Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #196 - 2006

Episode Date: January 30, 2015

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2006.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today is another in my series 20 years and 20 podcasts. So today I talk about 2006. Okay, so the year starts nicely enough. On January 21st is the pre-release. On February 3rd is the release of Guild Pack, codenamed Alt. So Ravnica, Guild Pack, and Dissension were Control, Alt, Delete. Caused us a little bit of a problem, especially with the name Control, because we talked about the Control deck. Did you mean the Permission deck or the deck that uses Ravnica cards? Anyway, Guild Pack had 165 cards, 55 commons, 55 uncommons, 55 rares, and it was a continuation of the Ravnica block.

So what we had done is Ravnica had done the first four guilds. Remember, guilds were two-color combinations. They were all ten in the block. The first set, Ravnica had Selesnya, white-green, Dimir, blue-black, Golgari, green-black, and Boros, red-white. Dimir, blue-black, Golgari, green-black, and Boros, red-white. So if you notice, in four guilds, there is eight colors, meaning three of the colors got represented twice,

which was black, green, and white. That meant red and blue had an extra. So in Guild Pact, red has a bonus guild of the three guilds, because there's six colors. So there was Orzhov, which is white-black. There was Gruul, which was red- colors. So there was Orzhov, which is white-black. There was Gruul, which was red-green. And there was Izzet, which was blue-red. So there was an extra red. And Descension, we'll see later in the year, had an extra blue.

The way we offset that, by the way, for those that care, is there were extra mono-colored red and blue cards in the first set to offset the fact that red and blue didn't have as many multicolor cards. Okay, so there were three mechanics in the set. Orizav had the Haunt mechanic, Gruul had the Bloodthirst mechanic, and Izzet had the Replicate mechanic. Bloodthirst got brought back

in a core set, so that obviously was a success. I think Replicate was also a success. Haunt, not so much a success. Haunt has this problem what I call unsticky, where you read it, and then two minutes later, you're like,

what does that do again? Part of the problem was Haunt works differently between the two different... If the mechanic was on a creature versus the mechanic on a spell, it worked slightly differently, but had the same name.

Anyway, Guild Pact went over quite well. In fact, the Ravnica block went over quite well. People really, really liked the Ravnica block. One could make the claim that it's the most popular block we've ever done.

Ravnica, the setting also is super, super popular. But anyway, let's move it on. Next, on March 3rd to the 5th

in Honolulu was Pro Tour Honolulu. Remember, by the way, that back in 2006, Pro Tours were named after the city they were held in. At some point, we eventually realized, because the Pro Tour is essentially marketing,

that we wanted to tie a little more directly into the set that's coming out, so now Pro Tours are named after the set it's tied in conjunction with. But back in the day, this was Pro Tour Honolulu. I think this was the very first Pro Tour held in Honolulu. Honolulu has become a very popular spot to hold the Pro Tour. It's been there numerous times. I think this was the very first Pro Tour held in Honolulu. Honolulu has become a very popular spot

to hold the Pro Tour. It's been there numerous times. I think this was the first time. The event was standard and Mark Herbeholtz of the United States defeated Craig Jones of the UK.

I was not at this event. This is not the point where I didn't go to most of the Pro Tours. I still went to World and I went to the Invitational this year. But this one was well known for a very high profile top deck in the finals of the Pro Tours. I still went to World and I went to the Invitational this year. But this one was well

known for a very high-profile top deck in the finals between the two of these. But anyway, that was Pro Tour Honolulu. Okay, next. April 22nd was the pre-release. May 5th was the release of Dissension, a.k.a. Delete.

