Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #300 - 2013

Episode Date: January 29, 2016

Mark continues his 20 years in 20 podcasts with the year 2013.

I'm pulling my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today I'm going to do another of my increasingly poorly named series, 20 years and 20 podcasts. I think I'm up to like 22, 23. Anyway, so what I've been doing is I've been taking every year that magic has existed in the series and talking about what happened that year. So I'm up to 2013. So I'm approaching the present. We're getting pretty close. Okay, so let's talk about what happened in the lovely year 2013. Okay, January 26th was the pre-release and February 1st was the release for Gatecrash, aka

Line. It goes hook, line, and sinker. So it had 249 cards, like most large sets of its time, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares. Oh, so this came out in the winter

but was a large set. In fact, it was the first time ever that the winter set, or the quarter one set, was a large set. And the reason was, we had returned to Ravnica. And we came up with this neat idea of having five guilds in the first set, which was a return to Ravnica. Five guilds in the second set, which was Gatecrash. And then all ten guilds in the third set, which was Dragon's Maze. I'll get to that in a little bit. But anyway, this was

a large set with the other five guilds. So this set had Boros, which was red-white. It had Gruul, which is red-green. It had the Simic, which is green-blue. It had the Dimir, which is blue-black. And it had the Orzhov, which is white-black.

So this, the design for this set was co-led. I led the first half, and Mark Gottlieb led the second half. What had happened was I had done, the previous year, Innistrad, then did Dark Ascension. Ken Nagel had led the first set, which was Return of Ravnica, and in order for me to lead the next set, which is Theros, which we'll get to also later today, I needed to duck out halfway through. Meanwhile, Mark Gottlieb had led small sets,

but had never led a large set. And so as a way to sort of, you know, get into the pool without throwing me in the deep end right away, he and I worked together, and then I sort of led the first set, halfway through handed the reins to Mark, who led it in the second half of the set. Anyway, there were five mechanics,

because there were five guilds. So Boros had Battalion, which was a mechanic that said if three or more creatures attacked, a bonus happened. So things that said, oh, if three more creatures attacked, a bonus happened. So things that said, oh, if three more creatures attack, something happens.

And so it encouraged you to attack with a bunch of creatures, which fit Boros, which has an army sort of flavor. The gruel had blood rush, which were creatures that you could sacrifice, you could discard from your hand to turn them into giant growths

that matched the power toughness of what the creature was. There was Evolve, which is the Simic mechanic, and those were creatures that if you played a creature with a power or toughness greater than their power or toughness, they got a plus one, plus one counter. So you would play them, and as you played other creatures, they would continue to grow. Oh, by the way, Battalion was a mechanic made by Sean Main for the Second Great Designer Search, and Evolve was a mechanic made by Ethan Fleischer for the Second Great Designer Search. So each one of them, I definitely, when we were doing the search, I realized we had interesting guild mechanics,

and it turns out that two of them were in the guilds I was doing, so I used them. Cypher is the demure mechanic. What Cypher does is they are spells that you then get to essentially link to creatures. So what they do is the spell goes off and then you would sort of link it to a creature and then whenever that creature does combat damage

the spell effect happens again. This was one of the mechanics that was very cool in concept but in execution it didn't play out quite as well I think development was a little afraid of it and so it had to pull back so it's one of those mechanics

that I didn't think didn't quite sell as much as it did in concept finally Orzhov's mechanic was Extort and Extort said whenever you played a spell

you could spend a white or black mana it was hybrid to drain your opponent for one so for each Extort spell you had in play so once I have a couple extort things in play, every spell I'm playing, I can be

draining, assuming I have the mana, I can be draining my opponent for a bunch of life. So this set was, like I said, the second set in the block. It was designed to be drafted by itself. So we had a neat, the block structure was pretty cool, let me talk about that for a second.

So the first set, Return to Ravnica, had five guilds in it. It was a large set. You drafted it by itself, like you normally do with a fall set. The second set, Gatecrash, was also a large set, and it was drafted by itself.

