Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #170 - 2004

Episode Date: October 31, 2014

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

I'm pulling my driveway. We know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is another one of my series of 20 years and 20 podcasts. So we're up to 2004. So we are past the halfway point. Okay, so let's talk about this year. It was an interesting year on many levels. So we'll start with January 16th to the 18th was Pro Tour Amsterdam. At it, Nikolaj Herzog of Norway defeats Osama Fujita of Japan. So Nikolaj Herzog had a good year. Starts by winning a Pro Tour.

He also would later go on to become a Pro Tour Hall of Famer. a Pro Tour. He also would later go on to become a Pro Tour Hall of Famer. And Nikolai won a number of European, multiple European championships. And as we'll see, multiple Pro Tours. Anyway, this event was

Rochester Draft. It used Mirrodin. Mirrodin had come out in the fall of 2003. For those that don't know what Rochester Draft is, because it's sort of fallen out of favor, it's when you spread all the cards out you open them in packs, land all the cards and people take turns picking the cards so it's a draft format in which it's all open

rather than sealed rather than closed information like a booster where only you know what you've taken also by the way on a personal level January 16th, which was the first day of the Pro Tour, was also the birth of my twins, Adam and Sarah. And so what happened was, originally, back in my bachelor days,

I used to go to everything that wizards would let me fly to. I mean, you name it. Anything that I could attend that was a magic-related thing, I went all over the world. Then I got married, and I said, okay, well, I'm married now. I cut back my travel some. I still travel a decent amount, but not nearly as much as I had been. And then my first child was born. My eldest, Rachel, was born. And I said, okay, I got to cut back a little bit. And so I cut back to basically the pro tours, which include Worlds and the Magic Invitational. And that's all the travel I did. Well, when my twins came, I'm like, okay.

Now it's time to really buckle down. And I stopped traveling to everything but the Magic Invitational and the World Championship. Two events a year. I've since switched to Magic Invitational for San Diego Comic-Con since Magic Invitational is no more. But anyway, so we're getting to the point now where I started not going to pro tours. I mean, I went to a few this year for different reasons, you'll see. But I don't quite have the in-depth knowledge I have. A lot of the earlier ones where I'm, like, talking about, like, he did this.

So I don't. Anyway, if my details are a little less exact in some of the stuff, it's because I just did not. The first, I don't know, eight years of the Pro Tour, I went to every Pro Tour. Or almost every Pro Tour. I missed one when Rachel was born. Okay, next, January 24th was the pre-release. February 6th was the release of Darksteel, codenamed Lettuce, because Mirrodin was Bacon, Darksteel was Lettuce, Fifton was Tomato.

The set had 165 cards, 55 common, 55 uncommon, 55 rare. It had all the mechanics that Mirrodin had, so it had affinity for artifacts. In fact, it also, this set, had affinity for basic land. Well, it had a cycle of artifact creatures that had affinity for each one of the basic lands, affinity for islands, affinity for plains,

affinity for mountains and such. It had entwine, it had imprint, it had equipment. Most people don't realize, affinity for plains, affinity for mountains and such. It had entwine. It had imprint. It had equipment. Most people don't realize, by the way, that equipment started in Mirrodin. It kind of instantaneously became evergreen. And so, like, Mirrodin had equipment and boom, then all magic sets had equipment. But it started in Mirrodin.

Before Mirrodin, there was no equipment. There were cars that were flavored as equipment, but they were not actually equipment. Equipment started in Mirrodin. Before Mirrodin, there was no equipment. There were cards that were flavored as equipment, but they were not actually equipment. Equipment started in Mirrodin. Anyway, Darksteel introduced two new things. Introduced a new keyword, modular. So modular was, they were cards that came into play

with a certain number of plus and plus one counters. Basically, they were zero, zero creatures, but they would come into play with a certain number of plus one, plus one counters. Basically, they were zero, zero creatures, but they would come into play with a certain number of plus one, plus one counters. And then when they died, those counters would get moved to another creature. And so the idea is, oh, here it is. It's a 4-4 trampler. And you could kill it, but while you might get rid of the trample part, the 4-4 just attaches itself to something else.

