Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #250 - 2011

Episode Date: August 7, 2015

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2011.

I'm pulling out of the parking space. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. I took my daughter to the orthodontist into school, but as we all know, school's right by my house, so we have a full podcast today. Okay, so today is another episode of 20 Years in 20 Podcasts. This is where I'm going through every single year of Magic's life, talking about what happened that year. So we start with, or not start with, today we are on 2011. We are getting closer and closer to the present. Okay, we start January 10th with Masters Edition 4.

Okay, so Magic Online, when it started, started, I believe, with Invasion. And so what happened was, we wanted to make sure, because there's a lot of formats that require older cards, a lot of legacy or vintage or older formats. And so we wanted to get people who played online to get access to some of these older cards. And so we created a system

we called Masters Edition that just had older cards in it and it was a means and a ways for us to do it. And the way we introduced it was in a product that you could draft online. So I both got stuff

into the format online and made a fun drafting environment. So this is the fourth one, a.k.a. the Masters Edition 4. It came out in January and it was just for online. This wasn't something you could purchase or play anywhere, but on Magic Online. Okay. Next.

January 29th was the pre-release. February 4th was the release of Mirrodin Besieged, aka Camera. So, the block was Lights, Camera, Action. And so the set had 155 cards, 60 commons, 40 uncommons, 35 rares, 10 mythic rares, and 10 lands. It was lead designed by Mark Gottlieb, and the lead developer was Eric Lauer.

So this was interesting. It was Mark Gottlieb's, I believe, first design and lead design. He'd been on many design teams, but his first time leading design. And it was Eric Lauer's first expansion lead. Eric had led some core sets, but he had never led an expansion

set. So this was his first expansion set, Mirrodin Mestige. So basically what was going on, for those who don't remember, the Mirrodin story, or the scars of Mirrodin's story, what is going on is we return to Mirrodin Mestiged. So, basically what's going on, for those who don't remember the Mirrodin story, or the scars of Mirrodin story, what is going on is we return to Mirrodin to discover that the Phyrexians have invaded.

In fact, if you go back to the original Mirrodin, there were some clues that the Phyrexians were there, but they were very, very subtle. There's a few in the card set, some in the book, but anyway,

for those who know the story, we were going to come back and just, the set was going to be New Phyrexia, the fall set was going to be New Phyrexia, and then at the end of the block we were going to go, oh my goodness, it is secretly Myrden! And do a little Planet of the Apes sort of thing. But we decided that, when we were trying to make it, that we were missing a good story, which is the fall of Myrden.

And so we did this cool thing where Skars and Mirrodin, we go back to Mirrodin, the Phyrexians are there at a small percentage, but 20% are Phyrexian. It was watermarked, so you could tell. And this set, it's 50-50. Half are Mirrodin, half are Phyrexian, and there's a war. This is the war between the Mirrons and the Phyrexians. And there's a neat outcome. I'll get to that in a second. But anyway, so this was the war between the Mirrens and the Phyrexians. And there's a neat outcome. I'll get to that in a second. But anyway, so this was the war.

This was the war between the Mirrens and the Phyrexians. So what we did was, there were two new mechanics. One was a Phyrexian mechanic. One was a Mirren mechanic. The Phyrexian mechanic was the living weapon. And those were equipment that came into play attached to a 0-0 germ. I think a little black creature. But essentially, they came living.

They were alive. You could attack with them right away. All of them had at least a toughness. Most of them also granted power. And the idea is, whatever you made came into play as a living creature. Now, you could move it to something else, but then the germ would immediately die. But anyway, that was a living weapon.

Battle Cry was a combat mechanic that when you attacked with a creature, it boosted all the other attacking creatures, and that was the Mirren mechanic. So the idea was, it was the Frexians and the Mirrens. Now, we carried over most of the mechanics from early on, in fact, in Polypherate and Metalcraft

and Imprint, I think all that stuff showed up in Mirrodin Besieged. But anyway, the big, big thing about it was this war. And we did a really cool thing at the pre-release, which was, when you came to the pre-release, we had made two different booster packs. One was a Mirrodin pre-release booster pack, and one was a Phyrexian pre-release booster pack.

