Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #119 - 1999

Episode Date: May 2, 2014

Mark discusses many of the stories of the designs of cards and cycles in Zendikar.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know that. I've done that so many times I never mess that up. I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Hopefully Mark will make it there without crashing. Okay. So I just finished recording four podcasts talking about Zendikar cards. And I realize that four podcasts is a lot.

So I'm doing an intermediate podcast to go in between, probably between the second and the third, but I've already recorded those, so I'm letting you know in secret that there's four. I don't know that as I'm recording it. Anyway, so today I was going to do another of my series of 20 years and 20 podcasts. And so, I started doing this thing at World last year where I did 20 years in 20 minutes to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game

and I've decided to instead of spending a minute I'll spend an entire podcast on each year of Magic's life and so we are up to 1999 so if you've not heard 1993 through 1998 those are five previous podcasts you can listen to it's a little series for you and today I got a lot to talk about 1993 through 1998. Those are five previous podcasts you can listen to.

It's a little series for you. And today, I got a lot to talk about. So as I start working my way farther down the years, I realize it's going to get harder and harder because we do more and more things. In the early days, like, yeah, we had a couple sets, maybe there was an event. And now I'm like, oh, okay, hold on, we got a lot to talk about. So let me get started because like I said, we've got a lot to talk about. So we're going to start with February 4th through the 7th. It was the Magic Invitational in Barcelona.

So this was the third Invitational. In fact, I've done a whole series of podcasts on the Invitational, so I don't want to give a lot of detail here. This is the one where Mike Long from the United States defeated Sterla Bingen from Norway. The most famous thing about this was we introduced 6th edition rules at this event, so it was the first time ever in any high-profile thing 6th edition rules were played. We drafted, must have been Urza's Legacy, which comes out shortly in a second I'll talk about it. We drafted it for the first time ever in this event on the last day and Mike Long

became a champion and ended up making the card Rootwater Thief anyway also Kaibuda by the way, there was a Grand Prix at that very event and Kaibuda was on the streak of winning Grand Prix's he actually won I think three Grand Prixs that season,

two of which were back-to-back, and he had a second to boot. Anyway, we'll talk about Kaibuda. Kaibuda shows up later in the year and does quite well for himself. Okay, on February 6th, so at the same weekend that we were having the Invitational, was the pre-release for Urza's Legacy.

It would come out on February 15th. And Urza's Legacy was the would come out on February 15th. And Urza's Legacy was the second set in the Urza block. Probably it's well known now in that it's a very powerful set. Some people believe of the three Urza's sets that it might be the most powerful percentage-wise.

I mean, there's an argument also for Urza Saga. Anyway, it was definitely played upon the themes and stuff we had done in Urza Saga. Anyway, it was definitely played up upon the themes and stuff we had done in Urza Saga. It had cycling. It had Echo. There were a few new tweaks on stuff.

It didn't really introduce anything per se, but it had a lot of... Back in the day, we would evolve mechanics, so it evolves both eco and cycling, it did some different things with them. Anyway, next, on February 26th to the 28th was Pro Tour Los Angeles. There's not a lot of Pro Tours in which the finalists were two future Hall of Famers, and there's some, and this is one of them. This is Stephen O. Mahoney-Schwartz defeats longtime friend John Finkel.

So two U.S. folk playing each other in the finals. And it was a very dramatic top eight. It was a Rochester draft. I know Worth Wolpert was in this top eight. Mike Long was in the top eight. Pat Chapin was in the top eight. Mike Long was in the top eight. Pat Chapin was in the top eight. It was a pretty good top eight.

The story of the draft is that one side, which was John and Steve and Worth, who are all friends, cooperated on the Rochester draft. And one side cooperated and the other side fought. And the side that cooperated did much, much better.

I think Wirth came in third or fourth, so the three that cooperated all did very, very well. Obviously, two of them were in the finals. And this is... Stephen O'Moan Schwartz had three top eights. This is the one he won.

John Finkel is up to... I think 13 top eights. This is one of them. And this is, he, John has won three events. This is his second. I think he only came in second once. But he won three different times. Anyway, that was Pro Tour Los Angeles.

