Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #268 - PAX 2015

Episode Date: October 9, 2015

Wizards pulled out all the stops with Magic at the Penny Arcade Expo held in Seattle this past August. This podcast talks all about it, including the full tale of my crazy seventeen-hour day.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so for me, yesterday we just finished PAX. I know this is the future for you. I'm talking about it in the future. The past for you guys. But anyway, I wanted to talk all about the experience of PAX and Magic at PAX. It was pretty cool. A lot of stuff happened. And I'm going to tell some behind-the-scenes stories. And for those that weren't there, which is the majority of you probably, just sort of tell you what happened and talk about it. Okay, so for those that don't know, PAC stands for Penny Arcade Expo. So Penny Arcade is a webcomic. Some of you might be familiar with it. They,

I don't know, a number of years ago, decided to make a show sort of based around their interests, mostly video games and such. But anyway, Pin Your Kid Expo, known as PAX, has grown. It's exploded. Now there's, there's now four PAXs. This is now called PAX Prime. And there's PAX East, which is in Boston.

And there's PAX South, which I think is in Austin. And there's PAX Australia, which is in Australia. So anyway, it's become this pretty big series of shows. So this year, Wizards decided that the timing of PAX was really good to do a big splash about our upcoming set, Battle for Zendikar. So we decided we were going all out, And we've always done stuff with PAX. Normally there's a PAX party we do. So we always are somewhat involved with PAX.

But this year, like, we were pulling the stops out. Okay, so I'm going to walk through all sorts of different things that we did. Starting with, okay, so I get there in the morning. On Friday morning. In fact, I wasn't working Friday morning. I took my son to go. He'd never been to PAX before, and he's 11. Anyway, Adam had a great time.

But anyway, I walk up, first day, and the first thing you see when you get to the annex is there's this giant 30-foot-tall Eldrazi busting out of the ground, smashing through the glass. tall Eldrazi busting out of the ground, smashing through the glass. It's breaking a police car and breaking a lamppost. So it's something we had planned. I knew that we were doing.

I'd seen the pictures of it. I'd seen art and models and stuff. But it's one thing to know you're doing and another thing to see it. It was impressive. It was really cool. It's just this big giant Eldrazi and you sort of walk really cool. It's just this big, giant Eldrazi. You sort of walk underneath it. And, like, it had this fist that was, like, smashing a police car,

and the police car was up in the air. And, you know, it was really cool. If you haven't gone online and seen pictures, I would go online and see pictures. So it was really neat coming. And the thing that was fun all week long, or all weekend long, was watching people, like, come take selfies and stuff with it. There's like a police officer that went next to the car, took a selfie. It was just fun watching people interact with it.

And it was a very cool, bold way to say, it is the Eldrazi. The Eldrazi are here. It was very neat. And then inside the hall, the whole place was decked out to be very Zendikari. There were hedrons, and there were core, and there were just lots of cool things. So anyway, first thing I come in, you see that.

Then you walk inside, and the first thing I see are cosplayers. So we had the Origin 5 all being cosplayed by lovely cosplayers. And you could pose with them, take pictures, and talk with them because they're in character. You can talk with them. It's fun. Jace may or may not have been played by one Gavin Verhey. But anyway, and then when you come in, we were... Really, there were two floors that were magic activities. And then the staff, there's stuff on the second floor for the staff.

But there was a basement in the main floor. So on the main floor, when you first walk in, there's a place to learn how to play. The Lady Planeswalkers Society was graciously teaching people how to play. We were demoing Arena of the Planeswalkers, which is the board game that our sister company Hasbro makes, that we've been working with. It's like, you know what Heroscape

is. It's like the game Heroscape, but it's planeswalker battles. And so you get to play one of the planeswalkers. The first set comes with the Origin 5, comes with Gideon, Jace, Liliana, Chandra, and Nissa. And you can pick one of the planeswalkers and you get little miniatures that represent

both your planeswalker in full color and your creatures that are monocolor of your color and that you get to battle them. You get to have a real, live-scale creature duel and you have cards representing magical spells you can cast and you have creatures that you're using. Anyway, it's really cool. I think they showed off, or at least teased,

the expansion for Battle for the End of the Car. There's a few new planeswalkers you can play. You can now play Onyxilus or play Kiora, which is pretty cool. Anyway, also downstairs, we had announced this week that we are doing... What's it called? See, I drive my Blakely thing. We are doing... I'm going to blink on it. It's a video game that

Okay, it's going to come back to me. We just announced that we are doing a licensing with a brand new video game that has I hate when I can't remember things. I apologize people that I can't remember your name. It'll come to me. Today's the first day of school for my kids,

so I got up really, really, really early. So hopefully I will be coherent. It'll come to me. I'll get it. So we also had, there was all sorts of stuff you could buy. There was a lot of exclusives. In the preview,

which I'll talk about in a bit, I wore an Eldrazi shirt that I got there. It was an Eldrazi exclusive. Everybody was like, where'd you get that shirt? Well, I wore an Eldrazi shirt that I got there. It was an Eldrazi exclusive. Everybody would say, where did you get that shirt? Well, I got it exclusive there. I got it there. And then there was a giant area for spectators. So one of the big things going on the weekend

was the World Championship was going on. So this year, we had 24 competitors. You had to be invited. You had to earn it by being a top player, winning a pro tour, or doing really well with pro points, or being the top rated in particular geographical section.