So when you came to play, you chose what side you were on, and then you got packs of that side. and pre-release booster pack. So when you came to play, you chose what side you were on, and then you got packs of that side. Now, it was interesting. When we first did it, we were like, oh, are people going to pick all one side or something? Because, you know, we didn't know what to send out to the people running the events. And we gave them, I think, slightly more than they needed

just in case it went to one side. But what we found was when the desk settled, it was about 52% Phyrexine and 48% Mirum, which is pretty close. Pretty close to 50-50. So the audience had a lot of fun and this really sort of opened their eyes that there's some fun things we can do around the experience.

Okay. Next. February 10th through the 13th in Paris was Pro Tour Paris. So Pro Tour Paris, the constructedth in Paris was Pro Tour Paris. So Pro Tour Paris, the constructed component of it was standard. And the limited was Scars Meridian Besiege Booster Draft.

So Meridian Besiege had just come out, so it was a booster draft with the two sets in the black that were out and standard. So Ben Stark of the United States defeated Paul Rietzel of the United States 3-1. Both those names are, I think at the time, future Hall of Famers,

but both of them are currently in the Hall of Fame. So it was a very high-octane match. But it was not the only high-octane match of that weekend. So on February 12th was the 2010 Player of the Year Showdown. So the previous year in December, Guillaume Matignon from France had won the World Championship. And in doing so, he tied Brad Nelson in pro points for Pro Player of the Year. Now that had never, ever happened before.

And so the rule was, if that had never, ever happened before, and so the rule was, if it ever happened, there was a playoff. The next pro tour, the two would play off. I think they played standard. I actually didn't write down what format they played. It was constructed. I believe it was standard. It might have been a different format.

But anyway, they played, I think it was best of seven, because my notes here say that Brad Nelson was victorious four to two, which implies best of seven. So, but anyway, there was a mighty fight, and Brad Nelson walked away pro player of the year for 2010. Okay, March 11th, we released the Deck Builders Toolkit. So I talked last year in the 2010 podcast about how we had done the very first Deck Builders Toolkit. The idea behind the Deck Builders Toolkit was we wanted a product.

When you're first buying your cards, one of the things that helps when you're just beginning is just getting a whole bunch of cards. The Deck Builders Toolkit, it's mostly commons and uncommons, but it's just a lot of cards. It gives you a base to start building out of. And the way the deck build toolkit works is you get different parts of decks. It helps you sort of give a leg up to building your first few decks. Anyway, we did the first ever refresh. So what a refresh is, is we put the stuff out. One of the things that's important, especially for mass market,

is you want to sort of redo the look of it at least once a year, just to make it feel like it's a newer product and not something that's been sitting on the shelves forever. So usually once a year on the Deck Post Toolkit, we'll do a refresh. This is the first ever refresh, the 2011 edition. Okay, April 1st, we had our first dual deck of the year, Knights versus Dragons. So dual decks, once again, are two 60-card decks

that are designed to play against each other. It's a lot of magic you have to put together with decks. But dual decks say, no, no, no, two-player game, all done. You can just out-of-the-box play some magic. Now, back then, we used to do, we have two a year.

One of them is Planeswalker-themed. One of them is not. We used to do the non-theme early in the year and the Planeswalker-theme later in a year. One of them is Planeswalker themed. One of them is not. We used to do the non-theme early in the year and the Planeswalker theme later in the year. We would later get the idea that maybe we want the themed one to tie into the fall set, and so we swapped them, but we haven't swapped them yet. So nice place to try,

because we were just trying to come up with what are classic enemies. And so I think the other thing we tried with the duel decks is we tried to bounce around to make sure that we're hitting different colors so the duel decks aren't always the same colors. And I remember I think we wanted red and white. We wanted kind of a red-white conflict is how it ended up. And so, okay, what's the iconic red thing?

