Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #180 - 2005

Episode Date: December 5, 2014

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2005.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another in my series of 20 years and 20 podcasts. And today I'm going to be talking all about 2005. Okay, so let's get started. Okay, January 22nd was the pre-release and February 4th was the release for Betrayers of Kamigawa. So this was the second set in the Champions of Kamigawa block. So it's Earth, Wind, and Fire. This was Wind. It had 165 cards in it, 55 commons, 55 uncommon, 55 rares.

The lead designer for the set was Mike Elliott. In fact, the design team was just two people. It was Mike Elliott and Randy Buehler. And the lead developer for the set was Mike Elliott. In fact, the design team was just two people. It was Mike Elliott and Randy Buehler. And the lead developer for the set was Henry Stern. So basically what the set did is it carried over the mechanics from Champs of Kamigawa. So it had Soul Shift, Bushido, it had Splice onto Arcane. It had Sparrowcraft and Flip Cards and Legendary Creatures at Rare. But it did introduce a couple new things.

So number one, it introduced ninjas! We knew when we were doing the Japanese-inspired set that we wanted to hold something back for the first set, for the first expansion. And so we decided to hold back ninjas. In retrospect, maybe that was a mistake, I think the fact that we did a Japanese-inspired block, and between

the whole block, we had just a small handful of ninjas, feels wrong in retrospect. So the ninjas came with a ninja mechanic called ninjitsu, which is a mechanic actually I made. So what ninjitsu did is you could attack with a creature,

and then if a creature in your hand, which they're all ninjas, had ninjutsu, it could replace an attacking creature. So the idea is, you thought I was this, but ha-ha, I'm a ninja! And the ninjas usually had saboteur-like effects, so when they hit you, they would do things. I got teased a lot for the flavor.

The idea was that something attacked you and it secretly was a ninja. And so there were a lot of people making fun of like, it's an elephant. No, it's a ninja in an elephant suit. And I'm like, I never said it was an elephant suit. I said that they use illusionary magic to hide their true identity. It's magic.

Okay, so the ninjutsu was the one new mechanic. The other new mechanic made by, I believe, Mike Elliott was called offering. What offering was, it was a mechanic where you could sacrifice a creature of a certain creature type, and then you paid the difference between that creature and the mana cost of this card. So the flavor was that your thing would sort of turn into this other thing. So it had to be a snake because it was turning into a larger snake, or whatever the case may be. We would later revisit this with the champion mechanic in Lorwyn.

It worked a little differently, but had a similar flavor of your guy is upgrading into this bigger thing. So, portrays of Kamigawa, I don't think there's anything else exciting about it. I mean, the whole champion's block, I've talked about this in previous podcasts, was not design's strongest hour.

A lot of the issues that... Champions has the issue of being very, very... What's the word I want? It had mechanics that all cared about itself, that all cared about things that were specifically in the set. There's a word for that, which I will get in a second. And the, you know, the themes were very linear, but also they were very parasitic. That's the word I was looking for.

Where, like, hey, you wanted samurai, but samurai are only in the set. Hey, you want to place an arcane, but arcane stuff is only in the set. You know, spirits, at least there were some spirits before this that went back a little bit, but anyway, there was a lot. Betrayers sort of continued the theme. Okay, so on January 28th of the 30th,

at PT Nagoya, Rochester Draft. Now, notice that the Pro Tour happened after the pre-release, but before the release. So, it was the Rochester Draft using both champions and betrayers. I remember a lot of the pro players went to pre-releases and tried to do well in pre-releases so they could win packs, because the only opportunity for them to practice doing betrayers was at the pre-release.

Although, I believe what happened was, when you checked in at PT Nagoya, each person was given a draft set when you checked in to allow players to have a little chance the night before to do some drafting. So at PT Nagoya, Shu Kimura from Japan defeated Anson Jansson from Sweden.

