Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #130 - 2000

Episode Date: June 13, 2014

Mark continues his "20 Years in 20 Podcast" series, exploring the year 2000.

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 episode of 20 years and 20 podcasts, where I talk about all of magic's history year by year. Today is 2000. We've hit a new millennium of magic. 2000, we've hit a new millennium of magic. Okay, so not too much went on in January, but in February PT Los Angeles from February 4th to the 6th

where Trevor Blackwell from the United States defeats Chris Benefell also from the United States. The big story actually of this tournament wasn't even the finals. The big tournament of the story was Mike Long during the final round of the finals. The big tournament of the story was Mike Long, during the final round of the Swiss, there was

belief that he was cheating. And so the judges spent a long, long time, but they could not prove that he was cheating. So they could not kick him out. And he made top eight. Oh, and people were mad and angry. And so, normally the semifinals

are early in the morning, and not a lot of people show up for it, but they showed up. There was a giant crowd. They're just to root Mike Long's loss. But he won, and he went to the semifinals. And the semifinals, even more people screaming for Mike Long to lose. And then in the semis, Mike Long loses. And then no one was there for the finals.

When people always ask me about sort of why I pushed Long, Long got people in seats. Long definitely got people excited. They wanted him to lose. They hated him. But he roused people up and was very charismatic and people wanted to watch him. And this is a perfect example where the quarters and the semis were packed, like you couldn't get a seat. And then the finals, like, dust balls running through. It was interesting. Anyway,

both Trevor Blackwell and Chris Benefell would go on to do other stuff. In fact, Chris Benefell would do stuff this very year. Okay, then, just a few weeks later, in fact, the pre-release of Nemesis happened during the Pro Tour that weekend, and then, two weeks later, in fact, the pre-release of Nemesis happened during the Pro Tour that weekend, and then two weeks later, on February 14th, Nemesis was released. So Nemesis was

the second set in the Invasion block, not Invasion block, I'm sorry, in the Mercadian Masks block. And for those that know their story, um, Mercadian Mask took place on Mercadia, and Nemesis took place on Wrath. Uh, the story about, um, in Mercadian Mask, you see Volrath kill Stark. He then returns back to Wrath for, um, and he ends up getting in a big fight. There's a fight about who's going to... Well, anyway, I think he ends up getting killed by Krovacs, I believe. Anyway, Voloth gets killed and there's a power vacuum in which a bunch of different people are fighting for power. I believe Grevenil Vek and the corrupted Urtai and Krovacs

are all fighting for power and I believe Crovax ends up taking it. But anyway, Nemesis took place on Wrath. So that's actually a block, by the way, where each set took place in some place different.

Mercadia Mass took place on Mercadia. Nemesis took place on Wrath and Prophecy, which we will get to in a moment, took place on Dominaria. Okay. So, then on

March 2nd through the 5th in Kuala Lumpur was the Magic Invitational. Now, this year is a special year. There are two Magic Invitationals, and the reason was we'd had them in the fall, and then we ended up shifting the one in Kuala Lumpur

because it didn't line up, so the time we could do it happened to be in the spring. So this one took place late in the magic season, where the next one would take place early. So it turns out that in the year 2000, both invitationals actually happened in the year 2000. And anyway, I'll talk about both of them. So this one, in fact, John Finkel is going to be a name you're going to hear a lot today, because John Finkel had a very, very good year in the year 2000.

And the first time his name pops up is he's in the finals of an Invitational. In fact, this is not the last finals of the Invitational he will be in this year. So Chris Bakula plays John Finkel. So if you remember, I did a podcast talking about my Invitationals. I haven't finished that yet, but I did talk about this one, which is one of my favorite invitationals, where Chris Bakula manages to go up against his

friend and probably best magic player on the planet, for sure at the moment, at the time. And, um, anyway, uh, Chris manages to win, ends up making the card Medley Mage as his prize. Um, Kuala Lumpur, I talked a lot about it in my podcast. I won't get into too much detail here. If you want to hear about it, I did a whole podcast managed to win, ends up making the card Meddling Mage as his prize.

