Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #237 - 2010

Episode Date: June 19, 2015

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2010.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today we are, this is another in my podcast, 20 years in 20 podcasts, where I'm taking every year, starting from Magic's beginning in 1993, all the way up to the present, which by the end will actually be more than 20 podcasts, but it was a catchy title. When I started it was 20, but obviously it's taking more than what to do. Anyway, as I do it, I will then talk about the whole year. I'll start from the beginning of the year, and I'll talk about everything I can come up with that happened during that year. These are not super exhaustive.

Usually, I hit all the products, and I hit all the Pro Tours. I try to hit other things when I can. If I forget something, sometimes just the places I do my research, I might be like, this was the year that Legacy got introduced, and I miss stuff like that. So I try the best I can to hit all the things. It's not thoroughly exhaustive, but it's hopefully decently exhaustive. Okay, we start.

January 8th was the release of the Premium Shards of Alara booster. So for those who have no idea what I'm talking about, we released a booster in which every card in it was premium, was a foil, and the cards were there were 539 cards from all of Alara blocks. So Shards of Alara

and Alara Born and Conflux. All three sets. So they made a booster of a combination of cards from the whole block. They were all premium, and you could draft them and have fun. So people might say, hey, that sounds

interesting, but why have we never seen that product again? Usually when we make something and we don't make more of it, 99% of the time is it just didn't sell well. It wasn't popular enough. And so we did it.

It just wasn't, it did not get enough people who were interested in it, so we didn't continue it. Obviously, when we start something like that, the idea is always like, oh, maybe this could be something we do every year, but that one just didn't pick up enough steam.

Okay. So, by the way, one of the themes of 2010 is, I talked about how in 2008, 2009, we were starting ramping up, and now we're in full-fledged, like, magic's the themes of 2010 is, I talked about how in 2008, 2009, we were starting ramping up, and now we're in full-fledged, like, magic's just making lots of stuff, and so you'll see that as I go through.

You'll also see in 2010, there's some experimentation going on. But we'll get to that. Okay. January 30th was the pre-release. February 5th was the release of Worldwake, a.k.a. Long. So this set,

so it was Zendikar, Worldwake, Rise of the Odrazi, so it was Live, Long, and Prosper. That codename, by the way, is really interesting. I wrote an article where I talked about all the codenames, and then I let the public vote on a codename,

and the one you guys chose was Rock, Paper, Scissors, which I believe we use for Scars of Mirrodin. But anyway, somebody during that, I got a lot of suggestions for other codenames, and someone suggested Live Long and Prosper, being an old

Star Trek fan, I thought that was awesome, so we used that. So this year was Live Long and Prosper. So Worldwake, by the way, was a traditional small set. At the time it had 60 commons, 40 uncommons, 35 rares, and 10 mythics. It continued all the themes of Zendikar,

so it had landfall and allies and traps and quests, but it expanded upon it in a couple ways. One is, kicker showed up in the first set. The second set had multi-kicker. So multi-kicker just means that you can kick it as many times as you want. You're not limited to one time. Normal spells that you kick with kicker, you can only kick it once. Multi-kicker, you can kick as many times as you want. You're not limited to one time. Normal spells that you kick with Kicker, you can only kick it once. Multikicker, you can kick as many times as you wanted.

We actually designed Multikicker during Zendikar design, but we wanted to save some stuff for Worldwake and decided that was a good thing we could save. Another thing that we actually did in Zendikar, but once again we saved, was there were animated lands. And so we saved... Well, when I say we saved,

that's a little bit different. We didn't make them. We knew we were going to do them in Worldwake, so we saved... Well, when I say we saved, that's a little bit different. We didn't make them. We knew we were going to do them in Worldwake, so we let Worldwake design them. So the idea of lands animating, that's really a theme that plays up in Worldwake. Worldwake was designed... The design was led by Ken Nagel.

I believe that's his first expansion design. And then Mike Turian led the development. The set is also known for having... I'm blanking on names. Stone... Blank Mystic. Stone... Ah!

I hate whenever I forget names. Jace the Mind Sculptor and... Ah! I'm blanking on the name. You guys know the name. The two cards that were real powerful that ended up getting banned. Normally we don't have two banned cards in the same set. That's a pretty rare set that does that.

But Worldwake did. Anyway, those cards. Worldwake was interesting because that Zendikar drafted with Worldwake when Worldwake came out. But then when you got to the third set, we didn't draft with Worldwake. Worldwake was very pinch but then when you got to the third set, we didn't draft with Worldwake. Worldwake was very pinched

as far as how much stuff got drafted. That it was one pack in one draft during the whole year. And so there were just less Worldwake out there. It's one of the reasons Worldwake definitely sought after, because there were less cards that kind of got in the mix than a normal set. Okay, next.