Dragons. Who fights dragons? Knights fight dragons. And so we had to manipulate the deck a little bit. The biggest problem with knights versus dragons in Magic is that dragons all fly, and most knights sit on the ground. And so we had to work a little bit to get some interactivity between them. But it's a fun—I've never played it.

It's a fun duel deck. Okay, next. May 7th is the pre-release. May 13th is the release for New Phyrexia, a.k.a. Action. So it had 175 cards, 60 commons, 60 uncommons, 35 rares, 10 mythics, 10 lands. Normally our small sets were a little smaller than this. I mean, now our small sets have grown a little bit bigger, so they're closer to this. I think now they're 165. But at the time, I believe our small sets have grown a little bit bigger, so they're closer to this. I think now they're 165.

But at the time, I believe our small sets were 145. So this definitely was getting a little bit bigger than the small sets. And the reason was kind of—oh, let me explain what's going on here. So when I went to Bill, Bill Rose, the VP of R&D, to explain to him what I wanted to do with the Mirrodin block was shift it so that we were showing the fall of Mirrodin and that we wanted to create a war. Bill came up with a really neat idea. He goes, well, what if we don't know the outcome of the war? And I said to him, well, we're going to know the outcome because we have to tell the people

the name of the final set. You know, by the time Mirrodin Siege comes out, we'll have to tell the retailers because they pre-order what the name of the set is. And Bill goes, what if we didn't? And Bill came up with a really cool idea, which I loved, which was, what if we tell them, hey guys, it's going to be one of these two sets. We're not going to tell you.

It's either going to be Mirrodin Besieged or New Phyrexia, depending on the outcome of the war. And that way, no one knew the outcome of the war before the set came out. Well, I mean, I forget how many, about six war before the set came out well I mean I forget how many about six weeks before the set came out we revealed it

but people ordered the product not knowing which product it was and what we said is look it's magic they're going to order the people who buy magic

are going to buy magic they're going to order it you know it's the third set they're going to buy it no matter what it's called and we did this fun thing where the audience didn't know

and we mocked up packaging and we had key art in fact the funny thing is Mir. We mocked up packaging and we had key art. In fact, the funny thing is Mirrored and Pure, we had a piece of art made which is based off Platinum Angel and people really loved the art. They're like, what did the card do? And I was like, oh, there was never...

So one of the things that people got confused, we tried to emphatically state this, but people still got confused. Our timelines, we were far ahead. By the time you saw the war and Married and Besieged, we were already printing new Phyrexia. We knew Phyrexia was going to win. That was a fait accompli. It was going to happen.

And that the public wasn't affecting what was going to happen. The war was going to come out the way it was going to come out. And we tried to state that very emphatically, but some people still really felt like somehow they were deciding the outcome. And because of that, there were people who believed, like, we had made two sets, and then just released one of the sets.

And that was not the case. That's a lot of work. We don't make sets we don't release. We don't have that kind of manpower. So literally, there were no cards made for Mirrodin Pure. We did commission the one art based on Platinum Angel, because we thought it would be fun

if Mirrodin Pure, you'd see Platinum Angel. We thought it would be fun if Mirrored Imperial you'd see Platinum Angel. But that art has never been used on the card. We've never made a card. People keep saying, you should use the art somewhere. Maybe one day we'll use the art in some supplemental product or something. But anyway, so the set was led by Ken Nagel. And the development was led by Aaron Forsythe. Aaron, I think at this point, was the director of R&D,

but he decided he wanted to get his hands dirty and do some development. He hadn't led a development in a while, so Aaron led this. So the new thing in this set was Phyrexian mana. The way it works is it's colored mana that has a Phyrexian symbol inside it and you can either spend mana like normal, if it's a red Phyrexian symbol, you can spend red mana for it, or you can spend two life.