Kuala Lumpur, I talked a lot about in my podcast. I won't get into too much detail here. If you want to hear about it, I did a whole podcast on it, or half my podcast is dedicated to this. But it was quite the victory. And it was an invitation that Chris Willow wasn't even going to go to. I had to talk him into going. And then it's funny, now when we hear Chris talk,

it's one of his favorite moments of magic. It's one of his sort of big victory moments, and especially beating John in the finals, which was the impossible task. Okay, in April 14th to the 16th, we had another Pro Tour in New York. This, in fact, so I had a streak. I had been to every single Pro Tour, and up until this Pro Tour. Pro Tour New York was the first Pro Tour I ever missed. In eight years, I'd been to every,

or not eight years, and at this time, the Pro Tour started in 96. So this was 2000. So in the four years, I'd been to every single Pro Tour. Why did I miss this Pro Tour? The birth of my oldest daughter, Rachel.

And so Sigurd Eskland of Norway defeated Warren Marsh of the UK. This was the Mercadian Mass Block Pro Tour, in which everybody played one of two decks. There was Rebels, and there was a Mono Blue deck. I forget the name of the Mono Blue deck. But anyway, I think Sigurd was playing Rebels. But anyway, I was told when I missed it,

people said, you missed a good one. It was very boring. I mean, Sigurd Eskelen's a really, really good player, as was Warren Marsh, and it was nice to see Sigurd win, but the format was not exactly magic at its finest. It was a lot of mere matches of really slow, boring matches. Okay. Finally, we jump to June 8th.

June 8th through the 11th is the U.S. Nationals. Now, I don't always bring up U.S. Nationals, but this particular year is important. So John Finkel defeats Chris Benefell to become the U.S. National Champion. So John had some successes, and he decided that it was time to take it seriously again. And so after a bunch of years,

he dusted off and actually really worked hard. And as you will see, this pays off for him. So he had done well at the Invitational, obviously, and now he becomes U.S. National Champion, defeating Chris Benefell in the finals. Okay, in May, not in May, sorry, in July, From July 7th to the 9th is the APAC Championship. So one of the things that started happening was the previous year, there had been a European Championship, and so APAC is the

what does APAC stand for? Asia Pacific, I think it stands for. So it's all of Asia and Australia. So they decide they're on their own championship, which is like the European championship. And in the APEC championship, Masaya Mori defeats Hiroto Watanabe. So two very,

very good Japanese players. And Mori takes it to be the first, I think this is the first ever APEC championship, I believe. Then, on June 5th, and the pre-release was actually on May 27th, June 5th, Prophecy comes out. So I've talked about before that I've called Homelands the worst design set in Magic history.

Prophecy is number two as far as... It was designed by William Jockish, who was a developer. And William was a very good developer. Not the strongest of designers. It was a very, very, very spiky set. It had Rhystic and it had a lot of Sacking Lands and it was one of those things where it was just super, super, super spiky.

And I know there's people that enjoyed it because it did reward you for skill, but it was not a particularly fun set to play. In late development, Bill Rose and I went in and added a bunch of splashy cycles, so there is the winds and the avatars, but those were added in during development and actually

weren't from design. Okay. Then July 14th to the 16th is the European Championship. So the Europeans had had a championship before. This year, Noah Boken of the Netherlands defeats Raphael Levy of France. Both of those were really good players, and Europe at this point had a number of very high-profile pro players, and so every year it was usually a very dramatic match among very famous Magic players. Okay, in July, Starter 2000 came out. So for those that don't know, what Starter 2000 was is we needed some things to teach people how to play.

I believe the starter product had two decks that you could play against. They were really, really simple cards, vanillas and simple sorceries. This one had two themed decks that played against each other. It also came with a CD-ROM. The interesting thing about this one was, I think there was a 5th edition City of Brass that was a pretty rare item in these decks, and there was a promotional Rocks from Nemesis.

And so this is one of those things that we did not print in large number. There's a few things in it that have a unique quality to them that aren't anywhere else. And so this product actually is worth something, just in that it's not something, you know, we didn't put it out in a large number because it was meant as a starter product. The other weird thing about the starter products, we made two of them, was that the cards in it were legal for standard even though they

appeared nowhere but in this product. But they were very, very simple cards, none of which we thought would be major players in Limited, so, I mean, in Constructed. But anyway, that started 2000. Okay, August 2nd through the 6th, the World Championship in Brussels, Brussels, Belgium. So this was, it's funny, I mean, there are a lot of dramatic moments, there are a lot of memorable finals. This finals is, in my mind, one of the most memorable finals ever. It was John Finkel versus Bob Marr, Bob Marr Jr.

