Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #227 - 2009

Episode Date: May 15, 2015

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2009.

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, 20 years and 20 podcasts. So today I'm up to the year 2009. Wow, we're getting close to present day. Okay, so one of the stats I talk about a lot is how the last year, as of the recording of this podcast, the last year was our sixth year in a this podcast, the last year was our sixth year in a row to be the best year Magic has ever had. Well, the beginning of that six year streak was 2009. So we talk a lot about sort of the Magic's new, I don't know, new surge or whatever you want to call it. It started in 2009. That's really the first year.

I mean, you see, Inklings up in 2008, Shards of Alara, definitely that block sort of started us, but it was, it's really 2009 where, like, we came on strong. So anyway, today I'm going to go all through 2009. So we start January 31st was the pre-release. February 6th was the release for Conflux. So Conflux, nicknamed Paper, because the Shards of Alara block was Rock, Paper, and Scissors. So Conflux was the second set. Shards of Alara had come out the year before, and the flavor of the world was there were five different...

The world had been broken into five shards, and in each shard, two of the colors were missing. So the center color that was the center color that had its two allies had kind of its utopia. What would an all-white world be? What would an all-blue world, or you know, white and its allies, and blue and its allies, and so each world kind of gravitated toward the type of world that it wanted. And so you got a chance to really see the colors and see how they interact with their allies. So anyway, Conflux came out, and in Conflux, in the story, I believe Nicole Bolas does something to start bringing the shards together. In fact, Nicole Bolas shows up in Conflux. For the very first

time as a planeswalker, the very first Nicole Bolas planeswalker shows up here. And he... So the set was interesting. Conflux, I think, is the last set we have done in which there was no named keyword or ability word mechanic. Now, there was a new mechanic. Or not a new mechanic. There was a returning mechanic. Actually, two returning mechanics.

One unique to this set, though. So this set... The previous set was very three-color focused. Conflux was actually five-color focused. For the people that I've been talking a lot about how the reason we didn't do a wedge block was there wasn't enough design to do a wedge block, people always say, but what about Shards of Alara? You did a whole block on the shards.

And I'm like, well, we didn't really. Shards had a three-color focus, conflicts had a five-color focus, and the Lara of Borne had more of a two-color focus. Now, each one had a little bit of three colors, although we did more concentration of three colors in cons than we did in shards. But anyway, when you think about

the whole block being three colors, it's because we kind of were sneaky, and conflicts really pushed it toward five color, not three. So it had the domain mechanic, which was returning from Invasion, aka Barry's mechanic, which was created by Barry Reich. When we made Invasion,

Barry Reich was the very first person to ever play Test Magic with Richard Garfield. He was a friend of Richard's from way back when. And he... Different groups set out to make their own magic set. He had made a set called Spectral Chaos that really was about multicolor.

And when we made Invasion, we looked at a lot of what Barry had done and we borrowed a few pieces of it, the biggest piece being Domain, which we had called the Barry mechanic in Invasion design. Also, Cycling had been brought back. Cycling continued to be in this. So, Conflux, the lead designer, was Bill Rose.

So, Bill Rose is now the VP of R&D. He and I started the same month, back in October of 1995. Bill has gone the management track. I've gone the creative track. So, he and I are both doing well for ourselves. But Bill and I, Bill was one of the original play tefters. He was the lead designer

or co-designer of Mirage and Visions. He would go on to design Invasion. He led Scars of Myr- not Scars. He led Shards of Alara. I did Scars of Myr- He did Shards of Alara and he did Conflux. The lead developer was Mike Turian. Mike Turian is a Hall of Famer,

a very good pro player, obviously, and he came to Wizards. He still is at Wizards, but he's no longer at R&D. He now works in the digital section, working with Magic Online. Okay, next. February 27th through March 1st

was PT Kyoto in Japan. And we started to get to the point where we had every Pro Tour have two components, both a constructed component and a limited component. I think that might have started in 2009. It didn't. It started in 2008. But this is around the time it started. But this is around the time it started. So, at Kyoto, they played Standard,

and they played Shards of Alara, Conflux, Booster Draft. So it was definitely very focused on sort of the here and now, playing the Standard format. We used to try to play the Standard format at least once. There was a period where we didn't play the Standard format at the Pro Tour because we used to play it in regionals and nationals and stuff. And then eventually we said, you know what? Standards are big enough. We should play it sometimes at the Pro Tour.