Anyway, everyone played, and in the end, when the dust settled, the top four, if I remember this correctly, was Paul Reitzel, Seth Mansfield, Owen Turnwald and Sam Black so four Americans, so interestingly the Americans

so the very first Pro Tour not Pro Tour, the very first World Championship ever, back in 1994 was won by Zach Dolan, who was an American then in 1998 it was won by Brian Seldon, an American and then in 2000 it was won by Brian Seldon, an American. And then in 2000, it was won by John Finkel, an American. But since 2000, an American has never won. America has come in second a bunch

of times, often that person being Pat Chapin. But an American had not won. So finally, America reclaims the title. So I think that's our fourth title. I think the Japanese had passed us, so I think we tied up the Japanese again, I believe. Okay, so there was an area where you could watch commentators. So the idea was, all the commentating was done live, and then the actual play was in the basement. We'll get to the basement in a second.

But anyway, there was this live commentating going on, and you can watch Rich and all the different commentators talk to people, do the interviews, and you could see it and all the different commentators talk to people do the interviews and you can see it all live which was very cool and then

if you go to the basement and the basement was where the tournament was taking place it was a really cool decked out thing with even more hedrons and stuff

and then there was places to play there were tournaments running all weekend you could go down and play in different tournaments I think there was a league going on and there was a Rise of the There were tournaments running all weekend. You could go down and play in different tournaments. I think there was a league going on.

And there was a Rise of the Eldrazi booster draft. So you could go do a flashback draft with Rise of the Eldrazi. Because obviously we were, there was a big Eldrazi theme for the weekend. Because we were battling for Zendikar. And then in the one back corner was a room that we used for panels. We did panels all weekend. So let me talk about our panels. So I was involved in two panels.

The first panel was drive to work live. So for the first time ever, I did a drive to work not in a car, but we mimicked a car. So what we did is we had these two seats, and I had a steering wheel, and then behind us, we had video of a car going. Although it's funny that they got like this loop. So it was like a seven-second loop.

So if you watch, you can see this online because we recorded it and put it online. It's on YouTube. Just go to YouTube and say Drive to Work Live. I think you'll be able to find it. It's me and Matt Cavato was my carpool guest. And so what happened was we had this little loop behind us. It was like a seven second loop. So if you're watching, we keep driving by this one house. We made fun of it during the show.

But anyway, so Matt was my guest. It was an hour long, because that's how long we had. So we joked that there was some traffic. We actually did two different segments. We talked about original Zendikar, and I shared some stories that I had never told about Zendikar. And hopefully you guys have listened to this.

I think what we're going to do is we post it as a video. If all went according to plan, I'm also trying to post it as a podcast with the audio. I don't know if that's happening. I mean, it hasn't happened in my time yet. Hopefully by your time it's happened. Okay, and then the second half was Mailbag with Matt, where live people could write notes on cards.

And so we talked about Zen the Card, shared some stories that we'd never shared before. And then we did Mailbag with Matt, and people asked all sorts of questions, a lot of which, because there's a good overlap, I think, between my blog-a-tog audience and my drive-to-work audience. And so I had a lot of blog-a-tog-ish questions where people were joking about things that I talked about on my blog. And Matt had no idea what the question meant.

And I kept having to interpret what the question meant. So that was fun. And you can see that. So then, that was the very first panel. That was the first panel on Saturday. On Friday, we had panels. We had a Vorthos panel. We had a panel if you want to learn how to come

work at Wizards. There was a panel that R&D did, talking about design development. There was a really big panel that was on Twitch that the creative team did, talking about the creative for Battle for Zendikar. There was a world building panel with both Magic and D&D.

There was a live, right after my live driveD. There was a live, right after my live drive to work was a live limited resources panel where Marshall and LSV and Ryan all came together and then brought up some of the other hosts, John and Brian. Anyway, and then the last, the final panel was Blogatog Live that I did.

It was very funny because they were concerned because there was a question and answer portion mailbag with Matt with my Drive to Work and also there's going to be a question and answer point

with Blogatog. And there was a little concern that they might just ask the same questions and I said, no, no, no. In between Drive to Work Live and Blogatog Live,

we're doing our big announcement of Battle for Zendikar. So I'm pretty sure that the Live and Blogatog Live, we're doing our big announcement of Battle for Zendikar. So I'm pretty sure that the questions on Blogatog Live will be about Battle for Zendikar, and they mostly were. But anyway, so the idea was, everything was done on my blog. Allison from our social media was on. As we were saying things, she would post them. But there's some technical difficulties,

so poor Allison in the middle of us trying to sort of post pictures, things went a little askew. Uh, then I started answering questions and then she had to type everything. The plan was I would answer questions and she would type on my blog what I had said. And so it was, um, uh, I felt bad cause I talk fast and there were a lot of questions and Allison was trying desperately to keep up. So you can go, by the way, if you go look at Blog Talk Live through where I say I'm leaving,

there's a, I mean, at this point, at this point it's six weeks later, so I'm not sure how easy it is to find. But if you scroll back, there's a whole section where you can see Allison typing stuff in as I answer questions. It was a lot of fun. I love meeting people.