So one of the themes you'll see this year in the organized play portion of the Pro Tour portion is over the years, there have been different countries that have been very dominant. The U.S., for example, early on was really, really dominant. I think in 98, the 97-98 Pro Tour season, every single Pro Tour was won by an American. There were other areas. The Swedes were very dominant for a while. The French were dominant for a while. The Czech Republic was dominant for a while.

You know, there were different countries that really had a strong dominance. And right now, in 2005, the Japanese were very dominant. This is the period in time where... And you'll see it in Worlds. It kind of culminates in Worlds this year. But this is the year of the Japanese players. They do very, very dominant. This is the period in time where, and you'll see it, it kind of culminates in Worlds this year, but this is the year of the Japanese players.

They do very, very well. Obviously, they win the first Pro Tour. Anson Janssen, by the way, is a Pro Tour Hall of Famer. And so another thing you'll notice this year is a lot of future Hall of Famers doing well. And I guess that's how they become future Hall of Famers. But a lot of familiar names will be popping up. Okay, next was March 11th through the 13th was PT Atlanta. So PT Atlanta was a team limited format.

So what a team limited format is, is you get cards, a whole bunch of sealed product, and then your team from all those cards have to make three decks. But you as a team only get one grouping of cards. And so what you have to do is sort of carve out space. Usually what you tend to do is you pick different colors. Okay, you will be the black blue deck, you will be the red green deck, you will be the white deck, you know,, and that way the cards are, you can divvy them up between the decks. At PT Atlanta, Team Nova defeated Team We Add. This is back in the day where we let you name your teams. I think now your team names are named after the people in the team.

But back then, you would name your own team. So Team Nova was Gabriel Nassif from France and David Rude and Gabe Sang from Canada. So Gabriel Nassif, obviously a Hall of Famer, very, very famous French pro player. Gabe Sang, back in the day, also was a pretty famous player, had a bunch of top eights. And David Rude was in the, I think he was one of the winners in Seattle,

the team event in Seattle. Anyway, the three of them defeated Team We Add, which was Adam Chambers, Andrew Pacifico, and Don Smith, all from the United States. But anyway, this was Gabe Nassif and Gabe Sang

this is the they were both players that had a lot of top 8s but had not yet won and this is the Pro Tour where they first won okay next we had Pro Tour Philadelphia

so Pro Tour Pro Tour Philadelphia was block constructed so that meant since Saviors wasn't out yet it was Champions of Kamigawa and Betrayers of Kamigawa. The event was May 6th through the 8th, and Gado Slifer from the United States defeated Kenji Samura from Japan.

So Kenji would go on to be a Pro Tour Hall of Famer. And once again, notice another event, another event, and the, uh, the Japanese are doing really well. The Japanese didn't place in the team event, um, the finals of the team event, but they, but they do show up most of the rest of the year in the finals. Um, so, uh, I don't know much. One of the things now is we're getting to the point where I did not go to the Pro Tour, so I have general information who won, what the formats and stuff were, but I don't have a lot of the stories

I had back during the days where I traveled. Some of these events I did go to, a few of them, and I will share more when we get there. Okay, next, May 17th through the 20th, speaking of events I went to, was the Magic Invitational. So this was the second year, I believe, we were in

Los Angeles at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. We were there for three years. This is the middle year, I believe, we were in Los Angeles at E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. We were there for three years. This is the middle year. So Terry So of Malaysia defeated Tsuyoshi Fujita of Japan.

So another Japanese in the finals, although did not win this one. So Terry So went on to design, his prize was a card called Rakdos

Augurmaid, showed up in Dissension, in the Rakdos Guild. It was a black and red card, and it could force you basically what happened was you could coerce your opponent, but they got to coerce you. But obviously it was in a deck where you cared more about being able to coerce them than you cared about them coercing you.

The card was a decent card. The problem was Terry made a card that did something that wasn't particularly fun, and so development was a little skittish on pushing it too hard. So it was good. It definitely got played, but it wasn't quite at the power level of some other Invitational cards. Also, by the way, that was not the only card to get made that week. So what happened was we did this thing where everybody submitted their card ahead of time, and the players voted on their favorite card.