So back in 2009, at least one Pro Tour a year will be standard. And now to modern day, most of the Pro Tours are standard. Also, we're still back in the day where the Pro Tours were named after the city they were in. We haven't yet got to the point where we started naming them after the expansions they were tied to. Um, anyway, at PT Kyoto, Gabriel Nassif of France defeated Louis Scott Vargas of the United States. So those names are familiar. It should be, those are both Hall of Famers. Very, very good players.

In fact, those are both top ten of all time Hall of Famers. Uh, just really, really good players. In fact, those are both top ten of all time Hall of Famers. Just really, really good players. So anyway, I don't think Nassif had... I think Nassif had won on a team before, but I think this is Nassif's first individual win, I believe. And Louis Scott Berg, it's... Louis, he won, LSV won another Pro Tour,

so this is the one coming in second, but there's a different Pro Tour he won. Once again, these are the Pro Tours that I did not attend, so I don't have tons of stories on these Pro Tours. Next, April 10th is the release of dual decks, Divine versus Demonic. So the idea behind this was, we'd always wanted to do a sort of a flavor of Angels versus Demons,

and so we decided, let's do it in a dual deck. The themes would later get played up in Absinthe Restored, but that was later. So anyway, the one thing about this deck was, we were just trying to find our feet doing dual decks. So the first dual deck we had done had been Elves versus Goblins.

And the second one we had done was Jace versus Chandra. So in 2008, we kind of established the beginning marker of one of the dual decks would be themed.

We would start tying that theme a little more into set releases. We haven't done that quite yet. And then we always would have a clash between planeswalkers. We'll get to that later. That would actually become kind of important.

Anyway, Divine vs. Demonic, I'm trying to think of other stories about it. Nothing that really jumps to mind. So let's move on. April 25th was the pre-release, and April 30th was the release for Alara Reborn, a.k.a. Scissors. So both Conflux and Alara Reborn had 145 cards, 60 common, 40 uncommon, 35 rare, and 10 mythic. So these were the first sets we'd ever done

with mythic rare in a small set. Shards of Alara was the first set that had Mythic Rares in it the previous year in 2008. And so, for the first time ever, we had made some small sets that had Mythic Rares. And obviously, there's less Mythic Rares in a smaller set. So, the set was

lead designed by Aaron Forsythe, and the development was led by Matt Place. So, this, there was a brand new mechanic in the set, Cascade. So Cascade was a mechanic that when you cast it, you kept flipping cards on the top of your library to find a spell that was smaller, had a smaller Converter of Manticosts

than the spell you cast. Bloodbraid Elf would be the big breakaway Cascade card. Cycling was continued. Land cycling was continued. But really, the standout thing about A Lara Reborn was it was all gold. Every single card in it was multicolor with a gold frame. Traditional multicolor. I remember Aaron was the lead designer, and when he first took the assignment,

I remember Aaron was a lead designer and when he first took the assignment when Bill first came up with a block plan for A Lower Reborn his goal was to be able to get to the point where we did an all gold set and everything he had done up to that built to how we can make a set because you can't start with an all gold set

you need to have some support stuff in place and when I say all gold I mean all gold there was no land there was no artifacts that were not multicolored. Everything was a gold card. And that

was important to... And that was the theme of the set. We only had a few gimmicky sets and then everything is something. Legions was all creatures and then Alaraborn was all gold. And when Aaron first took the assignment, I took him aside and I said, Aaron, just so you're aware,

this is a lot harder than you would think it would be, maybe at first blush, that there's a lot of resources you're used to having that you're not going to have in an all-gold set. And all-gold sets push you towards cycles, and there's all sorts of just things that are

problematic than trying to do an all-gold set push you towards cycles, and there's all sorts of just things that are problematic than trying to do an all-gold set. And so, anyway, Aaron did a fine job. I think it was a very big design challenge, but, you know, Aaron definitely rose to the challenge. Matt Place, one of my favorite developers of all time, who sadly is no longer with us. I mean, he's at another game company than that. But anyway, this was a tricky set.

Now it's a tricky set of design. It's a very tricky set to develop. A lot of times when you want to just pull things, when things are so structured and have cycles, it's just a lot harder to develop. Okay, next. June 5th through the 7th was PT Honolulu. There are a bunch of PT.