So this set had 180 cards. 60, 60, 60. So so 60 common 60 uncommon 60 rares once again we haven't got to mythic rares yet they don't exist yet we'll we'll get to them soon um so dissension uh had 180 cards but uh guilt back to 165 why uh and the answer was we decided that we wanted to end the block the way it worked was each, whatever your guild was, the set had one, you had one set that was for you. Let's say you loved Gruul. Well, Ravnica didn't have a Gruul for you,

Descension didn't have a Gruul for you, but oh, Guildpack had lots of Gruul for you. And so we decided it was at the end of the year, we wanted a little something extra for everybody. And so we came up with the idea of doing split gold cards. So the split cards had really showed up in Invasion, but they were split cards. They're cards in which you can cast either side.

They're two mini cards on one card. And when it appeared in Invasion, they were monocolored. They were different colors, but monocolored on each side. And so here, for the first time, we did gold split cards. And that allowed us to introduce and give you a few more cards for your guild, if you had a guild that was in Ravnica or Guildpact.

So Dissension had the Azorius blue-white, who had the Forecast mechanic. Rakdos. Oh, actually, I didn't describe what the mechanics did. Let me go back to the guild pact. I feel...

I'm in neglect. So, Orzhov had Haunt, which were... It went on creatures and spells, and when the spells were used or the creatures died, this ability would go onto the creature so that when the creature died,

it would trigger and do this thing. It was being haunted by the spell. Bloodthirst, the Gruul mechanic, said, if I enter at... If last turn... When Gruul mechanic, said if I enter last turn, when I play this card, if I've already dealt damage to you this turn, I get a bonus on the

creatures. They're bloodthirsty. They sense you've attacked them. Izzet had Replicate. Replicate was a mechanic that said you can play this spell and then for a certain amount of mana, you can copy it and you can do it as many times as you want. Okay, so now Azorius had Forecast.

Forecast was a mechanic where it could work in your hand. During your upkeep, you could pay some mana to reveal it. Did it have an effect in your hand? And that effect in your hand usually was synergistic with what you would do if you cast it. Forecast was actually inspired by an unglued card called Infernal Spawn of Evil, where you could show players that it was coming and do damage to them and say it's coming. Rakdos had Hellbent. Hellbent was a mechanic where if your hand was empty, things got

a bonus, so it encouraged you to empty your hand. And then Simica had Graft. Graft were things that came into play with plus one, plus one counters, and then whenever you played a creature, you could choose to whenever you cast a creature, you could remove a plus one counter from that thing and put it onto the new creature.

So, Dissension, Guild Pact had been led by Mike Elliott. One second. Sorry. Guild Pact had been the lead designer was Mike Elliott. Dissension, the lead designer, was Aaron Forsythe. And this was, in fact, Aaron

Forsythe's first lead design. Aaron had been Aaron Forsythe. And this was, in fact, Aaron Forsythe's first lead design. Um, Aaron had been on a bunch of different sets. And, um, he, in fact, Aaron was the only person in the Ravnica block to be on the design for Ravnica and Guildpact and Descension. Um, I was on Ravnica and Descension, but not Guildpact. Um, you, usually, nowadays, I'm the one that's on all three. But, uh, back then, Aaron was the one person that was on three. The reason he was was because he was doing the last set.

We wanted him to be familiar with all the sets leading up to it. So for those that don't know the story of Aaron, for a while, I was training Aaron to be my protege, to be the next head designer. Aaron, for a while, Aaron had been hired. I've talked all about Aaron in other podcasts. But anyway, this was Aaron's, uh,

this was back in the days where Aaron reported to me and was a designer. Uh, anyway, he led Dissension. Um, I think Dissension,

uh, all three sets went over really well. Like I said, when I talked about, uh, Ravnica, it was a little controversial

at the time. The idea that, like, we're going to have ten color pairs and divvy them up. And if you enjoy, you know,

blue-black, well, hey, Ravnica has blue-black, but Guild Pack doesn't, and Dissension doesn't, other than the split cards. Oh, the other interesting thing about Dissension is they changed it so it was 60-60-60. We would later go to default to 60 uncommon, so it's funny that, as you go

through the years, you'll see the set sizes rise and shrink, you know, that we've had sets see the set sizes rise and shrink. We've had sets be smaller and bigger, and we're constantly trying to figure out the right mix, which is an ongoing issue because we keep, obviously, changing it over time. Okay, next. May 10th through the 12th in Los Angeles at the Electronic Entertainment Exposition, also known as E3, was the Invitational. In it, Antoine Ruel of France

defeated Jeff Cunningham of Canada. So Antoine Ruel, for those who know, he's a very famous pro player, went on to become a Hall of Famer. He and his brother Olivier Ruel are both in the Hall of Fame. The only brothers currently to do that. So for winning this event,