Something else gets that much bigger. And they become hard to deal with. One of the, probably the set's most broken thing, we'll get back to, called Arkborn Ravager was a modular card. The other thing, which at the time was a vocabulary word, it has since become a keyword, is indestructible.

So modular was me messing around with trying to redo the V visions chimeras so in visions there were these cards that it would be a 2-2 first striker and when it would die you'd put a plus 2 plus 2 counter that granted first strike onto another creature

and so the idea was you could kill me but just my abilities and power toughness would attach to something else so modular was trying to sort of redo that in a little cleaner way. Also not making, like not having everyone produce

its own unique counter. Indestructible came about because I was like, okay, what do people dislike most? Like in playing with artifacts, what's the most upsetting thing? It's like, oh, having your artifacts destroyed. It's like, oh, I have this cool artifact that doesn't need things,

and my opponent goes, shatter, and then like, frowny face. And so I said, well, what if we made some artifacts that couldn't be destroyed? What if they were indestructible? And so we made some cards that could not be destroyed. It's funny, the word obviously has a pretty clear meaning,

and the meaning means cannot be destroyed. But it's through a lot of people. They're like, what is indestructible to protect you from? It's like, well, things that would destroy you. Now, I understand that there's some state-based effects that can destroy you. That's confusing. But just like destroy target artifact.

Can I use that? Does it say destroy? Well, then you can't use it. I had a little FAQ when I was on social media, or I mean, it might have been articles at the time, where someone would say, you know, can this do it? I'd go, does it say destroy? Dark Steel was a dark time.

So, we're going to get to Champs of Kamigawa block later this year, and that was, in my point, the low point of block design. I think that either Mirrodin block or Urza Saga block, you can argue which is the worst, but were the two low points for development, for block development.

So what happened in Mirrodin is we introduced a bunch of stuff. Affinity for artifacts gets a lot of the attention, although there's a lot more than just affinity for artifacts. Essentially what we did is we made a whole bunch of overpowered artifacts that all worked together in such synergy that even getting rid of one or two of them didn't stop it. We used to refer to the deck as the Blob. It was called the Affinity Deck, although ironically,

over the years, the Affinity Deck has less and less affinity in it, but named after the mechanic. And it just became a monster, and Standard became uber-unfun during this time period. This was really, there was a big exodus from Magic, because it was so, so unfun, it drove people from the game.

And that, for the longest time, Mirrodin was one of the best-selling sets of all time. I mean, it had the record for many, many years. And one of the reasons it kept the record is it was such, people were so excited for the set, it sold really well, but then the standard environment got so

sour that it just drove people from the game and made Magic not fun. And that's important. One of the things that we need to do is when we make the game is, you know, development, for example, has to make sure that the balance is there so that it doesn't degenerate. And this was one of the times where we definitely degenerated. Dark Steel also had a card called Skullclamp, which was also uber broken.

So the story of Skullclamp, which I'll tell quickly, probably when I do my... I'll tell the story again when I do my Dark Steel many years from now. So Skullclamp was originally... I'll tell the story again when I do my Darksteel many years from now. So Skullclamp was originally, there's a card called Bakwithal that I made, I don't know, there's a saga somewhere along the way I made a card called Bakwithal. Bakwithal was an enchantment that went on a creature that said, when this creature dies, draw two cards. And the idea was, oh, when this creature dies,

I get back the investment that I put into both the creature and this aura. And we had a big debate whether or not people would play that card. A lot of people said they wouldn't play it. I said, oh, maybe they'd play it. So I put it in the set as this test. Okay, they didn't play it. So anyway, the problem was, I thought, oh, what if we turn Bequithel into an artifact? And originally, Bequithel was plus one, plus one, like Bequithol into an artifact. And originally, Bequithol

was plus one plus one, like Bequithol. And then development got clever and said, you know, wouldn't it be funny if instead of plus one plus one, make it plus one minus one? And ironically, turning the plus one into a minus one made it even better. Because equipment only goes on your own creature.