And that was the, I think the fourth Los Angeles Pro Tour. I think it was the fourth one. Okay. Then, in April, April 28th was the release of 6th Edition. So 6th Edition, the biggest thing about 6th Edition was there was a rule change. What now is known

as 6th Edition Rules. So it was a major, major overhaul of the rules. It added the stack. It made interrupts get folded into instants. It did a lot of small things like once upon a time, tap creatures didn't deal damage, so you could if you tapped the creature that was blocking you, you would damage it, but it wouldn't damage you. That went away.

There used to be a rule that said artifacts when tapped turned off, which caused all sorts of problems. That went away. Damage on the stack, not only did the stack get created, but damage on the stack happened. That would later go away, but that's what got introduced. And anyway, there's just a lot of how the turn order worked, and a lot of things changed.

This is the largest ever change we made on the rules. Magic 2010 had a smaller change, which was maybe the second biggest change we've ever done, but not even close. 6th Edition, hands down, maybe the second biggest change we've ever done, but not even close. 6th edition, hands down, was the largest rules change we've ever done. And I know that Bill Rose was the one that oversaw it, and it was really a sweeping thing to try to consolidate Magic and get the rules all together.

And 6th edition rules really is kind of defined by that, by the rules changes. Nothing else in it shines historically as much as the rules change. Okay, on March 29th was the pre-release for Urza's Destiny. And then it came out in June, I believe, June 7th. So Urza's Destiny was a set that I did by myself. It has the weird quirk of, I mean, other than, I guess,

maybe Alpha and Arabian Nights, it is the only set, not done by Richard Garfield, that I believe the design team was a team of one. So ever since we made design teams, it was the first design team in which it was a design team of one. I think I asked Bill

if I could just do it myself. Bill was in charge at the time, and he said yes. So I was pretty happy. Urza's Destiny definitely did a lot of experimenting. The big twist on cycling was I brought cycling into play. So there are things that you could sack, pay two, and get a card. Or pay two and sack, get a card. No one realized that it was cycling because I didn't put cycling on the cards.

But the idea was of cycling on the board. I played around a lot with death triggers. Flickering showed up for the first time in the set on a card called Flicker, which I tried to do as a vertical cycle, but it ended up being one card. One of these days, I'll do podcasts on the Urza's Saga block,

and I'll talk about Urza's Destiny when I get there. Urza's Destiny definitely was a very interesting set. There's a lot of stuff. Anyway, this is probably a better set for the Urza's Destiny podcast. But it was a very interesting set. I was not on the development team. I was on the development team for both Urza's Saga and Urza's Legacy, as well as the design teams. So I was

on all three design teams for the Urza set but I was not, and I was on two of the three development teams, but I was not on the development team for Urza's Destiny because I was the sole designer. Although there's some cards I might have cost differently if I'd known they weren't going to be changed in development. Okay.

Next, also that came out in May was Portal Three Kingdoms. For those that don't know, so Portal, yeah, to explain this one, I've got to explain a couple things. So Portal, Portal is a set that we made to be an entry-level set, to sort of teach people how to play Magic. The idea, one of the ongoing things you'll see as I recap the years is, we are constantly trying to figure out ways to teach people how to play Magic. The idea, one of the ongoing things you'll see as I recap the years is we're constantly trying to figure out ways to teach people how to play. And so one of the things we tried was a set called Portal

that was an introductory set, pretty much just had land and creatures and sorceries, had nothing else in it. It was super, super simple. It had lots of problems, but we were trying different versions of it. So this year, we did a version that actually wasn't even released in the United States called Portal Three Kingdoms. It was based on a famous book called Romance of the Three Kingdoms by Luo Guangzong. I'm probably mispronouncing that name horribly.

And it was a very popular Chinese tale. And so what we did is we adapted it for the Asian markets. The set came out in Japanese, simplified Chinese, traditional Chinese, and English, although the English was only released in New Zealand and Australia, and in very small quantities. That's why the most expensive cards of Portal for Kingdoms are in English, because the English were the rarest. Anyway, it was another

portal set. It had trappings of Japanese. And so a lot of things, Henry Stern was the one who designed it. And there were a

bunch of changes. One of the biggest changes, instead of flying, since flying didn't make as much of a difference, was that they had horsemanship.