And then when the third set came out, which was a small set, Dragon's Maze, you drafted one Return to Ravnica, one Gatecrash, one Dragon's Maze. In fact small set, Dragon's Maze, you drafted one Return to Ravnica, one Gatecrash, one Dragon's Maze. In fact, I think Dragon's Maze went first.

So Dragon's Maze, Gatecrash, Return to Ravnica. So the neat thing was in this, you drafted with just Return to Ravnica, Return to Ravnica,

Return to Ravnica, then you drafted Gatecrash, Gatecrash, Gatecrash, and then only when the third set came out did you cross the lines.

Like, Return to Ravnica, Gatecrash never mingled until the third set. But in design, we worked really hard to make sure that they worked well together. And so when you finally got a crisscross them, you had some neat interactions. There were some... In the end, I think Gatecrash ended up being a little faster than we meant to be. And so when you mix Gatecrash with Return of Ravnica,

you tended to veer toward the Gatecrash guilds because they were a little faster than we meant to be. And so when you mix Gatecrash with Eternal Ravnica, you tend to veer toward the Gatecrash guilds because they were a little bit faster. But anyway, I'll talk about that when I get to Dragon's Maze. But anyway, Gatecrash unto itself is very popular. In fact, I think the best-selling winter set of all time. A little cheaty because it's also the only large set winter set of all time. But it was, in fact, very popular. It was very popular. Okay, next.

February 16th to the 17th. Pro Tour Gatecrash was held in Montreal, Canada. It was a standard tournament for the constructed portion, and it was a gatecrash booster draft for the limited portion. Sorry, one second. Somebody cutting in my lane!

People always, I find it funny that there's this conspiracy theory that I sit in, like I have a special lab I sit in, a little sound booth, and I have little sound effects that sound like I'm driving. But as a person, as a fact that I'm actually driving and cars are getting in my way and I have to occasionally pause from talking to you to make sure that I'm being safe, which I do, I am, in fact, driving in a car on the freeway as we speak. Anyway, Pro Tour Gate Crash. So Tom Martell of the United States defeated Joel Larsson of Sweden,

who they called the Swedish Brian Kipler. Anyway, the one other interesting little historic factoid from this tournament was Melissa DeToro became the first female to ever top eight a Pro Tour, which is very exciting. And for those that have, I've had Melissa on my podcast twice, and I'm hoping to have her on again. So her podcast and her were quite popular. Okay, next, March 15th, was Duel Decks, Sorin versus Tybalt.

So every year, there is a Planeswalker Duel Deck with two Planeswalkers fighting each other, and a non-Planeswalker, which is themed usually to one of the sets it comes out with. So this was the Planeswalker one, it was Sorin versus Tybalt. So the way it works is you have to go back a year. So if you go back a year to Innistrad, we always take two planeswalkers from that set. So from Innistrad, we took Sorin and Tybalt. Both of which, by the way, are natives

of Innistrad. So this was an Innistrad native fight. So Sorin, I assume, was white-black and Tybalt was at least red. I don't know if it was a second color in the deck. But anyway, dual decks. Okay I assume, was white-black, and Tibalt was at least red. I don't know if it was, uh, a second color in the deck. Um, but anyway, dual decks. Okay, next, that gets us to April 3rd, pre-release.

April 20th, sorry. April 27th, pre-release. May 3rd, release of Dragon's Maze. Uh, aka Sinker. So, it was a little bit bigger. It was a small set, but it was a little bit bigger than a normal small set. it was a little bit bigger. It was a small set,

but it was a little bit bigger than a normal small set. It had 156 cards, 70 commons, 40 uncommons, 35 rares, and 11 mythic rares. We've recently made small sets a little bit bigger

with Oath of the Gatewatch. This is us playing in that space earlier on. So we now, I think we now have 70 commons in a small set, and this has 70 commons. So this is definitely some of a template when we're looking for what to do with Oath

of the Gatewatch. Um, anyway, uh, the lead designer for, uh, Oath of the Gatewatch was Alexis Jensen, the winner of the first great designer search. Uh, and the lead developer was Zach Hill, who, um, uh, is no longer with R&D, he's moved on to other things. So the set, basically the idea of the set was it had all ten guilds in it. So mostly what it was, it was