So how can making plus one plus one into plus one minus one, when you can only equip your own creatures, be So, like, how could making plus one, plus one into plus one, minus one, when you can only equip your own creatures, be better? Well, they found a way, so. Okay, next. February 27th to the 29th in Kobe, Japan. Was Pro Tour Kobe. Masashiro Kuroda from Japan defeats Gabriel Nassif from France.

Both of those are really, really good players. Gabriel Nassif obviously would go on to become a Hall of Famer. They were playing block-instructed, so it was Mirrodin and Darksteel

block-instructed. There might have been a few affinity decks in that top eight. So, Corotta is a really, really good Japanese player. Gabriel Nassif,

one can argue, is one of the top players of all time. Obviously, I think you can argue the best, or one of the best French players. I guess there's a few other really good French players. But anyway, this is the second Pro Tour in a row where the top for the finals includes a future Pro Tour Hall of Famer. Like I said, I don't have as much little trivia on them. So next, May 11th through the 15th.

I think it was May 11th through the 13th and then on the 15th. I'll explain in a second. Was the Magic Invitational. So I did a whole podcast on the Invitational. So I'll just do the overview here. This was, I believe, the first year we went to E3. So E3 stands for Electronic Entertainment Expo. It is a big convention run in Los Angeles that is all about video games

and the electronic entertainment industry. So at the time, the Invitational was being funded by Magic Online. Magic Online was trying to find ways to use it. The Invitational proved to be a really good PR event, that it was really good for drawing press. And so they came up with this neat idea, what if we brought the Invitational to E3? And that way, it would allow our booth,

we'd be doing something unique at our booth. We'd be running this tournament. It's funny now, if you actually go to these kind of things, it's much more common to see big tournaments happening live at events. But we were a bit cutting edge. We were doing it. It was not nearly as, it was not something you saw a lot of. And we were pretty unique at the time we did it. So this event, oh, so what happened was,

this E3 was the same week as the Pro Tour in San Diego. So the way it worked out is we played at E3, and then at the end of the week on Friday, I believe, or Thursday or Friday, we drove down in a bus, and we had to get there in time for everybody to register. And it was like we ended up leaving late, and we were running so late. We were originally going to stop for dinner. And we ended up stopping at an In-N-Out Burgers and said to everybody, get whatever you want.

We're eating on the bus. And we, it was fun. It was an interesting experience. Oh, so what happened was the finals was between Bob Marr Jr. from the United States and Matthias Jorgstedt from Sweden. And they didn't play at E3. They played at the Pro Tour. I believe not on Sunday.

I think they played Saturday night. Right, because it's listed as 11th to the 15th. So they played on Saturday night. But anyway, Bob Marr wasn't going to win that. So Bob Marr, by the way, continuing our little theme so far. Bob Marr is also a future Hall of Famer. Bob Marr would make a card that I think is the most powerful

Invitational card ever made, Dark Confidant, for those that have never played it. It's one and a black for a 2-1 creature. Every upkeep, you reveal the top card of your library, lose life equal to its converted mana cost, and put it in your hand. So I'll talk about that. The making of Dark Confidant is a your hand. So I'll talk about that.

The making of Dark Confidant is a little story for later I'll talk about. But anyway, the Invitational was at E3. Then we drove down to San Diego for Pro Tour San Diego, which was May 14th to the 16th. So it was a booster draft.

So they were booster drafting Mirrodin and Darksteel. In it, Nikolai Herzog of Norway defeats Antoine Roel of France. So Nikolai, still a future Hall of Famer, defeats Antoine Roel, also a future Hall of Famer. I keep saying future because the Hall of Fame had not started yet. So anyway, Nikolai, in fact, won two pro tours in one season. In fact, he won back-to-back Limited. Used to be, we all started between Limited and Constructed.

