Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #214 - 2008

Episode Date: April 3, 2015

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2008.

Okay, I'm pulling away from the parking spot of my daughter's high school. You know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so today is another of my series, 20 years and 20 podcasts. So I've gotten up to 2008, getting closer and closer. Okay, so this, the series, for those that have never heard it, I'm going through each year of magic and explaining everything that happened in that year in a little more detail. Okay, so we're going to start January 19th is the pre-release.

February 1st is the release for Morning Tide. So Morning Tide was the small set that followed up Lorwyn. So this year, 2008, we had tried something brand new. So this year, 2008, we had tried something brand new. Normally, we had done a large set in the winter, in October, and then in January, February, we did a small set, and then in April, May, we did a small set. But this year, we did something different.

So what happened was Bill Rose had wanted to do, every other year at this point, we were doing a core set, and we'd come to the decision that we wanted to do, every other year at this point we were doing a core set, and we'd come to the decision that we wanted to have some set, a fourth set, every other year that there wasn't a core set. And the previous two years earlier had been cold snap. It didn't quite go well. So I said to Bill, I said, Bill, next time you want to have a fourth set, talk to me. I'll make it work. I'll make it an ingrained part of what's going on,

not an afterthought, but it'll be part of the whole year. And so Bill came to me and said, okay, I want to do it. You said you can make this happen. So I came up with the idea of having two mini blocks. What that meant is two blocks that each had a large set and then a small set. So you'd have a large set in the fall, small set in the winter, large set in the spring, small set in the summer.

Sound familiar? Yes, the two-block paradigm. This is kind of the precursor to it. But anyway, so I convinced him to do this. The way we did it is we did two blocks that were thematically connected. So Lorwyn took place in a world that there was an event called the Aurora that changed everything,

and then it became Shadowmoor. But they were two flip sides of the same world, a light and dark version of the same world. And Morning Tide was the follow-up to Lorwyn. And the codenames at the time were Peanut, Butter, and Jelly, but we had a secret fourth set, and we didn't want people to know it was a fourth set,

so we called the fourth set Donut. So it was Peanut and Butter, that was one set, Jelly and Donut was another set. But if you heard Peanut, Butter, and Jelly, you assumed it was a normal three-year set. Sometimes we'd be sneaky with our codenames. Okay, so Morning Tide, Lorwyn was a tribal block.

It introduced eight new tribes, and all of them were races. Well, Morning Tide came along and introduced five classes. Soldiers, Shaman, Wizards, Warriors, and Rogues. The idea was, previously when we had done tribal, that was prior to,

Onslaught was prior to the race class, which we had started in Mirrodin right after Onslaught was finished. And so we were trying to take advantage of the fact that we had a race class, and so I came up with this lovely idea of making this matrix where the first set cared about race

and the second set cared about class, and then oh, the combinations. Oh, and the combinations there were. The problem ended up being is, there was so much going on, and so many things to pay attention to, and every creature usually had a race and a class, so it just got really, really complicated.

In fact, the previous year, 2007, was the end of the time spiral block, which taught us about trying to keep the complexity, the comprehension complexity lower. And Lorwyn block taught us all about the end of the Time Spiral block, which taught us about trying to keep the complexity, the comprehension complexity lower. And Lorwyn block taught us all about the problem of board complexity. That what happened was when you played Lorwyn with Morning Tide,

and you would look at the board, there was so much going on, so many possibilities, that just a lot of players were like, couldn't process all the stuff that was happening. It was too much for them. So anyway, Morning Tide was led by a man named Paul Sodasanti, who used to work at Wizards. This was his first and only lead. He actually had been brought on.

We had a project called Gleamax at the time, where we had a digital undertaking. Paul ended up getting very involved in that. Didn't end up quite being successful, we hope. But anyway, this was Paul's lead. Mike Turian was the lead developer. Morning Tide had 150 cards, 60 commons, 40 uncommons, 50 rares.

Remember, at this point, there was no Mythic Rares, although as we'll see later in the year, 2008 is the year of Mythic Rares, just not yet. So Morning Tide was definitely... Oh, Morning Tide introduced three mechanics Prowl, Reinforce, and Kinship Prowl was a mechanic that

allowed you to cast spells cheaper it was a price reduction mechanic if you would hit your opponent with a rogue so it was a rogue mechanic a rogue was one of the supported classes so the idea is if the sneaky rogues came in and could hit you you could get things cheaper essentially the spells kind of were like saboteur abilities.