there was just the ten guilds. We had five guild mechanics in the first set, five guild mechanics in the second set. All ten were in this set. Although, I think we kept them out of common to keep from overwhelming people with keywords. I think they started to show up in uncommon. I don't think they showed up in common. There was one new introduction

though, was Ravnica has always had hybrid, and the original Ravnica had split cards. Well, we brought split cards back. We had saved them for here. We thought it was a good place when you're doing all ten to have some split cards. Well, we brought split cards back. We had saved them for here. We thought it was a good place when you're doing all 10 to have some split cards. And we introduced a mechanic

on split cards called Fuse. So what Fuse does is it says you can play not just one of the two split cards, but if you want to, you can play both of the split cards. It was called, what do we call it,

Split Entwine, I think is what we call it in design. It was a combination of split cards with Entwine. Entwine was a mechanic from the original Mirrodin where you had a modal choice and you could get all the choices if you paid the modal costs. And that was Entwine. So anyway, Fuse was quite popular. This had had some problems. Number one, I think we had set ourselves up.

Doing five guilds in a large set is doable. We did that twice. Doing ten guilds in a small set, even if you've already set it up with two previous large sets, is a lot. There's just a lot going on. There's a lot you have to handle. And it was a little bit overwhelming. We would never normally put, in fact if you count Fuse, 11 mechanics in a small set. Given 10 of them we had introduced you previously, but still

it was a lot of mechanics to all be in a single set. And there just was so much going on. It was just, and the also the draft environment proved to be a lot more complicated than we realized. environment proved to be a lot more complicated than we realized. Because part of it was what we did is when you came to the Privilege for Dragons maze, you got a box that

had one you got to choose one of the ten guilds and then also you got a secret second guild and the way it worked was it was one of the 10 guilds, and then also you got, which was Secret's second guild, and the way it worked was, it was one of the guilds from the other set.

So if you picked a guild from Return of Ravnica, it was from Gatecrash. If you picked a guild from Gatecrash, it was from Return of Ravnica. It was a guild that shared a color with the one you chose. So for example, let's say I chose, what's a good example? I chose Izzet.

So blue-red. So blue-red is from Return to Ravnica. That meant I would get one of the guilds that had red in it, which in Gatecrash was either Boros or Gruul, or one of the guilds that had blue in it, which was either Simic or Dimir. I couldn't get Orzhov.

There was no overlap there. And so the idea was you picked one and then got another and it helped you for building in the pre-release. But the fact that we had to sort of do that was a sign of how complicated it got. The one nice thing about the large sets were you only had five options and five two-color combinations.

With 10 and the drafting, wow, there's so many permutations of what you could do. It was a little bit overwhelming. And the other thing was Gatecrush. It was a little bit overwhelming. And the other thing was Gatecrush ended up being a little bit more aggressive than Return to Ravnica, and so it warped a little bit the drafting. It was a neat idea, and it was cool,

and I liked the idea of use a set, use a different set, use both sets. I liked the novelty and the coolness of how the draft is worked differently and that each draft was distinctly different. The other mistake we made, which was interesting, was the name.

So, Dragon's Maze refers to a particular dragon, Niv-Mizzet. Niv-Mizzet is the one that's setting this all up. He learned all about the maze, what was it called? The maze Azor was the original creator of Osiris. He had created this maze, and

it was figured out by Niv-Mizzet, and then there were ten maze runners, and anyway, for those that know the story. But one of the things, and the set also, by the way, introduced Raul Zarek, who had been originally introduced in Duels, one of the early Duels of the Planeswalkers.

But this is the first time he showed up in the set with a card. But anyway, Dragon's Maze was Dragon apostrophe S. A dragon. Niv-Mizzet. But when you put the name Dragon in the set, there was this belief like, oh, it's a set about dragons. I see dragons

in the name. And there was literally no creature hyphen dragon in the set. There was one card, I think, that made things into dragons. And the dragon, Niv-Mizzet, he wasn't returned to Ravnagoth. The dragon that's mentioned in the title, he's not in the set. So there was some expectations set up that the set really didn't deliver on. And one of the big things we realized is you have to be very careful about perception, what people expect, because you want to set up expectations correctly and then deliver on them.