And so he won the two back-to-back Limited. Obviously, he was very good at Mirrored and Limited. Good at Rashister, good at Booster. And Nikolai did something that, up to this point, only Kaibu had ever done, which is winning two Pro Tours in the same season. Now, there are multiple players that have won more than one Pro Tour, but to the best of my knowledge, and maybe this is something more recent, so I apologize if I'm forgetting somebody,

but I don't know if anybody else has won two Pro Tours in the same season other than Nikolai and Kai. Maybe this happened since then. I'm not jumping to my mind so if it is I apologize to whoever accomplished this very impressive feat so Nikolai is really good Nikolai by the way had won multiple previous European championships

Nikolai is a really good player particularly good limited obviously but anyway he takes the bootstrap and then Bob Bob Marr took the Magic Invitational which gets us to May 22nd which is a trap. And then Bob Marr took the Magic Invitational. Okay, which gets us to May 22nd,

which was the pre-release, and June 4th was the release of Fifth Dawn, a.k.a. Tomato. So this had 165 cards, 55 commons, 55 uncommons, 55 rares. It introduced two new mechanics, Sunburst and Scry. So Sunburst were artifacts that, for every different color mana you played it, it came with a plus one, plus one counter.

So, for example, let's say it, uh, I don't remember off the top of my head, but imagine you had a 2-2 that could cost four. Well, if you managed to use four different mana, instead of being a 2-2, it would come and play as a 6-6. It comes with four possible counters. I'm just making things up, so that was not an actual card necessarily. Unless it's in the recess of my brain, and it is. So 5th Dawn was really interesting.

A couple of interesting stories about 5th Dawn. So what happened was we kind of broke magic. We made Mirrodin, then we made Darksteel. Between the two of those, just magic was in trouble. And so when we got to design, development had kind of figured out we had made mistakes,

but beyond the point where we could fix the mistakes. So I, as the lead designer of Fyfton, was instructed, like, okay, affinity for artifacts is a problem. You can have a little bit, but it can't be good. They're like, okay, affinity for artifacts is a problem.

You can have a little bit, but it can't be good. Equipment is kind of good, so you can have a little bit, but it can't be good. Although we made one broken equipment anyway. I mean, not on purpose. Imprint, they were worried that it was getting complicated, so they didn't want me to do imprint. I fought to get one imprint card in. We had Entwine.

I don't think we did. We might have done something instructable. I mean, we definitely did some modular, because we did do a modular Sunburst card. But anyway, so the set was in trouble in that it wasn't allowed to do a lot of the things that the previous sets had done, and so we needed to find a way to sort of give it its own identity.

Meanwhile, the set, what happened was Randy Bueller, who was, I think at the time, the director of Magic. If not, he was the head developer. Randy was on the team and he had convinced me that we should bring on Aaron Forsythe.

So Aaron was somebody who, I had been put in charge by Bill of getting the website together and Aaron was the person I wanted to run it and if you heard my podcast all about putting the website together it took a while to get Aaron to get Aaron in the door but eventually he was running the website

we thought it would be neat to have him on the team and that he could write an article or multiple articles about being on the inside and he knew his stuff and we thought he'd be valuable so he ended up being really really valuable he designed both Sunburst and Scry in fact he was so good we ended up putting. So he ended up being really, really valuable. He designed both Sunburst and Scry. In fact, he was so good, we ended up putting him like he ended up getting into R&D

from being on the design team. We're like, what are we doing? Let's get him in R&D. And so Aaron would transfer over. Also on the design team is a guy named Greg Marks. So Greg Marks has a funny story, which is the previous year I went to a Pro Tour in Chicago and Greg Marks