The weekend gave me a lot of chance to meet people and shake hands and sign autographs and take pictures and answer questions and I had a blast I love interacting if you can't tell from all the social media I already do I do like interacting with you guys so it was fun interacting with you in person

okay so let's get to the main event of the week I mean well one of the main events was the world championship that was a big big deal I was I've been to every world championship of the week. I mean, well, one of the main events was the World Championship. That was a big, big deal. I was, I've been to every World Championship, so I was,

I definitely was at this World Championship. I got to see some of it. I was not there for all of it just because my family was actually on vacation the week of PAX. We did not realize at the time we had made the vacation how much stuff at PAX was going on. But, so Saturday, so let me talk about my Saturday day. That was my crazy day.

So we're going to talk about my Saturday. Friday, mostly, I was just there with my son for a little bit to walk around PAX and let him play games that don't exist yet or aren't out yet. And it was fun sharing that with my son. Of my three kids, he is the geekiest of the three. And so I get to share my love of games.

I mean, all my kids love games, but he loves video games. So I got to share video games with him. It was fun. Anyway, that was Friday. So Saturday, okay, so my call time Saturday was 6.45 a.m. A.m. So a little background to this. So we're doing a big Battle for Zendikar show.

We're going to do a giant preview of everything, and we're going to stream it live. And so we got Will Whedon and Ashley Burch, two sort of geek celebrities, if you will, to come be the host for the show. And then I was informed that I was going to be doing talking mechanics. And then I was told that Doug would be talking about story. So we had a meeting and Doug wasn't able to come to the meeting. So he sent Kelly Diggs as his replacement. And we talked all about what was going to go on and help plan things out and plot it and get the structure and everything. And then I remember going back to talk to Doug just to make sure, you know, I didn't want us repeating this.

I made sure we were saying different things. To find out that Doug didn't even know that he was in the panel. They had somehow accidentally not told him. So, but anyway, so 6.45am, we had done a lot of preparation. This was a big show.

I had numerous meetings. We were plotting things out. And even though I was on vacation, I'd been practicing all week. So 6.45 a.m. we have to show up because we want to be able to do the run-through twice before we open the doors. That's why it was so early. Because we wanted to do it actually on stage and practice with all the graphics and everything. Because it was a big deal. Okay, so let's talk about our host real quick. So Will Whedon.

I had met Will really, really briefly. Not in a way he would ever remember me, but I had met him at PAX for two seconds, you know, I don't know, six years earlier, seven years earlier. I had met him and I just said to him I had heard a rumor that he played Magic. And he had told me that

he had played a lot during Ice Age. He was really, really seriously in it during Ice Age, very competitive. He still played from time to time, but much more casually. And then, so anyway, I... So, Will's a Magic player, so it was pretty cool. We thought it would be fun to... And

Ashley, I think Ashley plays Magic duels. I don't think she will obviously play Magic much more um but Ashley uh okay I don't know

the name of her show she does uh she's a YouTube personality and does a show all about um video gaming um and so

we brought them in to be the hosts and um Graham Stark of well not just Graham Stark uh the whole

uh Loading Red running crew, I think, led by Graham, um, or maybe it was just Graham and Kathleen, I'm not sure. Uh, well, Graham and Kathleen were the ones that came in, and so they were writing the script. Uh, we obviously, uh, each person sort of, I structured on my section, and Doug structured his section, and then they put together a script that sort of hit the points that were going to be made. Um, my section was mostly beats, was like, I wanted to make sure Will knew the area I was going

and the points I was making, but I had a lot to say, so I didn't write it all out. Just like, make sure you ask me about this thing, and I'm going to talk about this stuff. So anyway, the beat had been put out, and so it's early in the morning. It's 6.45 in the morning. Now, like I said, normally when I get my kids off to school, I get up crazy early. So even though it was the summer, I hadn't been up that early for a while. At least I'm not completely foreign to the idea of getting up that early. But it was clearly crazy early for everybody.

And so the first run-through was mostly us just trying to figure out the order of things and what's the pictures. And I remember, so we did it once, and then we said, okay, let's do a full run through again. So we did the second run through and the second run through was a pretty good run through. Like, I mean, one of the problems is we were going to have all these screaming Magic fans and really what you wanted to do is talk to the Magic fans, but when they're not there, you know, I kept talking to Will because there was no one to talk to because there wasn't screaming fans. And they kept saying, you have to talk to the screaming fans.