And Dragon Maze didn't do that. It is one of the things that got us to do Dragons of Tarkir of saying, wow, people were so sad that there weren't dragons. We really shouldn't make a dragon set. And so that's one thing that definitely led to us later doing Dragons of Tarkir. Okay. May 17th through the 19th was Pro Tour Dragons Maze in San Diego,

United States. It was a block-instructed tournament, meaning you got to play with all three sets from the Return to Ravnica block. So you got to play with Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash and Dragons Maze. And it had Dragons Maze booster draft, which meant you drafted with all three sets. So it was a very Return to Ravnica and Gatecrash and Dragon's Maze, and it had Dragon's Maze booster draft, which meant you drafted with all three sets. So it was a very Return to Ravnica block-oriented pro tour.

So Craig Wesker of the United States ended up defeating Dusty Ochoa, also the United States. Okay, then later that summer, let's see... Oh, actually, before we get to that, July 13th was the pre-release and July 19th was the release of Magic 2014, the corset for the year.

So remember, the corset is always named a year later. So I think I've explained this, but one more time for people that don't know. The reason is we put these into mass and mass won't hold things that have a year that like, if it says 2013 on it, once it's 2014, they won't hold things that have a year that like if it says 2013 on it once it's 2014 they won't carry things to say 2013 that it looks dated um and so in order to create a set that would be around for a whole year because the goal of the core set is to put it out and keep

it on shelves because it's a beginning of product um we needed to have a name in which the mass market would keep it uh and so we would use the name. We were modeling after how cars work. Like we buy a car, the model of the car is always the next year. Anyway, the set was a normal large set, 249 cards, so 101, 80, 53, 15. So

101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, 15 mythic rares. The set was lead designed by Mark Globus. So Mark Globus came in fourth or fifth for the first great designer search. We actually hired four people from the first great designer search

and then would later hire a fifth person, although that fifth person was not just in the first great designer search, but was in the second great designer search as well, Scott Van Essen. But anyway, Alexis Jansen, who we just talked about leading Dragon's Maze. Ken Nagel, who I mentioned him already in this podcast.

And then a guy named Grant Hopkins, who does digital stuff, does a lot of programming. But we borrowed him from time to time. He's a really good designer, obviously. And then Mark Lobis. Mark Lobis originally got hired to do digital. And then he became friendly with a lot of originally got hired to do digital, and then he became friendly with a lot of R&D

people and ended up coming over to R&D. And now he's one of the producers in R&D. He oversees a lot of the structuring of how things happen, and he and I actually work closely together. Anyway, I think this was the first time he led a set. So for those who pay attention,

there now have been five different finalists from the Great Designer Search to lead a Magic set. Alexis Jansen this year led Dragon Maze. Ken Nagel has led a whole bunch of sets. Most recently, I think he led

Fate Reforged. Mark Lobeth led this, Magic 2014. Ethan Fleischer led Journey to Nyx. He Lobeth led this, Magic 2014. Ethan Fleischer led Journey to Nyx. He's going to lead, he led Oath of the Gatewatch, which you guys will see shortly. And then Sean Mayne

just recently led Magic Origins, as well as Conspiracy. So anyway, there's five alumni, all who've led sets. Or not alumni, but, you know, people who we first discovered

through the Great Designer Search. So, in fact, it has been a Great Designer Search. That name has lived up to its thing. So the one thing about Magic 2014, its slogan was Ignite Your Spark. Chandra was the main focal point. If you played Duels of the Planeswalkers, you were following Chandra's story.

