiple times for Darwin to go throw up because he was so sick. And it was crazy, crazy hot.

It was like 104 degrees. And it was crazy, crazy hot. It was like 104 degrees, and we were in the only room in the entire building that was air-conditioned, this little glass room. And everyone was pressed up against the glass, probably because it was so cold, and watching the match. And it was very, very cool. Also, by the way, at the exact same time,

Pro Tour Rio de Janeiro was going on, in the same building upstairs where there was no air conditioning. And John Finkel defeated Stephen O'Moan Schwartz. It was two Americans in the finals of Grand Prix Rio. A bunch of Americans had come because the Invitational was there and they were friends

so they came along as well. But anyway, the Invitational would be very memorable for me because that is where I proposed to my wife, to Laura. We stayed a week extra along with Richard Garfield and his family and Scaf Elias and Peter Atkinson. And we went around and saw Rio and saw Cristo and a whole bunch of different cool stuff. Went around and saw Rio and saw Cristo and a whole bunch of different cool stuff. And at a beach in Rio, in the water actually, is where I proposed to my wife.

Which, since we're talking about 1998, will pay off a little later in the year. 1998 was a good year for me and my wife. Okay, so the next big event happened on March 2nd, which was the release of Stronghold. So the previous fall, we had released Tempest, which was my first design, and it was followed up by Stronghold. So Tempest was tied along with the Weatherlight saga. It was the previous year, the Weatherlight expansion introduced the team. I guess they had showed up a little bit, or at least Sissy and the Weatherlight had shown up in Mirage and Visions in flavor text. But Weatherlight was the introduction

of Gerard Capuchin and the main story got started. Sisay got kidnapped and so Weatherlight was about them gathering the group together. Tempest, they actually went to Wrath. And then Stronghold was a continuation of that story. Stronghold,

so the premise was they were going to go rescue Sisay. In order to get there, they needed the help of Stark of Wrath. And Stark, in order to rescue Sisay, Stark said they needed to rescue his daughter, someone named Takara. Meanwhile, both Karn and Tomgarth ended up getting captured. So they had to travel to the Stronghold, Volrath Stronghold, to save a whole bunch of people. Sisay, Tamgarth, Karn, and Takara. In it, they also,

they would run into and meet the Sliver Queen that was in Stronghold. So Stronghold was, it was a continuation of Tempest. It introduced the spikes. I guess there was one spike in Tempest. And it mostly was a continuation. I mean, it had, back in the day, we would have

two main mechanics, so Buyback and Shadow were the two main mechanics. And there was more Advanced Buyback and more Shadow and there were more Lissids and more Slivers and more of the things that the first set had done. Other than the spikes in which they were introduced, there wasn't a lot of

new mechanics in Stronghold, as much as there was advancements of things. And at March 6th through 8th there was a Pro Tour in Los Angeles where David Price of the USA defeated Ben Rubin of the USA. Ben Rubin would go on to become a Hall of Famer.

Dave Price was a teammate of Chris Bakula. They call the team Dead Guy. And his victory was, Dave really loved playing aggressive red decks, and this Pro Tour was all Tempest, all Tempest constructed, because it came out so shortly after Stronghold's release they didn't have to have Stronghold cards in it,

because they weren't legal yet, that's how it worked back then. But anyway, it was a very exciting final. I think Chris Pakula did commentary for the very first time, which was exciting, because his good friend had won the Pro Tour, so he gave very exciting coverage. And I think that was the second time we were on the boat. The previous year, I talked about when Tomi Hobi defeated David Mills, and there was a riot. In fact, that was the third time. First time was Hema Rainier beating Tom Gavin. Then was

Tommy Hobey defeating David Mills. Third time, Dave Price defeating Ben Rubin. This was the first event that Ben Rubin showed up at. You'll see later in the year, Ben would have another really good finish to put himself on the map. But anyway, it was a very dramatic and exciting Pro Tour. Okay, then in April, April 17th to the 19th was the next Pro Tour in New York City. So this one was won by a player you might have heard of named John Finkel. So John Finkel defeated Dominic Kravicek. For those, by the way, a little trivia for you,

the name Dominic Kravicek, if you've ever played the game Wits and Wagers, that was designed by Dominic Kravicek. He went into game design, and Wits and Wagers is his baby. So if you've ever played it, he was defeated by John Finkel.