If your opponent hit you, then you got them for cheaper. Reinforce was a variant on cycling that allowed you to trade in cards for plus one, plus one counters. And then Kinship was this mechanic where you looked at the top card of your library during your upkeep, and if you matched things and stuff happened. None of these mechanics were particularly stellar. They all had some issues. Morning Tide definitely was a set that didn't quite

click the way we were hoping it would. Even Lorwyn, one of the problems in general was people liked Tribal, but we went a little too high on the Trib, it was a little too much what we call on rails, that when you draft it's like you had to pick one of the eight races

anyway Morning Tide, like I said, was and also both Lorwyn and Morning Tide were very sunny and bright and instead of people killing each other, they were throwing fish at one another and it was a little lighter the world didn't really go over super well and instead of people killing each other, they were throwing fish at one another, and it was a little lighter. The world didn't really go over super well.

Okay, next, February 15th through the 17th. Pro Tour Kuala Lumpur. It was a Lorwyn Booster draft, and the winner was a Hall of Famer that had already won multiple times before. Yes, John Finkel defeated Mario Pascoli of Italy. So there's only a handful of, I think there's only three of them, that have, I believe, only a handful of people won a Pro Tour at a point where they were already in the Hall of Fame.

I believe it's John Finkel, Brian Kibler, and Pat Chapin, if my memory's correct. My memory might be correct, so don't quote me on that. But anyway, Kuala Lumpur, by the way, is where, interestingly, John Finkel came in second at an Invitational, defeated by his friend Chris Pakula. So that's where Chris Pakula went to Kuala Lumpur. So I did not go to this Pro Tour. Now to the point where I don't go to most Pro Tours.

They go to the Worlds, but not the normal Pro Tours. So I'd been to Kuala Lumpur when I went to the Invitational, but I did not go to this Kuala Lumpur. Okay, April 19th was the pre-release. May 2nd was the release of Shadowmoor, a.k.a. Jelly. So it was 301 cards, 121 commons, 80 M-commons, 80 rares, and 20 basic lands.

Once again, mythics aren't quite there yet. I was the lead designer. Aaron Forsythe was the lead developer. We were trying to go dark, trying to make the mirror of Lorwyn. So Lorwyn was all about tribal. Shadowmoor was us going to the wall

on hybrid. We had introduced hybrid. I had come up with it during Ravnica Design, and we teased it a little during Ravnica Design, but I really thought that it could serve a larger purpose. And so, in Shadowmoor, half the packs were hybrid. 50% of the cards were hybrid, very close to

50%. And it, uh, hybrid is probably a little better served in smaller doses is what we learned part of the problem is there's just only so much overlap that the colors have and the way what hybrid is supposed to do is say

oh black can do this, red can do this well you can cast this for black or red the problem was because we were doing so many of them we had to stretch the boundaries a little bit of where the overlap was and so there definitely are more cards in that set that are kind of not

true hybrids. They break the rules a little bit that there are more gold cards than hybrids. And the lesson there is that you can have too much of a good thing. Hybrid's fun. Hybrid, in fact, is a very popular mechanic, but it's better served in small doses. Okay, so we introduced a bunch of mechanics.

There was persist, wither, conspire, and the untap symbol. So persist was a mechanic that said, oh, so one of the things this world did is it used minus one, minus one counters rather than plus one, plus one counters. One of the rules in design is you can have one kind of counter that goes on creatures, but we limit you to one. Normally it's plus one, plus one counters. Every once in a while it's something else.. Normally it's plus one, plus one counters. Every once in a while it's something else. This time it was minus one, minus one counters. So what happened was,

Versys was a mechanic that said when you die, if you don't have a minus one, minus one counter on you, you come back with a minus one, minus one counter. So it's kind of a regeneration sort of ability where if a creature dies, it comes back a little bit weaker, and then if it dies a second time, then it's gone. Whether it was a mechanic that damage done by the creature was done in the form of minus one, minus one counters.