The new thing in the set was Slivers came back. So that was a little bit controversial. So we did two things. One is, we over the years have changed how we've done tribal effects mechanically, so the tribal effects only affect your things. Originally, Goblin King made all goblins plus one plus one, and so if your opponent had goblins, it helped them too. And eventually we decided that, A, people didn't necessarily believe

that their stuff was supposed to help their opponent, and it just didn't make for necessarily great gameplay. Like, oh, I have a goblin king. Oh, wait. How many goblins do you have to play versus how many do I have to play? And so we changed it. Slivers hadn't yet been changed because the last time we did Slivers was Time Spiral and we felt like, you know, it was a settlement

of nostalgia. We didn't want to change how Slivers worked in a set in which we were being all nostalgic. So this is the next time we introduced them. So mechanically we changed them. And then the art team wanted to give them a different look. The look they currently had it just was a hard look to make a lot of differences to it. So they were trying to change it

up a little bit. It did not go over well. Especially I think how they looked went pretty poorly. But a combination of mechanically changing them and we made them look differently, the audience who loves slivers was upset by it. I believe that we have... We're going to stick with mechanical change. This is how we do tribal stuff now.

But I do believe that we are willing to... In reexamining it, we've sort of opened up and said, you know, there's different slivers in different places. They look a little differently. But we're not abandoning the old sliver look. So I think you will see slivers. I doubt we've seen the last of slivers, and I think you will see old sliver style slivers

visually again. Oh, by the way, the lead developer, I'm talking about the lead designer. The lead designer was Mark Globus. The lead developer was a man named Dave Guskin. So Dave actually started in online media and, or in online media. And... Not online media, in programming.

He was one of the programmers. And he ended up coming to R&D. And he spent a lot of time doing what we call experience design. If you know a lot of the stuff at Theros and the Hell Vault and all that sort of stuff that was wrapped around how we used to do pre-releases. That was what Dave Gussman's doing. Anyway,

what else happened here? We also changed the legend rule with this set, and indestructible became a keyword. We also changed unblockable to cannot be blocked. We actually tried to make unblockable a keyword, but the problem was we used it in so many different ways that it just didn't work.

That so much of your unblockable due to a certain thing. Anyway, we tried to make unblockable a keyword for technical reasons we couldn't do it. We did manage to make indestructible a keyword. Before, it was just an English word that had a normal meaning, but the fact that it wasn't a keyword was confusing people, and people were treating it as it was a keyword, so we finally just changed it to a keyword.

The legend rule changed to say, before, whenever a legend came into play, if another legend was in play, we'd destroy it. That now it said, when it came into play, A, each player was allowed to have one, so I could have a legendary character, you could have the same legendary character, and if I brought one into play, I then chose which one went away

under the new rules, which allowed you to do interesting things with certain planeswalker abilities and such. Okay, next, August 23rd was From the Vault 20. So, this was 2013, which happened to be the 20th anniversary

of Magic the Gathering. I'll be honest, we really underplayed the 20th anniversary. I was kind of sad. I love celebrating. I thought it was awesome that Magic was 20 years old. The feeling at the time, I don't know.

I think there's some that believe that, like, it dated the product or something. I don't know. There think there's some that believe that it dated the product or something. I don't know. There are some people that believe that. So we did very, very little to sort of celebrate the 20th anniversary. In products, we did one thing to celebrate it, which is this product. Dual Decks. Not Dual Decks. From the Vault

20. So normally From the Vault has 15 cards in them. This one has 20 cards in it, including a Jace the Mind Sculptor, and these are all in foil. So it was definitely a very sought-after product. Normally, From the Vaults, there's not a lot made. But this one in particular was extra hard to get your hands on.

A combination of just the Anniversary, and there's 20 cards, and Jason and such. Okay, next, September 6th. Was Duel Decks Heroes vs. Monsters? So, the second Duel Deck is usually tied to one of the set releases. We had Theros, we were going to do Greek Mythology,

and Magic, luckily, has a lot of Greek Mythology in it, and so we were able to sort of craft a Greek feeling of Heroes vs. Monst monsters, because one of the things about Theros I'll get to in a second is a big role of it was heroes and monsters. And so we definitely

had a duel deck that sort of played it up, and we were able to do some teases of some upcoming cards from Theros, we got some preview cards, and luckily there was enough stuff in magic that was Greek mythologically feeling, because a lot of early magic owes stuff to Greek mythology. and luckily there was enough stuff in magic that was Greek mythologically feeling because a lot of early magic owes

stuff to Greek mythology I think Tolkien and Greek mythology are the two biggest influences on Richard in making Alpha for example okay September 21st was a release and September 27th was September 21st was the pre-release