We like going to Honolulu. So there have been a bunch of PT Honolulu. There are a bunch of PT. We like going to Honolulu. So there have been a bunch of PT Honolulu's. This one was Shards, Block Constructed, and Booster Draft. We've since moved away from doing Block Constructed at the Pro Tour, but back in the day, every year we would have one Block Constructed Pro Tour.

This was all centered on Shards of Alara. And then there was a Booster Draft on Shards of Alara. And then there was a booster draft using Shards of Alara. Obviously, after the release of Alara Reborn, the block constructed and the booster draft used Alara Reborn. So at the Pro Tour,

Kazuya Mitomura of Japan defeated Mikhail Hebeky of the Czech Republic. This is, once again, we're back in the day where a little after the heyday of the Japanese, but the Japanese were very,

I mean, they're still very strong, but there's a point where they were just dominating the Pro Tour. We're trailing off that period, although obviously they're still doing well, still winning Pro Tours.

Okay, next. July 11th and July 17th was the release, July 11th was the pre-reth and July 17th was the release July 11th was the pre-release July 17th was the release of Magic 2010

so there are 249 cards 101 common 60 uncommon 53 rares and 15 mythic rares okay so if we talk about

the resurgence of Magic talk about how 2009 was the first year in some ways really Magic 2010 was us putting us so this was the first year. In some ways, really, Magic 2010 was us putting us... So this was the brainchild of Aaron Forsythe. Aaron Forsythe led this design.

And really what happened was Aaron felt like we had drifted some and that he wanted us to sort of find our roots again. And so what he did is he said, you know what? We're going to redo the core set. We're going to reimagine the core set. Nothing's off the table. If we could do the core set the way we wanted to, how would we do it? And I remember Aaron staring at, we have these sheets,

these beta sheets on the wall in R&D that are uncut beta sheets. And Aaron would stare at them and just kind of look and think, what was Richard up to? What was he trying to do? So one of the things that Aaron came to the conclusion of was we've kind of lost our way on something that he calls resonance. What resonance is, just doing things that are flavorful that the audience goes, I know what that is. And you just get excited because you, one of the things about resonance is the idea that when you sit down with a set of magic cards, you don't have to start from scratch. It's not like

the audience can't bring to the table something that enriches what we're doing. And what Resonant says is, there's things the audience already knows. They already know it. If they're all familiar with fantasy or there's tropes and things, what if we play into that?

What if the core set, the first time you sort of picked up magic, there's just things you knew about that were just represented. And he felt like Alpha had done a good job of that. That you had the white knight and the black knight. And there was just a lot of things that made Alpha sort of happen, you know, made magic in the early days happen.

Because Richard did a good job of really just capturing resonance. And then over the years, we had drifted some away from the resonance. And so Aaron Roy said, okay, you know what? We're going to recapture this. We're going to recapture our sense capturing resonance. And then over the years, we had drifted some away from the resonance. And so Aaron Roy said, okay, you know what? We're going to recapture this. We're going to recapture our sense of resonance. And so one of the rules normally, up until this point,

the core set was only repeats. And Aaron said, you know what? We should be able to make new cards. If we have cool cards that make sense, we'll make new cards. And the core set doesn't have to be just repeats. And so Imagine 2010 was the first time with a new core set. Now it didn't yet, the later core sets we started introducing or bringing back on Mechanic,

we hadn't done that yet with 2010, but it did, just having new cars and new creative and just sort of recapturing the sense of resonance really made the set shine. I was actually on the design team for 2010. I'm not, I haven't been on all that many corset design teams. Usually I'm not. But this was us sort of rediscovering. And so what Aaron did is he just took, like I was the head designer and he took Devin

Lowe, who was the head developer at the time, and took Brady Donovan, who was the head of the creative team. And like the design team was all the tops of all the different sections, because we're like, you know what, we're going to do this right. We are going to get our heavy hitters, and we are going to slam this out of the park. And it did. Magic 2010 really reinvented what the core set was, and I think really, really put a stake in the ground and said, you know what, magic can be a little different. And we really embraced this resonance. We'll see it later in the other Zendikar, but really, you know what? Magic can be a little different and we really embrace his resonance.

