Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #143 - Invitational, Part 5

Episode Date: July 25, 2014

Mark finishes his podcast series on the Duelist Invitational.

Okay, I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today I'm going to finish a series I started long ago on the Magic Invitational, Magic slash Duelist Invitational. So this is the fifth and final podcast on the topic. One of the things I really want to do with this podcast is give a sense of history to the game. And the Invitational holds a special place in my heart. I'll talk about that a little more today. But anyway, in the previous four podcasts, I talked about the first nine Invitationals, but there are two more. So we're going to talk about number 10 and number 11, and then I'm going to explain

what happened to the Invitational. It's a tearjerker. Okay, so let's start with number 10. So number 8 and number 9 were held in Los Angeles at something called E3. Let's see if I remember this correctly. E3 stands for the Electronic Entertainment Expo. And we had started going there. As of number 7, we were on Magic Online, because they were the ones that were footing the bill. And we were trying to figure a way to use it effectively. And it came up with the idea that it might be a good promotional thing to do at E3

to have a live event. And we were one of the first people actually to do a live event at E3. Now, more people have done that. Anyway, so for the three years, it was successful the first year, successful the second year, so we did it for the third year. Each year was slightly less successful because people were used to it from the previous year. It was a little less novel.

So the third year, we were in Los Angeles. And let me walk through the formats. So it was May 10th through the 12th, 2006. Okay, so there were five formats. First, there is duplicate sealed. So every single non-online Invitational that I had ever run had an event called duplicate sealed.

I've talked about this before. Basically, the thing about duplicate sealed is everybody gets the exact same sealed pool. It's pre-made. It's a designed pool of cards. And so rather than getting a random pool, it's a pool that's designed meaning, A, everyone gets the exact same

pool, and B, we carefully sort of build things into it. So there's a lot of, oh, what did I get? Normally in Sealed, there's only one or two ways maybe you want to build your deck. But in Duplicate Sealed, we give you a lot of choices. There's combos built in. There's just a lot of things to consider what way to go.

The other thing that's really interesting about Duplicate Sealed is not only do you have the cards, but because everybody has the cards, part of building your deck is building your deck to the known metagame. You know what everybody has to choose from, so you understand the metagame. So you have to build your deck not just to be the best deck it can be, but the best deck it can be in the environment where everybody has the same cards as you. I think it's very, very skill-testing. Normally, Sealed has

a lot of a high luck factor to it. It's a lot of randomness, and this kind of takes all the randomness out, and it's a lot of skill. I don't think people think of Sealed as being super skillful, but Duplicate Sealed is. So it turned out for this event, I was really busy. I think I was on three teams, and I made mention on the phone to somebody that I didn't know if I'd have time to build the duplicate sealed pool.

And Aaron Forsythe heard me and Aaron said, I'll do it. And so Aaron built it. So I built all the previous duplicate sealed, but Aaron built this one. And he did a fun job. Next, we had auction of the geniuses. So in number six, which was in Cape Town, I'm sorry, in Sydney, which was number five, we had started doing something called Auction of the Champions, where it was all decks from pro tour

and world winning decks. Then the following year in Cape Town, we did what we called Auction of the People, which we did every year since, where the audience would build decks

based around some criteria. This year, we went a little bit different. It was called Auction of the Geniuses, and the idea was that instead of having the audience build it this year, we went out and got 17 top deck builders. In fact, here they are.

Jamie Wakefield, Akira Asahara, Alan Comer, Andrew Cuneo, Mike Flores, Tsuyoshi Fujita, Mark Gottlieb, Itaru Ishida, J. Moldenauer Salazar, Frank Karsten, Masahiro Kuroda, Steven Menendian, Chris Millar, Olivia Ruel, Dan Paskins, Chris Bakula, John Rizzo, and Andrew Sullivan. So these were famous, famous deck builders. Some of them were former pros, some of them were not.

Some of them were more known just for deck building and writing about it. Anyway, we had 17. The reason there's always 17 decks is so the final person, oh, the way it works is, in an auction, is you start by bidding a certain amount of hand, starting hand size, starting life size. I think by now what we had done was we had raised the starting. So the first bid, instead of being seven cards, 20 life, I think it was eight cards, 25 life to give some of the bad decks a little bit of extra room.