So what had happened was we had a different mechanic that Ken had been playing with, a very very cool, sexy thing but we couldn't quite make it work. It was pretty splashy and at the last minute, we had to drop it. During Divine, right at the end of Divine, we had to drop it.

And Aaron came up with the idea of Phyrexian mana, although when Aaron came up with it, his idea was it would be colorless mana, and I suggested moving it to the colored, because it allowed you to both get access to things you don't normally get access to, and it allowed you to, in addition to making it cheaper.

One of my big things, which they mostly followed, they cheated on a few areas where I lost the fights on this, is my idea when I came up with it being in color was we would just map the abilities to artifacts, meaning the power level of what you would do to them if you're paying all the Phyrexian mana and paying the life is kind of equivalent to what it would be in artifacts,

meaning that you weren't weakening the colors. You weren't getting colors access to things they weren't supposed to have access to. Then they went and made a counterspell and a few other things that's not quite what I would have done. I tried in development to stop some of that,

but I was partially successful. I did stop a few that, but I was partially successful. I did stop a few things, but I didn't stop everything. So Phyrexian mana, everything else came back, except for there was no Battlecry. A Living Weapon was there. In fact, Metalcraft, Proliferate, Imprint. Only 10% of the cards were Mirren. We tried to make the Mirren ones that were there strong,

so there were some new cards for your Mirren deck. The idea being that this was only the strongest had survived. But there weren't... Because they had lost, there were just very, very few of them. A lot of people had figured out that Phyrexian had won because if you did the numbers, that if you had 20, 80% in the large set, 50, 50 in the first small set, 90, 10 in the second small set,

they are about even. You have about an equal number of Phyrexian and Mirren cards during the course of the block. So there were a lot of little clues where we were going. A bunch of people figured it out. But anyway, a lot of people didn't know, and there was a lot of discussions and bait,

so it was definitely kind of cool. I think any other interesting stories about... Oh, the one thing I was going to say is one of the plans when we first made Mirren was Brady Dartmouth, who was creative director at the time, came up with the idea that this would be the rebirth of Phyrexia, and that Phyrexia would eventually...

that Mirren would become new Phyrexia. Because Phyrexia has always had sort of an artifact component to it. Oh, that's another thing, by the way, a lot of people don't realize about Phyrexia mana. One of the things I was trying to do was I wanted the... I wanted, as frexings took over to start getting the more insight into the artifacts and so we had toyed with the idea of just straight up doing colored artifacts but we had done those in esper so the neat thing about doing the frexing mana is it

allowed us to make some colored artifacts but in a way that just felt different than what esper had done um because you would notice anything that was a permanent that had Phyrexian mana was an artifact. Like, it was a creature. It was an artifact creature. Okay.

Moving on. Next, June 12th. June 10th through the 12th in Nagoya, Japan. PT, Pro Tour Nagoya. So it was Scars, Block Constructed. So it had all three sets. So it's Scars of Mirrodin,

Mirrodin of the Siege, and a new Phyrexia in Block Constructed. And then it was aars, Block Constructed so it had all three sets so it's Scars of Mirrodin, Mirrodin of the Siege and New Phyrexia in Block Constructed and then it was a booster draft using all three sets so Block Constructed is not a format we support right now at the Pro Tour but what it meant was you played with just the sets from that block

it's a format that the pros actually liked quite a bit just because it was fun building the problem was the average player base, no one really ever... The only reason people ever played Block Instructed was in PTQ seasons, because they had to. We forced them.

But it just wasn't a format people seemed to like playing by itself, so we de-emphasized it a bit. So anyway, at Nagoya, David Sharfman of the United States defeated Toshiyuki Kaduka of Japan, 3-0. I don't have a lot of... I was not at this event, so I don't have a lot of extra info on that.