Antoine Royal got to make his own card, which ended up becoming Rangers of Eos from Shards of Alara. So this event, the way, for those who don't know Invitational, I've done podcasts on them. You can go listen to those. It's a round-robin tournament,

16 players, 15 rounds. Every player plays every other player once. There's five different formats, three rounds of each format. So this event, the formats were Auction of the Geniuses, which is a lot like Auction of the Champions and Auction of the People. But what it meant was we went and

found 17 really good, famous deck builders and had them build decks. And then in the auction the players would bid starting hand size and starting life total. And the person who bid the lowest was willing to start with the lowest life total and the lowest hand size,

got the card. And then they would play, I said got the deck, and then they would play the deck. We also had Duplicate Sealed. Duplicate Sealed was an event I had run every single event not on Magic Online.

And then when we started doing Magic Online several years before, they weren't able to code Duplicate Sealed. I know that sounds easy, but they weren't able to do it because of technological factors. But eventually they were able to do it. And this one, I was so busy that Aaron volunteered, and Aaron Forsythe made the Duplicate Sealed pool. By the way, if you've never done that, it's a lot of fun to do. People who like building cubes and things, building a duplicate sealed pool is a ton of fun.

The way it works is every single person gets the exact same pool of cards. So that when you're building, you know that the environment you're building is everybody has this card pool. I find duplicate seals are very fun to build and if built well, are very fun to play. So it's something, for those that like building things, the only downside is you've got to get enough copies of the card for everybody who is playing in your playtest.

Okay, next. We had a Mirage Visions booster draft. They had just started bringing Mirage and Visions to Magic Online at the time. So when we were on Magic Online, the Invitational would try to show off formats and stuff that players could play. We also had an event called Block Party.

What Block Party was, is you could play any block-instructed deck. The shtick was that different people would pick different block decks. So any block deck was legal, and I think things that were banned in their own block were banned. But it was a battle of all pick different block decks. So any block deck was legal, and I think things that were banned in their own block were banned. But it was a battle of all these different block decks from different blocks, and it was fun watching people play sort of the best block decks

from different blocks against each other. And finally, it was always a challenge to come up with goofy events for the Invitational online, on Magic Online, because we had a little more limitation than we did when it was just for paper. This last event we called Deccan and Decks. And what we did was, we did a sealed in which we gave them a lot of cards. A lot of cards.

I mean, like, boxes of cards. And the decks looked almost a little more like a constructed deck than a sealed deck, because of the volume of cards. Um, okay. Next, moving on. more like a constructed deck than a sealed deck because of the volume of cards. Okay. Next, moving on. June 16th through the 18th was Pro Tour Charleston.

So Pro Tour Charleston, that's hard to say, was a Ravnica team block constructed. So what that means was it was a constructed team event, you had two teammates, so three people were a team, you had to build constructed decks, but the shtick was, you were playing block constructed, Ravnica block constructed, and your decks, when stacked together, had to be legal. So what that meant was, you had access to four copies of any card between your three decks. And so one of the challenges was figuring out what are the best three decks you can build in a Ravnica block-constructed mold. Where do you want to use your cards?

