Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #318 - Early Days

Episode Date: April 1, 2016

Mark talks about when he was just a player of Magic and had not started working at Wizards.

I'm pulling out of the driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for the drive to work. Okay. So today, I'm going to talk about a role that I've never talked about before. So I was hired to work at Wizards in 1995. And I started freelancing in 1994. But I started playing Magic in 1993.

So what most people don't realize is before I became a Wizards employee, before I was even a Wizards freelancer, I was a Magic player. And I don't talk a lot about myself as a Magic player, so I want to talk today about sort of what I was like before I worked for Wizards, before, like back when I was just a magic player. What was I like? What kind of magic player was I? And so I just want to share some stories from my early, early days to sort of, like, one of the things that's important to understand is I began as a magic player, not as a magic designer, not as a magic developer, not as a Wizards of the Coast employee. I was just a magic fan. And a lot of times, I know I had the podcast with Melissa where we talked about our magic first.

And that made me realize that I haven't really shared a lot of sort of the, when I say my early magic, like pre-Wizards magic. And so today was talking about who was I as a Magic player? What was kind of my, I don't know, just sort of talk about what it was like to be a Magic player. Because I definitely draw on that when I try to understand newer players. I try to remember when I was a new player. Okay, so I'm going to try not to cover too much ground than Melissa and I did on the first podcast, because hopefully you've listened to that. It's a little too parted.

You should listen to it if you haven't. But okay. So, the super short version that I talked about before is, I was working at a game store part-time, the Game Keeper. People came in. They asked about the game. It interests me. I went to San Diego Comic-Con, where I finally got a chance to see it,

although none were on sale. And finally, when it, uh, I went to a game convention in Los Angeles. I think it was called OrkCon. There were three different ones. I forget the exact name of the fall one.

I'm going to call it OrkCon. I think it was OrkCon. Anyway, I finally had a chance to see Magic. I purchased a starter and three boosters. I was taught, well, kind of taught by somebody. So I have all that stories you've heard before. So let's talk about the stories you haven't heard. Okay, so I take my starter and three boosters. So when I say starter, by the way, Magic, once upon a time, you could either buy a booster pack, much like you can now, or you can buy what's called a starter deck, which had 60 cards in it. It had like 40% land. The idea with a starter deck was you could just

play it right out of the box. Originally, they had two rares in them. Eventually, they would get three rares. When I first started playing they had two rares um and uh anyway it was a way to buy so i bought one starter which would be 60 cards and then three boosters which is 45 more cards so when i first started magic i had 105 cards um and all my land i had was in that starter so when i first and um you could get land in the boosters maybe i got one or two lanes in the boosters i forget um but anyway when i first, and you could get land in the boosters. Maybe I got one or two lands in the boosters. I forget. But anyway, when I first started, that's it. I had 105 cards, including my land. I had 105 cards. So when I first started playing, I had a big problem, which was there was

nobody else who played. Like it was so hard to get cards that, you know, nobody else I knew played the game. And so what happened was, my first Magic playing experience was me playing with myself. Where I made two decks. Basically what I did is I took, I think I divided into two colors and three colors, I guess. Maybe it was two colors and two colors. I divvied them up and then I played the deck against myself so that I could kind of learn the rules. Now, be aware, I had been

taught by somebody at the game convention I went to did not really grasp all of it. I mean, A, I'm not sure how well he knew the rules, and I for sure was missing a lot of what was taught to me. But I had my trusty, handy alpha rulebook, and I read that thing many, many times. Let me be honest, handy Alpha Rulebook, and I read that thing many, many times.

Let me be honest. The Alpha Rulebook was not—it explained concepts, but not in the greatest of detail. Go look online if you've never seen the Alpha Rulebook. It is an awesome piece of magic history. But it wasn't—I mean, the rules—understand the early, early days. The rules were a bit fuzzy. Like I've explained before, I think Richard's idea

was he wanted a game and he wanted the basic rules explained, but like, oh, if weird things happen, you know, figure it out. Richard was a big fan of games that kind of encouraged the players to sort of have discussions and decide how they want the game to play. So Magic had a lot of sort of have discussions and decide how they want the game to play.