Like, I will. When there's screaming fans, I'll talk to the screaming fans. I go, it's just very easy when no one's here to just talk to Will. So we did it. We went through, and we made a few mistakes and cleaned some stuff up and did some clarifications of things. There's a lot of technical wording sometimes and stuff, especially for Will and for Ashley, who were less familiar than Doug and I in the day-to-day magic

stuff, just making sure all the terminology is correct. And anyway, both Will and Ashley were great. They were wonderful sports being there at 6.45 in the morning. We did our run-through and, okay, so we have a general sense of how it's going on. I got a few notes. We did our run through and okay. So we have a general sense of how it's going on. I got a few notes. We made

sure all the slides were correct. We fixed up a few things. We clarified a few questions and then okay. So next I got to get ready for Vlogatog Live. So Matt and I meet up and we decided we're going to go early because

we need to make sure that everything, Matt had gotten the, someone had, I mean, Matt didn't do this, but somebody, we had pre-meetings to say what we needed for all the panels and everything, as well as the preview show. So we had a lot of pre-meetings to make sure everything was running smoothly. So one of the things we had said is, what do you need to do Drive to Work Live? And I said, I need two seats, I need a steering wheel, and it'd be kind of cool if we could have, you know, a moving car behind

us. That'd be kind of cool. Also, there's something else we did that was fun, I'll get to in my little story in a second. So, we get there, and there's a, like, there's tables set up for panels, because it's supposed to be panels, and there's cameras and lights and all sorts of stuff. And they say, oh, well, do you guys need anything special? And we're like,

no, we just need a couple chairs. And then we realize, oh, wait a minute, we have a video of a car behind us. That meant we had to be positioned in front of the screen, which is off to the side. It's not where the table panel is.

So we need to do that, and we need to figure out chairs, and they had to move the camera to get the angle. If you see the video, by the screen, which is off to the side. It's not where the table panel is. So we need to do that, and we need to figure out chairs, and they had to move the camera to get the angle. If you see the video, by the way, it's really funny. They set up the video so you really get a sense of us driving.

But anyway, luckily we got there early, but it turns out that ours was a lot more technically complicated than we realized. Meanwhile, we had what we call a surprise and delight. I'll let you in on this because the story's better, I guess, if you know what's going to happen. So one of the things that we were going to do was we broke up our talk into two sections.

First section talked about Zendikar. We couldn't really talk about Battle for Zendikar yet. It was before all the Battle for Zendikar stuff happened. And it's kind of dangerous talking about stuff in which everything's not public yet. So we decided we'd talk about Zendikar, which was related. And we've got a bunch of stories that people didn't know yet. And then the second part was going to be Mailbag with Matt. But we needed a transition because people were going to write in questions

while we're doing the Zendikar part. And then we needed a way to get all the postcards. Basically at the beginning, everyone came in, sat down. There was like a hundred seats in the theater. I think we mostly filled up. We got like maybe 80 people.

like 100 seats in the theater. I think we mostly filled up. We got like maybe 80 people. And so people got postcards and they could write their questions on them. And then they were collected. And then the idea was halfway through when we transitioned, we needed to transition so that Matt could get the cards. So we decided we'd do a little shtick where I pulled into a drive-thru donut place and then we would order some donuts, and we'd get donuts, and then Matt would get,

along with the donuts, we'd get the cards. And Matt Tabak graciously agreed to be the donut salesman. And then Matt and I got a pretty cool idea. We're like, well, while we're getting donuts, why don't we just get donuts for everybody? Let's get donuts for the audience.

That'd be pretty cool. You know, there was only 100 seats. It wasn't, you know, it was manageable. So the idea was, okay, we'll get donuts for everybody? Let's get donuts for the audience. That'd be pretty cool. You know, there was only 100 seats. It wasn't, you know, it was manageable. So the idea was, okay, we'll get donuts for everybody. And everybody said, that's an awesome idea. So that morning, they sent people out to get donuts. And so the people had called ahead to get the donuts. And because it's packed, they were so busy, they were like, oh, we can't take phone orders.

You're going to have to come in. And so they came in, and they were just waiting a long time. And we weren't sure whether or not they were going to show up before the show And so they came in, and they were just waiting a long time, and we weren't sure whether or not they were going to show up before the show even began, but luckily they showed up right before we began. We got the donuts, we hid them, and then, so we did the Zen in the car part of the show, and like I said, this is

all online, so you can go listen to this. Hopefully, it's also been podcasted, and you can listen to that. Hopefully you have, and I'm just telling you things you already know. And then, Matt came, and we did that. And Matt came up with a pretty funny idea, which was the payment for the donuts was that he was going to say, you owe me five. So I would stand up and try to high five him.

And then, so for those who don't know the context of this, is on my blog, whenever people do something good, people in my blog would go, I really like thing X. Can you please give so-and-so a high five? And when I can, I'll actually take a picture of me high-fiving them. I don't take a picture of everybody being high-fived, but I high-five people. And so somebody liked something Matt had done and said, could you high-five Matt Tabak? And my reply was, I'll try.

So Matt's really tall. Matt's like 6'8". I'm 5'5". He's over a foot taller than me. So we decided we were going to film it. So we did it on Vine. Vine's a six-second video loop. It's part of YouTube.