February 19th through the 21st was Pro Tour San Diego. So remember, this is back in the day where we still named the Pro Tours after the city they were held in. Pretty soon we'll start naming them after the sets they feature, but we haven't quite got there yet. Okay, next.

It used Standard, and it used World Wake Booster Draft. Remember, sometime, I think, in the previous year, they started moving to a system where there was constructed and limited at every Pro Tour. I think that started in 2009, but maybe it started in 2010. Anyway, at this event, Simon Gertsen of Germany defeated Kyle Bogums of the USA. So Gertsen is a very, he is a commentator. You guys might have seen him do Pro Tour commentaries. Very good.

He was a pro that had been around for a long time, but finally had his due. He won a Pro Tour. One of the things that's really nice is when you see somebody who really is a really strong player, who's been present and definitely been somebody who people have looked up to finally win their first Pro Tour.

It's very exciting. So I was happy to see Simon win. Okay, on March 19th was dual deck Phyrexia versus the Coalition. So it was two 60-card decks, one deck representing the Phyrexians and one deck representing the Coalition. For those who don't know their magic story, during the Weatherlight Saga, this was the end of the Weatherlight Saga, story. During the Weatherlight Saga, this was the end of the Weatherlight Saga, Urza and the Weatherlight crew, this was all leading toward a giant...

Dominaria was being attacked by the Phyrexians, who were one of Magic's big bad guys, probably the earliest big bad guys of Magic. And Urza and crew had to stop him. And so it led to a giant battle. They invaded, an invasion for those that aren't aware, the Phyrexians invaded Dominaria,

and there was a giant war. And that whole block, in the end, the Phyrexians were defeated and wiped from the multiverse, never to raise their head again. Well, almost never, because they do. It's hard to kill creatures that replicate from oil, I guess. They're hard creatures to truly eradicate.

Anyway, so we were going back later in the year, we'll get to this, we were going to revisit Mirrodin, but Mirrodin had been visited, or we learned that since we first met Mirrodin, they had been infected by the Phyrexians, who had been slowly taking them over. And so we

wanted to remind everybody about the Phyrexians, because at this point, you hadn't seen the Phyrexians since Invasion block. That was a long time at this moment from 2010 that was a long, long time ago. Invasion came out in 2000 I believe

so like you hadn't seen the Phyrexians in about 9, 10 years so just to remind everybody who the Phyrexians were we made a duel deck they had them in it we put them against the last person they fought

which was the Coalition which was the coalition, which was the group of people in Dominaria collected together to stop them. All of Dominaria came together, even people who don't really get along, to stop the shared threat of the Phyrexian invasion. Anyway, so we made a duel deck highlighting an old conflict,

but really our secret motive, our secret agenda, was reintroducing the Phyrexians, because we knew the Phyrexians were going to come back to the story in a big way and we wanted people to be aware of who they were.

We knew old timers we knew who they were. I mean, the Phyrexians were some of the, in some ways, really the first classic villains of magic. The Phyrexians,

they go way, they, I guess Nicole Bell says, will go way back into early magic. And the Phyrexians actually go back to the very first story with Urza and Mishra. The Phyrexians are involved in the very, very first story of magic ever told. well, go way back into early magic. And the Phyrexians actually go back to the very first story with Urza and Mishra.

The Phyrexians are involved in the very, very first story of magic ever told. So they go way back. But anyway, we'll talk more about the Phyrexians later in the year. Okay, next. April 17th was the pre-release. April 23rd was the release for Rise of the Eldrazi, a.k.a. Prosper. So the set had 248 cards. 100 commons, 6 EM commons, 53 rares, and 50 mythic rares.