We would later use Wither technology to create Infect and Scarce of Mirrodin. That's a few years down the road. Conspire was a mechanic. Conspire actually was made by the development team, not by the design team. It allowed you to tap two creatures to fork, to copy the effect. So there are effects that if you tap two creatures to fork, to copy the effect. So there are effects that if you tap two creatures as sort of a kicker effect, you can then get a second copy of the spell

and pick new targets for it. And the untap symbol was quite what it sounds like. They were cards that, if they were tapped, part of using them required you to untap them. So in order to use them, you first had to get them tapped. The untap symbol sounded great in theory,

and we were doing the mere version of Lorwyn, so it was kind of a neat idea, but it confused people. A, even though it was inverted, most people read it as a tap symbol, unless it was contrasted against a tap symbol, which we didn't do in the same card, other than Snow Mercy, which was a holiday card.

And it just was mind-melting for a lot of people. The idea that I had to untap as a cost was just somehow really hard for a lot of people to wrap their brains around. It created a lot of what we call onboard tricks for like you'd walk into, like you would attack, going, they can't do anything,

and they would untap this creature with the untap ability. You're like, oh, it was right there. I didn't see it. I feel really dumb. So anyway, the untap symbol, persist're like, oh, it was right there. I didn't see it. I feel really dumb. So anyway, the untap symbol. Persist was a success. Wither was a success.

Conspire, less so. Untap, not a success. Okay, May 23rd through the 25th was Pro Tour Hollywood. It was a standard Pro Tour. Charles Gindi of the United States beat Jean Rousse of Germany. Once again, I don't know a lot.

Once we get to these later years, I just wasn't there. I don't know too much about it. I do know that one of the things that we always try to do was figure out how to name our Pro Tours. Now we name them after the expansions, but in the day we'd name them where we were.

And I remember this one, they decided they were going to be closer to Hollywood rather than Los Angeles. And we had a lot of Pro Toursour Los Angeleses, but this one was pro-tour Hollywood. But anyway. Okay, July 12th was the pre-release. July 25th was the release of Eventide,

aka Donut. 180 cards, 60, 60, 60. 60 common, 60 uncommon, 60 rares. There's a print in time. That was our small set. They were 606060. Anyway, I was the lead designer, and Matt Place was the lead developer. The interesting story about this, by the way,

was I was not supposed to be the lead designer. Somebody else was offered the lead, somebody who had never led design before. They were all excited for it, and then right before it started, they got cold feet, and they said, you know what, I don't think I can do this and they asked

if they could bow out which is the only time anyone's ever done that I've never ever it's the only time where I've given someone a design lead and they then said

oh I don't want to do it so I had no one else to take over so I ended up taking over little crazy stat here. So Shadowmore. So Shadowmore Design. So it came out in 2008, which means we started designing two years earlier, probably in 2006.

So since 2006, since the design of Shadowmore, here's a crazy stat for you. I have been lead designer of a set consecutively since 2006. Since Shadowmore. Every week I walk into the office, I'm lead designer of a set. That has been true consecutively since Shadowmore. A little crazy. Does mean I've got to do a lot of

design work, which is good, because I like it. Okay, the mechanics were Chroma and Retrace. Chroma, you guys might know better as Devotion. We had done Tease Chroma the year before in Future Sight. I liked the mechanics, something Aaron had come up with for Fifth Dawn, I believe, and I saved it. And then I teased it in Future Sight, and we ended up using it here. We didn't make the best cards with it, and we didn't quite use it as effectively.

I really thought it had more potential. I ended up bringing it back in Theros as Devotion and went over to Gangbusters in Theros. So, a good example of how you can execute poorly on a mechanic and that sometimes, you know, the execution, it has a lot to do with whether or not mechanics is a success.

Retrace allowed you to trade in lands for these cards with retrace. You could discard a land from your hand to play them out of the graveyard, essentially, or to turn a land in your hand as a copy of the things in your graveyard. It allowed you to sort of make land later in the game have other values. I liked retrace. It was a little complex on the board state. And it had a little bit of repetition of play.

But I think it was cool. Okay, August 29th was the very first From the Vault. So in 2007, I explained how we were just on the cusp of doing, starting to see the explosion of supplemental products. Well, 2008 is where this really comes to fruition. So From the Vault starts. From the Vault was the brainchild of Mark Purvis, one of the Magic, now he's the Magic brand director.