And horsemanship basically was flying, but the idea was if you're on a horse, only people on horses can step others on horses. And so if you've ever heard of horsemanship, that horsemanship basically was flying. The idea was, if you're on a horse, only people on horses can stop others on horses. And so if you've ever heard of horsemanship, that's where it comes from. And it had a lot of very quirky names.

We've reprinted a few of them in corsets, like Borrowing 10,000 Arrows or Peach Garden Oath. You know, they're just quirky names. And anyway, because there was not that many printed, it's one of the rare, there's some very rare cars in there that are powerful, and they're just, they're not that many in existence, and so they're expensive because of that. Okay, on May 30th through June 1st was Pro Tour New York.

And at Pro Tour New York, which actually wasn't in New York, it was in, I think, Rye, New Jersey. It was actually in New Jersey, but it was called Pro Tour New York. Casey McCarroll of the United States defeated Sean Keller of the United States. Casey played on

the juniors for a while, was definitely a very talented player, had a bunch of top eights. In fact, I think Casey McCarroll has either three or four top eights and one win. This is the win right here. Um, and anyway, definitely a very, uh, young, talented individual. Um, and this was his one chance, uh, where he shined and he won. Um, next is, okay, I could not find the date. One chance where he shined and he won. Next is... Okay, I could not find the date.

I tried very hard to find the date for this. I believe it happened in June. It might have happened in July. It was the European Championship, the 1999 European Championship. Nikolai Herzog defeated Dirk Babarski. So that's talking about Hall of Famers playing each other. That was another example of two Hall of Famers playing each other in the finals. Um, uh, Nikolaj Herzog is from Norway.

Dirk Babarowski is from Germany. Uh, each of them has won a Pro Tour. Um, in fact, Nikolaj Herzog, yeah, he's only won one Pro Tour. He, he, he did back-to-back top twos, I think. I think Nikolai Herzog, yeah, he's only won one Pro Tour. He did back-to-back top twos, I think. I think Nikolai did. Actually, I take it back. Nikolai might have won two Pro Tours.

Not that I'm thinking about it. Nikolai might have. Anyway, when we get there, I'll talk about it. Nikolai, anyway, was a very, very good player. Dirk was a very, very good player. They're both in the Hall of Fame, obviously. And Nikolai won the European Championship. He actually would

have won it twice. I think he won it now and he won it again in 2003, is my guess. Anyway. But anyway, the European Championship

was that summer. I think it started the year before. They started the European Championship because they wanted to have a place where all of Europe would compete and have sort started a European championship because they wanted to have a place where all of

Europe would compete and have sort of a European-centric competition. The U.S. Nationals drew a lot of people because the U.S. is so big. And so they decided to do their own version over in Europe. Okay, July 2nd to the 4th was

PT London, in which Kyle Rose of the U.S. defeated... Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. July 2nd to the 4th was PT London, in which Kyle Rose of the U.S. defeated Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I'm getting ahead of myself. July 2nd to the 4th was the U.S. Nationals, where Kyle Rose of the United States defeated John Hunka, obviously, of the United States, of the U.S. Nationals.

And at the same time, we also ran the Junior Super Series, which was an event we used to run for young people. And the winners got scholarship money, money for scholarships. And there were two different divisions. Jeff Slutsky won the 15- to 17-year-old division,

and Aaron Heimstra won the 14-and-under. We stopped doing the Junior Super Series many years ago, but it was done in conjunction with U.S. Nationals that year, in Columbus, I believe. Next, in July, Starter came out, which is now called Starter 1999. At the time, it was just called Starter.

We were moving away in the States from doing Portal. Obviously, Portal was still being done, tried in Asia, but it wasn't really working for us. We were trying something different. And so Starter was kind of a subset of 6th Edition with a few unique cards that didn't exist in 6th Edition that were vanilla cards or very simple cards. And so for collectors, there's some stuff in Starter 99 that the only place they exist is in the Starter set. They're mostly things like, I think, like Giant Octopus, and there's some stuff that

was in the, we made a little comic book to teach you how to play, and they were in the comic book, so we just kept them in the product, even though they weren't technically in 6th edition. So they have a special starter expansion symbol. So for collectors, that's a rare thing. And so, it was, I think, the fourth overall starter set, had 173 cards.