Now, this number is confusing some people because normally there are 249 cards. This is the time. There were 249 cards in a large set. What happened was instead of doing 101 commons, normally the 101st common is this weird card that's slightly less common than common, but more common than uncommon we call it common but it actually shows up a little less than the other commons we decided to use that slot

to repeat one of the Eldrazi to make sure that players were seeing the Eldrazi I forget, there were two common Eldrazi I forget which one it was if you played a lot of it, one of them showed up more than the other but anyway, we wanted to make sure that you saw the Eldrazi at common, because if your theme's not at common, and so

we used that slot to repeat one of the Eldrazi, just to make sure that they were showing up. Have you ever wondered why there was one less? So Rise of the Eldrazi was lead designed by Brian Tinsman, and the development was led by Matt Place. So what was going on here is originally the development was led by Matt Place. So what was going on here is,

originally the plan was, we were going to visit a world, be there for two sets, a large and a small, and then the large set was going to take place in a completely different world. So you can see us toying around with what would end up being the two-block paradigm. But what happened was,

it was a lot of work for the creative team, and the creative team, while trying to discover Zendikar, came up with this neat idea that there are these creatures trapped inside the world, which is one of the reasons that it's making the world act so crazy. And they said, well, you know what? We wanted to have a reboot. We wanted the set to mechanically start over.

And so what happened was we said, okay, what if the Eldrazi got out and it just radically changes everything? And so we had was we said, okay, what if the Eldrazi got out and it just radically changes everything? And so we had no mechanical carryover. We had a little bit of flavor carryover, but even then, not a lot. Really, it was a reboot, but we did a reboot in the same world. So Rise of Eldrazi, by the way, is a very quirky set in that it is much beloved by a lot of the hardcore drafting community. It's a really different drafting set and did something just really off the beaten track.

And people who really appreciate the nuance of drafting love the set. It's a lot slower. It allows a little more time for setup. And there are a lot of different strategies that you can use, although there are a lot of what we call false paths, things that normally always work in limited that are horrible, like a bear, you know two man, a two two in this format is really bad

where normally it's a pretty good thing and previously in Zendikar it was really good so anyway the setting was less popular with the more casual players it was definitely a little more out there what happened was Brian really

once they had the idea of the advisor getting released It was definitely a little more out there. What happened was, Brian really, once they had the idea of the Eldrazi getting released, Brian's a longtime Cthulhu fan, and they were sort of designed as Cthulhu meets Galactus, is how we talked about the Eldrazi. And so Brian went to town. Brian had, there were, you know, the Eldrazi, at least most of them were colorless, the big ones, and they were giant things,

and they had the Annihilator mechanics. Whenever you attacked, you had to sacrifice so many permanents, your opponent did, and they had, what else did they have? They had spawn that were things that were made by the Eldrazi that you could sac for mana, zero ones you could sac for mana, that you could then help get the Odrazi out. And then the people fighting the Odrazi had totem armor and had level up, and there was rebound, a lot of tools.

So the set was a lot about building. Brian called it battle cruiser magic, which is everything sort of like you had the time to build giant monsters and then smash the giant monsters into each other. But like I said, it's a set that has fans and detractors, so it's very funny when you talk about it. People get very, you definitely have a lot of passion about it.

But the set, the set is probably best known for how, the love of the real draft product. They really, really loved this product. It wasn't quite as embraced in other aspects. Okay, May 21st was the very first Deck Builders Toolkit. So the idea was we were trying to make new products, and one of the things was, okay, you're starting to play Magic. Is there a way to just, how do you get the first bunch of cards that you need? And when you first start playing Magic, we noticed a lot of times what would happen is

if you were in a community, sometimes the community would take a lot of commons and uncommons they didn't need, that they had extras of, and they would give it to new players. And we really liked that aspect. We said, okay, well, not everybody necessarily has a nearby community of people that can pull cards for them. Could we make something, could we make a necessarily has a nearby community of people that can pull cards for them. Could we make something? Could we make a product that kind of replicates that feel? Which is like, it's mostly commons and uncommons, but it just gives you a whole bunch of cards to start making early decks with, you know. And so we came up with that, and we called it Deck Builders Toolkit, which the premium boosters ended up not working out.

Deck Builders Toolkit was a big hit. We still make it. And it proved to be a very good early purchase product for people that are starting out. Okay. Next, May 28th to the 30th was Pro Tour San Juan. So it was Zendikar Block Constructed for the constructed part and Rise of the Odrazi Booster Draft for the limited part.

Paulo Vitor Dama de Rosa won and he beat Guillaume Mentionon from France. So, Paulo's from Brazil. He's in the Hall of Fame. He wasn't at the time,

but he later got voted into the Hall of Fame. I think Paulo, I'm not sure whether Paulo has his feet. I think Paulo did. If not, it's Scott Johns.