We'll see it later in the other Zendikar but really, in some ways, Magic 2010 was us. Now, at the same time, we'd come across

the New World Order and there was a whole bunch of different things going on. I mean, Duels of the Planeswalkers had come out so there was a lot

of different things that were happening that was sort of, it wasn't any one thing but 2009 really was the beginning of Magic's resurgence. It really was the stake in the ground and like, we're back. And Magic 2010, in some ways, was the first real shot toward that. And so in my mind, probably the most important thing that happened in all of 2019 was Magic 2010.

I mean, Zendikar happened. That's important, too. Probably the most important thing that happened in all of 2019 was Magic 2010. I mean, Zendikar happened. That's important, too. But 2010 really was sort of the, I don't know, like I said, the spiritual resurgence of Magic started with Magic 2010. Okay, August 28th was From the Vault Exiled. So I actually, this was my baby. I was in charge of this one. I had been on From the Vault Dragons the year before, but I had just been helping out, and they were stumbling a little bit trying to get a theme.

And so Aaron came to me and said, I'd like to put you in charge of this. And so I said, okay. The idea of From the Vault was we just look at it from different directions. The previous year had been all about sort of, hey, people who love dragons, here's a set for you. And I said, I want to just have a completely different vector. And so I said, what if we made a product,

something that I knew was very popular was cube, cube drafting. And I said, what if I made a product with just like things you could put into cube? Now, we didn't call it From the Vault Cube, but what we did is the flavor was From the Vault Exiles was all cards that at some point had been either banned or restricted so these were cards that at some point were problem cards, but they were powerful cards

obviously if they had to be banned or restricted so this definitely, the first From the Vault was kind of like, hey, look at some fun dragons and obviously we don't make a lot of the From the Vaults so of like, hey, look, some fun dragons. And obviously, we don't make a lot of the front vaults. So it was collectible. But this was not just collectible. It was like, here are some cards that really you might want to stick in something like your cube.

Okay, September 4th was Plane Chase. So Plane Chase was four 60-card decks, each with 10 planes. This was the brainchild of Brian Tinsman. And the idea was to create an alternate play experience that just did something a little different. This is really the beginning of us trying to

venture more into player friendly sort of formats. And so Plane Chase is this neat format. It's multiplayer. And you have a plane. You're always in some place that you're fighting. And there's a way, you have a die you roll,

a plane to die, and you can change where you're at. And each plane comes with it certain restrictions or is positive, negative. It does something to the battle. It affects how you're fighting. And you keep changing where you're at. Sometimes you want to stay where you are. Sometimes you fight to change it.

And it was a very neat system set up. We will later do another Plane Chess, I'll get to that down the road. But anyway, it just was a very, saying, you know what, there's other ways to play Magic. One of those ways, multiplayer. One of those ways is,

there's just ways to have more fun. And Plane Chess was based on something we used to call Enchant World tournaments, where everybody in the tournament would be under at the beginning there's a flavor of an enchant world

actual enchant world cards from Legends and later the effects wouldn't be tied to specific cards but the idea was there'd just be

some enchantment that would affect the whole tournament and from time to time it would change so as you were playing in a tournament the outside forces

could affect what was going on and so Brian was inspired by that to sort of make a multiplayer variant that did that as you were playing in a tournament, the outside forces could affect what was going on. And so, Brian was inspired by that to sort of make a multiplayer variant that did that. Okay, next, September 7th. Online, on Magic Online. We have Masters Editions 3. 230

cards, 75 common, 70 uncommon, 70 rare. One of our goals on Magic Online was to try to get all the different cards in Magic Online, so the people could play the different formats. Master Edition was part of this just as a means to get more cards online to make it fun. It was

built to be a fun draft environment. So one of the ways to collect your cards was you could draft it and it had a lot of old cards so it was a lot of fun. Then September 26 was the pre-release. October 2nd was the release of Zendikar aka live, this block was

live, long, and prosper so it was 249 cards, 101 common 60 uncommon, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares that's the same as magic 2010, for a while that was the size of our large sets, in fact that stays to modern day, except we've now changed uncommon from 60 to 80.

So we've gone from 249 to 269. But other than that, that is the size of our large sets. Okay, so Zendikar started because I wanted to do an experimental year. I felt there were a lot of land-based mechanics that we could do a set around land-based mechanics. I kept pitching this to people, and people were very skeptical, but I convinced my boss at the time, Randy Buehler, that you have to let me try experimental things because we'll never discover new things if we don't try things, and that it's important that, you know, a lot of years you'll repeat themes that you know are popular. But you know what? You've got to try out new themes because maybe you can put a stake on new themes.