Then, so let's say you start by going, okay, I bid eight cards, 25 life, to give some of the bad decks a little bit of extra room. Then, so let's say you start by going, okay, I bid eight cards, 25 life. The next person must bid lower, eight cards, 23 life, or pass. Now, cards is worth more than life. So let's say someone bids down to eight cards, 16 life. You can then bid seven cards, 20 life. But anyway, you have to either bid lower or you have to pass. And we keep going until everybody's seated, but one person. Then that person

gets it at the last bid they made. We keep doing that until everybody's bid on a deck that has a starting hand size and life total, and then when you play each other in your rounds, you play starting with that chosen handicap. Anyway,

this was fun. There were a lot of fun decks. I know Antoine Ruel, who would go on to win this event, I believe he played Chris Bakula's deck, and Chris Bakula had a fun deck that was built around former invitational cards. Former winners' invitational cards. Okay, next, we had Mirage Visions Draft. So,

this was on Magic Online. We had started doing this thing in Magic Online. We had started doing this thing in Magic Online. When Magic Online began, the first set available was Invasion. And so later we went back and started doing old sets so that people could have a chance to get the old cards and we would let people draft those sets. So at the time, I'm pretty sure Mirage and Visions were what were available. Because this was a Magic Online event, we were trying hard to pick things that showcased some of the things

you could do in Magic Online. Also, we thought it was a lot of fun to do an old-school draft. Mirage and Visions really was the first set that R&D really consciously designed it to be drafted. I mean, people drafted Ice Age, but that was a painful experience. I mean, I like Ice Age,

but it was not really designed to be drafted. Okay, next, Block Party. Block Party was a constructed format. We always like to do two limited and two constructed, and the last one floats. But we like to have stuff that a certain number of events that the audience has a chance to show what they can do deck building-wise. And Block Party said, okay, you may build any block deck you want. The only rules are if a card is banned in its block, it's banned in this format.

And so people could pick whatever block they wanted. And, you know, you could, if you wanted to play a control deck, well, maybe you wanted to play Ice Age block because Ice Age block has, you know, Force of Will and Arcane Denial and stuff. Or maybe you want to play a Burn Dock. Maybe you want to play Tempest

because Tempest had a lot of good Burn cards. Depending on what you want to do, or Tempest also had a good Weenie Block deck. You want to pick a block deck that you think would fit well in the environment in which everybody's playing block decks. Finally, we had an event called

Decadent Sealed. Two sealed events. Decadent Sealed. Two sealed events. Decadent Sealed was normally when you have a sealed, you get, I don't know, normally you get like six packs. What are six packs? So 84 cards, I think, is what you normally get in Sealed. Well, these players got over 400 cards, I believe. They got a giant amount of cards.

Enough so that it wasn't even on some level, it didn't feel like limited. It felt like low-level constructed. You get so many cards. And so, anyway, it was definitely an event. We were trying to find something weird and fun we could do that Magic Online could support. We didn't have the ability to code anything, so we

had to be a little inventive of how we can come up with a fun event that would work specifically for Magic Online. So anyway, those were our five events. So the finals ended up being Antoine Rouel of France versus Jeff Cunningham of Canada. Antoine Rouel is currently in the Hall of Fame, a very, very good French player. Jeff Cunningham, also a good player though, not in the Hall of Fame, but very, very well known for his writing, and he definitely was a very fun person. I think

he was, I'm not 100% on this, one of the slots that was available as R&D was allowed to pick somebody, called R&D Pick, whoever we wanted. I think we picked Tuff Cunningham. I think he was our pick. So we were very proud when he made the finals. Now, he did not win, and 20-1.

And the card he made was called Ranger of Eos. It was three and a white for three, two. When it enters the battlefield, you can get up to two creatures with a converted mana cost of one or less out of your library and put in your hand. So in Fifth Dawn, we had done a card called... What was it called? It's a card that lets you go get artifacts that only cost one or less. Tink... What's it called?

It's a card that lets you go get artifacts that only cost one or less. Trinket Mage. And this was kind of a Trinket Mage for creatures. And it ended up being a very good card. It's a lot of tournament play. It was very good.

One of the tricks about it is Converted Mana costs one. There were some creatures that either had additional costs when you played them even though their converted mana cost was one or they had X

in their cost and that an XW for example is a converted mana cost of one even though you can't play it for more than one.