And so basically it's all about sort of trying, different products are showing off different things. This is really showing off the collectability of Magic. A lot of the, every year there's a different theme to it. We started with dragons and we really bounced around and did a lot of different themes. I was actually involved

in From the Vault Dragons. I actually had my hand in the first couple From the Vaults. I would actually lead some of the later ones. This one I did not lead. But I was involved in it and in sort of the making of it

and working with Purvis and stuff. Okay, next, September 22nd was Master Editions 2. This was a set that was released only on Magic Online. And we were just trying to get some of the older cards that did not exist on Magic Online onto Magic Online. And so what we did is we made a set that you could draft. It was a fun draft experience, but that gave access to older cards. I don't remember which cards this had, but this definitely was

giving people access to some older things that they didn't have before. Okay. September 27th was the pre-release. October 3rd was the release of Shards of Alara. Okay, Shards of Alara had 249 cards,

101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares, 20 land. So 249 for a while, this would become the standard of large sets for a while. We introduced the mythics. The interesting thing about it, by the way, is, and we just recently changed uncommons from 60 to 80, but other than that, 249, I mean, by the way, is, and we just recently changed Uncommon from 60 to 80, but other than that, 249, I mean, now it's 269, but 249 was the standard for quite a while for large sets.

We, when Magic had started, we only had three rarities, and everybody else around us as they were making trading card games had more than three rarity. And one of the things we said is, you know, we were first, we did a lot of things for other people, but that doesn't mean that other people didn't have good ideas. The idea of Mythics was that we wanted to have things that occasionally showed up in less than every pack.

That, you know, we wanted packs to feel extra super exciting every once in a while. And the idea was, well, you knew you got a rare, you always got a rare, but every once in a while, about the idea was, well, you knew you got a rare. You always got a rare. But every once in a while, about one on eight on average, you got bigger than a rare. A mythic rare.

And I remember one of the stories about this was we needed to make a new expansion symbol, a new color for it. And the creative team under the time Brady Dunrith was in charge of coming up with a new symbol. And I know Brady went through all sorts of different things. And in the end, he ended up trying to do something that sort of kind of looked like with a new symbol. And I know Brady went through all sorts of different things, and in the end, he ended up trying to do something that sort of kind of looked like it was on fire,

and it ended up being the orange. But the orange was inspired by sort of a fiery look, which is where it came from. Anyway, Shards of Alara was a multicolor set. Oh, the set was led by Bill Rose, our VP, and the development was led by Devin Lowe.

So the set was definitely trying to do something. Bill wanted to create a three-colored, multicolored set, and one that would sort of adapt over time. And so the creative came up with the idea of five worlds that were each devoid of two colors. So what would a world be like for each of the five colors? There was a world in which they had their allies and not their enemies. What was it like? And so white was centered in Bant, blue was centered in Esper, black was centered in Grixis, red was centered in Jund, and green was centered in Naya. And so each world had its own sort of design. We had broken up the different

design teams. I had led the Esper world. I was on the Naya world and on the Bant world. So each world came up with its own thing. The Bant world had Exalted, which is a mechanic where if only one creature attacks, all the Exalted creatures help boost that creature. Let's see.

Esper had an artifact theme. All the creatures were artifact creatures,. It introduced colored artifacts and a lot of artifact matter stuff. Grixis was about unearth, which was a variant of flashback for creatures. It allowed creatures to come out of the graveyard for a turn and attack,

and then they got exiled. Jund had devour, which were creatures that, as you played them, you could sacrifice other creatures to help them get bigger and then Green had an unnamed mechanic that was sort of a 5 power matter mechanic we recently did Ferocious and Constant Archer

that was similar the way we used it is a little bit different but a similar idea of rewarding you for having bigger creatures also their cycling was brought back so cycling was also a mechanic that showed up in all the different shards. But anyway, this was us introducing the shards and it was

definitely a very complex design. There were a lot of moving pieces. But I think the five worlds we made were pretty cool and we gave defining names for all the shards that people still use to this day. You know, Jun for example. You gave defining names for all the shards that people still use to this day. You know, Jun, for example. You hear Jun tossed around all the time in decks, especially in Modern.

Okay. October 31st, Halloween through November 2nd, Pro Tour Berlin, it was an extended Pro Tour, where Luis Scott Vargas of the United States defeats Matej Zakaj. I apologize if I'm mingling your name. So Luis got Vargas in the Hall of Fame, although he was not in the Hall of Fame at the time he won this. But anyway, he is one of the greats. Obviously, he's in the Hall of Fame.