Dominic Krabischitz was the same person, by the way, if I've told this story, of the guy who came in top eight at, I think,

the very first, the Hammer Ragnar one, the very first top eight. Only for us to discover that Scott Johns was actually in the top eight, there was an error in recording and I had to show up early and tell Dominic that he was actually in the top eight, there was an error in recording, and I had

to show up early and tell Dominic that he was not in the top eight, which was one of the least fun things I've ever had to do while working for the Pro Tour. Okay, that gets us to June 15th, which was the release of the second set for Magic, the Exodus pre-release.

I'm sorry, the Exodus release. So Exodus was the third set in the Tempest thing. So Exodus in the story was the fleeing of the... Basically what happened was, in the story real quickly, is Ertai had gone to talk with the Sultari, particularly with an emissary, the Sultari emissary, named Lina,

named after my mom, by the way. My mom's name is Lin, but... And he opened the portal and the only way for them to get off Wrath was to go through this portal. Because it was an erratic portal. Anyway, there was a whole

bunch of... This is where the... I was very involved with the Wetherlake saga, but Exodus is where I kind of was let go and things started to deviate from the original story that Michael and I had pitched long ago. But in it, basically, the team had to escape and they had to get through the portal. In this version, Mary gets killed,

Corvax goes evil, Ertai gets abandoned behind. So things don't go so well for the Weatherlight crew. But they do escape to Mercadia, which we would learn about not the following year, but the year after. I'll get to that in a sec. Exodus, I mean, it was a continuation of Tempest.

It introduced a few things. It had the Oath Cycle. Oath to Druids was in there. It had both Survival of the Sidious and Recurring Nightmare, which both ended up to be very, very powerful cards. Anyway, it was definitely a fun set. And on the same month, two Magic expansions got released on the same month two magic expansions

got released in the same month how often does that happen the other one was called Portal Second Age so let me explain what Portal Second Age was so in 1996 I believe we released Portal

so what Portal was is we were trying to teach people or was it 96 or 97 when it was Portal we were trying to teach people how to play magic we tried a bunch of different things. So Portal was our attempt to say, okay, we'll release a product that's like magic, but a little simpler. And so it only had sorceries and creatures and land. It didn't have incense or enchantments or artifacts. And the idea was it was meant to be a

much slimmer version of magic. So Portal Second Age, we had gotten in a creative team to do the Tempest Saga and we decided that we would give a creative treatment to Portal. The first Portal was very kind of generic and so what happened for the second Portal is the same creative team that had created Wrath and done all that work made a world for Portal. It is the only time really that we used guns. Portal Second Age is kind of famous for having I mean they were very

muskety kind of guns but it's the one time in Magic that we had guns as a key part of the IP. Something we haven't returned back to I'm happy to say. I'm not a big fan of guns in Magic. Guns don't feel super fantasy to me. I like my fantasy to stay more fantasy. And I think in magic,

the weapons in magic is the magic. I'm not a huge fan of, I mean, I don't mind a sword. That's pretty fantasy. But anyway, so Portal Second Age came out, and it had a completely different look to it and had a world that was self-contained. It didn't do particularly well. It didn't do,

I mean, Portal kind of didn't do well. Portal Second Age didn't do too well. Portal Three Kingdoms would come out the following year. That had a little better success, but it was a very different market. Okay. Next up was, in August, we had the World Championship. So the World Championship was held in Seattle. The previous year, it had been at the Tournament Center,

Wizard of the Coast Tournament Center. This year, it was held very, very close by at the University of Washington. So it was in the U District. It was nearby, but to get a little more space, we were in the U District. I think the finals were shot at the... I do think the finals were held. I think they were held. Anyway.

Nonetheless, most of it was held at the University of Washington. And that season, by the way, the 97-98 season, was a very, very dominant season for the U.S. In fact, every single Pro Tour... Pro Tour Chicago was won by Randy Buehler. Pro Tour Mites was won by Matt Place. Pro Tour L.A. was won by David Price. Pro Tour New York was won by John Finkel. The Worlds that year was won by a guy named Brian Seldon from the U.S.

who defeated Ben Rubin. So Ben Rubin had two top twos in one season. Anyway, in fact, the top eight of that world had one non-American in it, which was Raphael Levy of France was the only non-American in that top eight. That top eight included John Finkel. I mean, Ben Rubin obviously was in it. Chris Picoula was in it. It was a real chock-full top eight.

And in fact, when we talk about high-profile top eights, it's one of the ones they always talk about. I think Scott Johns was in that. Alan Comer might have been in that. It was a very, very high-octane top eight. In fact, one of the funny trivias about that is Chris Pakula was in it in the quarterfinals and lost, and then the semifinals started doing coverage.