Where do you want to put them? Kaji Haru 80, so K-A-J-I-H-A-R-U 80, which was a Japanese team of Tomohiro Kaji, Shota Yasuka, and Tomoharu Saito. They defeated a Brazilian team by the name of Raala Pumba, which was Cirgo Zampier, Willie Edel, and Paulo Vito de Rosa. So, Paulo Vito de Rosa, well known for being a Hall of Famer. The one Brazilian so far in the Hall of Fame.

Willie Edel is a countryman. Has had his name mentioned for the Hall of Fame. Has not gotten in, but definitely one of the top players. You'll see he has a pretty good year this year. Tomohor Saito also, well, elected into the Hall of Fame, unfortunately got disqualified at a tournament before in being inducted, and did not get inducted. So he is the only person ever to be nominated, get voted

in, and then not get elected in due to being disqualified between the election process and the induction. Also, Shota Yasuka, also a pretty well-known Japanese player. Anyway, it was Team Japan versus Team Brazil, and Team Japan pulled it out. Next, July 8th was the pre-release. July 21st was the release of Colt Snap, a.k.a. Splat.

So it had 135 cards, 65 commons, 55 uncommons, 40 rares. So this was the fourth set of the year, although it came out in the summer. So normally we have our three normal sets, which come out in the winter, the spring, and the fall. And we had for the last couple of years, every other year at the time, we used to put out a core set. And the two years earlier, I think, was unhinged.

So we kind of had a fourth set every year for a while. And so they wanted to do another fourth set. And we went back and forth on what was supposed to be. For a while, we weren't even going to do a fourth set. And then in the last minute, we were like, no, no, we need to do one so we had a couple ideas the idea was floated around maybe it was supposed to be the fourth Ravnica set

maybe just a whole bunch of a set full of all ten color pairs a final follow-up to Ravnica there was talk of maybe doing a magic dungeon dragons crossover anyway, there was a's talk of maybe doing a, a magic Dungeon Dragons crossover. Um, anyway, there's a whole bunch of different discussions.

In the end, the idea we went with was what we call the Lost Set. So in TV, for example, they do this thing where they call it Lost Episodes. They're like the Honeymooners. There's an episode they made that was lost, but someone found a tape. It's the Lost Episodes found in the vault. Um, so I came up with the idea of doing a Lost Set. Because what happened was in Ice Age, Ice Age and Alliances were the two sets, but there was never a third set in the

block. The block only had two sets. The Homeland was kind of loosely tied to it, but only because it came out in between the two. It had nothing thematically or creatively or mechanically to do with the two sets. And so we came up with the idea of doing the lost set. And we made this very tongue-in-cheek thing, and we found it in an old file drawer, and we dusted it off and applied modern development to it. But we made one small problem, which was we had Randy Buehler make the announcement. And Randy is not really...

Randy's the straight shooter. Randy tells you the truth. When you hear it from Randy, you know it's true. So people didn't realize that Randy was sort of goofing around and so when they later found out that it was a joke, that it was never intended to actually be a lost set, there were people that felt we lied to them. I mean, in retrospect, what needed to happen

is I needed to make the announcement. Because, see, I talk about how we have an alien brain in a jar running R&D, and we use a time machine to fix mistakes, and I have an evil twin, and a bizarro clone, and all sorts of series of clones and things. Anyway, I think if I had done it, I have a little better time planting my tongue in

my cheek. So, um, but anyway, the idea behind it was, could we make a small set flavor as if it were the third ice age set, um, that, uh, could draft by itself. That was the goal. Could you make a small set that was designed to draft by itself? So we did a bunch of things. Um, first off, because we decided to do it so late, our design was very, very small.

We actually only had like four to six weeks to design it. Normally we would have four months on a small set. Development had their full time, but design, because we thought we weren't going to do it in the last minute and did it, had a much shorter schedule. The idea behind the design was, because it was drafted by itself,

we put mechanics in that you wanted to collect a lot of, what we call collect me mechanics, where it's like, oh, what you want to do is get a lot of copies of the same card, and then we gave you mechanics of things that would have advantage for you doing that. So since my reign, so I started in 2003 as the head designer. In my reign so far, I consider Cold Snap to be my biggest failure. We tried something. It didn't really work. The draft...