Okay, June 17th was Commander. So what happened was we made five 100-card decks to show off a new fun format called Commander. So originally the format was designed by a bunch of judges. The original name was Elder Dragon Highlander. When we started getting involved, we shifted the name over. Because in the beginning, when you first began playing, your commander had to be one of the five Elder Dragons from Legends. And so that name was cute, but it really had drifted away from there,

so we gave it a little simpler name that was a little less confusing. So Commander, we made these decks, and we had started doing summer products that were more casual-related. We had done Plane Chase, we'd done Arch Enemy. So this was another thing we were just, hey, here's another fun way to play. It's a format we knew was gaining popularity. And so we made five decks.

And it was so popular, and the format's so popular, that it went from being a one-time thing to a yearly thing. So these decks were really, really popular. A lot of times people say to me, oh, why didn't you make something before? I go, it wasn't popular, we stopped making it. Well, this is the reverse of that. It was so popular, we're like, let's make this all the time.

So you'll see in 2012, it took us a year to catch up. We had a sort of a filler product for 2012 just because it takes us a while to catch up because we worked far ahead. But starting in 2013 and on, there's a Commander product every year. You guys, some of you probably buy and play with. Quite fun.

Okay, July 9th was the pre-release. July 15th was the release for Magic 2012. 249 cards, 101 commons, 60 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythics, and 20 lands. Mark Globus was the lead designer. Tom Lapilli was the lead developer. So for those that don't know, Mark Globus was one of the finalists in the very first Great Designer Search. He actually tied for fourth.

So he got hired by Wizard. Here's a cute story. I'm not sure if I've told this story. If I haven't, I will tell it again. Which is when we were trying to set tickets, it proved to be cheaper to buy five tickets for the top five than to wait until we knew the top three and buy tickets. That would be more expensive to buy the tickets, I don't know, two weeks later for just three than to buy five tickets two weeks earlier.

So we bought tickets for all the top five. So a bunch of people in R&D were very impressed with Globus, and when they found out he had a free ticket, they were like, fly him out here, let's interview him. And he came out, and he ended up getting hired by our digital department. And over time, he ended up sort of moving from digital, ended up in R&D. Now he's one of the key people in R&D doing a lot of work.

But anyway, this was his first lead. So we've had quite a number of great designer search alumni have led sets. Alexis led Dragon's Maze. Ken, I mean, this very year led New Fraxing, but Ken had led a bunch of other sets. Ethan led Journey into Nyx. And Sean led Conspiracy. And Mark Globus led Magic 2012. Okay, so the theme in this deck was Bolas.

Nicole Bolas was the theme. It had really cool black packaging. Nicole Bolas has a card, which I think is the first gold card ever to be in a core set. There were legends in the set, which we had done once before. Exalted was the mechanic that got brought back. That's from Shards of Alara from Bant. Although this time

it was in white and black. Previously it had been in Bant color, so white, green and blue. But anyway, it was a core set. Had a little extra fun mixed in. Had a little bowl of flavor to it. Okay, August 26. From the Vault Legends.

We do From the Vault once a year. It's got 15 cards, there are special premium, and they're always themed. This year's theme was legendary creatures, and so we had legendary creatures from all over Magic. I worked a little tiny bit.

This was led by Mark Gottlieb. And anyway, I don't know what else to say. It's From the Vault. September 2nd was the second Duel Decks of the year, which was Ajani versus Nicole Bolas. Bunch of Bolas this year.

So normally our duel decks, we do one Planeswalker each year. The Planeswalkers are usually from the previous block. Two Planeswalkers so that they're still in standard. And the two Planeswalkers that had a beef with each other or had a fight or something. This one was a little bit of a stretch. I mean, not that Ajani didn't dislike Nicole Bolas, and I'm sure they would fight. and the two planeswalkers had a beef with each other or had a fight or something. This one was a little bit of a stretch.