So I think that's the only time where the person who did coverage had been in the top eight and then later did coverage. My sister got married. So I actually was at the beginning. I was there for, I think, like Tuesday, Wednesday, and then came back for Saturday. Or Sunday. I was back for Sunday. So I must have been there for... My sister got married, and so I had to fly back. So I was there for the beginning of I must have been there for... My sister got married,

and so I had to fly back. So I was there for the beginning of Worlds, flew back to my sister's wedding, and made it back to the end of Worlds to do the coverage. One of my crazier weekends. And Brian Seldon... Brian Seldon would go on

to have some other success. He had some other top eights. He actually was very good. And he defeated Ben Rubin, who would obviously go on on to have some other success. He had some other top eights. He actually was very good. And he defeated Ben Rubin, who would obviously go on to be a Hall of Famer. Also released in August, or also to happen

in August, was the release of a set very near and dear to my heart. Unglued. So for those that do not know what Unglued is, I was approached by Bill Rose and Joel Mick, and they came up with an idea of a silver-bordered magic set. The idea was a magic set that wasn't legal in tournaments, and would have a different border to designate that it wasn't

tournament legal. And their idea was I could do whatever I wanted. It could do cards we couldn't make in normal black-bordered magic. I was given that assignment. I ended up deciding that it should have a humorous bent and added a parody element to it. And then really went to town, and I was very happy. Unglute is one of my proudest accomplishments as a designer. It really was a special thing. I mean, it was all over the board.

I mean, it had BFM, which was a card so big, and $99.99 that it required two cards to be able to get it in play. And it broke borders and cards, you know, knocked from one card to the other. Or just all sorts of creatures eating their own flavor text and just a lot of nutty things. I had a lot of fun with it, and it turned out to be really good. In fact, the pre-release was held at Gen Con that year. At Gen Con in August, I went there, and I dressed as a chicken.

The real quick version of this story is we were brainstorming about what to do at the pre-release, and we were brainstorming, so there's a chicken theme in the set. And so I, during the brainstorming, I said, oh, I could head judge dressed as a chicken, and you could hear the screeching of the break, and as during the brainstorming, I said, oh, I could head judge dressed as a chicken. And like, you could hear the screeching of the break. And

as they stopped brainstorming, go, dressed as a chicken. Okay, we'll do that. And like, the brainstorming then turned into Mark's dressing as a chicken. Which I did. I actually got sick. I breathed in, there was a lot of dust I guess in the costume, and I breathed it in. And I ended up getting some sort of bronchial

problem. I actually, one of the few times I had laryaryngitis because I had some sort of lung issue for all the... But I did run the tournament and it went smoothly. I didn't get sick till later. But it was a hoot. By the way, when I say the pre-release, there was one pre-release for Unglued. It was at Gen Con. That was the only pre-release. We ran a whole bunch of flights. I think we ran six or eight flights. But it was a lot of fun. I definitely ran it a little different than a normal pre-release. You got tickets for doing different weird things. And then there was a raffle. So I guess for winning, you got a ticket. So winning meant something. But you got more tickets by doing things than winning. So it definitely encouraged people

to have fun more so than just win. Okay, and then September of that month, September 5th to the 6th, was Grand Prix Boston. I only brought, it's the only Grand Prix I'm bringing up, only because it was a pretty exciting one, which the finals were between John Finkel, who defeated Randy Buehler, who at the time, those would be the number one and number two pro players of the year. And so it was pretty exciting. The follow-up, later that month, September 25th to the 27th, in PC Chicago, so we've had a bunch of Pro Tour Chicago's, but this one, Dirk Baberowski of Germany defeated Casey McCarroll of the USA.

So Casey would go on, I think, the next year to win a Pro Tour. Dirk would go on to win two more Pro Tours, although both times as a team member of Phoenix Foundation. So Dirk is, so Kaibuda has won seven Pro Tours, and only two people ever won three Pro Tours, Dirk Beborowski and John Finkel. Now John won three individual Pro Tours, Dirk won one individual and two team, but nonetheless, Dirk Beborowski would and John Finkel. Now, John won three individual Pro Tours. Dirk won one individual and two team. But nonetheless, Dirk Beborowski would later get inducted into the Hall of Fame. And he is considered one of the greats.