He also has become... He does commentary now. He does a lot of writing. He's definitely one of the biggest personalities as far as pro players have connected with the audience. And he's much beloved, and he's now doing a podcast with Marshall, Limited Resources. So anyway, this was his first Pro Tour win, I believe.

I don't think he's won more than once. I think this was it. Anyway, it's fun when you see someone who really deserves to win to finally win. He's done so much for the Magic community that it was neat to watch him

have his win. Okay, November 7th. November 7th was Duel Decks. Jace versus Chandra. Okay, the 2007 introduced Duel Decks had introduced

Duel Decks with Goblins versus Elves or Elves versus Goblins. I forget which way it went. This was the first Planeswalker on Planeswalker duel deck, something that we do every year now. And we decided to start with two of our biggies,

Jace and Chandra. It was fire and ice. Red versus blue. And these were fun decks, these were great fun decks. I've actually, when we do spell slinging at events, we will bring duel decks to play, and so one of the duel decks we always have is Jace versus Chandra.

So I've played a lot of Jace versus Chandra in my spell slinging. And it is fun. It's very fun. The decks are actually pretty well matched up to each other. Although I think Jace is slightly harder to play. If you're going to play the decks and you've never played before, I think Chandra is easier to play than Jace. At least a little

more straightforward. I'm going to burn you versus knowing what to counter and all the stuff that Jace does. But as a little more straightforward. I'm going to burn you versus knowing what to counter and all the stuff that Jace does. But as I said, for example, you see from the draft, you know, we start picking up dual decks.

We introduce dual decks in Planeswalkers. We have from the vaults. You know, you're starting to see the idea of the supplemental products. We have, obviously, it's a year

in which we have a fourth set. That would be changed to becoming a full-time core set, but we'll get to that. That's 2010. We're not there yet. Okay, finally, December 11th to the 14th was the World Championship in Memphis, Tennessee.

Auntie Malin of Finland beat Jamie Park of the United States. Jamie Park was an old-time magic player from way back in the day, and he came back, remember, for the event and beat it by the Fin, Antti Malin. The United States, by the way, managed to win. Michael Jacob, Sam Black, and Paul Chion of the United States

defeated Australia. So the U.S., the U.S., like I said, early on was dominant in the team event, and so this was one of those years where they came back and won a little bit later. In recent years, the U.S., like I said, early on was dominant in the team event. This was one of those years where they came back and won a little bit later. In recent years, the U.S. has not been as dominant as they were in the early years.

They still occasionally managed to win. My favorite part about Worlds in Memphis, a couple stories. One is that it took place. We had the player dinner at Graceland. In fact,

it was across the street. There's like, I don't know, there's, you know, a little convention across the street from Graceland. And then,

so we had our, it was like a plater dinner. We had our plater dinner. And then, as part of it, we could go on a tour of Graceland, which was awesome.

And so, I have a lot of pictures of me and a whole bunch of Magic Players of Graceland, which was awesome. And so I have a lot of pictures of me and a whole bunch of Magic players touring Graceland. And if you've never been to Graceland, it is quite... Elvis Presley was quite the interior decorator. It was kind of a 70s explosion. And it is real neat.

It's real neat. One of the things that's been fun in general about all the travel for me is that it just meets all the different places I've been able to go. I love the fact that, like, right, I can go to the World Championship and, oh, by the way,

hey, I have a chance to see Graceland, which I'd never seen before. In fact, I'd never been to Memphis before. This is my first time in Memphis. And, oh, another story from this event is Richard Garfield was brought to this event to do spell swinging, and so he made his own deck.

He made a deck with, what did he call it? He called it, what was his mechanic called? Drek or something? The idea was he had cards that did nothing, and he had means using his deck to shuffle those cards into your deck, so that occasionally you would draw... Oh, Gunk! I think he called it Gunk. So you would

draw Gunk, so it did nothing. And the interesting thing was, Richard's deck inspired me to come up with a mechanic that I really thought was an interesting mechanic, and I tried to use in Avacyn Restored, but the development team thought it was a little too out there, and they ended up asking us to pull it.