Bob had previously won a PT that year. previously won a PT that year, and Bob, if Bob, so we're in the finals, and I think Bob had to get to the finals to clinch, I think if Bob got to the finals, he clinched Pro Player of the Year. In fact, there's a funny moment.

Darwin Castle, if Bob did not advance to the finals, Darwin Castle wins Pro Player of the Year, and if Darwin, sorry, if not advance to the finals, Darwin Castle wins Pro Player of the Year. And if Bob advanced to the finals, then Bob wins Pro Player of the Year. And so this is a great shot of the audience of Darwin. I forget who Bob was playing, but Darwin had a flag of his opponent. It was like Rooney versus opponent. Because basically, if Bob's opponent had won,

Darwin would become Pro Player of the Year. But Bob won. Bob became Pro Player of the Year. So he set up the finals in which Bob Marr, who Darwin would become Pro Player of the Year. But Bob won. Bob became Pro Player of the Year. So he set up the finals in which Bob Marr, who's now the Pro Player of the Year, playing John Finkel, who to many believed was the best player. I mean, at the time, it's pretty clear that most people believed he was the best player at the time. As we'll see later on, Kai Buda's about to make his move, the start of Kai Buda's run, his crazy, crazy run, which I'll talk about in a second. But anyway, that hadn't happened yet.

I mean, Kai had won in 99, he had won Worlds. But Kai is about to start a crazy run, which I will get to in a second. So right now, it's sort of like Bob Marr, who is the hottest player of the moment, Pro Player of the Year, versus John Finkel, who many believe was the best player ever, playing in the finals. And they were playing the same deck. It was a Tinker deck, and it had Frexian Processor, and basically it was Tinker on Tinker. And for those who don't remember Tinker, Tinker's a

sorcery for two and a blue that allows you to go through your deck, you have to sacrifice an artifact to go through your deck to get any artifact and put it into play. I had loved Antiquities, and there was a card in Antiquities. What was the name of the card in Antiquities? There was a card in Antiquities that allowed you to sacrifice an artifact, Transmute Artifact?

That's not the name. Anyway, it might be Transmute Artifact. Anyway, there was a card in Antiquities that allowed you to sacrifice a creature. Not a creature. You could sacrifice an artifact. You then could pay extra mana and get any artifact

that was equal to the converted mana cost of the one you sacrificed plus the extra mana you spend to get a new artifact so I loved that card I was trying to make

a cleaner version of it so it cost a little bit more but you didn't have to pay the extra mana turns out broken! in fact we were talking about the most broken

card I've ever made Tinker might be the most broken card I've ever designed anyway this was a Tinker on Tinker deck. Crazy, crazy things were happening. Phyrexian Processor was a card that I had made. I forget how much it cost.

It cost some amount of mana to play. But the big thing with Phyrexian Processor is when you played it, you've got to pay so much life. And then you could spend some mana to tap it to make an XX creature equal to the amount of life you paid. So if you paid 10 life when you played it, it made 10 creatures. If you paid 19 life, it made 19 creatures. So people were playing Frenzy Improcessors and making giant creatures.

Anyway, it was a major, major match between John and Bob. I believe it might have even gone to five games. It was dramatic, very dramatic. And John Finkel managed to beat Bob Marr to become the world champ. But that was not all that John Finkel did this day. So the U.S. team played the Canadian team. So the Canadian team was led by Ryan Fuller. And Ryan Fuller was not much beloved among the Magic community.

The funny thing was he was really good friends with Chris Benefell, who was on the U.S. team. So John Finkel, Chris Benefell, Aaron Forsyth, and a not-as-well-known player. What was his name? Frank something? Anyway, the U.S. team had to play the Canadian team, and the rule was you had to win. There were four matches because there were four things going on. And then if there's a tie because there's four matches, the champs play off again. So John Finkel wins his match.