If not for Kai Buda, he would probably be the greatest German player to ever play. And if you ask Kai Buda, I think he would say he is the greatest player to ever play. I know Kai is a huge, huge fan of Dirk Beborowski. He thinks he's underrated. Like, he's in the Hall of Fame, he's won more Pro Tours than almost anybody else, and Kai is claiming to me he thinks Dirk Babarowski is underrated as a

pro player. Okay, and October 12th was the release of Urza's Saga. So what had happened was, real quickly, one of these days I'll probably do my Urza's Saga thing, but the short version is we got a creative team to do Tempest, the story kind of

got taken away from Mike and I, and they decided they wanted to do a prequel to tie the story into Urza. Because in our version of the story, Urza was not, I mean, Urza was only tangentially involved, and they ended up making him very involved. And so they decided it was time for a prequel, and we were

going to go back and learn about Urza and his adventure, his saga, if you will. So what happened was design-wise, we had designed an enchantment set. It was not designed with Urza in mind. And then after the fact, we were told we were going back and it was a prequel, and we were going to go back in time. And so the problem was Urza was an artificer, and so they decided to call this block the Artifact Cycle because it tied to Urza, which was very confusing since that really wasn't about artifacts, it was about enchantments. But we had a bunch of broken artifacts, and anyway, no one remembers it was about enchantments. But we had a bunch of broken artifacts. And anyway, no one remembers it was about enchantments.

So Urza's Saga, for those that don't know their history, was one of, if not the most broken things in all of magic. It was ba-roken, to use an R&D terminology. Basically what happened was, it was the same people who had developed all the magic sets at the time me and Bill Rose and Mike Elliott

and William Jockish and Henry Stern and we were really overrun with things Bill I know was doing portal stuff and I was doing Unclued and I think Henry

was working on portal portal Three Kingdoms and we were all kind of like there was not a lot of us and we were being torn in a lot And we were all kind of like, there was not a lot of us and we were being torn in a lot of, we were being pulled in a lot of different directions.

And so the set did not get the attention it needed. It ended up being very broken. I talk about how there's three, the three legs of combo. One is engines, one is card drawing, and one is fast mana. And this set had all of them in abundance. And so it was

probably the most broken environment we've ever had. I mean, there'd be some other times. There was the Necro Summer of 96. There was Combo Winter, which was this one. And there was Affinity, I didn't have a name i guess but but the

mirrodin the year of mirrodin and the infinity madness those are the three kind of craziest times for magic i think this was the worst the most broken where the things were the craziest or the mirrodin gave it a run for the money um urza saga was popular and that was powerful, but it was broken. And so it was, we started doing, well, I guess we didn't start doing previous. Previous is the start of the previous year. So, but Urza Saga was used at the last Pro Tour of the year, Pro Tour Rome. And at Pro Tour Rome, it was won by Tomi Hovi of Finland, who had previously, so that was the first person to ever win two Pro Tours.

Now, as far as Tomi was concerned, he never felt he won the first Pro Tour, because David Mills was disqualified. So Tomi was really, really happy when he won, because he felt like he finally won a Pro Tour, even though technically it was the second Pro Tour. Pro Tour Rome was very quirky. It was run by the European offices. A bunch of us in the U.S. showed up more to advise, but we were actually not running the event. We were there in an advisory capacity.

And it was a crazy Pro Tour, mostly because it used Urza Saga. The joke of the Pro Tour was, Urza Saga in general, was there was early game, which was mulliganing, and then there was

mid-game, that was turn one. I'm sorry, early game was shuffling, mid-game was mulliganing, and then late game was turn one. I'm sorry, early game was shuffling, mid game was mulliganing, and then late game was turn one. A lot of decks could win on turn one or turn two, and so it was a crazy, crazy fast environment. The Pro Tour, I forget the format of the Pro Tour, but it was probably the most powerful format the Pro Tour has ever had, and I think it was, it might have been either extended or standard, but it was just blisteringly, blisteringly fast.

Things like Toleran Academy, and there were so many broken things there. Okay, also in November, Anthologies came out. So Anthologies was a box set, it had two 60-card decks, I think a green-white deck and a black-red deck. And it was meant to celebrate the fifth anniversary of Magic. Magic had come out in 1993, and this was 1998. So to celebrate the fifth anniversary, we released a box set. It was meant for the holidays. It came with a box so that you could keep your cards in it.

And it was two 60-card pre-constructed decks. And it had cards from every set, from Alpha all the way through Urza's Saga, which was the most recent thing. And it had... I think it's kind of... Probably the biggest thing that Anthologies goes down in the

record book store was it had a bunch of... It was white-bordered and had a bunch of mistakes in it. And so there are a bunch of cards from anthologies that are pretty rare. I know we messed up. We messed up on Semi-Healer, maybe on a Mesa Pegasus.