So we did a Vine on it and me trying to high-five him. And it's six seconds and me not able to high-five him. So the funny thing is, I was showing that Vine to our... We have a new communications person that came recently and so I was just showing them some stuff we had done and for some reason the vine came up so I showed them the vine and it had

288,000 views which is pretty crazy for a vine I mean I'm sure there are vines that get millions of views but for me for having a vine that was pretty crazy and he was our communication guy he was like wow a lot of people are watching this Vine. So we recreated that live.

I don't know whether or not I got captured. I didn't have enough chance to watch the video. It might have been captured in the video. It might be people laughing. And I get out of the car. And then people laugh. I don't know whether you see me doing the high five. I told the cameraman I was going to do it.

So maybe he was able to get it. Hopefully he was. But anyway, I did that. And then we got back. And then we did the mailbag with Matt. Went really well. Like I said, there were a lot of questions that were in-joke questions that I understood, but Matt was like, I have no idea what they're asking. One of the cards

was just Delver Secrets? Which was a joke because on Blogatog, there's people who believe that Delver Secrets shouldn't be blue, and they just will not let the topic go, and so it keeps coming up, and it's just this running joke of like,

I'll answer some innocent question about something else, and they go, Delver Secrets? Like, you know, like somehow, my answer here meant that now Delver Secrets didn't belong in blue, so. Anyway, right after my panel was the limited resource panel, which I walked out, they were getting up. So after my panel, I got at a table.

So after both panels, I did this, which is I did a meet and greet. I meet people. I shook their hands. I talked to them, signed cards, took pictures. In general, by the way, if you ever see me, I'm always happy to sign cards. I'm always happy to take pictures. I mean, if I'm out in public, it's not a magic event. And with my family, I mean, if I'm out in public, it's not a magic event.

And with my family, I mean, quickly. But, you know, I'm always happy to meet fans and do pictures to sign stuff. I'm not, please don't feel like, some people get so nervous when they meet me and I feel so bad. I'm like, I'm not going to bite you, you know. So anyway, so I did my panel. And then, what was next? So then I had a bunch of interviews. Um, so one of

the fun things about my job is, uh, as spokesperson, uh, I do a lot of interviews and, uh, like recently, oh, recently for me, but, uh, like I managed to interview for the AV, the, uh, the Onion AV Club, which is a real cool thing that does a lot of geeky type things. And I managed to do, last year, like I interviewed for Wired, or the German Wired, and the, what's the big London

paper I did? But anyway, I have a chance to do an interview for lots of different things. It's a lot of fun. It's fun doing the interviews and, you know, different reporters ask different questions. And so, I of fun. It's fun doing the interviews and, you know, different reporters always ask different questions. And so, I think this time I got interviewed by, um, I don't remember, I don't want to

name all of them because I'm going to mess up. And, uh, so, um, but anyway, also, by the way, now that I do interviews in English, I also had some Japanese interviews. So Japanese interviews are interesting because I don't speak Japanese. So there's a translator,

one of the wizards employees who interacts with the Japanese. And so she'll, you know, they'll ask questions, she'll translate, then I'll answer in English and she'll translate. It's a very interesting experience

being interviewed in another language. So, okay. So then I think I managed to eat a little bit. And then at... So there was a big event we were doing called the Battle for Zendikar event. And the way it worked is we got a whole bunch of magic celebrities, some of which were actual, you know, celebrities who played magic. Some were wizards employing stuff that are, you know, celebrities in the magic world.

And so we were playing the Eldrazi. It was three hours long. We were given an Eldrazi deck and then we played against the audience and they had three choices. They could play a mono-white core deck, they could play a red-blue, I'm sorry, a red-green landfall deck,

or they could play a white-green-blue ally deck. I think the simplest they were made so the core was the simplest to play, and the allies were the hardest to play. So depending on how skilled the player was, we could guide them toward a deck. And then we were playing the Odrazi. And the idea was, we played them,

and they either would win or lose. If they won, the Zendikari sort of got a point, and if they lost, they didn't get a point. And every time the Zendikari had a win, you would see an Eldrazi on the screen, and it would start becoming red. It would fill up with red as more Zendikari victories happened.

And then, when the Zendikaris got enough victory, when the creature was all red, they would preview a card. And we had a whole bunch of card previews. And so this was how we did our previews, is you had to play. People lined up in line. They lined up way early.

And so it was just fun. I think I played 11 matches. I went 7-4. And anyway, I had a great time. It was real fun. And it was neat. It was neat meeting everybody and playing everybody. It was fun.

We could play Rolling the Eldrazi. Will had a great time. I'll get to that in a second. Okay, so afterwards, uh, we, there's a short break

between that event and us doing the live show. So, I was assigned a handler, a handler. Like, I don't know, I don't think anybody else

had a handler. I think I was the only one to have a handler. I don't know why. Maybe they think I'm just, who knows. I'm reckless. Um,

but anyway, I had to go. I had, um, put on, I had to get changed. I had a special, I had I'm reckless. But anyway, I had to go. I had to get changed. I had a different shirt. In fact, I had three wardrobe changes. I wore one shirt for my life to drive to work. I wore a different shirt because all the people playing the Eldrazi wore the same shirt at the Battle for Zendikar event.