So there were some tricks you could use with that. Okay, now we get to invitational number 11. The last, the last dance, the last invitational.

In order to explain this one, there's some significance to this one. Let me go back and talk about the early days of my time at Wizards. Okay. When I first got to Wizards, I had been a gamer my whole life. I played a lot of games. I owned a bookshelf full of games. But when I got to Wizards, what I learned was gamer my whole life. I played a lot of games. I owned a bookshelf full of games. But when I got into Wizards, what I learned was I had a lot left to learn.

And Richard Garfield was an awesome game teacher. So one of the things that Richard really introduced me to was what we now refer to as German board games. So at the time, now, there's a lot of importing of German board games. You can get them translated in English. But at the time, if you wanted to get a German board games. You can get them translated in English.

But at the time, if you wanted to get a German board game, you had to get it from Germany. They were in German, and Richard would teach us how to play, and then would have to explain the rules, because the rules were in German. In fact, Settlers of Catan, I first learned to play it with Richard. It was Siegler von Catan, I think.

We called it Siegler, That's what we called it. And that was just... We knew it by the German name, because that's what the box said. Anyway, Richard would always pick up his German games at Essen. So, Essen Spiel is the largest game convention in the world.

Essen is a place in Germany. Spiel means game. So it was a game fair. And Richard always would talk so highly. Richard would go every year to Essen. And I was just, I really wanted to go to Essen. But at the time, I was low man on the totem pole. I was one of the new guys.

And only a few people got to go to Essen. So I never was able to get to Essen. And so on my to-do list, my bucket list, my gamer bucket list, was one day I wanted to go to Essen. Okay so, on my to-do list, my bucket list, my gamer bucket list, was one day I wanted to go to Essen. Okay, flash forward. We were trying to figure out what to do with the Invitational. So, one of the things, just sort of a little

omen of things to come here, is the Invitational was having a little problem figuring out its identity. I mean, it was the all-star game. Everyone understood that. But what exactly was it trying to highlight? What was it doing that nothing else was doing? And one of the things that r&d has definitely played around with was were we supposed to be using it like to make it spectator friendly were we supposed to be inviting some people that might not be the absolute top of the pro tour you know that might be people

that were famous magic people without necessarily being top pros. Also, we decided that we needed to do something a little different with it. We had learned from E3 that it was a very good way to get focal point. And so we were going to Essen, and they really wanted, someone decided that they wanted to get some attention at Essen. And so we said, well, at E3 we did this, it got a lot of attention. What if we did this at Essen? And someone else said, you know, someone came to me and said,

Mark, would you be okay having the Invitational at Essen? And I'm like, okay, ding, ding, ding, absolutely. So I was excited. I was going to Essen. I went to all the Invitationals. I was like, okay, my baby, finally my chance to go to Essen. So I was very excited. Now, the thing that was a little controversial about this one

was we there were a few people that got invited that were not top tier players. Two in particular. One was so we did a thing where we invited a top writer and so what we did was we picked some writers that were, writers might be the wrong word

but people who interacted with the public and through social means. Turns out the guy who got this invite wasn't a writer as much, he was a video director. But anyway, we took people that were people who did a lot to promote the game, and we used to always invite,

it was called the writer slot, although it wasn't always necessarily a writer. But it was somebody who really was a cheerleader for Magic and would make constant, either write an article every week or do a video every week or do something that really was promoting the game. And so we were a little looser in who we picked for the candidates for people to vote on. So one of the people we picked was Evan Irwin. So Evan Irwin at the time was well known for doing The Magic Show,

which was a weekly video all about magic. Evan would go on to work for Star City. I think at this point he might not even have worked for Star City yet. But he was, I mean, I think his show was broadcast on Star City, but he eventually would go work for them and be a major player there. But at this point, I think he was just doing his videos, the magic show. And anyway, what we did is we asked each of them to produce a small video to explain to the audience why we should vote for them. And everybody turned in really fun videos. I remember, I think it was Rizzo that did like a Rocky parody. And anyway, Evan did a very cute one.