Chris Benefiel loses his match. The guy whose name I'm blanking on, Frank somebody, loses his match. It's down to Aaron Forsythe. If Aaron Forsythe wins, they're tied. It's another match between John Finkel and Ryan Fuller. If Aaron loses, they lose. Canadian wins. Finkel and Ryan Fuller.

If Aaron loses, they lose, Canadian wins. Now, at this moment, the U.S., other than in 1997, when the U.S. did not win, Canada won, the U.S. had won every single team tournament, losing only one year to Canada. Well, Canada is like, this is the year that they win for a second time, break the U.S. streak yet again. And so it was a bitter finals.

There was no love lost between Ryan Fuller and John Finkel. But Aaron Forsythe pulls it out and it goes to a final, a tiebreaker in which John Finkel defeats Ryan Fuller to win for the U.S. national team. So Finkel wins the individual and wins the team, which might be the only time that feat has ever been accomplished.

I can't remember. I mean, someone will write in if I missed one, but I believe that's the year where the U.S. champion was also on the... Sorry, the world champion was also on the world winning team. I do not think that has happened. Or if it has, it's only happened once or twice.

It has not happened very often. Anyway, so John Finkel wins the U.S. Nationals, wins the world's, wins the World's Team, basically wins every major event of that summer, and he's back. John Finkel is back. Okay, next, PT New York, September 29th to October 1st. In it, Potato Nation defeats Car Acrobatic Team. So this was a team event. Potato Nation was Mike Turian, Gary Wise, and Scott Johns. Both Mike Turian and Gary Wise would go on to be inducted in the Hall of Fame. Scott Johns is currently the only person with five Pro Tour wins, only not to be in the Hall of Fame,

and they had a fight at a car acrobatic team, which was Aaron Forsyth, Andrew Cuneo, and Andrew Johnson. This was a team that Aaron Forsyth put together, and Aaron had a good year. He obviously was on the winning Worlds team. I mean, he made it to the Worlds team. He was a quarterfinalist or semifinalist at Worlds. He was on the winning team, and then he came in second at Potato Nation. So Aaron would later obviously go on to work for Wizards

and eventually become my boss. So also at PT New York, there was a Masters. So what we did for a while was we ran these events where we would have things we had to film for money because we were doing ES events where we would have things we would have filmed for money because we were doing ESPN stuff at the time, and we would shoot these for ESPN. And it just would be an invitation-only event that would happen at Pro Tours. So this Masters, Billy Jensen in the United States defeats Jason Zila of the United States.

I did not write down the format. It was a constructed format. And I think it was constructed. It was a constructed format. And I think it was constructed. Anyway, so we were having these masters at the same time as the event. Billy would go on also to be inducted into the Hall of Fame later. Okay, on October 2nd, Invasion comes out.

So Invasion was our first multicolor-themed block. Bill Rose and Mike Elliott and I put it together. We did the initial design of my dad's house up in Tahoe in California. It took elements of a set called Spectral Chaos by Barry Bit. Barry is known as the first person... He's the first person Richard Garfield ever played Magic against. When Richard had his first deck, he's Barry's who he played. He's a good friend.

And he was one of the playtesters. He went on to make a set that had a multicolor theme. It never got made. We took elements of it. The Barry mechanic, which is the domain mechanic from Invasion,

was actually from Barry's set. So it's called the Barry mechanic, which is the domain mechanic from Invasion, was actually from Barry's set. It's called the Barry mechanic. Anyway, the Invasion went over really, really well. It was a very popular set. It had a strong multi-color theme. It introduced Kicker. It had the Diddy cards. It had cards you could cast.

Fae Extra Man had cast his instance. Although the Kicker was the only thing named a mechanic in the set. Anyway, it went over quite well. So next, in November, came out the World Champ decks. So every year what would happen is we'd have the World Championships, and then we would have four decks. It would always be the world champ.

It would be the person who came in second if they weren't playing the same deck as the person who came in first. This year he was, so I think Bob Marr didn't get a deck. And then we would go down as we had to. Henry Stern would do these. And anyway, it would be four decks

as high as we could place them that were four unique different decks. If two people were playing the same deck, we tend to err toward the bigger name. Anyway, and then on November 14th, in Sydney, Australia, was the Magic Invitational, the second one of the year.