It came with, I think, a fifth edition City of Brass, which is something that's, anyway. It also came with a CD-ROM to help teach you how to play. I think I was the one that actually did the programming. You could play against the computer, and so I sort of taught the computer. I mean, the two decks were known decks, so I sort of said, like, hey, computer,

on this card, do things in this order. And I wrote the programming for it. I mean, I didn't actually program decks. So I sort of said, like, hey, computer, on this card, do things in this order. And I wrote the programming for it. I mean, I didn't actually program it because I'm not a programmer, but I wrote the logic for how it played. And then July 13th to 16th, which I think was at, not Origins, because Origins was before, anyway, was the Amateur Championship. And that's if you had no pro points. You used to run this championship where you could play if you had no pro points.

I did not write down who won that. Anyway, a guy who had no pro points won it. I did not write down the name. August 4th through the 8th was Worlds in Yokohama. So that's in Japan. Basically Tokyo. Yokohama is sort of a part of Tokyo, but technically Tokyo is big. So it's Yokohama.

It's actually a place we would have multiple events at. I think this is the first one was here. And at this event, a newcomer named Kai Muda would win, beating Mark Lepine of the United States. It's funny, because we were recording this for ESPN2, and the final match was so fast that us showing every minute of the final match, including a little bit of shuffling and them talking, wasn't enough to fill up a half-hour show. We had to show some semifinals because it was so blisteringly fast. Also at this event, the U.S. team, which has Kyle Rose, John Hunka, Zvi Mausiewicz, and one more person I'm blinking on,

defeated Germany in the finals. That finals is very, very famous for Marco Blum of the German team. He was the German national champion. He had in his deck a treacherous dragon. He had a dragon that when you played it, you had to sacrifice if you didn't have any artifacts in play. And his deck was all about having artifacts to get it out quickly.

And he got it and was able to play it, but he didn't have any artifacts in play. And that never, ever happens in his deck, so he wasn't even thinking about it. He played his dragon, there was no artifacts in play, and it had to sacrifice itself. And Marco Bloom is an awesome, awesome player. Two-time Pro Tour champion,

along with his fellow teammates, Dirk Paparoski and Kai Buda, on Phoenix Foundation. Like I said, German national champion. Awesome player. He is remembered for the dumbest move that he ever made, which happened to be in the team finals of the World Finals. Anyway, the U.S. did go on to win that.

And Kyle Rose, once again, was the national champion. We'll talk about Kyle Rose in a sec. Let's see. Next is, in September 3rd through the 5th, was Pro Tour Washington, D.C. This was a team event. And so the winning team was Your Tour Washington, D.C. This was a team event. And so the winning team was Your Move Games, which was Rob Doherty,

Darwin Castle, and... I work with him. Dave Humphreys. I'm picturing him in my mind. This is another one where the winners, all three members of the winning team, would go on to become Hall of Famers. Darwin Castle got voted in the first year.

I think Dave Humphries got voted in the second year, and Rob got voted in the third year. I believe that's how it worked out. All of them are really good. So Rob is a TO that runs a lot of, that owns and runs. For a long time he had one store, then he had a bunch of stores,

I don't know how many stores he has anymore, but long time T.O. and long time game store owner. Darwin Castle, obviously one of the best, I mean, after Kai and John, has the third best results of anybody in Pro Tour history. He's like nine top eights, I think.

And, you know, known for playing very offbeat and quirky decks. Dave Humphries now is the manager of all the developers at Wizards of the Coast. So I work with Dave day in and day out right now. And he, anyway, also a longtime player, very good. They defeated, sorry, Game Empire,

which was Alan Comer, who's in the Hall of Fame, Brian Seldon, and Kurt Wagner. Brian Seldon would go on, or sorry, Brian Seldon the previous year, in 98, was a world champion. Alan Comer would go on to get into the Hall of Fame, and I think he has four top eights to his name.