Became the first person to get, or, not, it's Scott Johns. Became the first person to get, or, sorry, not the first person. Became the fastest person to ever get to five top eights. I think Paulo did it in the shortest amount of time, I believe. But anyway, Paulo, it was a very, very good player,

but I think this was his first win, I believe. And Gil Matineau, another good player. We'll hear more from him later in the year. But anyway think this was his first win, I believe. And Gil Mantegno, another good player. We'll hear more from him later in the year. But anyway, this was in lovely San Juan. I did not go to this Pro Tour, but I had some friends that did. I know Brian Tinsman and his wife did,

and they had a great time. So it's supposed to be a very nice Pro Tour. Okay, moving on. June 4th, Duels of the Planeswalker decks. Okay, what is this? This is another product you might not have heard of. So there were five 60-card decks based on five Planeswalkers. They were all used.

So Duels of the Planeswalkers had, I think, just come out. It had just come out the previous year. And so what happened was we were trying to get people who play that to transition, people who might want to, to transition to paper magic. And so we made paper decks that were similar to the decks in Duels of the Planeswalkers. They weren't exact. I mean, they weren't exact, but they were close. And they definitely had a similar feel.

Like if you had a Chandra deck, it was a burn deck. It was a red burn deck. And so it had a lot of the cards the Chandra deck had. The feel was very, if you had a Chandra deck, it was a burn deck. It was a red burn deck. And so, you know, it had a lot of the cards the Chandra deck had. The feel was very, very similar. And so the idea was it was supposed to be

an early product that if you were familiar with Duels of Planeswalkers, this was a good first product to buy that was a paper product. Once again, we never made it again,

so my guess is it didn't do particularly well. I don't know much about, I mean, I remember the product getting made, I remember the concept behind the product. I don't know much about its effectiveness, although us never making it again probably means it wasn't particularly effective. Okay, next, June 18th, Arch Enemy. So this was led design, I believe, by Ken Nagel. So it was 40 60-card decks and then an oversized deck of 20 cards. And the idea was those four smaller decks, the normal decks, all together took on the big deck.

And the flavor of this was that you were fighting one large master villain and all of you had to team together to take on the villain. But the oversized cards, the large cards, just a giant, crazy, massive effect. And so it allowed one person to take on a team of four. And it originated as one of those products. So what we started doing during the summer is we were trying to make, the previous year I think we had been in plane chase. And so we were trying to make...

We were experimenting our summer and using the slot to make more alternate play patterns. Like, let's make different ways to play Magic and introduce the idea to people. Hey, you know, tournament Magic is awesome, and if you like to play tournament Magic, that's great. But you know what? There's a lot of other ways to play Magic,

and a lot of them are fun, and, you know, there's a lot of formats that you could try out. And so we did a lot of experimenting and tried a lot of cool different things. So Arch Enemy is a good example. I mean, Plane Chase the year before, Arch Enemy. Here's a really different way to play. Four on one. It didn't have to be four on one.

It could be multiple people on one. I know a lot of people that built a lot of fun Arch Enemy decks and just did fun things of trying to figure out how you can defeat them. I know some people that mix Arch Enemy with Plane Chase. So, anyway, this was definitely... Now, people ask about will we see another Arch Enemy.

My answer to that was, the first one was not crazy popular, but was not crazy unpopular. It was kind of in the middle. And so if I was a gambling man, I think one day we'll see Arch Enemy again. That's my take on it. I think it was... One of Arch and Me again. That's my take on it. I think it was...

One of the things we have to figure out is how much of an audience is for something, and that dictates how often we do something. The larger the audience there is, the more often we'll do it. I think in 2011, we started toying around with Commander. We discovered a huge audience. So we started doing that more often every year.

And so a lot of kind of what we do is based upon trying to gauge the interest. And so our journey is the kind of thing that there is interest. People like it. A little less common than some other stuff, but it's something that I do think we'll go back to one day. Okay, next, Magic 2011. So the pre-release for Magic 2011 was on July 10th and it got released on July 16th. So it was a large set had 249 cards

so 101, 60, 53, 15. That's the same as my so I'm speaking now this is a podcast so right now it's 2015. Our large sets nowadays are exactly those numbers except instead of 60 uncommons

we have 80 uncommons. To make a better limited experience and have more variety, we upped the number of uncommons. Okay, anyway, this set was led by Aaron Forsythe, the design was, and the development was led by Eric Lauer. So those are both important and a couple different axes. So Aaron Forsythe, a little history on Aaron Forsythe for those who don't know. Aaron got brought on by me to run the website.

I was in charge of tasks by Bill Rose to making a magic website. We really didn't have much presence. There was a sideboard that was organized, plate-oriented. But we really didn't have a general magic presence. And we decided we want one. I got tasked, as the guy who went to communication school, I got tasked with making it. And so a lot of the modern magic website

was my doing, at least the structuring of it. Like, I made the Making Magic column, which I've been writing ever since. But anyway, I needed to find an editor to run the site. And so I searched out. I found three people I thought were talented enough that could do it. I asked all three of them if they would like to do it.