And Evan gets voted in. So Evan Irwin is voted in for the writer's slot. There's a lot of controversy because this is the All-Star game. Evan, I don't know if he'd even played in a Pro Tour. I mean, Evan obviously has played Magic for a long time, but he's not a top pro. And there's a lot of complaints like, this is the All-Star game, what is Evan Irwin doing there? And we're like, look, you know, we're going to have the top players there. It's not like, you know, Evan's probably not winning the event, but, you know,

a lot of people were going to turn in and see how Evan does playing against some of the top players. And we were trying to make the spect players there. It's not like, you know, Evan's probably not winning the event, but, you know, a lot of people were going to turn in and see how Evan does playing against some of the top players, and we were trying to make the spectator friendly. The other thing was R&D got a vote.

Previously, I think we'd voted in Jeff Cunningham. This year, Vintage, did I mention? Oh, I've not done, I'm not talking about the format yet. One of the formats

was Vintage. I'll get to that in a second. And so we decided to invite Steven Menendian, who was probably the biggest cheerleader of the V vintage format that Magic has ever had. He'd formerly

once won the vintage championship and he just wrote about vintage and was passionate about it. In fact, he wrote books about it. In fact, he wrote a book about one card in vintage. He wrote a book all about Gush, playing Gush in vintage. That's some dedication. The entire book, chapters and chapters and chapters

about playing the card Gush. Which is funny because I'm the guy who made Gush. So I was always like, wow, that's quite the card. They could write a whole book about its use in one format, which is impressive. Okay, so let's talk about the formats. Number one was Auction of the People. So back to the people. The deck this year is we had people build an alphabet deck. What an alphabet deck is, is you had to have at least 26 cards in your deck, one card starting with each letter of the alphabet. After that, you could have, you know, you could have, if you had, once you had those 26 cards representing the 26 letters,

you were then free to do other cards, do whatever you wanted. But you had to represent the 26 letters. Mostly what this meant is you had to go look at the troublesome letters like X and Q and figure out what your options were. And that would sort of define where you could go. But we had lots and lots of very cool decks all over the board. It was definitely very cool.

Next we had Vintage. So Vintage is a format probably of all the constructed formats played at Invitationals. I think Vintage might have been the most played format. I mean, Vintage maybe, maybe Standard. But we had a lot of Vintage. The reason we tend to do a lot of Vintage in the Pro Tour is

it is hard to do Vintage at high-profile events, at premier events, because there's not enough of the cards that everybody has equal access to the cards. And it wouldn't be fair to have a Pro Tour where certain people coming just wouldn't have equal access. and it wouldn't be fair to have a Pro Tour where certain people coming just wouldn't have equal access. And so we've never done... I guess we did a side event long, long ago in the first year of the Pro Tour,

but we never really did a Pro Tour event on Vintage. And the invitation was nice because there's just 16 players, and, well, these 16 players, the best of the best, okay, they can get some access to... They were able to get their hands on them. And so Vintage, they loved playing Vintage. We loved showing it off. It was a format, it was a premier format

where we could show it off. So anyway, we tended to play Vintage a lot. We were playing Vintage this year. Like I said, we ended up inviting Stephen Menendee in to tie into that. Next, Cube Draft. So this was early on. Cube, this is around the time

that Cube was just starting to hit it off. I mean, not that there weren't cubes before this, but this is where cubing started getting a little more high profile. So back in the day, at this point, most cubes were what we now call high-octane cubes, which meant, you know, just full of really, really strong cards. Like, here's the best cards Magic's ever played, and mix and match so you could build archetypes around them. But anyway, we got a cube deck.

R&D for research purposes to make sure it was good. We tested the cube. It wasn't... I didn't think it was our cube. I think we got the cube from somebody else. I don't remember who built this cube. But anyway, it was kind of just a best of best. Then the next format was Make Your Own Standard.