September 27th was the release of Theros, aka Friends, Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Which is funny that we had a set with Romans in the name and it was about, not Roman mythology, but Greek mythology, and people always get weirded out when the codenames are somewhat close to the theme,

and the codenames get picked before the theme, so it's always happenstance when they are remotely connected. Anyway, it was a normal large set, 249 cards, 101 commons, 80 uncommons, 53 rares, and 15 mythic rares. I led the design. Eric Lauer led the development. So the theme I talked about when the set originally came out

obviously was a Greek mythology set. I said it was gods, heroes, and monsters were sort of the major themes. So the set had a strong enchantment component. Well, let's... Okay, so gods. In order to reflect the gods, we decided to have an enchantment component that we were going to bring,

and we made the enchantment component the effect of gods on the world. So, for example, there were a lot of enchantment creatures. In Magic, other than one enchantment creature in Future Sight as a hint of something we might do, we had never done enchantment creatures. In Magic, other than one enchantment creature in Future Sight as a hint of something we might do, we had never done enchantment creatures before. They showed up for the first time here.

We had a mechanic called Bestow, which showed up in the first set in Theros, which were enchantment creatures that could also double as auras. And so you could choose whether to play them as a creature aura or play them as a creature. If you play them as a creature aura and the creature they enchanted died

they would fall off and become creatures. I think all the enchantment creatures in the first set were bestowed creatures. Later in the block would have enchantment creatures that weren't bestowed creatures but in the first set we did that. We also had a lot of strong enchantment themes. There was a cycle of gods

the five gods which were all mythic rares of strong enchantment themes. There was a cycle of gods, the five gods, which were all mythic rares, all were enchantment creatures. They each had a magical item that was an enchantment artifact, first time we'd ever done that. So there definitely was a strong enchantment theme that ran through.

And also the gods, we had a mechanic called Devotion, which was us taking a mechanic, an old mechanic from Eventide, called Chroma, that didn't quite go over as well as I'd hoped, but I had high potential for. I really thought it was a mechanic that was going to be this awesome mechanic that it just never quite hit the audience, and I decided that it needed a second chance.

I thought it made a lot of sense here. It's called devotion. And the idea was that people cared about their gods, and the gods cared about people caring about them. And so the more devoted you were to your god, the more powerful the cards would become. And so basically what it did is it counted the number of colored mana in your mana cost of cards on your battlefield.

Slightly different than Chroma. Chroma also counted colored mana symbols, but it would look in different places, not always on your battlefield. Slightly different than Chroma. Chroma also counted colored mana symbols, but it would look in different places, not always on the battlefield. And Devotion was a little more locked. It's like permanence on the battlefield, that's what it looks at. Ended up being a pretty strong mechanic,

much stronger than Chroma, which also helped it. And there were a lot of mono-colored decks being played in Standard at the time, and other formats, because Devotion actually was pretty powerful. Okay, that was gods. Then there was gods heroes.

So the heroes had a mechanic called heroic, which were creatures that whenever they were targeted, would generate an effect. Maybe they get a plus one, plus one counter. Maybe you draw a card. Maybe something else happens. Maybe, you know, they temporarily get some kind of boost or bonus. But the cool idea was that these heroic creatures, you wanted to combo and target them. And so it definitely, and one of the ways to target them was definitely putting enchantments on them.

So heroic creatures played nicely with Bestow. But it definitely also, one of the things we were trying to do with the set is we wanted things to get bigger and grow. That big part of Greek mythology was you go on adventures and you start from a small farm boy but then you become a hero and so we wanted you to sort of, the heroic mechanic, you could watch things grow and become more powerful. Let's see. Then for monsters

we had a mechanic called Monstrous which was an activated ability. You could only use once per game. When you used it the creature would get bigger. It would get some number plus one plus one counters. And often, either it would trigger something or get an extra ability. But you had these monsters that were scary,

and then they notched up when you had enough mana to become extra scary. And Monstrous... Well, when I get to 2014, I'll talk about it. Monstrous was weird in that it was in the first set and the third set, but not the second set. Something we very rarely do. But I'll talk about it. Monsters was weird in that it was in the first set and the third set but not the second set. Something we very rarely do. But I'll talk about that in 2014.