So Magic had a lot of sort of weird interactions, but I'm not even talking about the weird interactions. What I'm talking about is I just didn't understand some of the basics. Like I explained this in Melissa's podcast, is I had a stasis. That was the first Rares I opened. And I just thought stasis didn't allow your opponent to untap. Because why would it not allow you to untap? It's your card. And I remember there was this thing called Mana Burn at the time. So Mana Burn is

if you clear a phase and you have mana in your pool, it'll do damage to you. One damage, you lose one life for each mana in your pool. And at the time, I couldn't understand it. Because I never... You cast your spell, why would you ever extra mana? It wasn't until I saw Mana Flare that I even understood that Mana Burn existed. I understood that Mana Burn existed.

Or, I'm sorry, I understood why Mana Burn existed. The first time I was like, oh, that's how you can get extra mana and not mean to spend it. I didn't understand that. But anyway, so I first made two decks. The color I was enamored of originally was green, because I opened up a Crawl Worm,

and just in general, my green cards were bigger than anything else I had. I think we've definitely made uncommon... Like, back in the day, in Alpha, there was not much bigger than 3-3 at common. Black had the 3-3 Swamp Walker, Bog Wraith. Red had Hill Giant. Blue did have the Serpent, Blue had the Sea Serpent, whatever.

So Blue had a Serpent, but other than the Blue Serpent, the only things bigger than a 3-3 were in green. And Crawl Room was a 6-4, which was bigger than any, like, there were rares that were bigger than it, but I didn't have them, and so it was the biggest

thing I had by far. So I was really enamored of green. And I remember I made two decks and I played them against each other. I was slowly trying to understand. I then realized pretty quickly that I really liked the game. I called my dad. I remember I was all excited. I really like, the game just clicked with me.

And not only did it click with me, but I have a good sense of sort of sensing potential and I was like this is a big game this is going to be a big thing I remember saying to my dad, I said this is going to be as big as Dungeons and Dragons which for those, I mean Dungeons and Dragons was a role playing game that defined a genre and put it on the map

and obviously became a game for history we make Dungeons & Dragons now. I did at the time. I mean, we acquired TSR back in, I don't know, 97, 98. Anyway, so I was really excited, but there was nowhere to get more Magic cards. And so what I did is I found local game stores. And there's a game store in Westwood.

So I lived in West LA. I lived in Los Angeles. And I live real close to a place called Santa Monica. stores. And there's a game store in Westwood. So I lived in West LA. I lived in Los Angeles. And I live real close to a place called Santa Monica. And so Westwood was where UCLA is. It's the city that sort of little city that UCLA is in. And there was a game store there. And the guy, I went and talked to the guy. He, he really liked magic. And so it was clear that he was invested in getting magic. But, you know, he would get as much as he could. Remember in the early days, you could order stuff and just get a small portion of what you order

because there was so much demand and so little product. And I remember, I think his name was Steve? I remember Steve and I had a heart-to-heart where he was trying to decide how much money to put into magic. And I remember with Legends, he had decided that he was just going to decide how much money to put into magic and i remember with legends he had decided that he was just going to buy as as much as he as much money as he could get his hands on he was going to buy legends and he and i were having this talk of was that a smart idea um because at that point magic had like everything he'd got in and sold out instantly in the day and he's like is this a good idea and i encouraged him to do it and i believe he sold out on his legends it took him maybe a week to sell out because he bought a lot

i bought four boxes of legends from him myself so you know a lot um and i believe by the way there were there were states that didn't get as much as much there's states that didn't get as many boxes as I bought. And Steve bought a whole bunch. Anyway, so what happened was when Beta came out, I went and talked to Steve. I found out that they were doing another shipment of the product, Beta. And I was in and I bought two boxes of starters and two boxes of boosters with the intent of selling it to my friends. And then one box of boosters was allocated toward me. I think the starters and the boosters, one of the boosters was for my friends.

And I think I had one box of boosters dedicated toward me. Maybe I was planning to sell them to my friends and only so many friends wanted them. But anyway, at some point I ended up with a box that was my box. And I knew that I would just rip it all open. The idea of playing with limited, that wasn't a thing, let alone I had no one to play with. So every day, I allocated them one per day.