Kurt Wagner, this is probably, he's a guy out of LA. I think Kurt might have top eights to his name. Kurt Wagner, this is probably, he's a guy out of L.A. I think Kurt might have another top eight to his name. But I regularly was on the pro tour for a long time. All three of them were from Los Angeles at the time. And I believe the game store they played in was Game Empire, which is why it was called Game Empire. In fact, both teams were named after the store that they played in,

because Your Move Games was named after the store that they played in. Because Yermove Games was named after the store Yermove Games that Rob owned. Okay. Oh, the other interesting story about that one is in the finals, Rob Doty was sick as a dog. I talked about the story where Darwin Castle in the Invitational in Rio versus Jakob Schlemmer, sick as a dog. Same thing. The quirky thing about this thing was that they had to win two out of three to win. And so Rob had to play, even though I think they built his deck for him because he was, like, collapsed on the floor.

But anyway, even though he was Sick as a Dog, they managed to pull it out, and they won. Okay, next. September 25th was the pre-release, and October 4th was the release of Mercadian Masks. So I talked about this a little bit. Urza Saga kind of exploded, made Combo Winter, Standard broke,

we had to ban a whole bunch of cards, we got taken up to the CEO's office and shoot out, and we're told if it ever happened again, we would be fired. Well, we made sure Mercadian Mask was not overpowered. Mercadian Mask has a bunch of issues. I mean, at some point I'll do the Mercadian

Masks podcast. Anyway, it had all sorts of issues. We were trying not to push power level. I think the design had some issues. The creative, for sure, had some issues the creative for sure had some issues for some reason we had to have a Q in name although I

creative people kept telling us that M-A-S-Q-U-E-S is not the same as M-A-S-K-S they're different words but we're like let's use words people know how to pronounce anyway the joke there was we were so mad at the spelling of the Q that we changed every spelling in our set every time a K would show up, it changed to

Q-U. Anyway. Arcadia Mass did not sell particularly well. It had a lot of issues with it. October 15th through the 17th was Pro Tour London, where Kyle Rose shows up again. So not only was he national champion that year, U.S. national champion, and the captain of the U.S.

sorry, of the world's winning team, but he also won a Pro tour, Kyle Rosasummer. And he defeated a guy named Thomas Pryor from Austria in London. And I don't remember too much about that event. It was, I think it was a limited event. I'm pretty sure it was a limited event. My big memory of that event was the last event that Randy Bueller played in before he joined R&D, that he would join R&D.

So Randy, in the fall, would join R&D and be the newest member and start working on Invasion, which I'll talk about in the 2000 podcast. Okay, next up, in November 12th, there's so much to talk about. November 12th, we released something called the Battle Royale Box Set. Okay, raise your hand if you know what the Battle Royale Box Set is.

Okay, so it was our first product aimed at multiplayer play. So what it was was, it was four 40-card decks, so 160 cards total, all white border, I think actually with expansion symbols. So some of these cards are unique that the only place they exist in white border with

expansion symbols is this product. For collectors, this is a product that has some unique cards. Anyway, there were four decks. Spirit Gale, white-blue, Chargoif, red-green, The Deluge, green-white, and Cinderheart, black-red.

And the idea was, they were four decks meant to play against each other in a four-person multiplayer game. So this is the first nod we ever made that people maybe played with more than two people. And it definitely was geared...

I mean, they were mostly cards... I think they're mostly cards from 6th edition, and, oh, no, no, no, I take that back, there, the gimmick of this thing, I think, was there were cards from every previous expansion, I think, were in it, so it was actually a throwout magic, yeah, in a lot of ways, this might be the precursor to some of the commander decks, I mean, obviously, they were 40 card decks, but sort of just plucking things from, I think what we did is, okay, now I remember this. We tried to find cards from throughout

Magic that affected multiple players. So what we did is we looked for cards that all meant something in multiplayer play. So there were four different cards. Let's say, like, Chargoif must have had Largoif in it. Because Largoif looked at all graveyards, not just your graveyard. So in multiplayer play,

it got bigger. And so, we were looking for cards that probably got powered up with having lots of players. And anyway, like I said, it was a unique product. I think it came in a box that you could keep. I think. I don't remember the... Anyway. But it was called the Battle Royale Box Set. Dun-dun-dun.