We messed up on a bunch. Somehow they were mostly white cards, but in which we wrote the wrong thing. And the funny thing is, the cards looked a lot like 5th edition cards, which came out in 1997, because they were white-bordered and they were templated very similarly. In fact, I think the only way

to tell them apart might be the copyright, because for the first time in 1998, before that, we would just list the year it was produced, and then we would list 1993 through the year it was produced. So, like, the copyrights for anthologies, if I remember correctly, was like 1993 through 1998. But the only way to

tell that you have an anthology's version of a card if it's not misprinted, there's some misprints, is to look for the copyright date. But anyway, that was all the product releases and the events of the year. Oh, real quickly, I promised this. In October of that year, October 10th to be exact, I got married.

Not particularly a horrendous magic-related thing other than I invited many, many magic people. We got married, we call it destination wedding, where out on one of the islands, there's a bunch of islands off of Seattle, a place called Port Ludlow, and we got married there, and all of R&D and a lot of other people came

and spent the weekend there. It was a little resort area. And anyway, a little personal highlight of 1998. As I run through, I'll share one or two little things. Most is about magic, but... So anyway, let me recap. I'm almost to work. So 1998 was definitely a year

of us sort of finding our feet a little more I mean 97 was the year we branched out we started doing more of the foreign language stuff

I mean this was the year where the pro tour really started churning and getting going and our product releases were we stopped having

a lot of the printing errors you'd see in early years and I think we were starting to find a groove a little bit. I mean, there obviously was some chaos behind the scenes with the Weatherlight Saga and stuff. And I guess, well, okay, to be fair, Urza Saga was a low point from a...

I mean, so when we talk about, I think a lot of times I talk about the kind of mistakes we made and then the good thing it led to. So Urza Saga was the biggest developmental mistake we've ever made. I mean, you can argue Mirrodin. Mirrodin will fight you for the honor.

But one of the things it did, so when we made Urza Saga, it went badly. We banned a whole bunch of cards, created what was called Combo Winter, which was just a very, very bad time for Standard, where people were leaving in droves because it wasn't fun. A lot of people left the game during Urza Saga. So it's the one and only time that we ever got called into the CEO's office, Peter Atkinson at the time, and yelled at, chewed out. And we were informed that if it ever happened

again, we were being fired. Fired. It's the only time I've ever been threatened with being fired in my 18-plus years at Wizards. And in fact, Mercadian Mask, which would follow it. If you ever wonder why Mercadian Mask wasn't that strong, that's part of it. And so I think the lessons of this year was we realized that we really didn't have developers as we think modern sense. I mean, we had people that could develop, but most of us at heart.

I mean, really, Mike and I were more designers than heart. Bill was kind of half designer, half developer. I mean, Henry and William were. In fact, Henry was the only sort of what I would think of a modern day where he had proved himself on the Pro Tour. He had two top fours at Worlds. And we decided that we needed to do more of that. And so what would happen in the following year, in 1999, we would hire some Pro Tour people.

Randy Buehler would be one of the big ones. We would start hiring people from the Pro Tour to do development. And it really would be a big shift in how we did development, of hiring people that showed some expertise and being able to break environments to do development. And it really would be a big shift in how we did development of hiring people that showed some expertise and being able to break environments to do development. And so,

in some ways, 1998 was the mistake that led us to modern development. I mean, we didn't get modern development until 1999, but it was the impetus

that made us get modern development. So I guess 98, looking back, was probably a year of a few mistakes. It's funny. I guess I started by saying, oh, it's of a few mistakes. It's funny. I guess I started by saying, oh, it's like a good year.

I'm like, well, except we blew up the tournament environment and the behind-the-scenes story kind of went crazy. Okay, it was a tumultuous year behind the scenes. And we had some fun sets and fun pro tours and things were slowly coming together. But we were finding our feet. And while we weren't misprinting things, other than anthologies, we had our share of things to learn. And so 98 was definitely a growing pains year.

But anyway, I'm now at work. And so that, my friends, was 1998. So I hope you guys enjoyed hearing about it, because I do love talking about history, but even more, I love making magic. I messed that up. As much as I like talking about magic, even more, I like making magic.

I'm working on this. I'm trying to get this. See, I had the intro all down. I've been doing it for 100 times, but I'm working on this. I'll get this closing one eventually. But anyway, it's fun talking to you guys about the year 1998.

Anyway, it's time for me to go make magic cards. So thank you very much for joining me, and I'll talk to you next time. Bye-bye.