was playtesting a homemade set he had made. Now, normally I'm not allowed to come within 20 yards of a homemade set, but of all things, our lawyer had come to that Pro Tour. I mean, the only one I ever remember her ever coming to, and I got special

permission to look at them. So I actually got to see his cards, and he impressed me. And so I ended up inviting him to come be on a set. Now, he was freelance. It's all done through email. But Greg was one of the few people. In fact, only two of the time I had, I can remember that people that were on a set that had never either currently or previously worked at Wizards. That they're two people that like, I guess Greg would

later future work at Wizards. But anyway, he was part of the team along with Aaron and we had a lot of challenges. The thing we ended up

doing with Sunburst was we knew we needed to go a different direction so we played into this whole thing about well what if we have an artifact that wants you to play lots

of different colors. Now, it's interesting that this set really formed a lot of my ideas about block planning. So I hadn't yet become head designer yet. So I would in a little bit, very soon. But what happened was we had come up with this idea of this shift for the third set, but we hadn't really

set it up. And we were able to change some of the stuff in Darksteel, but it was too late on Mirrodin. And so we had this... Now remember, the drafts went in order back then. So it was, you draft Mirrodin, then you draft Darksteel, then you draft Fyffdawn. And Fyffdawn had this weird twist, but it was third, and Mirrodin didn't really have

cards setting it up. And so it was really, really hard to get people to do the thing we were trying to do in the third set. And so it made me realize that if we just ahead of time figured out what we were doing, we could have laid the groundwork in earlier sets. And anyway, it was the first thing that really, I mean, I guess Invasion Block had taught me how having a structure was very valuable, and then this kind of taught me how not having a block structure causes you problems. So between my experiences, I think, with Invasion and with Mirrodin

really cemented in my mind what I wanted to do. And so a year later, I would become an actual designer. In fact, less than a year later. In fact, now that I realize this, in 2004, I actually became head designer. I'll talk about that a little later. I forgot about that. A little extra for the end. Okay. Okay.

So, we move on to July 9th to the 11th with Pro Tour Seattle, where Von Dutch, with Camille Cornielsen, Jeroen Remy, and Jelga Viegersma, all from the Netherlands, defeated www.shop.fireball.com2, which was Jin Okamoto, Itaro Ishida, and Tsuyoshi Ikeda. Those are three very, very good Dutch players versus three very good Japanese players. Two of the Dutch players actually would go on to be in the Hall of Fame, both Cornelius and Vikas Mar in the Hall of Fame, continuing our trend so far.

And this was a team-limited Pro Tour. The two things I remember of this Pro Tour, one was that Chris Bakula made a blunder that's very memorable. Have you ever heard him being interviewed? Chris has been trying to get in the Hall of Fame forever. I believe he deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,

but he keeps missing by the razor-thin of some margins. Chris believes in his heart that the thing that keeps him from getting in is that he needs one more Pro Tour top eight. He has three. This was the Pro Tour in which he was playing for top eight, and he missed something on the board that he could have prevented his opponent from winning,

and he could have won the following turn, I believe. Every player has some moment where they're like, oh my, what did I do? And this is Chris's moment, which is really every player has some moment where, like, oh, my, what did I do? And this is Chris's moment. And which is really hard when, you know, something you desperately want, like, you trace it back to one moment of weakness where you made one tiny mistake. Anyway, that happened in this event. The other thing that happened in this event was Bob Marr, when he won the invitational card, had turned in a card that granted you nine poison counters. Which we said, no, we're not going to do that.

It's also broken. But anyway, one of the things that I would, a service I always provided, and the reason I'm bringing this up is because Bob wrote an article about it, which is, if players needed help making their card, I always offer my services. I obviously made a few Magic cards.

So what I would do is if someone needed help, I would say to them, okay, well what do you want? And I would get as many clarifications as what they wanted, and then I would give them some suggestions. So Bob had said he really, really wanted a cheap black creature that had card advantage.