And this one, Finkel, Finkel was having a hot, hot year, would win the Invitational, defeating Ben Rubin. So both Finkel and Ben Rubin are both from the United States. Both will later get inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Both really, really good players. So Finkel had come in second at the previous Invitational in Kuala Lumpur. This time he finally gets the chance to win. One of the funny stories at this Invitational was

at the Kuala Lumpur Invitational, Pukula came, but did really well on day one and realized he had a chance to actually win, begged David Humphreys for deck tech, because David had worked on decks, and Chris hadn't brought constructed decks. And the

promise to Dave Humphreys was, if he loaned him his decks and Chris won, he would fly him to the next Invitational, wherever it was. Well, it turned out to be in Sydney, Australia, and Chris, true to his word, flew Humphreys. Humphreys was to be in Sydney, Australia, and Chris Truder's word flew Humphrey. Humphrey's was not in the Invitational. Flew Dave Humphrey to play

in Grand Prix Sydney, which he did. And this was, Finkel had handily won the finals. One of the funny things was, one of the formats they had to play, we did the auction of the champions,

where people bought previous Pro Tour and World Champ winning decks. And John Finkel had gotten Zach Dolan's first Worlds winning deck. And he's playing against Ruben playing Dave Price's Tempest Mono Red deck. And turn one, Finkel plays a turn one Ser Angel. And Ben Rubin's trying to figure out, assuming the perfect draw, how many turns before he could kill

a turn one Ser Angel. And the turn one was like three turns. Because he had to double kindle it or something. Anyway, also held not too much later, December 1st to the 3rd, in PT Chicago was Kai Muda

defeating Camille Cornielsen. So Kai Muda's from Germany, obviously. The German juggernaut defeating Camille Cornielsen from the Netherlands. Both of them would go on to be world, both of them would go on to be Hall of Famers. In fact, this top eight on to be Hall of Famers.

In fact, this top eight had six future Hall of Famers. So in this top eight, John Finkel, yet again, having an awesome year, Mike Bustelnik, Zvi Marcewicz, JLR, Kai Buda, Camille Kniehlsen, Brian Kibler, and Rob Doherty. So

Kai Buda, Camille Kniehlsen, Brian Kibler, Rob Doherty, Zvi Mausiewicz, and John Finkel, six of them would go on to be Hall of Famers. So this is considered one of the high points as far as just juicy, juicy top eights. Also of interest, there was a Masters event this year,

at this event. The Masters event was John Finkel versus Ben Rubin! Yes, a repeat of the finals of the Invitational from two weeks earlier. Like I said, Finkel was having a hot, hot year. He would lose, Ben Rubin would actually win this one, so finally

Ben avenged himself from the loss at the Invitational to beat John. But like I said, John was hot. John had been in the top eight of this event and in the Masters, as well as winning the previous Worlds and the Invitational and the U.S. Nationals. Now, as hot as John was,

this was the start of what would be an even odder streak for Zvi Buddha, not Zvi, Kai Buddha. So Kai had previously won Worlds and was a very, very good player. So this would be his second win for a Pro Tour. Now, at the time, not a lot of people had ever won two Pro Tours. I believe when Finkel won Worlds this year, he was the second person to ever win two Pro Tours.

The only other person had been Tomi Hovi, who had won the second PTLA and PT Rome. who had won the second PTLA and PT Rome. So this summer, both John and Kai would become number two and number three to win two Pro Tours. Kai would quickly win his third Pro Tour. In fact, when I get to 2001, if year 2000 was the year of Finkel, year 2001 was the year of Kai Buda. And as you will see, if you think John Finkel's year is good, wait until you see next year when Kai Buda does almost the impossible. I mean, I guess he did it, so it's not technically impossible.

But Kai Buda, I'll tell some stories in 2001. Really, Kai Buda's year is more 2001. But he starts his run here, winning in PT Chicago, well, first PT Chicago that he wins, and against a very, very high-octane top eight. Like I said, six of the eight would go on to be Hall of Famers. And both Michael Pustilnik and Jay Elrod had other top eights to their name.

So even the two that aren't Hall of Famers were still named players that were good. Okay, so in December, Beatdown Box came out. What is the Beatdown Box, you say? So the Beatdown Box was... It had 122 cards. It had four pieces of alternate art. Sanger Vampire, Urnum Djinn, Ball Laming, and Clockwork Beast. Yes.