I mean, not that Ajani didn't dislike Nicole Bolas, and I'm sure they would fight. They might have actually come up with a little tiny story moment where they fought for two seconds, but my only problem is Ajani would not really last too long against Nicole Bolas by himself, so it feels a lot of match. I mean, in the game terms, Nicole Bolas is expensive, so the decks are balanced,

but in flavor, I don't believe Ajani on his own is going to take on Nicole Bolas without some luck on his half. Okay, next, September 2nd through the 4th in Philadelphia was Pro Tour Philadelphia. The constructed part of it was modern, and the limited part of it was Magic 2012 Booster Draft. A limited part of it was Magic 2012 Booster Draft. So at the event, Samuel Estrade from Italy defeated Josh Utterladen of the United States 3-1. So both very good players.

Josh, I won't say a shoot-in, but when Josh is eligible for a Hall of Fame, he has a high percentage chance of making the Hall of Fame. I will call him a highly probable future Hall of Famer. The other interesting thing about this event, by the way, nothing to do with the Pro Tour, there were two guys that were native Philadelphians,

I think that's the right word, who showed up at the event. One of them was an actor who had played Magic for a long time. The other was a videographer and editor who didn't even play Magic.

And they came to make a little video. Well, these two people were Nate Holt and Sean Kornheiser, who you guys might know better now as the Walking the Planes guys. This was the event that they shot a video at on their own time for fun that first put them on the map

and got people to recognize who they were. The story continues. We'll get there in a second when we get to Worlds this year. But anyway, they made a video. It was very entertaining. It spoke about magic, but at a level that was much more accessible to people that didn't know magic all that well.

And it was really well received. To be continued. The story will continue. Okay, September 24th is the pre-release. September 30th is the release for Innistrad, aka Shake. That block was Shake, Rattle, and Roll. So there's 264 cards, 107 commons, 67 uncommons, 59 rares, 16 mythics, and 15 lands. Why do those numbers sound so weird?

Because there are double-faced cards, and double-faced cards have to go on their own sheet. And so that's why it messes up the math. So it's kind of like a normal large set with some stuff layered on top of it. Anyway, I was the lead designer. Eric Lauer was the lead developer. This is Eric Lauer's first fall set. So he had led large sets, and then he led core sets.

And he led Married in Bessiege earlier this year. But this is him leading his first large set. So Eric actually had two leads within one calendar year. That doesn't happen tons, but it happened for Eric this year. Okay, so the Innistrad was our gothic horror set. I had been inspired by back during Odyssey when we made Flashback. We made a graveyard set, and Brady and I were talking, and Brady talked about how he felt the creative was a mismatch.

Brady wasn't in charge of creative back then and he said that it feels like if you want to do a graveyard set you should do more of a horror sort of thing. I love the idea of building a set around

the genre of horror that there's a lot of resonant tropes we could hit and so we did. We had vampires and werewolves and zombies and ghosts

and humans in plight. In order to make the not the goblins in order to make the werewolves and zombies and ghosts and humans in plight. In order to make the werewolves work, we came up with double-faced technology. And not just the werewolves, but all the whole idea of dark transformation. The vampire turns into the bat

or the scientist experiments with things he shouldn't and turns into the fly and stuff like that. So the set had three mechanics. It had Transform, which was a double-faced mechanic, and one could argue the werewolf was kind of a mechanic. It was unnamed. But the werewolf mechanic was, if

you have, they come on the human side, if you cast no spells on a turn, they flip to the werewolf side. If you cast two spells on the same turn by the same player, it goes back to humans. They go back and forth. We brought Flashback back, which actually was from the same player, it goes back to humans. They go back and forth. We brought Flashback back, which actually was from the original set that spawned this whole discussion.