Two of them said they were not interested in moving to Washington. But one of them, Aaron Forsythe, was. And so Aaron Forsythe came originally to Wizards to run the magic website. And then we put him on Fifth Dawn to try out his hands at... In fact, we put him on Fifth Dawn basically to see, for him to write an article about it for the thing. Plus, we knew he had some chops, and we thought it would be fun to let Aaron be on the set. Aaron blew us away, did an amazing job, made Scry, made Sunburst, did all sorts of stuff

during 5th on. Anyway, we ended up bringing him to R&D. For a while, he was my protege, and I was his boss, training him to be a designer. He designed a bunch of sets. And then there was an opening for lead developer, and Aaron jumped over to become lead developer. And then shortly thereafter,

the director job opened up, and Aaron ended up taking the director job. So a very short period of time went from my being Aaron's boss to Aaron being my boss, which was very bizarre. But anyway, I bring this all up because Aaron is a good designer, but he doesn't have a lot of opportunities to do design because his job takes a lot of time. So Aaron, every once in a while, will get his hands wet and, you know,

or get his hands dirty, I believe is the expression, and do something. He had done Magic 2010 the year before, which we completely, Magic 2010, by the way, came out in 2009. So Magic 2011 came out in 2010. Why is that, by the way? Because we need it's very important for the core sets to be carried in mass market, and mass market won't carry things that have a previous

year name on them. It's important that we date them by year so people know what they are. So by naming it the next year, much like cars do, it allowed us to keep it around as long as we needed. If we had called Magic, if the set coming out in Magic 10, 2009, was Magic 2010, then the mass market would carry it, and in 2011 they would stop carrying it. Anyway, that's why we do it.

Anyway, Aaron had done Magic 2010, had been very popular. He really redid the concept of what the core set was. For the first time ever, it had new cards. It had a lot more leaning toward resonance. But anyway, Aaron really re-changed how we thought of the core set. He was very excited, so he didn't imagine 2011. He didn't imagine 2010.

Eric Lauer, who's gone on to become the head developer, the equivalent of mine on the development team. This was his first lead of a development, I think, I'm pretty sure. And he would later go on to do tons and tons of other sets, including

I think Married Miss Siege, he did Innistrad, he did Theros, he did Tarkir, he did Return to Ravnica, he does most of the large fall sets now. Anyway, this was him getting his first

experience. I think, I'm not sure whether Aaron or Eric did this. My gut is Eric did it. This is the first set that brought back a core set that brought back an old mechanic. And the mechanic they brought back was Scry. Interesting mechanic that Aaron had created way back in 5th Dawn, and that is one of Eric's favorite mechanics. In fact, it might be Eric's most

favorite mechanic. I know it's up there. It's in his top five, I've been told by Eric. But anyway, it was definitely fun. They had a blast putting the set together. It was a real good set. And I guess 2011's biggest thing is that it started the idea of bringing back an old mechanic. Other than that, it followed in the footsteps of 2010. It had new cards. It definitely pushed toward resonance. And it did a lot of things that Aaron had set up in 2010, and he continued in 2011. But there was a lot of changeover.

Aaron wanted to make sure that the corset wasn't too stagnant. Okay, and August 27th was From the Vault Relics, a project that I was actually in charge of. We had done the first From the Vault the year before, 2009, called From the Vault Dragons, and we wanted to do a new thing. And it's important to me that we changed, I wanted the From the Vault to have a lot of different audiences,

that it wasn't always the same audience, that we could point toward different audiences. And so From the Vault Relics, for a while, was called From the Vault Cube, which meant we wanted to pick a theme that we thought would be relevant to cube players. And so the idea of Relics was banned and restricted. The rule was these were all cards

that at some point had been banned and restricted. We had a little bit of fun, because some of the cards that hadics was banned and restricted. The rule was these were all cards that at some point had been banned and restricted. We had a little bit of fun, because some of the cards that had once been banned and restricted really never deserved it. So there's a couple cards in there that are us having a little bit of fun of things that have gotten banned and restricted. But mostly it was just cards that were really good. Because you know why cards get banned and restricted? Because they're really good.