And I remember at the time, I was an out-of-work writer working part-time. Well, I was out of work as a writer. I was working part-time in the game store. And of work as a writer. I was working part-time in the game store. And I had no idea what my next writing job would be. So I spent a lot of money on magic. But like I said, I was enamored. So every day I could come home and I allowed myself, when I got home from work or at some point in the evening, I was allowed to open a pack. And when you get one pack a day, that is an exciting thing. It's something that really made me understand the value of somebody who doesn't have a lot of money,

that literally can buy one pack of magic. This is kind of my experience each day. I got a, like my focus was on one singular pack. And so I would open it up, and and I would read each card and I would read the flavor text and I would just absorb every card. Um, and sometimes I would open a card and I would try to understand, well, what would you do with it? So, so those that don't know, I'm a Johnny, um, from a psychographic. I, I like building weird and crazy decks. Back when I was doing magic all the time, I was known for, I would just build lots of decks. I'd carry them around

with me. My shtick was I would make decks to play each other. In fact, I wrote an article that was in one of the early duelists. This was long before duel decks existed, where I talked about building companion decks to play against each other. And I gave an example. I make two decks and I build them and talk about how to tweak them to make them fun against each other. So I used to have decks in which they were designed to play against one another.

And I would have pairs of decks. And I, in fact, my friends, I kind of was the duel deck experience for my friends, which is, I would, well, I'm getting ahead of myself. But anyway, I eventually got friends that played Magic. Okay, so what happened is I would open up the booster pack every night, and I would get all excited. And I would just, you know, really focus on the cards.

And I really would sort of try to understand what I think each thing could do. And I would build decks. And once again, I had no one to play with yet. I would play, I'd have two decks in. And I would build decks. And once again, I had no one to play with yet. I would play... I'd have two decks in which I was playing both sides. Obviously, I couldn't surprise myself and things like Giant Growth were a little harder to use. I tried to pretend like I didn't know what the other me had,

but whatever, you know. And little by little, I actually would start to get a general sense of how the rules worked. I think reading through the rule book many, many times and playing games against myself, I started learning the basics. Okay, so eventually there was a game convention, a magic game convention that I heard about. And I was all excited, like, okay, people playing magic. And I remember going to it and the turnout was tiny, was

tiny, tiny, tiny turnout. But there were people to play Magic with, even though there were not a lot of people. And so I started playing Magic with people. And I think that's the first time I might have played against other humans in the game of Magic. But anyway, I played that. I would look around for tournaments and stuff. I remember UCLA had one. tournaments and stuff. I remember UCLA had one. Remember my Leviathan deck story where I played against a kid who had a giant deck who beat me. He called it the Leviathan deck because he had one Leviathan in it

which he somehow managed to get out and beat me with. But anyway, little by little I started playing different people and eventually I heard of a tournament down, I lived in Los Angeles, and it was down south. It was the Women's Center in Costa Mesa. So there's a man named Scott Larrabee, who has worked for Wizards for 16 years, 15, 16 years. For a long time, he ran the Pro Tour. He's still super involved in organized play.

Scott was one of the people that ran, because I first met Scott running Costa Mesa Women's Club. And so what happened was Scott had some friends, I think running the tournament's predated. Eventually they got a store, I think. running the tournaments predated, eventually they got a store, I think, but, um, they used to run this event. It was on Saturday nights or Saturday afternoon and evening. Um, it had to end at a certain time because they, they, they got this women's center that they rented out. Um, they got it for, you know, a good rate and I, it would start sometime in the afternoon, I don't know, one, two o'clock maybe. It would run into the evening, and they would just run all sorts of different events.

One event that they ran was called the, how is it, Mafters, Mafter event, where you would get a starter deck, and then you would play somebody. You'd make a deck, and you'd play somebody, and then if you beat them, you got all their cards. And then you would rebuild your deck, and you would keep playing. Usually, I think 16 people would enter, so it would be four rounds. And at the end, the winner would own all the cards, because if you won, you got all the cards. So the winner of the whole thing had 16 starter decks worth of cards. So, you know, 32 rares at the time.