And nobody other than Mike Turney. Mike Turney was the only one that said, I believe in you. I believe this is going to work. Everybody else was kind of like, eh, eh. You know, they were a little skeptical. But to my credit, or to the credit, not my credit, to their credit, Randy and Bill and, you know, the powers that be said, okay, show us what you got. Now, they gave me a couple months to prove what I was doing, meaning I had to sort of check in.

But I did, I managed to check in, and they're like, okay, we like what you're doing. So the set revolved around, the two big mechanics were landfall, which was a mechanic that every time you played a land, it would make a trigger, so it made playing land very important. Landfall ended up being really popular. And also it made us rediscover the idea of let's do things for the players to get to do things they want to do, rather than mechanics

to force players to do things they don't want to do. We brought Kicker back from Invasion. Because there's a lot of lands, you tended to have a lot of lands in play, so you get extra mana, so Kicker back from Invasion because there's a lot of lands you tended to have a lot of lands in play so you had extra mana so Kicker helped you use the mana we also had lands that could

that had spell-like effects when you played them they did small things there's some lands that rare that once you got to a certain threshold started doing large things as you played lands so Landfall Plus.

There were allies, which were creature type that had support. Vampires actually had a bunch of support. There were traps, there were quests. Oh, so one of the things that happened with the set, by the way, I was the lead designer, and Henry Stern was the lead developer. And then at some point, Devin Lowe also spent some time being the lead developer of the set.

Anyway, one of the set. Anyway, one of the things that happened was I had this idea for this land set and then Creative was on the hook to go, well, what is this? And Doug Byer, who was on the team and also on the Creative team, came up with a neat idea of it being an adventure world. Kind of like a cross between Dungeon Dragons and

Raiders of the Lost Ark. Just a world in which the world's kind of crazy, and adventurers are here, and it's a wild, untamed world, but there's riches to be had. And anyway, we embraced that. It's funny, obviously next year we're going back to Zendikar, so my little experiment that a lot of people were skeptical about paid off. It ended up being a very, very popular set.

And so I'm... I was excited. I mean, like I said, it was a lot of... Zendikar was the first set built from the ground up with New World Order. We had retrofitted it

to the previous years because we had come up with it while Shards of Lore was being made. But this is the first, like, built into the DNA of the design was the ideas of New World Order. Okay, on October 30th, I'm sorry, on October 16th, from 16th to the 18th, was Pro Tour Austin.

They played extended as the constructed format and Zendikar booster draft. This was the one Pro Tour, by the way, I did go to because I missed the World Championship. I'll get to that in a second. In it, I got to watch Brian Kibler of the United States defeat Shosha Ikeda of Japan.

So two very good players. Brian obviously would go on to be in the Hall of Fame. Brian, just a very well-known. Brian is kind of famous for being very passionate and definitely having some... I mean, he's a spike, as most players are,

but he's a Timmy Spike, and he loves playing with dragons, and he loves doing a lot of splashy things when he can. And Brian is a character. He's a lot of fun, and so it was neat to see Brian. I believe this was his... Was this his second win?

I think this was his second win. I think he'd won once before. So anyway, or was this his first win and he would later go on? Brian has won two Pro Tours. Maybe this was his first one. I don't remember. Actually, I think this was his first win.

I think his other win's coming down the road. Okay, October 30th, our second duel decks. Duel decks, Garrick versus Liliana. So the importance of this duel deck was every year we did a thematic one and then we did a Planeswalker one. What we tended to do is the creative team would come up with a reason why the characters were fighting. And this one had huge ramifications,

that the decision to have these two characters fight led to a comic, which led to this fight actually happening in Innistrad. And the ramifications of this fight were huge because Garak gets tainted by the Chain Veil and becomes a darker version

of himself and that plays out in Invasion with a double-faced card and then we had a whole core set where Garak went to town and anyway Garak's in a bad place right now because of the creative team justifying this fight. It was interesting. Wanting to come...

Where were they fighting? So it was very interesting. This duel deck actually had... Probably had more ramifications of any duel deck story-wise than I can think of. Okay. The final event of the year happened November 19th through the 22nd in Rome. It was the World Championship. And out of all the World Championships, it's the only one I wasn't at.