And so it was from the vault of a lot of classic cards from the past that just were so good that at one point or another they needed to have some restraint on them. Okay, next was September 3rd. It was dual decks Elspeth versus Pezzeret. Okay, so we started this pattern where we did two dual decks a year. The first dual deck, or one of the dual decks, was usually had to do with a fall set. started this pattern where we did two dual decks a year. The first dual deck, or one of the dual decks, was

a theme usually having to do with a fall set. Like this year we did Phyrexia. You'll notice in future years we swap them around so the one that has to do with the fall set is closer to the fall set. But anyway, one would have to do with a theme. The themes early on were like elves

versus goblins, or knights versus dragons, or demons versus... divine versus demonic. We started making the themes a little more tied into the fall set, or into a future set, usually the fall set. And we also every year had a planeswalker-oriented duel deck, of which two planeswalkers would face off. Normally we would pick planeswalkers that I think were still actively in standard. So you look at the previous year's block. So this was looking

at Shards of Alara block. And so there were five Planeswalkers to choose from. And we ended up choosing... We wanted to choose ones we hadn't done before. Anyway, we ended up choosing Elisabeth versus Tezzeret. Elisabeth's more of a good guy. Tezzeret's more of a bad guy. So it definitely

had like a good guy, bad's more of a bad guy, so it definitely had like a good guy, bad guy, sort of vibe to it, um, but anyway, the duel decks were very popular, and the Planeswalker duel decks, which came with obviously two Planeswalkers,

the key to a Planeswalker duel deck was, they were the Planeswalkers from the previous block, that were still standard legal, with a new, um, art treatment, um, anyway,

those have always been very popular, okay, September 3rd through the 5th, was Pro Tour Amsterdam, art treatment. Anyway, those have always been very popular. Okay. September 3rd through the 5th was Pro Tour Amsterdam. So it was a scars... It was a booster draft of Scars and Mirrodin. And I didn't write down what the format was.

Maybe it was standard? Anyway, at it, Paul Rietzel of the United States defeats Brad Nelson of the United States. So Paul Rietzel would go on to become a Hall of Famer. So Brad Nelson, we're going to hear about him in a sec. But Brad Nelson was having a mighty fine year. Like I said, we'll talk about that upcoming. Okay, next, September 25th was the pre-release.

October 1st was the release of Scars of Mirrodin. Oh, wait a second, Scars of Mirrodin. I guess Rock, Paper, Scissors was not Scars of Mirrodin. Oh, wait a second. Scars of Mirrodin. I guess Rock, Paper, Scissors was not Scars of Mirrodin, but must have been the set before. Oh, so it must have been Shards of Alara Block, but it's been Rock, Paper, Scissors. Anyway, Scars of Mirrodin was lights, camera, action. So it was lights, camera, action.

So it was a normal large-sized set at the time, 101 commons, 69 commons, 53 rares, 15 mythics. So the idea behind Scars of Mirrodin, I may have talked about this a bunch of times, but originally the set was going to be New Phyrexia. We visit the plane New Phyrexia, and then at the end of the block we learn, dun-dun-dun, New Phyrexia is actually Mirrodin. But what we realized is we were glossing over a really cool story, which is, hey, aren't we going to talk about how Myrden became New Phyrexia?

So the idea was we moved it back. We started, when the first set started, which was Scars of Myrden, the Phyrexians had only, had a foothold in, I think 20% of the cards had a Phyrexian watermark on it. So for those that don't know, if you go back and look at original Myrden, there were clues placed in original Myrden, some in the cards, some in the books, that the Phyrexians were there.

Karn had tracked some oil from when he was a planeswalker, and when he lost his planeswalker status for a little while during a time spiral, he got infected. And anyway, Karn unknowingly infected Mirrodin, his creation, with some Phyrexian oil. You saw a little beginning of it in early Mirrodin, which was teasing.

And that's not retconned, by the way. It's not like we went back and said, hey, let's pretend we did that. You go back and look. The Mephedros, you look in the book, there's the oil that, like the first chapter,

what's the main character finds, not main character, the main bad guy finds, Memnard finds the oil, which clearly goes into his skin. Anyway, it's there. Honestly, guys, there's no retconning. We had set this up. Brady Downer, who was creative director at the time, really wanted a way to bring back the Phyrexians. He knew they were big villains of ours.