Some people liked the draft. I'm not saying it didn't have its fans, but it didn't work really well. It wasn't particularly popular. The set did not sell all that great. It did not market test all that well. Another big problem we found was when we went to do the Lost Set, what we realized was

there weren't a lot of mechanics from Ice Age. The mechanics in Ice Age fell into two camps. Either they were good and they were evergreen and we used them like cantrips or something. Or there wasn't that much space in it. So we really had to explore some spaces that wasn't as deep as we needed to.

I mean, we were trying to capture Ice Age, but there weren't a lot of mechanics left to really explore. The mechanic that people liked the most was called Snow. Snow was technically a supertype, so things were snow permanents and then there was snow mana and anyway it was

of everything we did in the set it's the thing I most often ask when are we bringing it back and I don't know my answer on that is one day if there's a set where snow makes just tons of sense it's something we consider. But I think we have to be in a world where the world wants to be snowy, not snowman is going to make us make a world snowy. Okay.

Next. On September 23rd, released on October 6th, was Time Spiral Snap, aka that block was Snap, Crackle, and Pop. Time Spiral, Planar Chaos, and Future Sight. So Time Spiral had how many? 422 cards! What?

That's my new what. So it had 121 commons, 80 uncommons, 80 rares, 20 basic lands, and 121 special cards, aka uncommons, 80 rares, 20 basic lands, and 121 special cards, a.k.a. the time-shifted cheat. So Time Spiral originally was designed as a time-themed block. From that, I ended up splitting it into past, present, and future, because that's how time breaks into three. And then once we started on the path of the past, we stumbled upon nostalgia. into three. And then once we started on the path of the past, we

stumbled upon nostalgia. And in some way, it might have started as a time block, but it ended as a nostalgia block. And the set is time spiral, for example. Every single card you could do a little paper on. Let's talk about the influences of past

magic on this card. Look, the title is a reference to this card, and the arch is a reference to that card. And the mechanic is a reference to this card. We had a lot of fun making it. I think if you were very, very invested in Magic, you had a lot of fun with it. It was a Magic set about celebrating Magic, and it was just joke upon joke upon joke, but all about the set, all about Magic's past, and a lot of players that weren't, a lot of players felt like they like there was a joke going on they weren't in on. And so, plus

Time Spiral was very complex. So normally in a set, in a large set, we will do like four or five mechanics. When we stretch, that we didn't concentrate here, we go to six mechanics. So let me just name the things that were in Time Spiral. Now, I'm not talking Plane of Chaos or Future Sight.

Just in Time Spiral. Buyback, Echo, Flanking, Flashback, Madness, Morph, Shadow, Storm. Those are the keywords. And then also, not keyword, but mechanics essentially. Rebels, Slivers, Spellshapers, slivers, spell shapers, and phthalids. Oh, but wait, those are all old mechanics. We also had, Flash was finally keyworded, and we had suspend and split second. That, my friends, is a lot of keywords, a lot of mechanics.

That's a lot of mechanics. And it was a bit overwhelming. We had different counters commingling with each other. It was just there was craziness. It was crazy. And like I said, I see Time Spiral Block as

kind of being the cult film of the blocks. It has its fans and the people who like it really like it. I love drafting Time Spiral. It is is deep there's so much going on and you know the time travel pack has so many different cards uh the time shifted sheet for those that don't know what that was is because we were trying to reflect on the past what we did is we took 121 cards put them in their old frame and they're plucked from all of our magic showing all sorts of mechanics by the way the ones i

named were in the main set once you you encounter the time-shifted sheets, there are even more mechanics in the set. And so what happened was, every pack had one time-shifted card. It had a purple expansion symbol on it, and the card could go anything from being an old common card to an old... I mean, they were the past, so they were rares.