And so I came up with the idea of, okay, well what if you get to draw a card every turn, but you're losing life equal to the converted mana cost? And Bob and I riffed off that a little bit. He really liked it. And so we went back and forth, and I would sort of do a version of it, and he'd give notes,

and we went back and forth all weekend long at this Pro Tour, Pro Tour of Seattle. So I had been at Pro Tour San Diego because I had been in E3 for the Invitational, and obviously I was at Pro Tour of Seattle because I lived in Seattle. But those two and Worlds were my only travel for the year. Anyway, that was the Pro Tour where we went back and forth,

and Dark Confidant got made between me writing stuff and Bob giving notes, and sort of between us we ended up with Dark Confidant. One of the funniest stories is Bob tried to convince me that it should be optional whether you draw the card and lose the life. And I'm like, Bob, A, it's not going to be as cheap as you want, if that is true. And B, that's not black. Look, do it. Build your deck around it.

Do whatever you need to do. Black is not the one that goes, well, maybe. No. Black's like, I'll give you power, but it comes at a cost. Bob later told me that he was really happy that I was right. That I was correct in making the right card. Okay, next. September 1st through the 5th

was the World Championships in San Francisco where Julian Mountain of Netherlands, who's 15, youngest player I think to ever win Worlds, and might be youngest ever to win a Pro Tour, defeated a Canadian Ayo Paquette.

So that was in the wharf down... We actually, it's a site we've had multiple Worlds at. There's not too many places that you can say there was more than one World Championship at, but that's one of them. Also in the team event, Germany defeated Belgium.

So that was the team event, Germany defeated Belgium. So that was the team event. The one thing I remember about that event is one of the things we did for promotions is we had this giant clear column that reached up to the ceiling and in it was play money that represented all the money we'd given away at the Pro Tour.

And anyway, it was... I remember that they got Julian to get inside it and pose with the money for a picture afterwards. Okay, September 18th was the pre-release. October 1st was Champions of Kamigawa. Codename Earth. So that block was Earth, Wind, and Fire. So it's 306 cards, 110 commons, 88 rare, 110 commons, 88 rare, 110 commons,

88 uncommons, 88 rares, 20 basic land. So that introduced all sorts of things. That set had Bushido and Splice

onto Arcane and Arcane, obviously. Soul Shift. It had flip cards. It had Spearcraft. It had the legendary theme where all the rare and mythic creatures...

There was no mythic. All the rare creatures were legendary, and a few of the uncommons were as well. That, by the way, is where my quote, if your theme isn't at common, it's not your theme. Because we did this thing, and then you just couldn't see it. That you could open up ten booster packs and not realize that all the rares were legendary.

It's just... Because it's sitting so far away, it's just hard to notice. Anyway, I mentioned earlier that if, if, if Mirrodin Block might have been the low point for block development, Champs-Élysées-Montgallon was my pick for a low point of block design. Bill Rose had this idea that we would do this top-down design, that we'd get creative build a world, which they did. And there were two major mistakes one. The design mistake made was that we did all

the creative first and then tried to match the design to a pretty done creative. And what we learned was creative is way more flexible than design. And we ended up having a very ham-fisted design because we didn't have a lot of room for movement because we were trying to match things that were locked in. Now the way we do it,

we kind of learned a lot from this set, which helped us improve like Innistrad and Theros, other future Top Gun sets, where we go back and forth so that we are working with creative to make sure that we're hitting the beats we need, but in a way that we're also making sure we hit the mechanical elements we need

so that creative can sort of also adapt to the needs of the mechanics. Creatively, the mistake I think was made was they were very, very true to the source material, which is Japanese mythology, which is inspiration, but they were so true that some of it was not resonant because a lot of people, a lot of our audience just didn't know a lot of the things they were doing.