And then we made not only the winner's card, but also the fan favorite card. Now, the difference was the fan favorite card didn't have the winner's picture on it, where Rakdos Agamage pictures Terry So in Rakdos form. So the card that got made by Kenji was called, not by Kenji, sorry, by Sioshi Fujita, was called Gemstone Caverns, and it's a land that if you go first, allows you to,

or sorry, if you don't go first, yeah, if you go first, I think if you go first, it lets you, it gives you a one-time advantage that it lets you play with this land in play, and you get to tap for color once. Okay. Next, on May 21st, we had a pre land in play, and he gets a tap for color once. Okay. Next, on May 21st, we had a pre-release.

And then on June 3rd, we had the release of Saviors of Kamigawa, a.k.a. Fire. So there's 165 cards, just like betrayers. 55 common, 55 uncommon, 55 rares. Haven't gotten mythic rares yet. That'll happen in Lorwyn. But not yet. Actually, not in Lorwyn. But not yet. Not back in 2005. So the design was led by Brian Tinsman. The development was led by Randy Buehler. So one of the things that we often did, and obviously we recently have

done away with the third set, but this is another example where the third set kind of just like took a major turn. And Brian made sure to have some elements of the block, but really he was doing a lot of different things in the set. Remember, Brian had led the design for Champs of Kamigawa, but he had not done Betrayers. Mike Elliott had done Betrayers. So he had done the first and third set in the block. So there

definitely were a bunch of things introduced here. So Channel was a mechanic that was kind of like cycling, except you could discard your card for any effect. The card would say what the effect was. I've since gone on record as saying that Channel was a little too broad to be a mechanic.

We like having things where you discard cards for effects, but we tend to sort of, you know, if you want to discard your creature to get a temporary, you know, giant growth effect, oh, that's Blood Rush. That's what Blood Rush does. You know, and the channel is a little too broad. Sweep, another example, a couple things that got keyworded that I don't know if I would keyword.

Sweep was a mechanic where you got to return a certain number of lands when you played it, and the lands you returned dictated the size of the spell. This, I think, was just a cycle of five cards. I'm not quite sure why we keyworded it. I think we were a little on the let's keyword things side. The other cycle that only had five, although this one was worth it in my mind, was the epic spells.

So the epic spells were spells that you would play that you could never play another spell, but you got a copy of that spell every turn. This came about because Brian was trying to play around the idea of legendary instances or sorceries. What would be a spell so famous that it would have sort of a notoriety to itself? And he came up with the epic spells, which were pretty cool. Another thing he did is he did a hand-sized matters theme that was nicknamed Wisdom, although that wasn't on the cards.

And so there was definitely a theme of caring about how many cards were in hand. In fact, there was a cycle of Maros in the set. Maro being the card from Mirage that I made long ago, named after me, that cares about how many cards are in your hand. So there was a cycle of cards that were star, star equal to the size of your hand, although the red one cared about your opponent's hand. So there's a cycle of cards that were star, star equal to the size of your hand, although the red one cared about your opponent's hand. And they figured out that Maro meant something in Japanese,

so all of them were something Maro, like Adam Maro or Sora Maro. Another fun thing about that cycle is my twins were born right around then. I guess my twins had been born in 2004, but when the set was being made, it was in 2004. And so there set was being made, it was in 2004.

And so, um... Now, there's a policy of no vanity cards. I knew nothing of this. But I will say, uh, I have a son named Adam and a daughter named Sarah. And among the Maro cards is Adam Maro and Sora Maro. Um, uh, both of which actually mean things in Japanese. So everyone, everyone claims it's a coincidence. Uh, maybe it is. I had nothing to do with it.

But anyway. Adamaro and Sorbaro have a warm place in my heart. Anyway, so Saviors was definitely Brian trying to sort of go in a different direction. Depending on how you feel about Champions, it definitely sort of was different than a lot of the stuff that had come before.