I don't know how many mythic rares... Mythic rares didn't exist yet, once again. But anyway, you could open up Psionic Blast. You could open up Sulcanar the Swamp King. A Chroma. Or you could open up Squire. There is a range of good to bad.

And Squire, yes, was put in there to be bad. Oratog was also on the sheet, which is Squire plus just other stuff. So Square was meant to be, you know, wah, wah, wah. So today's sound effect day, apparently. Okay, so Time Spiral, a little too complicated. Beloved by the hardcore fans, but didn't do quite as well. The funny thing, by the way, was I was so sure that Ravnica was going to be, you know, okay, people would like it,

and then Time Spiral comes, they're going to love this, and they love Ravnica, and Time Spiral didn't quite get the overall audience reaction I was hoping for. Like I said, the diehards did love it. There was so much going on. Okay, speaking of Time Spiral,

let's talk about the Pro Tour, which Time Spiral played. October 20th to the 22nd was Pro Tour Kobe in Kobe, Japan. So it was a Time Spiral booster draft. So Time Spiral had been out. Not by long though.

A couple weeks. And Jan Maritz Merkel of Germany defeated Willy Edel of Brazil. So Willy pops up again. So he had two seconds this year. He came in second at two Pro Tours. That is impressive. Not a lot of people do that.

One of the reasons his name is in discussion for the Hall of Fame. So Time Spiral was very popular on the Pro Tour because the Pro Tour, A, tend to be older players and they knew all the references, and B, they loved having so many different cards. And there was a lot of play

scale in this set, because there were so many mechanics and so much going on, and while it was overwhelming to the average person, most pros were like, this is fun. And by the way, people always ask me, if I was in a desert island, and I had to bring one block with me, one block, I could play with one block, what would I bring? In a heartbeat, I'd bring Time Spiral. There's just a lot going on there. It's fun and you would not grow tired nearly as fast as anything else. Same reason it's a problem because there's so much going on. If you get it, you get it. And so, okay. You guys hear the rain? So, how are we doing on time today? Whenever I drive and I see the rain, we're actually been pretty good for being rainy out.

Okay, so next we get to the World Championships. So back in 2006, the World Championships had this weird thing where some of the time magic seasons used to start in the fall and end in the spring, and worlds would be in the spring. fall and end in the spring, and Worlds would be in the spring. And sometimes Magic years, at least for organized play, match the calendar year. So back in 2006, we matched the calendar year. So the 2006 season ended in Worlds at the end of the year in December. Well, November 29th and December 3rd, it was the World Championship in Paris. Lovely Paris. We were in France.

And so the finals was Makihita Mihara of Japan versus Ryo Ogura, also of Japan. Now, Mihara would win, go on to become the champion. He just recently got inducted into the Hall of Fame, so a very good player. But I don't...

If you ask me what the big story is of Worlds in Paris, Mahara's involved, but it is not the finals. So, let's talk a little bit about Gabriel Nassif. So, Gabriel Nassif is from Paris, from France, and he is one of the best players to ever play on the Pro Tour. Most people stick him in the top five of all time. He's in the Hall of Fame. He's up there on Pro Tour Top 8s. I think he's number three in Pro Tour Top 8s? If not three, then four.

Darwin Castle might be ahead of him. I mean, number one is Kaibu, and number two is John Finkel. Actually, I'm not sure whether Gabe has passed Darwin or not, but they're three and 4. Anyway, one of the things about once you get

really good, you know, there's a few things you want out of, you know, to make your legacy, if you will. One of them is,

again, the Hall of Fame. That's a pretty big one. But another is becoming world champion. That, you know, the biggest names in the game,

for example, Kai Buda and John Finkel, both at one point, were world champion. Kai Buda in 1999, the biggest names in the game, for example, Kai Buda and John Finkel, both at one point were world champion. Kai Buda in 1999, John Finkel in 2000. Gabe Nassif, while he's won a Pro Tour, has never won a world championships. You know, he wants to be world champion and have that on his resume. And not only can he be world champion, he can be world champion in his hometown.