And so if you were really familiar with Japanese mythology, maybe you understood the kami and a lot of the elements that were going on. But if you weren't, a lot of the things that were a little more... The lesson is, in order to be resonant, you can't just match the source material. You have to match sort of some expectations of the source material. match the source material. You have to match sort of some expectations of the source material. At least what we learned

is that common is where you do things people know and that rare is where you do things they might not know but can learn about. You know,

Hundred Handed Ones and Theros was not done at common. It was done at rare. It is part of the source material and we wanted to reference it but we wanted to make sure that the things

we referenced at common were, you know, Minotaurs and Medusa and things you knew. Okay. October 29th through the 31st was the final Pro Tour of the year. Pro Tour Columbus. Pierre Canali of France defeated Shuhei Nakamura of Japan. Nakamura.

So every single finals this year at a Pro Tour, with the exception, interestingly, of the World Championship, had a future Hall of Famer in it. So Shuhei Nakamura would later go on. He came in second. But he would go on to be a Hall of Famer. They were playing extended. Also, the one last release of the year, on November 20th, was the pre-release. November 19th was the release. Yes,

the pre-release was the day after the release, because it's a weird set. Was Unhinge! Unhinge had 141 cards, 55 commons, 40 uncommons, 40 rares, 5 basic lands, which makes 140, and then, dun-dun-dun, a secret card that was a secret

and showed up only on the rare sheet, called Super Secret Tech. Anyway, I just did a whole podcast on Unhinge, so if you want to hear more about Unhinge, just listen to that. What happened was, we had done Unglued back in 1997. It was popular, but we overprinted it. So the perception of it was people didn't like it because we had to get rid of a lot. I convinced them, or Randy convinced them, that, you know, people really liked this.

We made another one. We again overprinted it. And again, it sold really well early on. And then we had to get rid of stuff because we overprinted it, and again, it sold really well early on, and then we had to get rid of stuff because we overprinted it. The big challenge of trying to make a third unset happen is we've overprinted both times. It's trying to make them understand there is an audience that wants it. We'll buy it. We can make money doing it. But they have to be careful not to overprint it.

Both previous times, we didn't understand how to treat it, and we made way too much. And you can lose money on anything if you just make too much of it and so anyway Unhinge was a lot of fun like I said the biggest in lessons learned

I talk about this but the biggest mistake of Unhinge I think was the gotcha mechanic which you could say gotcha if your opponent did something

you know did this particular thing the card said that you could get it back the set also had a ass theme. There were donkey folk, and all the cards with donkey folk had cute ass names

like fat ass and cheap ass and dumb ass. There was a fraction theme that we used a half on a bunch of things. There were cards that a little girl cost half a white mana for a half-half creature. Mons Goblin Waiters produced half a red mana for a half-half creature. Mons Goblin Waiters produced half a red mana.

All the donkey folk had half in their power or toughness or both. Also, we had an Artist Matters theme, so that you could... Things that cared about what artists were on the cards you played. But anyway, I... Like I said, I think Unhinged had some issues. And in general, I like Unhinged. I think Unglued came out a little better on

Unhinged. But I do believe that there's an audience that loves these, and I'm trying desperately to... I believe a third unset will eventually happen. That's what I will say. Not if it's when, not if. Okay, also this year, the last product for sale was the World

Championship decks. 2004 World Championship decks. So that's a product we used to make with different backs that would have four decks from the World Championships. So this year would have had Julian Mountain and A.L. Paquette, plus two other people that were there. They were always four different decks. The problem with it is because Worlds played Standard and Standard changed right after

because of the new set coming out, we would make this product that uses a format that was no longer being played. It always had a problem and we eventually went away. There were people that loved, loved, loved the decks, but not enough people, unfortunately. And so we were still making them.