So we haven't yet made it. It's a mechanic we call Forbidden. I've never said what it does. I'm not going to say now, because in my heart of hearts, I think maybe I can rework it. It's one of the mechanics that I love. I love coming up with mechanics not going to say now because in my heart of hearts i i think maybe i can rework it it's a it is one mechanics that i love i love coming up with mechanics uh where you just do something that

goes you can't do that i'm going to do it and uh now maybe i maybe a little too much you can't do this but uh i there's a germany i mean richard one of the things is fun by the way just interacting with richard working with richard having richard on teams or even just meeting up with Richard at Worlds. Like, one of the fun things about Worlds for me for a long time was Richard used to always go to Worlds. In fact, I hold the record right now for attending the most Worlds. I've been to every single

World Championships but one. Rome, I missed, unfortunately. But Richard, for a while, went to every one as well. And so in fact, Richard and I were tied for a while with the record and then finally Richard missed some of the more recent worlds and I pulled ahead but

I always love going to worlds and meeting up with Richard I think Memphis might also have been we played a whole bunch of werewolf games so for those who have never played werewolf, werewolf is a game where you sit around and two people are a werewolf and everybody else are villagers

and you're trying to figure out who the werewolf is. And then every so often it's nighttime and the werewolves get to kill somebody. And so the idea is the humans are trying to figure out which one of the werewolves before the werewolves kill all the humans. And so I remember in Memphis, I played werewolf with Richard and his daughter Terry.

And Terry and I were the werewolves. And we played really well. We would have won the whole game. I made one small mistake at the end because I was just tired because it was really late. And other than that one small mistake at the end, we would have won. In fact, logically we'd won if I

wasn't so tired and just played straight up. We had the numbers to do what we needed to win. But anyway, somehow that weekend, every time I played Werewolf, I was always the Werewolf. And people started just assuming I was the Werewolf because I was always the Werewolf. And it's very hard to win Werewolf when everyone just assumes from the start you're the Werewolf. But anyway, it is fun. One of the things that I like with Richard is it's fun playing other games with Richard. One of the great joys of my time at Wizards has been

having to get a chance to know Richard, especially in the early days, obviously, when he was working full-time at Wizards, and I was a single man who could spend every evening sitting, playing games. Richard introduced me to so many games, there's so many games I learned to play by being taught by Richard

how to play them. And it's just very cool. You know, Richard, for example, taught us how to play a lot of German games back before German games were a thing.

Like, they would be in German and Richard would have to explain how the rules worked because all the rules were in German. But anyway, I'm watching my clock here.

Because I left for my daughter's school, I got here a smidgen early, so I'm actually just parking here. Because I left for my daughter's school, I got here a smidgen early, so I'm actually just parking now. But anyway, I'll give you a few extra minutes here to get your full drive to work. So anyway, 2008 was a very interesting year. Like I said, it is, in some ways,

it is a year that really shows the future. We see the two-block format that would obviously have a huge impact on the future to come. We see the beginning of, you know, it's from the vault shows up for the first time. The first Planeswalkers dual deck shows up. This is the first year where we're, I mean, I guess we had made a fourth set every year for many years. But this is the first year where we're like, this is just what we do now. We are always going to have a fourth set. Now, obviously, when we get to 2010,

what that fourth set would be would change in a second, but we definitely were in that mindset, and the other thing, like I said, this is the beginning of Shadowmores, the beginning of my reign of lead designs just continuously.

It is interesting. Like I said, I look back in 2008, and we made some mistakes. It's funny, because definitely a lot of New World Order grew out of this year. In fact, I didn't even mention that. Shards of Alara was the first set that made use of New World Order. Now, we retrofitted it. I would actually say that probably an actual... I mean, but it's still in 2008.

So 2008 is the first set that even has any New World Order influence happened, which is Shards of Valhalla. We had come up with it after a lot of the work had been done, but during development, not during design, but during development, we retrofitted a bunch of New World Order stuff to it. So 2008 is the first year of New World Order stuff to it. So 2008 is the first year of New World Order. 2009 is the first

year of... What you'll see is next year is... I think we're on the cusp of a big change. This year is the change of having more supplemental stuff. Next year, Magic 2010 actually comes out in 2009, and

New World Order really starts in force, and so 2009 is a very transformative year, so we're kind of setting ourselves up, this is a year of lessons, a year of learning, a year of starting to roll out supplementary products, but we are sort of leading up to one of our most transformative years, which will be 2009. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed a little peek into 2008, but I am in my parking spot, so we all know what that means.

It's time to end my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. Talk to you guys next time.