So he made Mirrodin. He set up the thing so that when we returned to Mirrodin, it could be new Phyrexia. Anyway, so the way it was set up is we had two mechanics for the Phyrexians and two mechanics for the Mirrans. The Phyrexians obviously had Infect and had Proliferate. Infect has gone on to be possibly the most what's the word I want? Polarizing mechanic ever made. There are people that love, love, love, love

Infect. People that hate, hate, hate Infect. And so I fight all the time on my blog. I give the Infect haters a lot of mail and I argue with them. One of the things about my blog by the way for those that actually read my blog is I tend to

give a lot more just because it makes for interesting conversations I tend to let people that are negative something talk a little more because when someone says I love something that's great awesome and I do that some obviously but when someone says I don't like something

I can debate it and talk about it. It just makes more stirring conversation. So I lean a little more toward the controversy. So if you read my blog, for example, you would think that everybody wants Champs-Élysées to come back, and everyone wants to kill Infect. I just take the people that... I tend to take

the argumentative side and give them a little more voice, just because it makes more interesting blogs. Anyway, for those who care. Okay, anyway, on the Mirren side, the Mirrens had Metalcraft and they had Imprint. So Imprint

had been brought back from the first time we were in Mirren. By the way, instead of Metalcraft, we almost, almost had Affinity. My original plan was to bring back Imprint and Affinity being almost had affinity. My original plan was to bring back imprint and affinity, being both of the Mirrodins were repeats, things you had saw before when last we were in Mirrodin.

And the reason we didn't do it, development thought they could balance it. The problem was there's a room for error in anything development does. So there's a percentage chance that maybe they're off by some. And the thought was to miss on something that had been so destructive before would have huge negative PR ramifications.

It's one thing to mess up on something we've never done before, but to mess up something that really had a huge negative impact on the tournament scene, if we mess up a second time, really big PR risk. So we decided that, okay, we'll make Affinity Lite, which is what MetalGraph ended up being. MetalGraph ended up being designed by Mark Globus, by the way, who was make Affinity Light, which is what MetalGraph ended up being. MetalGraph ended up being designed by Mark Globus, by the way, who was on the design team, for a completely different project that he had been making.

I think when I do... I've already done the Scars of Mirrors podcast. I talked about this. But anyway, it came from the thing. But anyway, it was definitely... So the idea was we'd been invaded, and the second block turned into a war, which we were 50% each side.

And in the last set, you find out who won the war. And we did this neat thing where we advertised two different sets. Was it going to be Mirrodin Pure or New Phyrexia? Who was going to win the great war? And then, ba-ba-ba, the product came out, and we found out who won the war. So it was pretty cool, and that's a... Well, we'll get to Miriam's Siege next time. There's a cool preview of Miriam's Siege. But that's 2011. Okay, so let's continue

on. December 9th through the 12th was the World Championship in Chiba, Japan. So the finals were Guillaume Matignon versus Guillaume Wafatapa. It's Guillaume were Guillaume Matignon versus Guillaume Wafatapa. It's Guillaume on Guillaume, French on French

finals. And Guillaume Matignon managed to win. And it ended up in a very once in forever thing. Guillaume Matignon and Brad Nelson tied for Pro Player of the Year. They were exactly even. So we ended the year, ended the season not knowing who the Pro Player of the Year. They were exactly even.

So we ended the year, ended the season, not knowing who the Pro Player of the Year was. And when we get to 2011, I'll talk about what happened because they had a playoff in the very next Pro Tour. Also, Team Slovak Republic, which is Robert Djokovic, Ivan Flock, and Patrick Surab, managed to defeat Team Australia to win for the team event so one of my favorite

things of the event by the way was a promotional thing actually so we do this thing called Massive Magic where at the event we will play a game with giant magic cards like three feet tall.

If you've ever seen the magic cards in pictures in our office, we have giant cards. Those are what it's from usually, is us playing massive magic. And the way massive magic works is we have two people who are playing, usually wizards people, and then every time we draw a new card, we get a representative from the audience to play that card. And they get to carry it, and they cast it, and if it's a permanent, they stand there, and they tap it, and if it's a creature, they attack with it.

And then we have commentary done by some people who do commentary. And anyway, it's just a hoot. It's really, really fun. And at Worlds in Chiba, because it was Scars of Mirrodin, we set up this thing where it was the Phyrexians versus the Mirrodins. And at Worlds in Chiba, because it was Scars of Mirrodin, we set up this thing where it was the Phyrexians

versus the Mirrins. And so, Richard Garfield and I were the two people playing. I took the role of Phyrexia, because I was a huge Phyrexia fan. Richard took the role of Mirrin. And we had this awesome, awesome battle. So what happened was, because Phyrexian

was awesome, I got the lead. I got the early lead. But then Meron managed to come back. But then I managed to turn the tide, and I was on the cusp of winning. And just as I was on the cusp of winning, Richard revealed that he was a double agent secretly working for the Phyrexians. But then the judges, who I will admit I believe were unbiased, were a little, I believe, pro-Mirren, made some calls that were very against Phyrexia

in a very biased way, I will say, and it helped Mirren catch back up, and so Mirren managed to sort of get its footing. Then Richard revealed he was a triple agent and actually really working for Mirren. And then I managed to pull it out. My team and I, we managed to have a win for Phyrexia. And we managed to win and defeat the Mirrens.