So this was a format that I really, really... I had high hopes for this format. It was my hope that I would show it off at Invitational, and this would get a life of its own and become a major player as a really fun, constructed format. Now, it is kind of a cult format. There is definitely a following in this format. So the way it works is, the problem I was trying to solve is, I wanted to give people access to most of the cards in Magic. But when you give people access to old cards, most formats give you access to most of the cards in Magic, but when you give people access to old cards, most formers give you access to all of the cards. So the problem is the power level just goes through the roof. So I said, what if I could give people access to any card, but not every card? And the idea was, so I cut out the super early stuff because

a lot of that's broken. So what we did is, choose your own standard sets, do the following. I cut out the super early stuff because a lot of that's broken. So what we did is, Choose Your Own Standard says, do the following. You may pick any standard set from 5th edition forward, and you may pick two blocks. And the idea here is that you could either take any standard deck from history, since there was a standard, you could take a standard deck,

and it would be legal in this format because standard is, you know, two, I mean, from fifth forward. Standard started around there. Any deck that was Standard legal from fifth forward, I guess, was legal in this format. But you couldn't get creative. You could go, oh, well, this block and this block had a theme that overlapped. I can mix these together and I can get this core set.

And a lot of people build a lot of fun decks. And I remember, so you had everything from Ice Age block forward, everything from 5th forward, with the exception of, I think, Mercadian Masks, and whatever was the current block that was not done yet, meaning there wasn't a full block's worth. Every other block got played in this set, in this format. I was very, very happy.

It was a super, super diverse format. Never caught on, but anyway. Okay, next is Winston Draft. So Winston Draft is a format created by Richard Garfield. Originally it was called Let's Make a Deal Draft. So what happened was Richard loved making up drafts. It was one of his favorite things to do. And he liked making especially two-man drafts, two-person drafts.

So what he did was, the way it worked is, you had a deck of cards, a deck of magic cards. I think you took six packs worth. So you took out lands, 84. This time the lands might not have been the packs, so maybe it was 90. But anyway, you shuffled it all together. And then what you did was, you made three piles in front of the deck. So when you started, there were three piles of each, one card each.

So pile A, pile B, pile C, and your magic deck, the library. Okay, look at pile A. And then either you took the card or you passed it. If you took it, you put it in your hand and replaced it with a card from the top of the library. If you passed it, you took a card from the top of the library and put it on top of it.

So now pile A has two cards in it. Next, you go to pile B. Either you take the card in pile B or you pass. If you take it, it goes in your hand, and then you replace it. If you pass, you take a card from the top of the library and put it on top of it. So now pile B has two cards. Then you go to pile C, assuming you haven't picked up a card yet. You look at pile C.

You either can take the card in pile C, or you can pass. If you take it, you replace it with a card from the top of the library. If you pass, you put an extra card on top of the top of the library, no matter what the card from the top of the library is going on it. And then if you pass on C, you're forced to take the top card off the library. So what happens is the next person now looks at A. Now if A was passed, A is no longer one card. A is two cards.

And so they have to decide whether to take the whole pile. You either take the whole pile or pass. Anytime you take the whole pile, it goes in your hand, and you replace it with one card. Anytime you pass, you take one card and put it on top. So over time, the piles start getting bigger. So the idea of it's not interesting enough, you juice it until someone eventually takes it.

And at the end, you each have whatever cards you took. Not necessarily an even number, because one person might have taken bigger piles. Winston is a very fun skill testing format. And it's interesting that you have limited information. You don't know everything your opponent has, but you know some of what they have, because you've passed on piles that they've picked up. And so part of it is trying to figure out what you value, what they value. You know, are you leaving behind something that might not be good for you but would be

really good for them? So maybe you have to, you know, you have to draft it so they don't get it. But anyway, we introduced Winston Draft. And another reason that we tend to do events like this or formats like this in the Invitational is Winston Draft takes time. It's not a super fast draft. But in the Invitational, you know, we're running 15 events over three days. We have a little more time than you normally have.

And so we were able to do that. And like I said, this was at Essen. So we were playing all day at Essen. In fact, we had tables set up and people could spectate. And it was a pretty big deal. And by the way, Essen was awesome. It was huge. It was like, I don't even know how many buildings.

It was just like, I've been to Gen Con, which is pretty big. And I've been to Comic Con, San Diego Comic Con, which is pretty big. This was bigger than both of those. It was just huge. And the thing that's really interesting is that in Germany, I don't know if I explained this earlier, the reason the German board game has so many games is, in Germany, gaming is much like the movies.

In America, for example, you don't ask them, like, do you go to the movies? No, everybody goes to the movies. Maybe you see different kinds of movies. Maybe some people see comedies and others see dramas. But, hey, everybody sees the movies. Gaming is like that in Germany. Everybody games.

All families games. It's not, do you play board games? It's, what kind of board games do you like? It's just part of the culture. And so, because gaming is so popular, there's just a lot of, it's a very healthy market. So, there's a lot of German game designers. And then, a lot of non-German game designers that design for the German market. But anyway, that is why Essen is such a huge deal, which is, it's a game convention in a place where gaming is just something everybody does.

So it's a very, very big event. A lot of people come to it. You see a lot of families. And the other thing that's awesome is the range of gaming in Germany. I mean, there's games for little kids up to games for adults that are all across the board, games to play for families, games, everything. And there's physical games and all sorts of stuff. It's just amazing the board, games to play for families, games, everything. And there's physical games and all sorts of stuff.

It's just amazing the number of games that you saw. And they really, one of the things the Germans, they love sort of the setup of the games and a lot of neat flavor of what the game's about and where it takes place.

And German games are also known for having little fancy pieces. Usually they have wood pieces. Anyway, it was a lot. I had a blast. I had a lot of fun going to Essen. Okay, so what happened at Essen? So in the finals,

we had Thiago Chen from Portugal versus Rich Hohen from Canada. So both of them had been pro-poor players. I know that Rich Hohen was known as being a limited specialist, if you will, Although he did very well.

And the finals were in three constructed events. We didn't play the limited events in the finals. So it came down to the final. Once again, for some reason, the finals and invitations always go down to the last match. It's like if it's five things, it's three to two. If it's three, it's two to one. So this came down to the final. They had played Auction of the People.

They had played Make Your Own Standard. But in the end, it came down to the final. They had played Auction of the People. They had played Make Your Own Standard. But in the end, it came down to Vintage. And what mattered? How did the last Invitational end, kind of apropos in Vintage? It was Death by Poison. Makes my heart proud. So, yeah, Tiago got out some flash combo

where he got out creatures that, I don't know if they were the slivers, or they're something that either were, had poisonous, or he can make poisonous, or, uh, this is before, um, Scars of Mirrodin, so there's no effect yet. Um, I think he used from, I think it was from, um, uh, I think it's from, um, Future Sight, because Future Sight had a little bit of poison in it, and slivers and such. So anyway, in fact, it might have been, it must have been a poison subtercale. Anyway, so Tiago1, he made a card that you guys might all know, named Snapcafter Mage. So Snapcafter Mage is one and a blue

for a 2-1 creature with Flash. I think it's a human, I think it's a human wizard, I believe. Anyway, edge of the Anyway, enter the battlefield. You may flashback an instant or sorcery out of your graveyard. What that means is you may exile an instant or sorcery out of your graveyard. You can cast it by paying its mana cost and then exile it. So what happened was he made something different,

and then I know he and Zach Hill had worked together to make this card. My one contribution was originally just cast an an Ancient Sorcerer's Graveyard and I realized that we had flashback in the environment, which Tiago obviously didn't know. And so I suggested, oh, well what if it was granted flashback? And so we made that change. The one thing, the only thing I feel sad is

if we were making this card, it would have been red and not blue. Both red and blue can do this, and it's just a little more interesting in red. Red can use it. Older formats can make more use of it. And I wish I... The reason it's blue is Tiago asked for a blue card, and so we made it blue.

I wish I had talked to Tiago and said, you know, one of the options is making this red. Would you like to make this red? I mean, he might have still wanted it blue. He made it blue in the first place. Probably he likes playing blue is why he made it blue. But I should have asked. I never asked. Okay. Okay he likes playing blue is why he made it blue. But I should ask. I never ask. Okay.

So now we've had Invitational 10, Invitational 11. Why, oh why, is there no Invitational 12? So this is a complex story. So there are a bunch of things. Number one is I had spent a lot of time and energy sort of selling the Invitational outside the walls of Wizards. I really had tried to make something that I thought our spectators and the fans would really enjoy, and they did.

They embraced it. The Invitational was always a lot of spectators. People enjoyed it. People would try the formats out. And being in the Invitational became a badge of honor. The pros really, really cared. It was a big deal to come. And so I...

The problem was that I hadn't carved a very good identity within the walls of Wizards. That early on, there were definitely people that kind of saw it like as Mark was throwing a party

for a bunch of his friends and flying around the world. I'm like, no, no. They people that kind of saw it like as Mark was throwing a party for a bunch of his friends and flying them around the world. I'm like, no, no, they used to tease me about it. And I took the jokes in stride, but underneath it was kind of, I don't think people really understood what he was doing. And the last year in Essen, we were trying to sort of maybe mix it up a little bit

and find ways to let it do something that other events weren't doing. But anyway, what happened was, what did it in was actually the downturn of Magic. Magic had a period of time where we were going down. Our acquisition was going down. We weren't getting as many people, so we were slowly selling less. And there was some belt tightening because, you know, when you make less money, you can spend less money doing things.

Like, one of the nice things about Magic being successful is that that allows us to be able to do a lot more things. And when we're not as successful, we have to cut back. And Chris Galvin, who's the head of Organized Play, called me up. He felt bad. I told the story before that Chris, once before, had taken the money away from it. But he said, look, I just can't. We don't have the money. taking the money away from it, but he said,

look, I just can't, we don't have the money. I have to, there's events I'm cutting that I, are even less, you know, that, it's hard to justify the Invitational when I'm cutting events that I think have even more importance. And so he's like, I'm sorry, Magic Online didn't have the money, so for once and for all, this time,

the Magic Invitational actually was going to end. And I was sad, I mean, one of the things when time, the magic Invitational actually was going to end. And I was sad. I mean, one of the things when I think about the Invitational, when I go back and I realize, is that if I stop and think about magic and say, okay, one of the things where I was given carte blanche, where someone said, Mark, you can do whatever you want. I can think of three things where pretty much I just did it. One was the Invitational.

Another were the Unsets, Unglued in particular. I mean, Unhinged kind of followed what I'd done in Unglued. And then the Great Designer Search. And in each of those cases, I really sort of said, okay, let's do something fun. Let's do something that the spectators can enjoy. Let's do something that's really different and really plays up the wackiness that is magic.

And the Imitational and the Unsets especially, I think it's me sort of saying, look, magic is many things. It's competitive. It's thought-provoking. It's intelligent. It's strategic. But you know what? It's also fun. Magic is fun. That's one of the big, the thing that attracted me to magic, I mean, obviously there's multiple things and there's a

lot of ego identification and deck building and getting to design your own game and all sorts of cool things that I love. But above all was, like, when the dust settles, when I think back to magic and I think about what magic has done for me, magic has done a lot of good for me. It is, it has paid me handsomely. It has given me my dream job. I met my wife. I mean, I've traveled the world. Magic has been very, very good to me. But one of the things that magic has given me is just a lot of laughs, a lot of fun time, a lot of just sheer, sheer joy. And that, one of the things that I think when I'm kind of giving carte blanche to mess with magic, one of the things that I always think about is,

I just want it to be fun. I want to do stuff where people have fun. And the Invitational was saying, you know what? There's no reason we can't do something competitive that isn't also fun. I believe the Invitational was highly, highly skill-testing. In fact, let me talk about the winners of the Invitational real quickly. Here are the 11 winners of the Invitational is highly, highly skill-testing. In fact, let me talk about the winners of the Invitational real quickly. Here are the 11

winners of the Invitational. Ularade, Hall of Fame. Darwin Castle, Hall of Fame. Mike Long, should be in the Hall of Fame. Chris Bakula, should also be. He missed by a couple votes, Hall of Fame. John Finkel, Hall of Fame. Best it ever played. Kai Buda,

Hall of Fame. Best it ever played. One ofa, Hall of Fame, best that ever played. One of the two is the best at the second. Yen Turen, Bob Marr, Hall of Fame. Terry So, Antoine Ruel, Hall of Fame. Tiago Chan. Those are good, good players, you know. Those are amazing players. And that the Invitational, while being fun and fun for spectators,

also was very skill testing. And that's an amazing list of people. So here are the cards they made. So Ula made Sylvan Safekeeper. They didn't come out of these orders. These orders, they won them. Darwin Castle made Avalanche Riders. Mike Long made Rootwater Thief.

Chris Pakula made Meddling Mage. John Finkel made Shadow Mage Infiltrator. Kai Buda made Void Mage Prodigy. It's the one I forgot last podcast. Bob Markel made Shadow Mage Infiltrator. Kai Buda made Void Mage Prodigy. It's the one I forgot last podcast. Bob Marr made Dark Confidant. Terry So made Raktos Augur Mage. Antoine Royale made Ranger of Eos.

Tiago Chan made Snapcatcher Mage. And with the exception, I believe, of Raktos Augur Mage, sorry, Terry, I believe all of these, the other ten, I believe, have all been in a Pro Tour Top 8, most of which have been in a winning Pro Tour deck. These are some good cards.

And people always ask me, by the way, I'm almost to work, what are my favorite Invitational cards? As a designer, I'll list my three favorites. They're all good. They're all cool. I think they're a lot of fun ones. These are the three that speak to me as far as just what I enjoy as a designer. Number three

is Snapkissed Mage. I wish it was designer. Number three is Snap, Kiss, and Mage. I wish it was red, but it's a very, very fun card. It's powerful. These are all powerful. But it does a lot of neat things. There's a lot of cool interactions with the card. Number two, my favorite design, is Meddling Mage. It's a Chris McCool's card.

I just like a lot, not only what it does and how much thought-provoking and how you have to really think about what you want, but also what it does to the environment and how people build around it. I really like a lot, not only what it does and how much thought-provoking and how you have to really think about what you want, but also what it does to the environment and how people build around it. I really like that people have to diversify what they're doing to protect against it. I think that's really cool.

And my favorite design of all time, this one's a little biased, is a Dark Confidant, which is Bob Marr's card. So Bob Marr, normally when someone does an Invitational card, if they want help, I always help them. But usually any help I give is kept mum. Look, it's their card. And so Bob outed me, though, as helping him when he talked about his card.

So what had happened was Bob had turned something in we couldn't use. And so at Pro Tour Seattle, it was a team event, Bob and I, between rounds, he would tell me what he wants, I'd make a card, and then we'd tweak. Like, he'd give notes and we went back and forth. We went through like five iterations

until we finally got to Dark Confidant. And Bob said, I like it, I like it, just one thing, can we take off, can we add May? I'm like,

no, you can't add May! Not at this cost! And it's not black, you know. And five years later said that he was very happy that I didn't let him add May to it. That the card is much, much more fun if there's an element of risk to it. Plus, it allows us to push it a little more.

But anyway, the Invitational, one of the reasons that I've been trying to do these podcasts about history is I want to leave a mark on, on the sort of, I want to be one of the historians that sort of fills in the gaps of the game.

So when people look back, I believe the game is going to outlive me. And I want people in the future to be able to look back and have some sense of what happened in the Invitational. And that, it was definitely made by me, I like to think of it as being, And it was definitely made by me.

I like to think of it as being, if Unglued is kind of my vision of a fun product that I would like to make, that The Invitational is my tournament format that I would love. I like the idea of something small enough that you knew every player and they were all names and you got to see them play each other. That's why I was around Robin. I was trying to make something that was both fun, fun, fun for the spectators and lots of fun for the participants. I believe in the 11 years The Invitational did that, we did that.

The players had a blast. The audience had a blast. Now people often ask, they go, will it ever come back? Is The Invitational truly dead? Like a phoenix, might it rise from the ashes? And I don't definitively know the answer will be yes, but I'd like to hope and believe

the answer will be yes. Only in that, I think it's a fun thing. It's something that Magic really doesn't do. I mean, the Playoff Championship has elements of it. That's obviously a 16% Invitational,

but it doesn't have a lot of the weirdness that I think was a big part of the Invitational, which I think is important. So I hope someday the Invitational comes back. You know,

it would bring a smile to my face. But anyway, these podcasts have been a chance for you guys to get a glimpse, to see,

to see the weird formats and the winners and the cards and little stories of us traveling around the world. Because the Invitational, like I think I mentioned once before, it is because of the Invitational, magic has taken me to

every continent of the world bar Antarctica, which will be a toughie. But the only time I ever went to South America was for the real Invitational. The only time I ever went to Africa was for the Cape Town Invitational. And so it was Rio Invitational. The only time I ever went to Africa was for the Cape Town Invitational. And so it was,

the Invitational is, like I said, is my baby. I have fond memories. I hope other people have fond memories. And that, my friends, in a nutshell, is the Invitational. So I'm parking my car now,

which means it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.