And we had Morbid, which was a mechanic that cared about things dying. Morbid, we really were trying to make a theme in the set of suspense and dread when you played, because it was a horror thing. And we did a bunch of things with the transformation cards and the Morbid cards of like, just, you were always scared of bad things

happening to you, and that was very unconsciously done. We also did a lot with tropes, and a lot of, there was you know, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the fly and the exorcist, and a lot of just horror tropes, I mean, redressed in magic terms, but we did a lot of things to really play up and

do a lot of resonant tropes off of horror, of gothic horror. By the way, the set was very popular. One could argue one of the most popular sets of all time. If not the most popular, very popular. It and Ravnica probably are the ones that are dueling for the

honor of all-time favorite popularity, but really, really well. Thanks to Eric and his team and I think the draft format turned but really, really well. Thanks to Eric and his team and some design. I think the draft format turned out really, really well. Eric did an amazing job, and it just was a very, very fun format

to draft. Okay. Next, November 18th was the Premium Deck Series with Graveborn. That was Zombies. A fancy name for Zombies. The previous year we've done Slivers, this year we did Zombies. I don't know if there's one more coming.

The Premium Deck Series did not survive. It was something we tried. It was a deck, it was a 60-card deck, all Premium, of just a fun theme that used cards from all throughout Magic. It never really took off, so like I said, maybe, maybe there's a third one. I don't remember off the top of my head.

But it's something we don't continue. So this is either the last one or the second last one. Okay, finally, the final event of the year, November 17th through the 20th, was the World Championship in San Francisco. In fact, it was at the Wharf. There's only two locations, I believe, that two different World championships have happened at

one was the San Francisco Wharf in which this event and the one that Julian Mountain won many years before and then there's a convention center in Tokyo in Yokohama that we had two different world championships at

but anyway so this also was the last of the old school worlds. So once upon a time, there would be national championships around the world. Each team of

either three or four, depending on the year, would get invited, plus pro players got invited on pro points, and there was a rating invite, and all those people

would come and play for many, many days, for like four days, or three days, I guess. And then after, I don't know, 21 rounds of play or something crazy, they would narrow down to a top eight and the top eight would play. Then on Saturday, there always was a team competition where the national teams would play off. Both those, there still is a world championship, there still is a team event. They're not quite the same as they were back then.

This was the last of those events. And right before this event began, we announced that we were stopping Worlds, and we didn't say we were going to make a replacement, because we hadn't figured that out yet. And we got a lot of feedback, because that was a horrible idea, and we took that feedback and realized that

we couldn't just get rid of Worlds, and we vamped it. And so it came back in a slightly different form, but a pretty cool form. Okay, at this event, Junaya Iyanaga from Japan defeated Richard Bland of England. So this top eight was a really good top eight. Conley Woods, Paulo Vitor Damoduroso,

Luis Scott Fargas, Josh Utterladen, Craig Wesco. Like all people that have, honest to God, well, some of them are in the Hall of Fame Paul is in the Hall of Fame Louise is in the Hall of Fame I believe that Conley and Josh and Craig all have a shot

at getting in the Hall of Fame so this was a high octane top 8 okay the last story my favorite story of this has nothing once again to do with worlds

so for those by the way who have heard I did a podcast on walking the plane so some of the stuff I'm telling I'm going to tell you a slightly different version of it. But the story I'm telling you, there's a longer version of the story.

You can listen to that podcast. But anyway, what happened is, Nate and Sean had made the Philadelphia video. It went over really well. They decided it would be fun to go to Worlds, but they didn't have the money to go to Worlds. So they did a Kickstarter. So what a Kickstarter is, for those unaware, it's a website that people can propose things they want. People can donate money, and then if they're able to make the thing they do, they promise the people something for putting the money in. So what the promise on this Kickstarter

was, they were going to give them access to the video first, and then they give them a little bonus that wouldn't be in the normal video. So anyway, I find out that Nate and Sean are going to be there. I call up Nate, who I've never met before, although Nate knows who I am because he's a Magic player, and obviously I'm well-known in Magic circles. And I say, hey, Nate, you know, it's Mark Rosewater. I really enjoyed your video, and I'm going to be at Worlds at the same time you are.