He definitely, there were more things that we'd seen in the first set. There were some flip cards that flipped from creatures into enchantments. Brian definitely did some riffs

on some stuff that had shown up early on in the block. Okay, next was July 8th of the 10th was PT London, was Booster Draft. So this would come out after

Saviors come out, so it was a Booster Draft with all three sets, with Champions and Betrayers and Saviors. At this event, Jeffrey Cerrone from Belgium defeated Tsuyoshi Fujita from Japan.

So yes, Fujita went back-to-back top twos. He went top two at the Invitational and then top two at PT London. Jeffrey Cerrone, by the way Fujita from Japan. So yes, Fujita went back-to-back top twos. He went top two at the Invitational and then top two at PT London. Jeffrey Cerrone, by the way, is from Belgium. And I don't know, once again, I don't know if he's in that PT London, but like I said, I know it was booster draft. Okay, next, July 29th was the release of 9th Edition.

So 9th Edition had 359 cards, 110 commons, 110 uncommons, 110 rares, 20 basic lands, and 9 starter cards. So this is something that 8th edition had also done, where we needed some cards to teach people how to play, but we didn't necessarily want to have to put them in boosters. They were mostly vanilla cards, really, really simple. And so what we did is we just made these cards, We made them legal for standard, and they were labeled.

The funny thing is they were labeled S1 through S10, and for some reason S6 wasn't there. That's why there's nine of them. I don't know what happened. Maybe there was an S6 that got pulled at the last minute because it wasn't in the... They were all used in the starter game. There's a thing we used to teach people with and the starter game had a book which was like a comic book that would teach you how to play.

And these cards were just in the book. And so we liked how they taught and so we didn't want to change the cards. So anyway, there was the starter cards.

Okay, so... This set did a couple things, a couple famous things from 9th edition. So its expansion symbol was the first one, or no, I guess 8th edition was the first one that had the span of cards with a number on top of it. But we definitely started with the basic editions using a number. Imagine 2010, which would happen, not until 2010, we would start shifting over how we named them, but back then it's still Nth Edition.

So this set was the last set to have white border cards. So for those that might not even know what white border cards are, back in the day, when Magic first came out, the policy was the first release of a card set was in black border, and any additional releases were in white border. So Alpha and Beta were black border, then Unlimited were in white border. So alpha and beta were black border. Then unlimited was in white border. And as revised.

And of course, at that time, since then, had been in white border. Now, the one exception was whenever something appeared in a language for the first time, we would make sure that that appeared in black border. So if you ever want to get black border 9th edition, it exists in one language for the first time, we would make sure that that appeared in Black Border. So if you ever want to get Black Border 9th Edition, it exists in one language, in Russian, because this is the first set we printed Russian in. Also, we made a conscious decision in 9th Edition to start keywording, not keywording, sorry,

to start putting reminder text on basic keywords. So this is the first set where flying said, this creature may only be blocked by another creature with flying and such. Because we added in reminder text, trample and protection had been removed from the basic set as being a little too complex. And once we had some reminder text, we felt comfortable to put it back in. Also, this was the first set to have

enchantment aura so when magic first started creatures would say let's just say you had a goblin it would say summon goblin

and enchantments let's say enchant a creature it would just say enchant creature and nowhere on the card did a creature say creature

and nowhere on the card did enchantment say enchantment you just had to know that summon meant creature and enchantment say enchantment. You just had to know that summon meant creature and enchant blah meant enchantment. And we felt over the years that was wrong. We had changed creature earlier to go from summon goblin to creature goblin.

And so this set fine said, you know what, we should just have enchantments be enchantments. And so we came up with the aura terminology. So you were enchantment aura, and then in the rules text it would say what you enchanted. I think that was good to help clean things up. Okay, so...

Let's see. On September 24th was the pre-release. October 7th was the release of Ravnica, City of Guilds. I think I'm talking in my movie voice. In a world.