Maybe it's a point in the game. Well, I think later we got to three rares. But anyway, I used to play a lot of Masters. The Mini Masters was my version of playing that with only one booster pack. That's where Mini Masters came from. But anyway, Grandmasters. It was called Grandmasters was the name of the format. Also, I mean, there wasn't really a standard yet.

It was original Magic. You just played with the cards you owned. In fact, early Magic, there weren't any rules. In fact, early Magic, you played with 40-card decks. But eventually, you would... The DCI in January of 1994 started up. The Duelist Convocation International. In fact, it wasn't an international. Originally, it, the Duelist Convocation International. In fact, it wasn't an international. Originally, it was the Duelist Convocation.

And then the Duelist magazine started around the same time. And they would get you a card. I actually have a card I got, a little laminated card. And I heard about it in, like, January. I think I didn't actually sign up until, like, March. I got my little card in the mail. I was a DCI member, a Duelist Convocation member.

And I got a little, you got a little newsletter if you're in the Duelist Convocation. In fact, I eventually, when I started doing the puzzles, I started doing advanced puzzles for the Duelist Convocation

newsletter that were harder puzzles. So for those who are fans of my puzzle series, the really hard ones were in the Duel of Convocation, the little newsletters. Anyway, so I started going to Costa Mesa and there I met a bunch of people who became my magic friends. Some of which would go on to actually have some success in the Pro Tour.

Let's see. Well, I actually, first off, I met Henry Stern not there, interestingly enough. Henry Stern, I used to do this thing in the game store where I would demo out of a magic deck to sell. I got my store to get magic. We didn't have magic. But eventually, I convinced him to carry magic. I would sell it. I would demo it.

I had a starter. We were allowed to demo games, so I had an open starter deck, and I would show people how to play it, show them the cards. And I had a little thing where if you played Magic and you wanted to trade with me, I had a rough idea of the rarities, so you had to match rarities, and you had to trade me something that wasn't already in the deck. But if you wanted a card that I had that you didn't have, I would trade with you. And Henry Stern somehow came in, and he liked trading with me,

so he would come in all the time and we started up a friendship. And it turned out he lived like a block from me. So Henry was the first person actually, the first magic friend that I think I made where I went to his home and we played magic with Henry Stern. And we had a lot of fun.

And then Henry and I both ended up going down to Costa Mesa. I forget whether we went together or separate. Or maybe I learned about it and I told him about it. So he used to go down all the time. But down there, I met Frank Gilson, Mari Rubina, Mark Chalice. People in the early days of the Magic Pro Tour all played on the Pro Tour. They were part of a thing called Pacific Coast Legends

was the name of their team. Mark Justice was on their team. Eventually Scott Johns was on their team. A bunch of other people were on their team. Anyway, and I used to go to Costa Mesa and I would play and I also would build decks

and then through that I made a bunch of friends and then I would go, I made a bunch of friends. And then I would go to some other tournaments with the friends. There also was a store. I don't even remember the name of the store. That I used to go that was open, I think, Friday nights. They ran a magic tournament Friday nights. And I used to go to that.

At the time, I was in Los Angeles. I wasn't dating anybody. I had lots of free time. So Friday night I would go play in the one card store and Saturday I would go to Costa Mesa. And I remember the card store was where I usually bought my cards because the Costa Mesa at the time didn't have a store yet. And so I would play Magic Friday nights, play Magic Saturday. I would build decks. I became the guy who used to be known for building decks.

Also, I did a lot of trading. So one of the things early on was I bought a decent amount of Magic cards. Obviously, I was buying boxes of things. But still, you couldn't get all the things you needed just out of a couple boxes. So you had to trade. So early on, I learned how to trade. And one of the things that I figured out pretty quickly was that some people had no idea what the cards were worth and would make really crazy trades. And some people very much knew what the cards were worth and would try to

make you make really bad trades. One of the things I learned, one of my rules when I was trading with people was I had a code of conduct when I traded, which was I wanted to make sure that people understood the value of what they had. I did not like the sharks that would try to trade off people and try to get them to trade away valuable cards for nothing. Usually when I trade to somebody, if somebody had something I wanted that was of value,

I made sure they understand it was of value. I made sure that when I was trading them something, I made sure they understand the value of the things they were trading and that I wouldn't make a trade that was not in their interest. I had a couple of crazy trades, like the one I talked about with Melissa, where I didn't even want to make the trade, but the other person really wanted cards that I had, and I would eventually make the trade because they were so eager.