Okay. And then I think in December, it might have been November, this is another one where I know this product came out, but I couldn't find the date, was the 1999 World Champ Decks. So really quickly, let me explain what the World Champ Decks were. For a while, what we would do, when the very first Pro Tour came out, we made eight decks to celebrate the PT1, and they're called the PT1 decks. They're the top eight decks.

And then starting from that point onward, we started making, we would pick four decks from the World Championships of that year, and the idea was they did not have Magic card backs. They had special World Championship backs. The cards had gold borders, and they were signed in gold by the person whose deck it was, and there were four decks that you could buy

that came in this black box sort of thing. And I think there were two pairs of two decks. I think is that a word? Or maybe all four decks came in one box? Anyway, there were four decks. I actually didn't write, I forgot to write down whose decks these were. So because it was the

1991s, we always had the winner, so Kaibuda was there. I think we had Marc Lepine because he was,'s we always had the winner so Kai Buda was there I think we had Mark Lapine usually we'd have the winner and the person who came in second and then I'm pretty sure I think Jakob Schlemmer and maybe Gary Wise

that's my memory it's Buda, Lapine, Wise and Schlemmer that's my guess someone who actually can look it up can tell me how close. What we would do is we'd try to pick the top four decks out of the top eight that we thought were the most interesting combination of decks, and then we'd lean toward the bigger name. Like, if two people were playing the same deck,

we would take the player that was more known to be their deck. Like, I think this year, I think the deck that Gary Wise was playing was played by two people, but Gary Wise was the bigger name. Okay. Finally, the final event of this year, the final thing to talk about, December 3rd through December 5th in Chicago was PT Chicago, where Bob Marr Jr. of the United States defeats Brian Davis of the United States. So this, I talked about this in another podcast.

Oh, I talked about this in my coverage podcast. Because this is one of the classic matchup finals of PT. So what happened is, Brian Davis on paper had a really good matchup. That Brian Davis was supposed to beat Bob Marr on paper. And what happened was, Brian was young at the time. Brian's a very good player, but he was very young. Bob was definitely more of a veteran at this point.

He'd never won a Pro Tour, but he had done well, and he was a name. People know who he was. And so they play, and during the course of five games, I believe in every single game, there's a point where Brian, according to, like, Randy Buehler and Brian Hacker were doing the commentary, and my memory of this is, there's a point in every game where Brian Davis was supposed to win, where he had the means to win, and Bob Marr would find, in three of the five games, Bob Marr found some way to take what was basically unwinnable and found a way to win.

There are a bunch of mistakes made by Brian. There are a few gambles taken by Bob. Bob just played really, really well. a few gambles taken by Bob. Bob just played really, really well. And anyway, Bob... The joke of the tournament is Bob... Brian Davis goes 5-0 and loses the tournament. He showed up on every game.

He was positioned to win every game. But Bob managed to somehow pry three games away from him and went on to be the champ. Bob would, I believe... Well, that's the next year. I think Bob would go on... Yes, I think Bob goes on to become Pro Player of the Year in 2000. We'll talk about that when I do the 2000 podcast. Oh, by the way, I didn't mention this.

So the 1999 Pro Player of the Year, surprise, surprise, Kai Buda, who edged out John Finkel. So that was Kai's, Kai would have a couple Pro Players of the Year. This is the first time Kai would win Pro Player of the Year. He basically had a bunch of very good Grand Prix finishes, and he won Worlds. That was what clinched it for him. Anyway, that is 1999.

It was a chock-full year. Let's see, how much time did I... I got to check my clock. Oh, and I actually made good time getting here. I managed to fill in all the year and make good time to get to work as well. So anyway, one of the things you'll see as we're moving forward in this series is I did not have a lot of time to talk about some of these stuff

because there was so much happening. So I see as we move along in these podcasts, I'm going to have to pick up the pace. There's a lot going on. But I managed to get it all in. It was a chock-full year. You could see we were putting out sets. We were organized play was in full swing. There were lots of different things going

on. We started making more and more side products, not just the court expansions. The rules changed. That was probably the biggest thing of the year. But anyway, that, my friends, in a long, A long, not long, but a normal-sized podcast is $19.99. So, as much as I love talking about magic and magic history, even more, I like making magic. So it's time for me to go and start making things for me to talk about when I get to this year. Anyway, thanks for joining me, and I'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye.