Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #160 - 2003

Episode Date: September 26, 2014

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2003.

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today I'm continuing a series, you guys know, called 20 Years and 20 Podcasts. So for those that have never heard of this series before, what I'm doing is I'm going through every year of Magic's existence from its beginning and spending a podcast talking about it. And we are up to 2003, so let's get going. Okay, so January 17th to the 19th was Pro Tour Chicago. So this is important, historically speaking, as I believe it's the last PT win thus far of Kai Budda from Germany, the German juggernaut. So Kai Buda defeated Nikolai Herzog.

So whenever you have two future Hall of Famers playing each other in the finals, that's pretty impressive. The other real famous thing about this PT was it's the one time in the top eight that John Finkel played Kai Buda. And they played in the semifinals. And obviously Kai won since he won the whole thing. So the interesting story here is back in the day,

I used to be in charge of the producer for the video, for all the coverage. And so I would pick what match we would start on. And so I remember going back to talk to everybody. I said, okay, here's what's going to happen. We're going to start on Finkel on Buda. And then we're going back to talk to everybody. I said, okay, here's what's going to happen. We're going to start on Finkel on Buda, and then we're going to not end until it ends. I'm like, we're going to them, we're not moving away.

Because usually what happens is, we'd watch a game, and then when that game finished, we'd go watch a different game. You know, we'd bounce around, so you had a chance to see everybody. But I'm like, Kaibuda is playing John Finkel in the top eight of a Pro Tour. We will watch that. We will watch that. We will watch that for the entirety of that happening.

And it was very cool to watch. Anyway, maybe they will meet again. They both still play. So I believe there's a chance for a Buda Finkel finals match again. But that was the classic one. So, oh, by the way, the event was Rochester Draft. So back in the day, the way the Pro Tours used to work is we used to alternate between doing a limited format and doing a constructed format. Rochester, for those that don't know, is one where you lay out all the cards and you draft one at a time.

But it's open information. Everybody sees what's being drafted. Where Booster, it's closed. You're only going to see the packages passed to you. There also was a Mafters event. So we used to do these other events at the Pro Tour that was sort of invitational. You had to be one of the top players to play in it.

It just was another way for pros to make money. And also, I think we were making content, additional content. Anyway, the Mafters was standard, and Frank Canoe defeated Ken Ho in Standard. Okay, then January 25th was the pre-release, and February 3rd was the release of Legions, codenamed Moe, of Manny, Moe, and Jack, which were the Pep Boys. I've talked about this before, that most people who do not live in a city with the Pep Boys have no idea who that is.

So the set had 145 cards, 55, 45, 45. Now, for those that know their magic history, they're like, wait a minute. During that period of time, small sets were 143. They were 55, 44, 44. What's up? What's up was the gimmick of this set. So, Legions is famous. Legions and Allure Reborn are probably the two sets most famous for just being all of something. So, Legions

was all creatures. All 145 cards were creatures. It's also famous because the set at the time was thought of as being very weak because there were not a lot of tournament cards in it. But it did really well with the casual crowd. The set actually sold really well. For a long time, it was the best-selling small set. And it's a good example of, we used to use that as an example all the time, of that there are different audiences.

And, you know, the more experienced players that were more geared toward tournament play, the set didn't have as much to offer. But the casual players, they're just having fun. There's just lots of fun things going on. Clearly, Onslaught block was a tribal block, so this set had a lot of tribal components in it. And so, anyway, Legions was definitely something that...

Like I said, it had its fans, and I really did enjoy it. The reason there's 145, the reason there's 45 uncombs and 45 rares was we were keeping to tight cycles in the set. So normally what we do, and the reason that we'll go to 144 is, oh, what we do is you have artifacts or lands fill in the slots. Well, it couldn't be lands because we had all creatures and artifacts could only be artifact creatures

and we didn't want to have four artifact creatures at uncommon and four artifact creatures at rare. So what we did instead was just upped one. So people often ask why those numbers exist at the rate they do. Why do we do exactly the numbers? And the reason is, in a short hold,

is when we print magic cards, the way it works is they get printed on a sheet. And the sheets, in the past, they were 110. I think at this point in time in magic, they were 110. Now they're 121. And there's just math. If you want every card to show up at the same, you know, every card of the same rarity to show up the same number of times, there's just basic math of how much you can divide up sheets. And sometimes a rarity will be on multiple sheets, and so the way we divvy up, we'll split it. And there's complicated things about collation. But essentially those numbers have to do with how we print.

Now sometime in the future, we're not there yet, we'll get to what we call print-on-demand. I mean, print-on-demand exists, it's just not cheap yet. Digital printing will get us to a place at some point where we might be able to pick and choose the numbers we want and not be tied to sheet size to determine size of sets, but we still are, so that is why that is. Okay, what's next? Next is, in March, anything in February? I see nothing. In March 21st to the 23rd was Pro Tour Venice.

It was Onslaught Block Constructed. And Osip Libidovic, from the United States, defeated Tomi Wallamies from Finland. Both Osip and Tomi were Pro Tour regulars. I mean, they were both well-known names. Each one of them has been in talks for Hall of Fame. Neither one has made the Hall of Fame, but they were both people that people, like, voted for and talked about and, you know, were contenders

for the Hall of Fame. Venice... I think it's the one time we were in Venice. Also, there was a Masters event. So the Masters event was team-limited. So for team-limited, there was a team called PS2, which was Masahiko Morita, Katsuhiro Mori, and Masahiro Kuroda. So Kuroda is, I believe, in the Hall of Fame.

Morita and Morita, so all three of them are very, very famous Japanese players. And so it was a very high-octane Japanese team. They defeated 2020, which was Elijah Pollock, Steve Wolfman, and David Rude. They had done well, I think, in 2002 at a PT, a Team PT. So anyway, it was Japan versus Canada in the Masters Team Limited, and Japan was on top. Anything else exciting about that? That definitely

it was a format of giant creatures playing each other. Onslaught Block obviously had a lot of tribal components and that was definitely one of the it was a finals of lots of big creatures. The Onslaught Block constructed lends itself

toward pit fighters and just things doing giant things. For those who don't know Osep, he is quite a character. He's very funny. In fact, this might be the finals of two of the funniest people to ever be on the Pro Tour.

Both Tomi Walamese and Osep are both very, very funny and real characters. And so it was quite the finals. Okay, next. June 27th to 29th was U.S. Nationals where Joshua Wagner defeated

Gabe Walls. That will become important later. I bring it up just because when we get to Worlds later, Wagner and Walls will do something important. Okay, next. May 17th was the pre-release. May 26th was Scourge. Scourge was nicknamed Jack for Manny Moan Jack, and it went back to 143 cards.

So 55, 44, 44, which is normally what small sets were at the time. So Scourge was lead designed by Brian Tinsman. So Legions was lead designed by Mike Elliott. Scourge was lead design by Brian Tinsman. So Legions was lead design by Mike Elliott. Scourge was lead design by Brian Tinsman. So the thing I didn't mention about Legions is, it's funny, because Legions was lead design by Mike Elliott, but led developed by William Jockish. And William had this attitude that every creature in the set

had to really be a creature. Because there's ways with creatures to mimic, you know, you can put on Enter the Battlefield effects and put Flash in Enter the Battlefield effects and you can put Global effects in. There's a lot of ways to mimic other card types using creatures and

William really didn't like that and William pushed hard to try to as much as possible make them creatures and not creatures that were functionally filling other roles. I think that was a mistake, by the way, looking back in that, look, if they say creature on the credit line, you've met your task. That's okay. That you don't necessarily need to, part of what you wanted to do with an all-creature set

is mimic some other creature types to make sure that you have the balance of the kind of things you need. Anyway, on to Scourge. So when Scourge was designed by Brian Tinsman, he decided that, I often talk about the third set problem. He was trying to just do something different. So he took a sharp turn. One of the ideas for how to make the third set different

is just do something different. So even though the set going up into this was all about tribal and had morph, Brian made his set all about converted mana cost matters, which was thematically about having things that were expensive, caring about having expensive CMC

stuff. And that set has Scornful Egotist, which was an 8-drop 1-1 with morph. And the idea was, well, you didn't play it with its hard pass, you morphed it. And then we had it in play, it was a cheap creature that had a really high converted mana cost that you could take advantage of with other cards.

The other thing that happened was Brian made a set, I don't think it was Brian's intent when he made the set to have a dragon theme. In fact, the design had very few dragon cards in it. But somewhere along the way, somebody, maybe someone on the development team,

decided that the set needed a hook. And I guess Brian had put a few dragons in the set, a couple high-profile ones. And so they decided, well, since this was a tribal block, maybe we can make the third set, but tribal dragons, dragon tribal. The only small problem was it wasn't really there. And so the set was kind of sold as Dragon Tribal,

but it didn't really have that many dragons in it. I believe the whole set has, I think, six cards that are a dragon or could make a dragon. And then there's a bunch of cards that reference dragons and have a little bit of a flavor of dragons. But anyway, Scourge was sold as a dragon set, but was kind of sadly not really a dragon set. I mean, development pushed it a little bit, so it had enough

with a straight face to say, well, tiny dragon tribal, but anyway, that was a mistake. Check out some mistakes. Okay, next. Oh, wait a second. I did not talk about, I talked about Yokohama. I'm sorry, not Yokohama. I talked about, what did I talk about? I talked about PT Venice. Did I mention, no, I didn't mention, okay, I'm sorry. One of the things about these is

I have all the stuff written down and I'm driving and so I just can pick at notes. So trying to remember this all is tricky. Okay, so now we get, after Scourge... Oh, did I skip PT Yokohama? I did, I did, I did, I did. Sorry. Before, I jumped to Scourge, but earlier in May, actually the week before, May 9th to 11th, was PT Yokohama, which was a Bouchard Raft tournament. And in it,

Matthias Jorstedt from Sweden defeated Masashi Oyeso from Japan. Both pretty good players. Both had multiple top eights. So booster draft, so it was the full block booster draft. And there also was a Masters.

The Masters was extended. The Masters actually was a Masters. The Masters was extended. The Masters actually was a pretty high-octane Masters. Bob Marr, who was, at the time, king of extended, one of the best extended players, defeated Gabriel Nassif. So once again, that's another future Hall of Fame, Hall of Famer playing Hall of Famer.

You know, Bob Marr Jr. from the United States, Gabe Nassif from Japan, not Japan, Gabe Nassif is from Japan. It's not Japan. Gabe Nassif is from France. And they were both really, really good players. I mean, one could argue they're top ten of all time. I mean, obviously in the Hall of Fame. Okay, sorry, jumping around there.

So in July, we had the European Championships. So kind of as a companion to the U.S. Championships, which was a pretty big event, Europe got together and all the European Championships. So kind of as a companion to the US Championships, which was a pretty big event, Europe got together and all the people played. And Nikolai Herzog of Norway defeated Pierre Malabon of France. So Nikolai Herzog,

I believe this is the second time he won the European Championships. And this is the sixth European Championships. And four of the six European Championships were won thus far by Norwegians. It was very much the Norwegian tournament. They used to joke it was the Norwegian Imitational. Because it was won by Norway so much.

Anyway, Nikolaj Herzog, like I said, he obviously early in the year got to the finals against Buda. He was a very, very good player. And obviously he got voted in the Hall of Fame, because he was so good. Okay, next. July 28th was the release of 8th Edition. So 8th Edition had 357

cards, which is an odd number. So it had 110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares, because at the time our sheets were 110s. I meant a full sheet of each rarity. And then there were 20 lands. That's normal for a large set. And then there were seven extra cards.

What? What are these seven extra cards? So what happened was we had some cards we needed for the intro game to teach people, but we didn't want to take up slots in the thing. So we put them in. There was a starter product that needed them to teach. And so we just put them in, we labeled them as if they were in, they had 8th edition

expansion symbol, but they were labeled special. They were like special 1 through 7. And so if you wanted those cards, they only existed in the intro game. You couldn't actually get them in a booster of 8th edition. We have done that a couple times where we just had cards we needed and

we wanted them to be legal. The reason they're included in 8th edition is we wanted someone who bought an intro pack and that was what they had to play with. If they went to a tournament, we didn't want them kicked out. But the cards were low-powered meaning we know they wouldn't matter for constructed play. We just wanted them legal so that if beginners played them, they weren't

kicked out for having some random, you know, eager cadet or whatever one of the cards was. So 8th edition, by the way. So July, this is July 2003, it was the 10th edition of Magic the Gathering. Magic had premiered for the first time in July of 1993. So in July of 2003, it was our 10th anniversary. To celebrate, we decided to do something a little special with the 8th edition. The 8th edition was coming out on our 10th anniversary. To celebrate, we decided to do something a little special with

8th edition. 8th edition was coming out on our 10th anniversary. This is actually an idea that I came up with, that we weren't really doing anything for the 10th anniversary. I'm like, oh, we should do something. I go, look, we have a product coming out, and it's a core set. So the idea I pitched, which obviously I managed to convince them to do, was

there was a gimmick, and the gimmick was there was a card from each set, each Blackbordered set, in Magic's history that had never before been in the core set. So, starting from... I mean, I think we actually repeated something from Alpha, though, by definition that had been in the core

set. But from Arabian Nights forward, every set from Arabian Nights up through Scourge, I believe, there was a card from every expansion Magic it had. I even tried to get a card from Unglued in. I think I tried to get the She Stands Alone.

But there's a rule about how if you have a if cards are the same name, any version can be played. And there's a rule that says silver-bordered cards can't be played. So if we had had a black-bordered version of She Stands Alone, one of two rules would have gotten broken and we didn't want to break either rule.

So we decided, Silver Border said, don't get cards. In retrospect, in retrospect, what I should have done is stuck one of the lands in. I didn't think of that at the time. Anyway, but there's cards from every Portal product. There were cards from anything that produced new cards.

And it was a fun promotion. I was real excited and we were definitely able to jazz things up and we threw a few cards in there that might not have been Inspector and maybe normally we wouldn't have thrown in.

Although it was a challenge, some sets had very clear, easy choices. And some sets, like for example, some of the early sets, Raven Knights was a good example where we couldn't use uncommons and rares because they were on the reserve list.

And of the commons, a lot of them had been reprinted. So we had to find a common that hadn't been reprinted before that we could reprint. Okay, after 8th edition, what is next? Next is August 6th to the 10th. What is the world championships in Berlin? So let's see. Daniel Zink

of Germany defeated Jin Okamoto of Japan to become the world champ. So Daniel was I think the first German. No, no, second. Kaibuta did in 1999. So, uh, Dirk, I'm sorry, Daniel was, um, I think the first German, no, no, second. Kaibuda did in 1999. So, uh, Daniel Zink was the second German to become a world champ. Uh, and there's only a handful of countries that have had multiple people be world champ. Um, the U.S. has done it. Germany's done it. Japan has done it. Um,

might be it. I forget. I apologize if I'm forgetting somebody. So the other exciting thing that went on there was, so the U.S. team, 1995 Worlds was the first time that we declared a winner in the team event. U.S. managed to win that. So U.S. won every year, with the exception of 1997, where Canada won. U.S. had won every year up until 2002. In fact, North America had not lost until 2002.

Well, in 2002, Germany won. Team Germany with Kaibuda. And finally, the U.S. lost after a pretty long streak. So in 2003, the U.S. had a mission. Team USA won to win again.

In fact, there was one member of TSA that really wanted to win, and that was Justin Gary. So Justin Gary had been the U.S. champ in 1997. So the U.S. had won every single year from 1995 through 2001, with one small exception, 1997, One small exception, 1997, the year that the U.S. did not, in fact, it's the only year up through 2003 that the U.S., including 2003, it's the only year the U.S. hadn't made the finals. Not only didn't they win, they didn't even make the finals. Now, in 2002, the U.S. didn't win, but they did make the finals.

In fact, in a very dramatic fashion, if you remember my 2002 podcast. So, so if a team, at time, Worlds has had different amount of team members from the national team. Sometimes it's been four, sometimes it's been three. In 2003, it was three. It's back to four now, but, or, well, it's now the World Magic Cup. But anyway, we'll get there eventually. Okay, so it was Josh Wagner, Gabe Walls, and Justin Gary. Good players.

I mean, Gabe Walls and Justin Gary both had top eights. Anyway, Justin was a man with a mission that he, you know, he had let USA down once. He wasn't going to let it happen again. And so the finals were the U.S. versus Finland, led by Tommy Wallenies, who had just made the finals against Osa in Venice. And USA pulled it off! So the USA continued their streak of being in the finals. Well, minus 97, they'd been in the finals every year,

and they'd won every year except for 2002 and 1997. But they won again. The U.S. reclaimed the victory. Okay. Next. Let's see. Was September 12th through the 14th. Was Pro Tour Boston. So that was a team limited event. So a limited

event was I'm trying to think how it worked. I think what happened was the first day was team sealed, where they just got a lot of product, and then I think it went to Rochester, team Rochester dropped. I think that's how it worked. Anyway, the team that

won was the Brockafellers. So Brock Parker, Matt Lindy, and William Jensen. William, aka Baby Huey Jensen, or Huey Jensen. So Jensen went on to become a Hall of Famer. Matt Lindy was probably

most famous for winning the U.S. Nationals in 96, where he defeated Mike Long, to keep Mike Long from becoming the U.S. National Champion, in what I consider the most dramatic finals ever. And then Brock Parker was another very, very good player. And the three of them came up and won. And they defeated the original Slackers,

which was Ricardo Osterberg, Lord, how do I pronounce his name, Thrande? I'm not sure how to say his name. And Jake Smith. I don't know if all of them were from Sweden. I know Ricardo was from Sweden. Osterberg was from Sweden. I think his teammate.

I think they might all be from Sweden. Anyway, they lost to the Rockefellers who are all from the United States. Okay, we then get to September 20th, was a pre-release, October 3rd was a release, of Mirrodin, whose codename was Bacon. Mirrodin Block was Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato. So we liked the idea of having three sets of things that went in an order that you knew,

but we decided we had to be more careful and pick things that everybody knew. Well, Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato, pretty good. A lot of people, by the way, when they heard the codename, people always assume the codenames mean something when they don't. And so, bacon, meat, it's a meaty set. And then when they found out

later on it was an artifact, they said, ah! Because artifacts up until Mirrodin had been brown. And so, ah, meat is brown, and it's an artifact set, so it's brown, like that. Whenever you find a connection between the codename and the set, it was accidental

because codenames were not decided to have anything to do with the sets. Usually they're picked before the sets exist. Anyway, Mirrored Inn was 306 cards, so 110 rares, 88 uncommons, 88 rares. I'm sorry, 110 commons, 88 uncommons, 88 rares.

You'll notice, by the way, as I go through the years and talk about different sets, the set sizes keep changing. We are always sort of readjusting and figuring out what the correct set sizes are supposed to be. I believe Mirrodin was us cutting back a little bit. Before, we had done 110, 110, 110, I think, and that was a bit high. And so we're doing 110, 88, 88, which is a little smaller, a little more manageable. So Mirrodin, for those that might not know, was an artifact block. All about

we visited the metal world of Mirrodin, who was we later found out, I think we found out at the time, it was created by Karn, and it was run by what's his name? The engine blah! what's his name the the the the the the the the the the the

the the the the the the the the

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the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the the, the qualities of the world had sort of ingrained with the creatures, and so there was a lot of metal components to all the creatures. And the shtick of the set was, it was Artifact Matters, we introduced equipment for the first time, the set had Entwine, and had Imprint,

and had probably the most broken mechanic, affinity for artifacts. So Mirrodin ended up being pretty broken. Dark Steel, which would come out next year, 2004, added fuel to the fire. And it was a pretty, I talk about the biggest mistakes design has made. And I think the biggest block mistake, probably Kamigawa was the biggest design mistake. And the biggest developmental mistake is a tie

either between Urza Saga or Mirrodin. But Mirrodin was a little bit overpowered. Okay, a little bit, it's being kind. It was really overpowered, and we ended up having to ban a lot of cards from the block. Plus, it being an artifact block and everything being colorless, it was hard to stop the deck by removing one piece. I always prefer it as a blob.

No matter what piece you took, it just had other pieces, and we ended up having to ban a lot of cards to be able to deal with it. Mirrodin, the world of Mirrodin we go back to, obviously we see it later in Scars of Mirrodin. Also, in Mirrodin, we actually laid the seeds for the Phyrexian invasion, which we knew in Mirrodin was going to happen. Like I said,

how we were going to portray it changed a little bit, but the idea that we wanted, that new Phyrexia had sneakily I'm sorry, that Phyrexia had sneakily got its way onto Mirrodin and was slowly turning it, was something that there's little tiny glimpses of in Myrddin, but would come to full fruition, obviously, in Scars of Myrddin seven years later.

Okay, next. October 31st to November 2nd was PT Norlins. PT Norlins. It was an extended event, and Rick Osterberg, Ricardo Osterberg, Osterberg? Osterberg? He's from Sweden. Osterberg, Oosterberg, he's from Sweden, defeated Gabriel Nassif from France. So, obviously, Gabriel Nassif, gone to be a Hall of Famer, Osterberg, a very good player, you just heard about him coming in second in the Masters up above, or previously, and anyway, extended was, At the time, we used to have an Extended Pro Tour every year.

But anyway, Extended has since... Not as supported as it once was. Okay, next. Oh, wait, wait, wait. Did I talk about... Who was... Did I write down... I don't know if I wrote down the Masters from PT.

I did not write down the Masters from PT New Orleans. At some point, the Masters ends. Although I think there was a Masters from PT New Orleans. I'm pretty sure there was. I don't think it ended yet. I just didn't write it down. So whoever won the Masters at PT New Orleans, I apologize. Okay, so the next thing that came out in December was the World Champ Decks,

the 2003 World Champ Decks. I don't remember who all they were. Obviously, it was Zink played Okamoto, so both of those were in. Like I said, the World Champ Decks was, it was the two finalists, assuming the finalists weren't playing the same deck. And then usually two other people in the top eight,

based somewhat on deck choice, based somewhat on personality. Usually we'd pick the four best the four most interesting decks to play, and then if there was multiple people playing the deck, we skew toward the better player, the better name. Because part of the... The decks were trying to both build the archetypes and build up the player, so... And that was...

Henry Stern used to always go to the Pro Tour. That was Henry Stern's job. I think I explain this every year that Henry Stern did that okay so I'm almost to work we

that my friends was 2003 so you'll notice by the way I mentioned this in 2002 but it's worth pointing out so

in January we had not January was it January um yeah Legions came out in February Legions came out in February we had, or not January, was it January? Yeah, Legions came out in February. Legions came out in February. Scourge came out in May.

Aethedition came out in July. Mirrodin came out in October. We had World Champ Decks in December. And that's it. We had three expansions. We had one core set. And we had the World Champ Decks. And back in the day, that's all we made. It's funny, because one of the things that will happen as we move forward through time,

and you'll start seeing us adding products to the point now where every month we have a product. So it was a very different time. Also, if we go back in the day, the people that were making Magic back in 2003 was a much smaller group of people. I mean, most

of the design, I mean, Mike, Ellie, and I were the normal people. I mean, most of the design, I mean, Mike Elliott and I were the normal designers. I mean, there were a few people like Brian Tinsman that would chip in. But anyway, it was just a much smaller group back then. From a PT, there was no one dominant. I think in some of the previous years, there were just people dominating.

And I mean, obviously, Kai won a Pro Tour, and there's other names here that show up multiple times. But no one... Kind of the Pro Tour has settled down a little bit. It wasn't nearly... For a while,

it was sort of like it was very star-studded where one person was just dominating. And now, it's settled down a little bit. There were a bunch of names that were doing well.

And clearly, as I can demonstrate, you know, a lot of that were doing well. And clearly, as I can demonstrate, a lot of the people doing well would later end up in the Hall of Fame, which is obviously correlated. But it wasn't like nobodies were winning. The name people were winning and doing well. Like I said, Gabrielle Lucey, for example, shows up multiple times. So there are people doing well, but it's not the dominance that you saw in 2000 and 2001. That just wasn't happening. Okay, so what was my final recap of 2003? I mean, we learned some stuff.

I feel like the gimmick of legions taught us a lot about the difference between some of the casual players and some of the more experienced players. Well, actually, the tournament players versus the casual players. You know, the tournament players were a little unhappy with legions, but the casual players really ate it up. And it taught us a lot about there's an audience that's very vocal and very in front of us, but there's another important audience that's also very big that is a little more,

we used to call them invisibles because they were much harder to see. So in 2003, I was learning a little bit more about the invisibles. It was definitely a year of mistakes from a developmental standpoint, where we made a broken... I mean, it would not... The brokenness would really take...

It's 2004 where you'll see the brokenness take fruition, but it started here. But anyway, guys, that, in a wrap-up, or in a 30-minute wrap-up, was the year of 2003. So I hope you guys enjoyed hearing about it, and it was not a...

It wasn't a standout year. There was not a lot of high-profile things. But there were a few things here and there that definitely went on to... I mean, Mirrodin made its stamp, and obviously we'd go back to Mirrodin. But anyway, also, things here and there that definitely went on to, I mean, Mirrodin made its stamp, and obviously we'd go back to Mirrodin. But anyway, also, by the way, I should mention, Mirrodin at the time was the best selling set Magic ever had, and it held that record for quite a while. Now, part of the reason is it drove a lot

of people out of the game, so Mirrodin was a weird child. But anyway, that, my friends, is 2003. But I've now parked my car, which means it's time for me to be making magic and an end to my drive to work. Thanks for joining me, guys.