And then I wore a different shirt. I'm showing off one of the shirts, the Eldrazi shirt, at the preview show. Okay, so I had a little bit more to eat, had some water. I got changed. I got my makeup done. And then I'm escorted back. So they came and got the four of us.

So it was me and Doug and Will and Ashley. And we're joking around. So Will has decided, by the way, at this point, he had been playing in the event, and normally I guess he plays real fast, aggressive decks. He wasn't really used to doing a ramp into a giant creature deck, but he really had fun. He liked it.

And the Eldrazi had grown on him, and so he was saying to me that he really felt that the event had taught him that the Eldrazi were misunderstood, that they were just creatures, they were hungry, they were locked away, no one let them eat, and they're just hungry. Let them out, let them eat. And so he decided that in the show he was going to try to take the side of the Eldrazi. Now be aware, be aware, we had rehearsed the show.

This whole angle we were taking was not something we had rehearsed. But the good news is I actually have improv training. I talk about in college I ran an improvisation group. So I was willing to go with the flow. I mean, I knew my material very well. And so we started the show and now they're screaming.

Like before we're practicing, I keep looking at Will because there aren't screaming fans. Now there's screaming fans. People are very excited. And so the way the show worked is Will and Ashley came out. They introduced stuff.

Then Doug came out. And then Will and Ashley talked a little bit more and then I came out and then they did a little wrap up and so I'm watching from the monitors and back and the audience is screaming, real excited and Doug shows off Gideon and they're real excited about that and he announces that we're doing an art book for Zayn the Car

they're real excited about that Graham from Loading Red Run came on stage to do a little bit and he announces that we're doing an art book for Zayn Dakar. They were excited about that. Graham from Loading Red Red came on stage to do a little bit of that. Graham was also involved. So we actually had five performers, I guess. I forgot Graham. So then my turn to come out. And so I come out, and Will, like I said,

Will had warned me that he was going to do this. It wasn't like I was surprised. I didn't know. He told me ahead of time. And so come on, he starts saying how he's decided the Eldrazi are just misunderstood. And so I'm goofing around with him because that's what we're doing. But meanwhile, like in my head,

I have, so the show is like a 45-minute show and about 20 minutes of it was me explaining a lot. And I knew I had, I had a lot of stuff I had to explain. That when we first plotted it out, I said to them, I go,

I have like between 20 and 25 minutes of material. And they're like, well, we want to go much over 45 minutes. I think the show might have gone 50. And I'm like, okay,

I just, I have a lot to say. And so we get out there and I start doing my thing and it's fun and like, there's a Will has a teleprompter

because Will has specific lines my I just have I outline mine so mine's not teleprompter um but I just I had practiced it a lot

so I knew the order of what I was saying and this was the first time I got to talk about Battle for Zendikar like I say this all the time

but like I had turned over the set 16 months earlier and I can't say anything so I'm always excited people are like you seem so excited every time you talk about Magic

I'm like because I've been wanting to talk about it forever and I finally get a chance to talk about it so I was excited and Battle for Semicard

has a lot of moving parts there's a lot going on I started by explaining the Adrazi and what we did is we showed cards that we had previewed at the event

and so I was walking through I think there were 10 cards. And I'm like, here's this card. Here's what it means in this card. And I used the cards as a mean to describe all the different things we had done with the set. I first talked about all the Eldrazi components. Then I talked about all the Zendikari components.

I introduced all the mechanics. I explained the philosophy. I talked about what we were doing to capture the Eldrazi. I mean, all of this is between my column and the preview show and all this stuff, I assume you guys well know by now. I mean, as of hearing this, Battle for Zendikar, you guys have played Battle for Zendikar.

It's not just a thing. I think you've played it. I think I'm six weeks ahead, so I think you've played it by the time you're hearing this. I'm assuming, I mean, I'm assuming everything's known, so I'm not worrying about censoring myself here. So anyway, so the first part is I'm talking about the cards. That takes a good bit. And then we get to the section where I get to show off the non-basic lands. So I had mentioned on my blog, we didn't want people anticipating

the fetch lands, and we finally get to the preview show, and the first thing we said is, okay, no fetch lands. Because we want to be focusing on the cool things and not on what isn't there. So I put out a post on my blog saying, hey guys, and I was very careful, by the way, for those who want to go back and read, because as you'll see in a second,

I couldn't just say, hey, you're not going to open fetchlands in Battle for Zendikar, because that would be technically not true. So what I said was, a lot of you are expecting a rare cycle of fetch lands. I'm sorry to say, they're not going to be fetch lands. Instead, they're going to be a new cycle of duels.