The next podcast when I get to 2014. Won't be the next podcast, but I'll get there eventually. Anything else? Oh, the set also had Scry, which actually was added in development to help smooth things. But as Greek mythology is all about omens and things, Scry actually

thematically made a lot of sense.ens and things, Scry actually thematically made a lot of sense. We would later make Scry evergreen. That would happen in Magic Origins, which would happen two years later. But this was definitely us realizing how valuable Scry was and one of the big things

that made us go, you know what? Maybe we should always have Scry. Okay, next. Theros, by the way, did very well. It has some problems in the expansions, which once again, when I get expansions, next 2014

podcast, I'll talk about that. But Theros itself did really well. People liked Greek mythology quite a bit. It went over very well. The gods, especially the monocolor gods, went over quite well. Devotion was probably the biggest hit of the mechanics, but Monstrous was really well received Heroic was very well received

Bestow Bestow was a little less received only because it was a little less clear to people how it worked and we made it such that if you try to attach it like an aura and you got rid of the creature that normally if it was an aura it would just go to the graveyard

but because it has an option to become a creature we let the creature that normally, if it was an aura, it would just go to the graveyard. But because it has an option to become a creature, we let it stay in play, because we were trying to make them just harder to hose. And that was a little unintuitive for some people, although most people, once they understood it, liked it, only because it just made the card better. But it was a little bit unintuitive. Okay, October 11th through the 13th,

Pro Tour Theros in Dublin. It was standard for a constructed part of it, and the Theros Bouchard Draft for the limited part. Jeremy Desani of France defeated Pierre Dagen of France. All French finals. Oh, I forgot something! Speaking

all French. I talked about, oh, I skipped over. Well, this is important. I talked all, oh, I skipped over. Well, this is important. I talked all about the Magic 2014, and I skipped over an important thing that happened in July, which was the World Championship. I should get back and talk about this. So July 31st through August 2nd in Amsterdam

was the World Championship. So a 16-person tournament. The World Championship now is an invitation tournament. At the time, there were 16. So a 16-person tournament. The world championship now is an invitation tournament. At the time they were 16, now we've moved to 24, but at the time they were 16. And Shahar Shenhar from Israel defeated Reid Duke from the United

States in a very... Reid looked like he was going to take the whole thing. It was a matchup really in his favor. And it came down to the final game. Shenhar pulled it off and managed to win. I don't want to give away the spoilers of 2014,

but he might go on to win twice in a row. Definitely, no one's ever been in, actually, until 2015, sorry, 2014, no one had never, no one had ever been in a finals

of a, um, the finals of a world championship twice. That would happen two times next year. Well, anyway, sneaking ahead to 2014. Anyway, also that same weekend, although August 2nd to the 4th, so first there was three days

of the world championship, then three days, we had a day first there was three days of the World Championship, then three days, we had a day off, and three days of the Magic World Cup was the Magic World Cup. I'm sorry, the World Magic Cup. Say that wrong. The World Magic Cup. And that's where a whole bunch of countries,

50-some countries, all came to compete. Each country has a four-person team. And the finals, France, led by... Rafael Levy, defeated Hungary. And it is definitely... I don't think France had ever won the team event before.

They had been in contention. They'd been in the finals many times. I don't think they'd ever won before. So it was a big feather in the cap for France, for Rafael. Anyway, so it is definitely... That's why I wanted to talk about France on Friday. But wait a minute, France did well this year. So I'm sorry I skipped over that.

One of the points we had to jump around on the paper. Also, I forgot that July 19th, technically, was the Deck Builders Toolkit. Every core set has a new toolkit tied to it. And July 19th, we did that. Anyway, back to November. Sorry, jumping around here. Okay, November 1st was Commander 2013. I did not

write down. So Commander is 500, 100 card decks. What was the gimmick of 2013? I think this was the second time. I think we had done Commander decks. They were very popular. We couldn't get them out quick enough, so we did Commander's Arsenal, which I think was 2012. And I think 2013 was the second decks. They were very popular. We couldn't get them out quick enough, so we did Commander's Arsenal, which I think was 2012.