My family, every five years, we go on a cruise. One of my promises to my wife when we got married that I'd take her on a cruise every five years. And we were on this lovely Disney cruise. I wrote a whole article about it, actually. And the cruise was awesome. But when we had scheduled the cruise, usually worlds happen in December, not in November, and not in the middle of November. And so when we scheduled this, I didn't think it was going to be a problem.

And then I was at the World Championship, was it Memphis? The previous year's World Championship I was at. And I realized that I had scheduled my vacation over Worlds, and that I was for the first time ever going to miss Worlds. I was very sad. But anyway, Worlds went on without me. So added Andre Coimbra from Portugal, defeated David Reichenbauer from Austria,

and China defeated Austria in the team event. So Austria had a good showing, but came in second in both events, both in the individuals and the team. This was China's year to win. China, by the way, I talk a lot about how Japanese had really been a big powerhouse. China

actually has gone through a big growth early on. Magic's had been in China for a long time, but this is a really good example China actually has gone through a big growth. Early on, China, China, Magic's had been in China for a long time, but this is a really good example of, you know, the Chinese just getting better and better over time. And obviously they came and managed to win,

win the whole team event. So anyway, it's the, I'm trying to get, it's funny, I don't have a lot of stories because it's the one world I didn't go to. I do know people who did go that Rome proved to be a really nice site. We'd been at Rome once before, the Pro Tour that Tomi Hovey had won had been at Pro Tour Rome.

But anyway, it was, I was told, quite the event. So anyway, I'm almost to work. So let me wrap up 2009. So 2009, like I said, was a formative year. It's the year of our comeback. I mean, the seeds of it happened in 2008.

I do think Shards of a Lower Block started setting some of the scene. But I really think this was a year, and I credit Magic 2010 with being kind of the emotional flag in the ground moment where R&D sort of came together and said, led by Aaron, saying, you know what, we can up our game.

And I feel like really from that point forward, we have mega upped our game. And the quality of Magic from Magic 2010 forward has been awesome. I mean, it's really been something I've been proud of. I'm not saying we didn't do things I'm proud of before that, but I feel like we just stepped it up. It was us stepping up to the next level. And I really, the resurgence was, I mean, it's been neat to watch Magic on the rise.

For the last six years, like I said, every year for the last six years has been the best year Magic has ever had. 2009 being the first, you know, the first of the six year run. We're not done yet, by the way, and we're planning to keep going, but thus far, six years in a row. And it was neat. I think that I also think Zendikar really was

just everybody hitting at full throttle. I was very proud of the design. I took something that, like I said, no one thought. I mean, very, very few people had much faith in. And managed to, with an awesome design team, create something cool.

I think the creative team just knocked it out of the park and that the world of Zendikar just became this very neat place. I didn't explain this too much, but when we designed it, I came up with Kicker and Landfall and some land mechanics. They came up with its adventure world, and then

allies and traps and quests were all designed to reinforce that flavor. And like I said, it's so popular that we're going back. Battle for Zendikar is the fall set this year, so we're returning to Zendikar, and that's pretty cool.

It is fun to make something that has become so popular that then you return to it. I know when we went back to both Mirrodin and Ravnica, those are both worlds that I had done that I was really, really happy. So anyway, yet another world to return to, so I'm quite excited. So anyway, 2009 is us starting to hit our stride. As you will see, we will pick up. I believe that when I say start, that doesn't mean we don't

get faster and leaner and meaner and better, but this is really, in my mind, the beginning of Magic's resurgence. I probably said that word like 80 times this time, but I mean it. So that is 2009. We did some cool stuff, had some fun sets.

Some magic was played at high-level events. Some dual decks came out. And that is 2009 in a nutshell. It was a good year. And next time I get to the, I start getting to a new decade. The teens,

I'm not sure what the decade's called. But next time we get to 2010. And there's a lot of awesome stuff coming, because like I said, when you begin a long run, and I'm in year one of the run, we get some more years. But anyway, it's been fun. It is neat going back and looking at every year,

no matter what the year was. And some years were successes, and some years were less so. It is fun looking back on a year where we've just sort of, we're really hitting our stride, and I think that 2009 definitely goes down in the books as being one of the great turnaround years in magic. I think it was an amazing year. So anyway, I am now in my parking spot, so we all know what that means. It means that's the end of my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to

be making magic. I'll talk to you guys next time.