I said that. And then, because I was sort of saying they're not going to be fetch lands, I also said, but a lot of people are excited for full art lands. We are doing full art lands, basic lands. So I got to show off the full art lands. And we knew last time, I mentioned this on stage, that we did market research on Zendikar, and the number one, I have to quote this, I do my air quotes, the favorite mechanic of the set was full art land. The real favorite actual mechanic was landfall, because that's a mechanic, but the favorite

thing in the set was full art lands. So we knew we were going to come back, we knew we were going to do that again. So I show off the four-art lands and they just start screaming. We have to not talk for like a minute while they're screaming. Because what we did is we showed the plains and then made it a little smaller and showed the island beside it. So we showed all five at once. And it was one cycle. There's four cycles.

It was one cycle by an artist named Tin Washu. I learned his name. How to pronounce his name because he had a tricky name for me. So, we do that, and then I get a preview, the dual land cycle. As of this,

people are arguing what to call them. I'm sure by the time you heard this, some name has been cemented, but there's a couple different names, so I don't know what the nickname has been decided upon yet. But there are lands in which they enter, they're allied duels, they enter the battlefield untapped, as long as you control two or more basic lands.

They were designed because they work really well in two and three color decks, but not as good in four and five. And they have basic land types, which means they play really well with the fetch lands. In standard, the ones with Constant Dark here, and in modern, both sets. So anyway, I show off the dual lands, people here, and the modern bull sets. So anyway, I show off the dual lands. People are really excited.

They're screaming. And then I think Will... Because Will had been doing a lot of different things, the person running the teleprompter was confused where they were supposed to be, because Will was doing a lot of improvising.

And so there's one point where Will asked me about hey, these expansion symbols, which was actually a question he was supposed to ask me about the next thing we're going to talk about. And it was kind of fun to come like, oh no, these are different Will.

To Will's credit, the thing I love about Will was, even when there's a mistake, he played it off real funny. It was funny. credit, the thing I love about Will was even when there was a mistake, he played it off real funny. It was funny. He had a lot of fun. You know, it was definitely,

I really enjoyed working with Will. I didn't actually get to work with Ashley too much. I got to meet Ashley, but like literally when I'm on stage, Ashley wasn't on stage

when Ashley was on stage. But I did get a chance to interact with Will and that was a lot of fun. And like I said, even when we make a mistake, it was all sort of fun and we played off really well

and I think Will did a great job okay so the next thing is Will then says hey these dual limbs are cool wouldn't they be neat

in full art and that's the reveal of Zendikar Expedition so we had done this cool thing it's a promotion to the set you guys must I don't need to spend

a lot of time telling you what it is I don't think you know what it is but I was revealing Zendikar Expedition for telling you what it is, I don't think you know what it is, but I was revealing Zen Mikara Expeditions for the very first time, which is a pretty big deal.

You know, the chance to get full art duels from Ravnica, or full art fetch lands, or full art shock lands, all with brand new art, all set on Zen Mikara

with a new frame and premium foil, and anyway, exciting stuff. People were very excited. And then at the end of it, the shit, the way it worked was I showed off the battle for Zendikar duels

and then I said to everybody there were two more ten card cycles, but I didn't say what they were. And so at the end of the show, we wanted to have a mic drop moment. So Will and Ashley are joking. Ashley's like, oh, Mark didn't tell you? Here they are. She has two cards

in her hand. She shows them to Will, and he gasps. And then when they ended, they showed them to everybody, and everybody, the show ended with everybody screaming because they were very excited. So after that, we finished that. I got off. I was pumped. The show went really well. Then I had an interview with, I'm not going to remember names. I had an interview.

I did a lot of interviews. But anyway, I did an interview after that. And then after that, there was a party. And so the magic party, I talked to lots of people and answered questions or clarified some things about what I had said and talked to a lot of people and signed more autographs and took more pictures. It was a whole bunch of food because we had a party. We had a lot of food.

And I managed to get some dinner We had a lot of food, and I managed to get some more, some dinner, and I had a lot of dessert. They did little tiny, like, chocolate mousse cups that were really good. They were really tiny, and so I ate one, and I was like, that's good. So I ate another one, and I ended up eating only five. And somebody who came to my autograph, it was very funny, he goes, I just, I wanted you to finish before I come out here. I didn't want to bug you. And he goes, I was wondering how many of those you would eat.

And I was like, I was hungry. I just did a big show. I was hungry. But anyway, so there was a fun party. And that party lasted until 1130. And so I was able to get out of there at 1145. So that means that day started at 645 a.m. and ended at 1145 p.m. It was an awesome day. Everything went really well. The show went well. The Battle for Zendikar thing was cool. The previews were awesome. But that was my big day.

I also worked on Monday. I took Sunday off. Like I said, my family vacation was actually this week. And then Monday went back. I had a fun time Monday for the live blog talk. Allison and I went around taking all sorts of pictures

of me all over the place some of those pictures ended up on blog talk I should actually ask I should ask Allison for the ones we didn't get to post I should ask her to send them to me so I can actually post them

on blog talk but anyway like I said we did the live blog talk and that was packed so a couple I'm not too far from work so a couple roundups We did the live blog talk, and that was packed. So a couple, I'm not too far from work,

so a couple roundups is the thing that was fun is it is neat to work on something and then to see another team. So, like, we have an organized play team that does all sorts of big events and things like this. And hats off to them because this was a major, major undertaking. The amount of moving parts that were going on. And it wasn't just the events team,

the brand team. There were all sorts of things going on. And there, I mean, the amount of work to monitor all the things and there were a lot of things that popped up like the driver work live where like we had the components but we a lot of things that popped up, like the Drive to Work Live, where, like, we had the components, but we hadn't quite realized

that there were some changes that needed to be done, and on the fly, all the last-minute things we did to make things work. Just props to every single person. There are so many Wizards people and so many volunteers working so hard to make that all come off and make it through. Oh, by the way, Puzzle Quest!