So, there's 306 cards, 110 commons, 88 uncommons, 88 rares, and 20 basic lands. So, the lead designer was myself. The lead developer was Brian Schneider. So, the short version of this, I talked about this, I did a podcast

on Ravnicanica was we were doing multicolor, the last time we did multicolor was Invasion which came out I believe in 2000 and so one of the things that I had wanted to do was try to go a different direction than

Invasion had gone, Invasion was all about playing four and five colors, so I said what if instead of playing lots of colors, we play few colors? So since that was four and five, I said, well, what's the fewest you can play and still be multicolor? Two. So the idea was, what if we had all the color combinations, both enemy and ally, and focused on all two color combinations? The reason I focused on ten and not five, A was Invasion focused on 5 originally. I wanted to be different than that. And I wanted to make sure there was enough space.

And so I thought that if we had 10 different color pairs, that would make sure we had enough space to do enough different things. Because gold cards can be restrictive. Anyway, I wanted to make sure we had enough to do. I took this idea to Brady Donovan, who was the head of the creative team at the time. Or actually, I take that back. I was the head of the creative team at the time. But I was the manager of the creative team at the time. Or actually, I take that back. I was the head of the creative team at the time, but

I was the manager of the creative team at the time. I guess he was in charge creatively of the creative team. So I went to Brady, and he was doing world building, and he came back with the idea of a city world with ten guilds. I liked the idea so much that I embraced it, and I built an entire block plan out

of it. So I ended up doing the 4-3-3. So there were four guilds in the first set, three in the second, three in the third. That at the time was pretty controversial. In fact, the set is officially called Ravnica City of Guilds.

So let me explain. There's a funny story behind this. So I put the set together. I went 4-3-3. Brady worked with me. I mean, the set did all the stuff to communicate the guilds. But there was a lot of people outside of R&D that were nervous, that people wouldn't understand. And I'm like, I think they're going to get it. You know, it's a pretty clear pattern. We're doing part of the pattern. By us not finishing the pattern, we're pretty much telegraphing we'll do that in the future sets. In fact, by doing four in the first set

and having two other sets, we pretty much had people figure out 4-3-3. They wouldn't know what order we were doing them in, but I'm like, it's going to be clear. And they said, we don't know. And then Brady said, no, no, no, we're doing this stuff creatively. I said, look, we're doing cycles and guild mages and lands

and we're doing all this stuff. We're going to hammer it home. And Brady's like, absolutely. It'll be in the names. You're not going to miss that there's 10 guilds. But they were nervous. They thought people might not get it. In fact, I think we had a playtest

where we sent out the cards to one of our playtest team and their notes were, we don't get it. And we say, oh, these aren't final names. Final names will have the art and the names and, you know, they're going to get it. And they were really nervous. So I remember I was out of town on vacation and I came back and they had changed

the name of the set from Ravnica to Ravnica City of Guilds. Which I thought hilarious, like, I don't understand what's going on. Wait, in the name, it says City of Guilds. There must be guilds here. Oh, now I get it. There's guilds. Anyway. I mean, Brynn and I both told them it wasn't necessary, Oh, now I get it. There's guilds. Anyway. I mean, Brynn and I both told them it wasn't necessary,

but we're like, okay, it makes you feel better, I guess. I mean, very few people refer to it as Ravnica, colon, City of Guilds. So I'll get my movie voice back. In a world of guilds. Okay, so there were four guilds in this set. So the four guilds were the Selesnya, which is white-green, the Dimir, which is black-blue, the Golgari, which is black-green, and the Boros, which is

red-white. So each one of them had their own mechanic. So the Convoke mechanic was for Selesnya, that mechanic where you could tap creatures to help... Spells with Convoke allowed you to tap creatures to get mana of their color to play that spell. We just re- Spells with Convoke allow you to tap creatures to get mana of their color

to play that spell. Convoke just came back in Magic 2015. It's definitely a real popular mechanic. Created by Richard Garfield, although he originally submitted it for Boros and I moved it over to Selesnya. Transmute, designed by Aaron Forsythe. All these people were on the design team, obviously.