And I think 2013 was the second ones. So let's see if I can remember what that was. I think the first ones did three color and did wedges, I believe. So the second one must have done shards. So my guess is this was the shard one. I think Mark Gottlieb led the design for this. I did not write this down.

But I believe Mark Gottlieb led the design for it. And that it was shard-based. I don't remember if there was some other gimmick tied to it. But I believe it was shard-based. Anyway, it's something we do every year. There's 100... It's five 100-card construct... I've got pre-made decks. There's 500-card pre-made decks.

There's 100-card decks. They're commander decks, meaning they come with a legendary creature. Actually, they come with three legendary creatures, but one main one to be your commander, and the other two can be backup commanders. And then it's a 100-card deck in which it's a singleton. It means every card only appears once. And each deck has a very specific theme to it.

And the decks are made not just to play fun unto themselves, but to play with each other. And the commander format has been very, very popular. People like it quite a bit. Finally, the final act of the year, November 15th, was the 2013 Holiday Gift Box, which came with... It had a nice box,

and it had four boosters and 20 lands from Theros. So the story of the gift box, I'm not sure if I've told the story. Odds are I have. I repeat stories. But in case I haven't, we, for years, I mean, for years, even when I first got here 20 years ago, we've always been trying to figure out

the right kind of gift box for December so one of the things that people don't realize is December actually is a very slow month for us and the reason is that it's the holiday season people are spending money buying gifts for the holidays and what we've discovered is that it's just a poor time for us and that when we put out sets people get focused on our set and so it's just a poor time for us, and that when we put out sets, people get focused on our set.

And so it's actually better for us to basically be active when there's not other things going on. And so December has proved to be one of the slowest months for us. But one of the things we always have wanted to do, and have tried many times over the years, is say, well, you know what a good thing is? What we want to do during December is have a product out that people who are friends and families of Magic players could go, oh, that's a Magic thing. I could buy that and give it as

a gift. And we want the Magic players to be happy that their friends bought them a Magic-related gift. And for years, we tried to figure out how to do that. The big secret, by the way, rested in not well, the contents were important, but the bigger secret was the name. I actually had one meeting

where we were brainstorming the set, and I said, okay, I have one brainstorm. You want to sell the set? You want to get people to buy it for the holidays?

Could we please call it the Magic the Gathering Holiday Gift Box? And we finally, finally used the name, which I think is a big part of just, one of the things

about people who don't know magic is it's very daunting. There's lots of magic things. How do you know what to buy? But when you see a holiday gift box on it, you go, you know, maybe they like this for the holidays. And then what we learned was we made a nice gift box

so the box itself that the players can use. And look, just put magic cards in it. This is what players want. We experimented with all sorts of different things. In the end, you know what magic players want? The latest magic cards is what they want. And so Theros is the set that was out. You know, it just came out this fall.

And so how did it gift box for 2013? Just has Theros stuff in it. It had Theros boosters, Theros land, and a nice gift box that you could have. And the gift box has proven to be quite popular. I mean, for a gift box. It is, I guess your expectations have to match. But yeah, it is definitely something guess your expectations have to match. But yeah, it is

definitely something that we've continued to do. Anyway, as I drive up to Wizards, that, my friends, is 2013. It was an interesting year. We definitely, so I think 2013 was the fifth year in a row that we had was the fifth year in a row that we had had the best year Magic had ever had uh

that five years earlier Magic you know Magic had the best year it ever had and then the year after that again it had the best year it ever had and did that five years in a row

the trend continues but we're only talking about 2013 um but anyway 2013 was a good year it was an up year uh Return to Ravnica block

was pretty popular Theros especially the first set was very popular. A lot of fun pro tour play around the world. A lot of supplemental

products that people enjoyed. But anyway, that my friends was 2013 in a nutshell. But, I'm in my parking space. So we all know

what that means. It means it's time to end my drive to work. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. I'll see you guys next time.