I would love to somehow be involved in your video. And Nate was like, okay, well, can we interview you? I'm like, you can gladly interview me, but what I meant is I'm going to do something a little more offbeat, a little more just doing an interview. And so Nate thought and came back to me and he said, okay, I have an idea for a

Willy Wonka parody. Can you sing? And I said, no, I can't sing, but I like the way you're thinking. So what he ended up coming up with is this bit. I'm going to ruin the bit a little bit just to explain the story. So the idea of the bit was he's interviewing me, and he says, at first, a few innocent questions. Then he goes, so I hear you're not that good at magic.

And I go, no, I mean, I'm not. I mean, for R&D, I'm on the lower end because they're all former pro players. But, I mean, I've been playing the magic since the beginning. I'm playing for 20 years. I'm not too shabby. And so he challenges me. And then it's me playing him as the wizard. And I manage to beat him.

And I laugh maniacally. And then he says, does he get to pick the next game? And I say, yes. And he cut. And it's me and Nate, now not in his wizard attire for some reason, dressed on a basketball court playing basketball, where through the power of editing, I managed to beat him. He's actually a very good basketball player, and I'm horrible,

so Sean and his editing makes me somehow appear that I win. Oh, they look really closely. I have no idea what I'm doing. So anyway, in order to shoot this, we had to go to a basketball court. So they scouted one out, and then Nate and Sean and I hopped on a little trolley one day and went out and shot this basketball scene um I didn't really know them before this and I had a chance you know in fact in some ways having to spend time with them traveling to and from the site I got to talk with them get to know them um I had a great time a lot of fun making making the

video um I then promised I said the promise I made to Nate was it was a lot of fun, look, whenever you and I are in the same city at the same time, and you're shooting a video, I'll gladly be in the video. So I've been in, I don't know, five or six walking the plane. So whenever I'm in the same place he is, I always will do something with them. And it's fun. They're a blast to work with. They're, they're, they're great. Um, oh, the one story here though is, so he shoots that one little segment.

Um, and I really wanted people to see it, because I have a lot of people who track me on social media. I'm like, oh, it'll be fun. I wanted them to see this. But Nate and Seanan decided that they liked it so much that they wanted to save it for the bonus footage for the people on the Kickstarter. And I was like, oh, okay. And so

what needed to happen was, well, as soon as someone from the Kickstarter, they had a link. They were allowed to post the link. So I'm like, okay, well, one of them will post the link. Once it's public, then I can, you know, retweet the link or I can point toward it. But I have to wait for somebody who's a Kickstarter person to post it.

So I'm waiting and waiting and waiting. Nobody's posting it. Because I think they're like, oh, this is private. I'm not supposed to post this. And so finally, Nate takes pity on me and he cut a little segment that's just our segment that he called The Morrow Project. So if you've never seen it,

you can go look at The Morrow Project. It is, I believe, on YouTube. And you can see, I mean, I ruined a little bit of some of the surprise of it, but it's still fun to watch. And you can see me and Nate doing our very first acting together. And like I said, our very fruitful relationship.

We've gone on and done a lot of stuff. The other thing, by the way, you've never seen, there's a video that he and I did for the World Championship. I forget the name of the episode, though, where he and I did a parody of The Princess Bride, which is by far the best thing he and I, I mean, that I've been involved in, together, the best thing he and I together have done. If I've been involved in. Together, the best thing he and I together have done.

If you've never seen that, I'd give it a peek. Okay, so I managed to get through the year just in time because I just got to work. So to recap, 2011 was a chock-full year. A lot of fun happened. Magic was definitely finding its stride set-wise. Scars of Mirrodin Block went over well. Innistrad went over even better. We had just lots and lots of things.

Master's Edition, Dual Deck Knights vs. Dragons, Commander, very first Commander, Front of All Legends, Dual Deck Ajani vs. Nicol Bolas, the Premium Deck Series with tons of different products. And we had all the Pro Tours.

But anyway, it was a fun, fun time. A lot of well was done. So anyway, that is 2011 in a nutshell. But I am now in the parking space and we know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of me talking magic,

it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.