Usually the crazy trades I would make is somebody valued the cards as a collector, not as a game player. So there was a card that was hard to get that they really, really wanted, and usually what happened was, it wasn't that I was hard to get that they really really wanted and usually what happened was it wasn't that I was trying to drive them up it would just be I actually didn't want to trade the card that's some of my best trades were they would want a card that I really didn't want to trade

and they would encourage me to get the card but what I didn't do was I didn't take advantage of people I didn't say oh I know this card is valuable and you don't know it so I'll trade you your rare for a common, for a crawlworm or something that I know. And not only didn't I do that, because I thought that was way wrong,

if I saw somebody making a trade in which I thought someone else would be taking advantage of, I would always step in and tell people, make sure they understood the advantage of it. I really, really hated sharks. I hated trading sharks. And something in general to be aware of. So if you are trading, I ask the same of you, which is look out for other people. Like if you see people that don't know what's going on, don't let others take advantage of them, especially if you're aware of it, especially, especially for little kids.

Oh, that would tear my heart out. I mean, I would stop it whenever I saw it. I would stop it. But one of the things that makes a good community is people stepping up and making it a good community. And if you see people doing abusive things like that, stop it. It's within your power to stop it. You always have the ability to let people have information. It is not wrong for people to know what they're doing, what they're trading. Hey, if they want to make the trade knowing with full knowledge, that's okay. But it shouldn't be out of ignorance that they're not understanding that they're trading away a valuable rare for a nothing common. They should be aware of that fact.

Now, back in the day, by the way, they're not allowed the tools that are available today to sort of understand value and stuff. And so it is something that was harder back in the day. Anyway, so I would make really wacky decks, and then I would play them with my friends. One of my favorite things to do, and I did two things a lot. One was I would make decks that had weird win conditions, and then I would try to beat other people's decks

that were real decks with them. Now, in Johnny fashion, I knew I would lose a lot of the games. The goal was just to win a game. So I would play decks that would do crazy things. The classic one that I talk about all the time is I had a deck in which there's a card called Tunnel which says destroy target wall. And the goal of the deck was I wanted to defeat somebody by casting Tunnel.

So the deck was all about I make this wall and make a super high toughness and give the wall to you. And then I put a what was it called? There was a card on it that when the creature died, you lost life equal to its toughness. So I would put that on the creature. I would make a wall, make it super tough, give it to my opponent,

put that on it, and then tunnel it. And they would die because if the wall had a 20 or more high toughness, then they would die if their life was below that. But I would do all sorts of weird decks. Decks in which my opponent is like, what is he doing? Like, they wouldn't understand how he's going to win and then out of the blue I would do something to win.

Even to the point, I had a deck that I had where the idea of the deck was, I was going to give you a force of nature that you couldn't deal with because you have to pay green, green, green, green for green upkeep or it does eight damage to you. So what I would do is I would give it to my opponent. I would lifelink it. And then I would let them die to the force of nature. The funny thing is this is back in the early days in the deck to pull off all the things I needed to do,

I actually had Lotus and Moxes, and I had Channel, and I had Fireball. So a Mox, actually, you just need a Land. I think a Land, a Black Lotus, Channel, and Fireball is game. So I would open up opening hand, I'd have those four cards like, no, no, no, that's not what I win with. I would not take the turn one win because that wasn't

what I did. My deck was supposed to do a certain thing. And the thing was, the way I would get the Force of Nature into play was probably Animate Dead, which takes a creature out of the graveyard for one and a black. It takes a creature out of your graveyard,

puts it into play at minus one, minus oh, so it'd make it a seven, eight, because it's normally an eight, eight. And then I put Spirit Link on it, so it didn't matter that it was damaging me because I would gain life for all the damage it did to me because Spirit Link's kind of like Life Link. It's the original card that granted it.