So Transmute is a mechanic where you're allowed to spend some mana to trade the card you have with Transmute for another card in your deck. Not trade. You discarded it to go get a card with the same converted mana cost. So it was kind of a tutoring mechanic. It was flavorful and made a lot of sense in Dimir. We kind of shy away from doing tutoring mechanics now. We find they make the game stay too repetitive.

Too many games play the same way. So probably you're not going to see Transmute come back. But people really did like it. Dredge was my mechanic. It was for Golgari. It allowed you to get things back from the graveyard, but at a cost of milling cards. Dredge probably will not come back

because it's barochen! There are Dredge decks now played in formats where you can play crazy powerful cards, and the Dredge cards are very competitive. We tried a lot of mechanics and ended up with Dredge. We literally tried like 30-some mechanics. The Golgari ended up being the one we were having trouble with. Radiance, designed by Mike Elliott.

Radiance spells that whenever you targeted, whatever you targeted with, whatever permanent you targeted, it would then hit any permanent that shared a color with that thing. Originally, it looked both at creature type and at color, but it got complicated, so we changed the color. Of the four mechanics, it's the one that

I, when the dust settled, I felt least matched its guild. Not that the mechanic wasn't interesting, but it really wanted to be in a set that was more about color. And the Boros really, I mean, there were cool things you could do where you could have a team and you could use it to have your team all work together, but

it was a little looser. I felt the other three did a little stronger job of connecting to their guild um okay so uh also the set introduced hybrid so hybrid man it was something i had come up with when i was trying to figure out um a new way to do multi-color and i liked the idea the traditional multicolor was and, and what if we did or? So at one point, I tried a version where there was equal amounts hybrid

and traditional gold, and it was mind-melting in the complexity. I played with R&D, I mean, this is, you know, former pros, I mean, best of the best people that know what they're doing, and like, the play test ended and the note is, that was so

hard, you know. So when R&D has a hard time with it, you know, it's going to be problematic for the players. So I ended up pulling Hybrid from the set. I think, well, I think I turned it in with a little bit of Hybrid. Brian Schneider, who was the lead developer, pulled

it from the set, but then later realized he was missing something and needed it, and then brought it back in. In fact, I think what happened was, I think I pulled it from the set, and I put it into Time Spiral, which was the next year's set. We were going to do it in Time Spiral, because time was going crazy, and mana was going crazy, and that was the flavor we were going with. Anyway, obviously, Ravnica went on to be a very, very popular set. It's kind of funny because if you ask me about the low point of Magic design,

Champions of Kamigawa was the set I picked. It really had a lot of design issues, and it might have been the worst block design-wise we've ever done. But one of the best blocks we've ever done was Ravnica, which was the very next block. So it's funny that highs and lows can be so close to each other. But yeah, Ravnica

was instantly popular. Like I said, there's all this nervousness. A lot of people thought the 4-3-3 thing was crazy. They thought the drafting would never work. And it went on to be one of the most popular sets, if not the most popular block we've ever done. And drafting was like one of the most popular drafts we've ever done. So

all these worries. The one thing I will say which is interesting is I always see Ravnica for me as being kind of a personal hump where there's a period where I would pitch crazy things and people would go, Mark, you're crazy. And after Ravnica

it's sort of like, well, I're crazy. And after Ravnica, it's sort of like, well, I guess he must know what he's talking about. Somehow that was a switch from you're crazy to I don't get it. Ravnica had that switch. Before Ravnica,

it was like, you're crazy. And after Ravnica, it was like, I don't get it, but okay. They assumed I must know something. That was a switch

where people were like, okay, Mark seems to know something. So if he thinks that we can do it, let's let him try. Like Zendikar, which came later, no one really got Zendikar, but people are like, okay, Mark seems to know something. So if he thinks that we can do it, let's let him try. Like Zendikar, which came later, no one really got Zendikar, but they're like, okay, Mark, we trust you. Okay,

show us what you have in mind, because we don't get it. Okay, moving on. October 28th to the 30th was Pro Tour Los Angeles, which was an extended event. Antoine Ruel of France defeated Billy Moreno of the United States. So Antoine Ruel of France defeated Billy Moreno of the United States. So Antoine Ruel, well known for making it into the Hall of Fame, a very good French player.