At some point we'll stop, but we were still making them back then. Henry Stern, who used to make them, he used to go to the like, he would go to Worlds and that was his big like project is making sure that he'd figure out the decks and get all the stuff

he needed to do and you always get the player signatures because their signatures would be on the on all the copies of their cards in gold

it was very cool anyway the last event of 2004 which was not even I forgot to write this down but I thought of it on the way so you guys

you can tell that like I have a rough outline, but I definitely, I deviate from my outline. So the last thing that happened, this happened actually at the end of December, is I got called into Randy Buehler's office. So Randy was at the time the director of Magic R&D, because he was for this part of the story. So what had happened was, Bill had been director of Magic R&D, because he was for this part of the story. So what had happened was, Bill had been director of Magic R&D, and also he had been the head

designer. And while he was doing those two jobs, he was able to do both. Then Bill got promoted and went up and became the R&D vice president, VP of R&D. And Randy took over as being the director of Magic R&D. The position now held by Aaron. So Randy was my boss. In fact, both Randy and Aaron, who are my two bosses consecutively, were both people

I got into the company. It's kind of interesting. Anyway, so Randy called my office. So what happened was, Bill had tried for a while to be both vice president and head designer. And so while Champs-Élysées was happening, it just became clear that Bill was in over his head. There was too much that he needed to do as vice president that he just didn't have the bandwidth to also be the head designer.

And so Randy came to me and said that he would like me to be the head designer. So if you know anything about my... When I first came to the company, I was hired as a developer. I told them at the time that what I really wanted to do was design. And they said they had a designer, which was Richard Garfield, and I took a job as a developer. But my goal all along was to become a designer. I convinced them to let me do Tempest.

But my big, big goal for Magic, the job I wanted, the brass ring for me, was being head designer of Magic. And in 2004, December 2004, I managed to get that job. And so I've now been doing it for... Oh, wait a second. Is that right? No, no, no, that is not right. It happened in 93. It happened at the end of 2003. Oh, the reason I'm realizing this is because... it happened in 93. It happened at the end of 2003. Oh.

The reason I'm realizing this is because, yes, because we work ahead. Okay, I just talked all about this amazing thing that happened. Okay, it almost happened in 2004.

This amazing thing happened to me at the end of 2003, which I didn't talk about in my 2003 podcast. So I'm going to leave it in because it's a big deal. Okay, technically it happened

in December of 2003. Because I just going to leave it in because it's a big deal. Okay, technically it happened in December of 2003 because I just celebrated my 10th anniversary last December because this will be my 11th anniversary this year. But anyway, at the beginning,

at negative 2004, the end of 2003, I became head designer, which I did not talk about in my 2003 podcast. So anyway, I'll leave it in. So one of the things that's funny

that you guys don't always realize is what I do is I'll do a podcast, and then if I mess something up, then I will redo it. And so yesterday I did this podcast, and then on the way home, I always listened to it to make sure. And I was listening to it,

I made a mistake, and I said, oh, I made one mistake, and then I, oh, I made a second mistake. And I made 10 mistakes in the podcast. So I said, okay, I'm going to redo it. 10 mistakes is too much. You know, I'll let one or two mistakes slide. I mean, I'm a second mistake. And I made ten mistakes in the podcast. So I said, okay, I'm going to redo it. Ten mistakes is too much. You know, I'll let one or two mistakes slide. I mean, I'm doing it live, so occasionally I'll say something slightly wrong.

But anyway, today is the revamped version, but I like today. So I think I'm going to keep today's. And that, my friends, all wrapped up, is a little bit of December 2003 and 2004. So that was all the things this year. I mean, it was an interesting year. Obviously, there was, it was, being that it was one of our blocks that I consider our worst developmental blocks and one of our blocks that I consider our worst design blocks, I'm not going to say we were fighting around cylinders right now.

It was definitely a year where we were learning things. In a lot of ways, I believe Mirrodin really redefined how we did development, and Kamagawa redefined how we did design. So let's chalk this up as a learning year where we learned a lot, and

that, my friends, in a nutshell, was 2004. Okay, I've just parked my car, and since I'm sitting in the parking lot, that means this is the end to my drive to work. Thanks for joining me today, guys.