The difference between Spirit Link and Life Link is if I put Spirit Link on my opponent's creature, he doesn't gain the life, I gain the life. So if I had a Force of Nature and gave it to my opponent, he couldn't attack me with it because of the Spirit Link. Any damage it did, I would just get back. So he had this

8-8 that he couldn't attack me with and would basically kill him in a certain number of turns. But I often will get the animated Force of Nature out with a Spirit Link on it in the first couple turns, and I could just attack my opponent with them, beat them, but that wasn't what my deck was doing. So you're very Johnny me of,

I wanted to win the way I wanted to win, even though the deck probably more efficiently had other ways to win. Like, my deck actually was a pretty good deck, the little animation deck, but only, I added silly things in it to try to have the silly win condition that, like, if you just took those silly win conditions out, it was probably a pretty strong deck, a little animation deck. But only, I added silly things in it to try to have the silly win condition that, like, if you just took those silly win conditions out,

it was probably a pretty strong deck. So I became a decent deck builder. Like I said, my strategy was more about trying to do cool and different things. I also would build decks to play against each other. That's another big thing. I would make decks that had a lot of fun tools. Most of my decks would play against each other.

I would only have cards in number that you needed to make the deck do a particular thing. But usually, they were mostly decks with just lots of one-offs

because I liked having variety. One of the things about the gameplay was I wanted the decks to play really differently whenever you played them. But anyway, so I made my

friends through mostly meeting them in Costa Mesa. Somehow I made more friends at Costa Mesa than I did at the card shop, although I went to the card shop every Friday, or most Fridays. I guess I must have made some friends at the card shop, but the ones that really went on

to be sort of my long-lasting magic friends tended to be the ones at Costa Mesa. And then what happened was I started freelancing for Wizards, and I freelanced really early, meaning at some point in order to do the puzzles, they really wanted me to do puzzles with the latest content. Because if there was a new set coming out, they wanted the puzzles to be with the cards from the new set. So they had to give me access to cards early because there's a lead time in publishing, especially in a magazine. So I had knowledge of cards ahead of time, which is cool.

But it meant I couldn't play in sanction play. time, which is cool. But it meant I couldn't play in sanctioned play. So what happened was, very shortly after I was not able to play, or very, there's a window in which they started sanctioning tournaments, and then I wasn't allowed to play in tournaments. I think that summer. So like, I started freelancing in, I don't know, February or March. And by that summer, I was not allowed to play in sanctioned tournaments, and sanctioned tournaments started in, like, March or something. Now, I did, uh, the two big events that I played in was, I played in, um, 1994 Worlds, uh, so it must have been end of the summer I wasn't allowed to play, because I did play in Worlds, um, or maybe, maybe it was in September. Anyway, I was allowed to play in Worlds, and I did.

And it was single elimination. I played in just one, what was it called? Not a fleet. One flight. I played in one flight. It was single elimination. I won my first two matches, and my third match was against somebody who was like, literally, his whole deck was designed to beat an aggressive deck like mine. I just didn't have a prayer. My deck was pretty good. That's my little blue green weenie deck that I played.

I've talked about that deck. And then I went to 94 nationals. Actually, what I'm realizing is there's probably some good stories about my nationals, my worlds and nationals. Maybe what I'll do is maybe my next podcast, I'm going to talk about playing in U.S. nationals and in world championships in 94. I think I'm going to,

I think I have enough information about those two events to actually, so maybe what I'll do is I'll wrap up for today and next time I'm going to talk about the one time I played at Worlds

and the one time I played at US Nationals sort of how I did and sort of the tournaments around it. There's some fun stories of, there'll be stories of me as a magic player, not me as a magic designer or as Wizards of the Coast person. So anyway, I hope today was kind of fun for you guys.

I don't know, just sort of give you some insight on who I was before I became a Wizard of the Coast employee. Just, I was a magic player,

kind of a little bit about my magic and how I function and what I did. So I hope, I don't know, I hope you guys enjoyed little stories,

little insight into some early, early days of me as a magic player. But, I'm now in my parking spot. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of 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.