He and his brother Olivier, two really good, both in the Hall of Fame. Billy Moreno would go on to work for R&D. He no longer works with us, but he was in R&D for a couple years, and so this was his best finish at a Pro Tour. Okay, next. The last event of the year, but thematically the one that ties it all together.

So November 30th through December 4th was Worlds in Yokohama. So this was actually the second Worlds in Yokohama. The first Worlds in Yokohama was in 1999, where a fresh newcomer named Kai Buda won the Worlds, beating Mark Lepine. Kai that year had won three Grand Prixs and came in second in another.

So he was starting to make a name for himself, but his first sort of pro tour top eight was him winning Worlds. So anyway, we went back to Worlds. At it, Katsuhiro Mori of Japan defeats Frank Karsten of the Netherlands. Frank Karsten, obviously, a very good pro player, known

for deck building and deck strategy, and he would go on to get in the Hall of Fame. And Mori's definitely had his name in contention for the Hall of Fame. So also, not only did Japan win the individual event while in Japan, but Team Japan defeated Team USA in the finals.

So Japan won the individuals, Japan won the team event while in Japan. No one other than the U.S. has ever won the individual and the team while being hosted in their home country. So it was very impressive. The Japanese were quite... I've never seen an audience as excited as that audience was when Katsuhiro won.

They were very, very excited. They were, the Japanese were, I mean, they were excited just because Worlds was in their back town. The fact that the local guys were doing great was very, very exciting to them. But by the way, Japan won almost everything that weekend.

So, the quick story is, I was at the event, and I and Aaron Forsythe and Richard Garfield were asked to participate in an exhibition match. So what happened was, there was a league, a high school magic league

that was really popular in Japan, and the team that had won were going to play off that was really popular in Japan. And the team that had won were going to play off against me and Aaron and Richard. And we were playing team standard. What that means is we were all playing standard decks, but our decks when put together had to be a standard legal deck, which meant that we only got four of any one card between our three decks. So Aaron actually built all three decks with some help from R&D. And I don't remember what they played.

I played a white-green deck that could search out creatures from the deck. I remember playing it. I was doing a lot of spell-slinging at the event. I played it all through spell-slinging. I didn't want to let anybody down. I wanted to make sure that I was playing my best. Richard, I know, tweaked a bit with Aaron's original deck design,

and he had made it a little more fun to play for himself, although I think he made it slightly weaker. So anyway, we were each playing a match, and the best two out of three matches in which each match was two or three games would be the champion. So Richard lost pretty quickly. I think 2-0. So we were down.

So Aaron and I both had to win in order for us to win. Then Aaron wins. I think Aaron won 2-0. And I lost my first game. So Richard had lost. Aaron had won. And I think I was still, I think I was... I think I was in the middle of my first game after both of them were finished. My game was taking a while.

And I lose game one. So now, it's all on my shoulders. I have to win. I have to win game two, and then take it to game three, and I have to win game three. So game two, I get a really bad hand. Like, I just...

Richard had lost. I had lost my first game, and I get a horrible opening hand. And I decide I need to mulligan. And it was one of those hands, by the way, that wasn't super horrible. It wasn't clear I had to mulligan. But I figured out that I was trying to be better about mulliganing,

and so I decided to mulligan. And Aaron later said that I made a very smart mulligan. That was one of the moves he was most impressed with, that I mulliganed a hand that a lot of people thought would have kept. And it was a bad hand to keep. I should have mulliganed it. It had mana, but it didn't have a play in which good things were going to happen.