Clockwork Beast. It had two pre-constructed decks. The Arrow Doom versus the Ground Pounder. I think the Arrow Doom was a blue-black deck and the Ground Pounder was a red-green deck. There was no white cards in this product. It was all white border, and the expansion symbol was a mace.

So the Beeped on Box set was our... We spent many, many years experimenting with what... We always like to have a product out for the summer that's designed for people to buy as a holiday gift. Eventually, we finally just cut to the chase and just go, it's the holiday gift box! But we haven't

done that yet. So this is called the Beatdown Box. We really hadn't done dual decks yet, although we had started doing the World Champ decks, which were pre-constructed decks. This was definitely made of two decks to play each other. So you see the precursor of dual decks yet, although we had started doing the World Champ decks, which were pre-constructed decks. This was definitely made of two decks to play each other. So you see the precursor of dual decks showing up here.

And these cards had alternate art that I think... I'm not sure if this alternate art was used somewhere else, but at the time these were unique, and so if you wanted to get these cards... The other cool thing about the beatdown box was it came in this very cool box. I think we had done the box before, but one of the things we had done for the December holiday SKUs,

SKU, by the way, is S-K-U. It has to do with, what does SKU stand for? It has to do with the number that people can track when they sell. So I'm using industry speak. Anyway, the thing we've done with the holiday products is we tended to put them in a nice box. So that once you got it, you could open it up and you could use the box. And so this was no different. I know the Beatdown box was, a lot of people really like the Beatdown box. Just the box itself. So, that my friends is the year 2000. I'm almost to work.

So, to round up, this was a rough year for Magic design-wise. So, the sets that came out were Nemesis, Prophecy, and Invasion. So, I guess the Mercadian Mass block was not the strongest. Neither Nemesis or Prophecy were particularly great designs. Prophecy in particular, like I said, it's my number two pick for worst design of all time.

But Invasion really turned the corner for us. I think that we had... The Urza Saga block had broken everything. A lot of people had left the game. We had a combo winter because of that. Mercenary Masks, we had gotten chewed out, and so Mercenaryile Masks, we purposely made a much lower power level to not repeat any mistakes from Urza Saga. But it was not, Mercantile Masks had

a lot of problems. We didn't denote any of our mechanics, so people thought we hadn't put new mechanics in. And it was a weak set in general. It played, I know some people liked Unlimited, but the whole year, the whole block was a little set in general. It played... I know some people liked Unlimited. But the whole year, the whole block was a little spiker than we liked. It really was a set that required you to constantly be aware of what you were doing.

Pitch cards would come back. We had Rebels and Mercenaries. And we had Spellshapers. And during the course of the year, it was definitely a really... Yeah, I know the Nemesis had seals, and Prophecy had Rhystic, and there's a lot of sacrificing.

It was another very, very spiky block. Probably the only set spikier was probably Odyssey block, which is actually to come. We'll talk about that in 2001. But anyway, Invasion was a nice return to fun, casual magic.

Gold proved to be a very, very popular theme. So while we started a bit rocky, I do think we ended the year sort of getting back to our roots and making just a plain old popular set people were excited by. On the competitive side, the pro side,

2000 was the year of John Finkel. I mean, hands down, he came in the finals of a Magic Invitational, won a Magic Invitational, won a U.S. National Championship, won a World Championship, won a World Teams, made Top 8 at another Pro Tour, came in

second at the Masters of another Pro Tour. John was on fire. But like I said, it also was the reintroduction of Kaibuda. And as we get to 2001, if you think 2000 was a good year for John, wait till you see 2001 for Kaibuda. Anyway, 2000 was the year of the new millennium, the start of magic and all good stuff. So I think it was a good year.

Like I said, there was a lot going on. You could see that our organized play is getting ramped up. A lot more stuff was happening there, and we were putting out more products. Beatbox and Starter and World Champ Decks, and you're starting to see us expand. Obviously, as time goes on, even more stuff will come out. But anyway, that, my friends,

in a nutshell, is the year 2000. So, I hope you guys enjoyed listening up but as much as I like talking about magic history and magic products even more I like making magic

so it's time for me to go I'll talk to you guys next time