Magic Puzzle Quest! Early on, one of the demos Oh, by the way, Puzzle Quest. Magic Puzzle Quest. Early on, one of the demos was they were showing off Puzzle Quest. We announced that they're doing a magic-themed Puzzle Quest. So I make sure I mention that. That was being demoed in the basement. Oh, also, a cool thing we did during the party, by the way, speaking of the basement,

is all the staff were giving out coupons for free T-shirts, and you could go down and you could pick, I think they had all, there were a couple of images you can choose from between like Gideon and Eldrazi and Nyssa, I think. And then you had a bunch of different shapes, hedrons and things. And so you could customize your own t-shirt.

So you could make a t-shirt that was especially made that you had made. And so it was sort of a one of a kind because you picked, I guess, maybe colors and shapes and things. There's long, long lines

because there's so many people waiting for shirts and it took a while to make each shirt. But that was also going on. There was dancing. Anyway, the party was a lot of fun. Normally we were

at a different location but because we were in the annex the party was at the annex. So it's a little different from our normal one. I had fun. Normally when we're at the, normally we it's a little different from our normal one. I had fun. Normally when we're at the club, normally we're in a nightclub,

and it's really loud. And here, there was dancing, and there was definitely a section that was really loud. But you could actually get away to not quite so loud things a little easier. And I don't handle loud so well, so that was nice for me. But anyway, the whole event, so many people put a lot of time and energy in. But anyway, the whole event,

there's so many people put a lot of time and energy in. The making of the statue outside, all the events run. Tim Shields, our guy that came and ran all the events, he did an awesome job. Lady Planeswalker do all the teaching. I talked to Tifa, who runs in. She said there's so many people they were demoing.

Oh, here's a very funny story. I have a little bit of time. I was going around taking pictures, um, for the, the Blogger Talk Live, and so I decided it'd be fun to have me take a picture of me learning how to play, it's a cute picture, um, and I don't even know the girl who was teaching me, but she was so nervous teaching me, I'm like, it's okay, I, I already know how to play, you can't go do wrong, um, but it was very fun, she's very sweet, and, uh, um, it was, it was a really fun like, it's okay. I already know how to play. You can't go do wrong. But it was very fun. She was very sweet. And it was a really fun weekend. It was an amazingly fun weekend. I'm so pumped. Like I'm saying, it's Tuesday. I'm driving on a Tuesday because Monday I was at PAX. And so it was a really cool event. In fact, I'll bet you a lot of people, I'll bet you most of the events and brand teams won't even be there today because they're probably exhausted. They were there four days straight. In fact, I'll bet you a lot of people, I'll bet you most of the events and brand teams won't even be there today because they're probably exhausted. They were there four days straight.

In fact, probably a 50 because they had to do set-ups. So they had many, many days, five days. Actually, there was a 50 because the Magic World Championship

started. Oh, I didn't even... Okay, I told you the top four. So what happened was Owen played Paul. Owen won. Seth played Sam.

Seth won. So the final was Owen Turton-Wallace versus Seth Mansfield. And it went to a dramatic fifth game, and Seth pulled it out over Owen. And Seth became our latest world champion, our fourth U.S. world champion. Not world champion. Yeah, world champion. Our fourth U.S. world champion. I actually never had a chance to meet Seth.

The other three I know just because they've been playing Magic forever. And I just don't think I've ever met Seth. I used to go to all the pro tours, so I used to know all the pros pretty well. I was around this weekend, and I'm sure I saw him, but I never introduced myself. And I don't know if he was there after he won.

He might have been. I just didn't see him. So congratulations, Seth. And like I said, it was him. So congratulations, Steph. And like I said, everything, it was a really fun, amazing weekend. The World Championship went great. The Battle for Zendikar event went great. The Pre-Show went great.

Everything. All the panels were fun. Oh, and we announced, we did a big panel, the Creative did, which was the one streamed on Twitch. And we announced the name of the next expansion after Battle for Zendikar, which is Oath of the Gatewatch!

And we found out that, yes, Chandra's going to be there, and we saw the four of them taking the oath, and what does that mean? What's the Gatewatch? And why are they taking an oath? Fun things to find out in the future. And anyway, it was an awesome awesome, it was really fun. It was great.

So it was fun talking about it and sharing with you all sort of the behind-the-scenes story of the making of PAX. And I hope you guys enjoyed it. It was fun talking about it. But I'm in my present space, and oh, we had traffic today, so I talked quite a bit. So you know what that means? It means I'm in my drive to work.

So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.