So anyway, game two, I managed to win game two. Aaron's note to me was I could have won it like five turns faster. I was so cautious to make sure that I won because I had an edge in the game that I was just being super, super cautious. And I managed to win it, but Aaron said that I opened myself up to stuff, you know, that by not trying to win faster, I gave him opportunities to find answers. But anyway, I did win, so we went to game three. So it turns out that the people who were playing knew ahead of time who they were,

specifically who they were playing. So the person that had played me, I guess had chosen to play me. I think what they did is they told the three of them who the exhibition was and each one of them chose. So one chose me, one chose Aaron, one chose Richard. So the person who was playing me had chosen to play me. So in the game,

I was playing a mirror match. They were also playing the Court of Calling, I think. Anyway, you've got to go through your deck and literally get the card you need. A creature that you need. And so he went in his deck and he got Morrow. But the interesting thing was he didn't have four mana yet.

He only had three mana. So he went and got a card that he couldn't cast yet. And it turns out he didn't get mana for a couple turns. Meanwhile, I was doing my thing and what I realized was he wanted to beat me

by attacking me with Morrow, which is obviously the card named after me. And so what had happened was is he kind of made a move for a style play, but ended up burning him because he didn't get the mana he needed to cast it. So I was able to get advantage on him because I wasn't making...

I courted a calling and got my creature I could play. And so I was doing a good job of beating him, and he just didn't manage to come back in time. I managed to defeat him, and so I won. And then I won my match, and that means we won. So the one loss of the Japanese all weekend long is we took down some Japanese kids. But I was very, very proud of myself.

I don't play competitively all that much, and I worked really hard making sure I could play the deck. It was crystal clear that the kid I was playing was way better than me. He had been playing competitively all year long, and I don't play a lot of competitive magic. But, the way I explained it later is,

I won a game that only, literally, only I could have won. Because the only reason that I won was because he was trying to get style points and going for the morrow. But if he played anybody but me, he would have just got the winning card and not tried to get the morrow. So, I like to feel that I, that it was a match for me to win. Anyway, the one other thing this year, every year for all the previous podcasts, or many of them, I talk about how, and the final product of the year, the World Champ Decks,

and I explain how Henry went to Worlds every year and hand-picked the decks and this and that. Well, this deck, I don't have to do that because we stopped making the World Champ Decks. It required a lot of work. I explained this in previous ones, where the problem was it was a standard environment making the World Champ decks. It required a lot of work. I explained this in previous ones, where the problem was,

it was a standard environment that two seconds after a new set came out and it was no longer... So we would put out a product that had standard decks that were no longer standard legal. And you could play them against themselves, and there were people that enjoyed that. We had a lot of fans of the decks.

There were people very sad when we stopped doing them. But they never sold that well, and it just was a weird position product. The other thing that happened in 2005, a little footnote, is we had made three introductory sets, Portal, Portal

Second Age, Portal Three Kingdoms, and what had happened was, we at the time had made the decision that you couldn't play them in tournaments. And it caused a lot of problems. We were like, you know what, we at the time had made the decision that you couldn't play them in tournaments. And it caused a lot of problems. We were like, you know what, we have all these magic cards we made, why don't we let people play them somewhere? So we decided that we would make them vintage playable. Because vintage is where everything else is playable.

So other than silver border cards that are not tournament legal, or cards that are banned, every other black border card can be played in vintage. Why not? And by opening the doors, there are some cards that actually, especially like every other card, every other Black Border card that we've played in Vintage, why not? And by opening the doors, we actually, there are some cards that actually, especially from Portal for Kingdoms,

that have become important cards in Vintage. But in 2005 is when that happened. So, to recap, since I'm almost to my destination, it was a year of highs and lows.

Like I said, it was a year of the last two Champs-Élysées sets, which were not particularly high points for us. But it was also the year of Ravnica, which is one of our high points forever. So it was a year of highs and lows from a design, you know, product standpoint.

On the organized play end of things, it was a year of dominance by the Japanese. They showed up in almost every finals. They won a bunch of the things. Worlds, they won the individuals and the teams. So there was a... It was definitely a year of some Japanese dominance.

But you saw a few other players sneak through. You saw a lot of future Hall of Famers make their mark. But anyway, that, my friends, is 2005. And so now, I've parked my car, which means that this is the end of my drive to work, and it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.