Which I like to believe is a little tease of what was coming down the pipe. Spoilers for those that somehow don't know the black. And also, another fun thing we did was we used to have Worlds in December at the time, and so we would usually find some fun way to tease the upcoming set. For those who know the story of Worlds in, is it Memphis, I think?

New York or Memphis, where I showed off the Chameleon Colossus by playing in a multiplayer game and getting 55,000 life through some crazy attack. Anyway, this was... We put the preview cards

in our decks. We had one in the Mirren deck and one in the Phyrexian deck. So we got to show off some cards. But anyway, we had great fun. I love... I always love hanging out with Richard. Richard Garfield is an awesome guy for those that might not know that.

And he and I don't get to see each other as much anymore. He used to work at Wizards, obviously, and I used to see him every single day. In fact, back in my early days, not only did we spend every day together working, but after work, most of us used to go out to eat most nights, and we would stay and play games late in the evening. And so I had spent a lot of meals with Richard and definitely played a lot of games with Richard. Richard introduced me to a whole mess of games.

You ever want a great instructor in the world of games? Richard Garfield is a master in just, he knows everything but every game, and he will teach you to play games you've never seen before. Many in other languages. At the time, a lot of them were in German. Back before the German games really got brought here to the U.S. But anyway, I had a blast hanging out with AMA Worlds.

So, to wrap up the year. So 2010, I said that 2009 was the ramping up year. 2010, we're bam, bam, bam. It's happening. Dual decks are happening. From the Vault is happening. Deck Builder's Toolkit is happening. We even experiment with other things

that didn't end up going anywhere, like the Premium Booster or the Planeswalker decks. We started the summer, you know, alt format product with, we had Arch Enemy and, you know, and then Magic was just and, you know, and Magic was just hidden. So one of the things to realize

is, starting with Magic 2010, Magic started going on this great rise that it's been on ever since. And so this was the early days. I mean, Zendikar was, even though it was 2010, Zendikar was still going strong. We had Worldwake, we had Rise of the Odrazi, we had Scars of Mirrodin.

There was just a lot of magic and a lot of people playing magic and a lot of just excitement as people were, more and more people were getting into playing magic. And like I said, the Pro Tours, we had Simon Grinson win and Paolo Vito D'Amato Rosso win and Paul Reitzel

win and Guillaume Matignon win. In fact, if you look at the finals of most of these, three of the four finals had future Hall of Famers in it. I guess that's how you get in the Hall of Fame is by being in the finals. It helps. But anyway, it was a very fun and exciting year, but a full year. For example, one of the ways to realize is, if you go back to some of the early years, like 96, 97, you'll notice when I was recapping the year

like about half the years me talking about all the pro tours that were going on and like you know there were years in which they were like we put out three products

and that was it that's all we did we didn't even do a course every other year we put out three products so this year we put out real quickly

let's recap we put out Worldwake we put out the premium shards of Alara boosters we put out the dual decks Frexian vs. the Coalition, we put out Rise of the Odrazi, the Deck Builder's Toolkit, Duels of the Planeswalker decks, Arch Enemy,

Magic 2011, From the Vault Relics, dual decks Elisabeth vs. Tezzeret, Scars of Mirrodin. Whoa! That's a lot of stuff. And we don't let up, by the way. We keep making more stuff, so like, it's funny. I mean, 2010, we were ramping up and we continue to stuff. And we don't let up, by the way. We keep making more stuff. So, like, it's funny. I mean, 2010, we were ramping up, and we continue to ramp, but we don't stop.

So upcoming is 2011. 2010 is getting into the next decade, our current decade for Magic. And Magic is just going strong and making 8 billion different things. And I was busy, busy, busy. I guess, I don't know. I'm always busy, but 2010 was a great... It was a fun year. There's a lot of cool things that happened during it.

I think there's definitely lots of highs and lows and cool things happening. So, anyway, it was a fun year to recap. So next time I do this series, we'll get to 2011. But that, my friends, in a drive-filled nutshell, is 2010. So I hope you guys had fun. But, I pulled in my parking spot.

So 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. Thanks for joining me, guys.