You know, Worlds moves around and it's not often Worlds is in the same place. So this was the one time thus far that Worlds was in Paris. The stars had aligned, and he had a good deck. In fact, he had a really good deck. It was a really good match against the field, and he makes top eight. Gabe wins his quarterfinal match.

In the semifinals, he's playing Mika Hida Mahara. I'm sorry, Maka Hida semifinals, he's playing Mikahida Mahara. I'm sorry, Makahida Mahara. So he's playing Mahara, and it's a good matchup. His deck is well-suited. I think they split one and one, and they're in the third game, I believe. Actually, it might have been the second game. In fact, I think what happened was...

I'm trying to remember here. I think Gabe Nassif was up one game and they were in the second game, I think is what happened. But anyway, there was a moment where he had a couple choices. He could play slow and conservative, or he could make one move in which

if his opponent didn't have..., like, Mahara didn't have a lot of cards in his hand. If he made this move, there was one turn where Mahara could have the right card, but if Mahara didn't have it, then it was a lock, and then Gabe was automatically going to win the following turn. And so, he took the risk and said,

you know, he did the math in his head, and he's like, okay, the best risk for me is, give one turn, he has to do a bunch of things that would all have to happen on this his head. He's like, okay, the best risk for me is give one turn. He has to do a bunch of things that would all have to happen on this one turn. It's unlikely to happen. If he can't do it, then I'm guaranteed I lock him next turn. I'm going to win. I win this match.

I go to the finals. I know the other semifinal match that both decks I'm favored against. And it's like, okay, I'm on the road to becoming the world champion. But Mahara had the cards he needed. You know, it was a very, like, he needed the right combination of cards at the right time. He had what he needed. It happened. And Mahara wins the game.

And this, I don't know, crushed the spirit of Gabe. I think Mahara then went on to win the next game and won the match, obviously, and went on to the finals. But one of my big memories of Worlds in Paris is, like, everybody believed that it was going to be Gabe's tournament. And just that semifinal match is one of the most memorable things of Worlds. It's a thrill of victory, but occasionally you get the agony of defeat.

Also, by the way, at that event, the previous year Worlds in 2005 had been the first induction of the Magic Hall of Fame. So the inaugural class, if you will, was John Finkel, Darwin Castle, Ula Rade,i Hovey and Alan Comer this was the second year, so the second induction class got inducted at this Worlds that was Bob Marr Jr Dave Humphries, Raphael Levy Gary Wise and Bob Rob Doherty

both Rob and Dave along with Darwin Castle who've been nominated the previous year, were together on a team called Year Move Games. They actually won, I think, the first team tournament. But anyway, all of them showed up. And I remember Bob Marr had little twin girls,

and they were wearing a shirt that showed his picture from Dark Confidant. And it said, who's your daddy? I remember that. wearing a shirt that showed his picture from Dark Confidant. And it said, who's your daddy? I remember that. Anyway, it was an awesome ceremony. It's funny that all of them have really gone on to keep their hand in the world of games. Bob Marr Jr. now runs a game distributor. I actually see him from time to time.

The distributors from time to time will come in, and once a year we pitch him of all the new stuff we're doing. Dave Humphries works with me. He's the manager for the development team. I've worked together multiple years now. Rafael Levy is the one person here who still actively plays on the Pro Tour. He has long since clinched the title of most Pro Tours played. In fact, Rafael Levy has the great honor of being one of only a few people who got into the Hall of Fame and while being a Hall of Famer, won a pro tour.

And in fact, it was his first win. He had not won a pro tour when he was inducted into the Hall of Fame. John Finkelman also, he had previously won, but he won once after being in the Hall of Fame. Those are the two I know off the top of my head. There might be a third person I'm forgetting. I apologize if I'm forgetting somebody. Next is Gary Wise. Gary Wise has gone on to, I'm not sure what you would call him, a journalist or a writer,

but writes about a lot of different sports and different games. And Rob Doherty. Rob, for the longest time, owned and ran a number of game stores. I'm not sure what happened to the game stores. I think they are still running. But I know Rob is mostly doing game design now and working with other former pros, including Darwin, I believe, doing game design. So all of them have kept their hands in the gaming world. So anyway, all this to work.

2006 was an interesting year. Obviously, Ravnica Block was going on and Ravnica Block would have a big impact sort of on where we go in the future. Also,

Time Spiral, in its own way, much like Odyssey in its own way, Time Spiral proved to be very, very important. Time Spiral Block taught us

that we had to be important about what we call comprehension complexity, which is, can the people understand what's going on? And then Time Spiral, along with Loreman, taught us the importance of board complexity. Can you follow what's happening on the board? And those two sets together,

those two blocks together, really were what led the way to New World Order, which is something that we, the first set that kind of showed up in was Shards of Lara, and then full-time showed up in Zendikar, which is something we do now. I've done a whole podcast on this,

about simplifying commons and how complex commons are so that we make it easier for beginners to get into the game. And Time Spiral was definitely a precursor of that. On the Pro Tour, I don't know. I mean, some of the previous years were dominated by specific people. Like I said, I think Willie Edel's the only name that even shows up twice in a finals. And so a little more, you definitely see the world spreading of just different people. You know, like this year, for example, we see France and Canada and Japan and Brazil

and, you know, a bunch of different countries all represented. Japan was still going on quite strong still. This is definitely the era. I mean, obviously the finals of the World Championship was Japan on Japan. So the Japanese dominance was still going on strong. I'm trying to think. And Coltsnap was probably, I guess, the low point of the year. We were experimenting, trying something different.

In some ways, you might say, it was one of our earliest forays into supplemental sets. I mean, I guess the unsets were probably the earliest. But it was us definitely tipping the toe in what else could we do beyond just doing normal expansions. And I guess, if anything, maybe this was the year of nostalgia. Both Time Spiral and Cold Snap were playing into Magic's past and looking at what we'd done.

In fact, there was actually some marketing problems we had because a lot of the flavor of doing Cold Snap was, hey, remember Ice Age? And a lot of Time Spiral was, hey, remember Ice Age? And a lot of other stuff. Oh, hey, remember Ice Age, and a lot of other stuff? Oh, another interesting thing that I didn't point out is Split Second, which was a mechanic in Time Spiral, was actually designed for Cold Snap, and then we realized that we

were doing a time theme, we ended up taking it from Cold Snap and putting it into Time Spiral. I'm sure I've mentioned that in an article once or twice. Anyway, probably any final wrap-up for 2006. It was... Here's maybe the thing I'll say is

we're on the cusp of a lot of change. The next couple years... It's very funny that when I go through 2006 it's like, let me name the three expansions we did, and and oh there was a summer expansion and there was some pro tours and done and seen

and in the next couple years we're going to start adding a lot more products that we're sort of going to ramp up and Magic is really going to take off I mean we're not quite there yet but we're on the cusp.

It's very funny when I go back and I look at something like 2006, which doesn't seem like that long ago, although I guess it's eight years. But really, the radical difference of how the magic world, of just what we do now for what we did then. And in some ways, it seems like a world apart. It really seems like, oh my goodness, there's so much more things we do now and so much more different things we think about. And it's interesting. It's just sort of neat to evaluate sort of, I don't know,

the nature of how things have changed. But anyway, that's what this whole podcast series is about. So you guys can see a little bit of glimpses of the past. Hopefully today was a good glimpse into 2006. Like I said, it was a good year. And I see the rain did slow me down a little bit, so I got a little extra time today. Okay, so I'm now part, and we all

know what that means. It means it's time to end my drive to work. So while I love talking about magic, it's time to stop talking magic and start making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.