Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #350 - 25 Random Things

Episode Date: July 22, 2016

Mark talks about various (mostly early) Magic trivia.

Okay, I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, today's podcast is based on a column I did many, many years ago called 25 Random Things About Magic the Gathering. So there was a little meme that went around for a while where you were supposed to list 25 random things about you for your social media. You would put it up on Facebook or whatever. And I decided to do that for Magic. So I thought today I would go through the 25 facts I talked about and give a little extra info because we have a whole podcast here. Okay, so fact number one was Magic the Gathering, for a period of time, was not going to be called Magic the Gathering.

In fact, so when Richard first made the game, he called it Magic, just Magic. But the problem was that Magic as a word, the worry was that it wasn't, they couldn't trademark it legally. And so they were looking for a different name. So for a while, it was called Mana Clash. And that was, if you ever see,

there's like an early, Wizards put out an early submission trying to get people to purchase it. And the very earliest thing they put out was, it actually was called Mana Clash. Eventually they realized that it wasn't as good a name as magic. Everybody just called it magic. So they're like, okay, maybe the answer is, instead of changing the name, let's add something to magic. And so the idea was that the gathering was added just so something they could trademark.

It wasn't just magic. That word unto itself was hard to trademark. But magic, the gathering, okay, that's a unique thing. And that's how the gathering came about. Some people have asked me why the gathering, which leads us into number two. Some people have asked me why The Gathering, which leads us into number two. So Richard's original intent was not that Magic the Gathering was all of magic for all time. Richard believed that Magic the Gathering was going to be the first incarnation.

And so Richard's idea was that we would put out Magic the Gathering for a year or so, whatever. And then the next incarnation of magic, let's say it's Ice Age, would just be called Magic Ice Age. And the idea is that each time there was a new thing, it would get a new name and that magic would keep changing its last name. That was the original plan. Well, it turns out that if you want to, you know, trademark something, you kind of have to consistently use it. And so it became apparent very quickly that the Gathering had to stay. So even though the original plan was actually to change, was to Magic the Gathering, Magic Ice Age, Magic whatever,

the Gathering was really picked by Richard to be an introductory. The Gathering was supposed to be the first chapter in Magic's history. So in the beginning, what do you have? The Gathering. You come together. So, now beginning, what do you have? Well, you have the Gathering. You come together. So now it turns out it actually ended up being a pretty cool name,

and I think the Gathering sort of represents the players coming together. But it was interesting, early on it was chosen to be, it wasn't chosen to be a name that would last years and years and years. It was chosen to be a name that the game would have in its first incarnation. Okay, number three. One of the things that changed from the original... If you've ever seen an original Alpha playtest card, the mana costs were done a little differently. So the way the mana costs were done originally was...

So let's take... We'll take Prodigal Sorcerer. So Prodigal Sorcerer costs two generic mana and one blue mana. So on the card, as you would know it, it would say two and a blue. That's how mana costs are written now. But in original Magic, it would say three blue. So what that meant is the first number was how much mana you had to pay, and the second included any colors you had to use. So three blue meant three, you must pay

three mana for this, one of which must be blue. So for example, let's say you had a creature that costs two blue blue, so four mana, two of which is blue. Under the original thing, it would say four blue blue, meaning you must pay four, two of which must be blue. And the original thing, it would say four blue blue, meaning you must pay four, two of which must be blue. And what happened was, that was how Richard did it originally, and when he started doing some testing with it, they realized that it just confused people, because it sort of, it counted things twice. That if Prodigal Sorcerer says three and then says blue, people were confused that you somehow were only spending three total, because there was more, you know, there was three plus blue. And so people wanted to be additive with it. So Richard finally just changed it. And it's a good example. I talk about

this a lot in my, one of my truisms of design is that don't fight human nature and that people kept wanting to read it a certain way. Now it's interesting, I've talked about this too, that I believe if I had, you know, we had the mana symbols all over again, we might actually put the colored mana symbol first. Instead of being too blue, it might be blue too. Because people always, it's funny,

we write the mana symbols the way we write them, but people always talk and put the color first, even though that's not how they're written on the card. And I've tried time and time again to get people to sort of say it the way we write it, but people just really want to put the color first. The idea being the color is the most important part. So if I had to do it all over again, we would probably do that. The other thing I might do different, I've mentioned this, I did a whole

article on what I would do different if magic started all over. I'd be very tempted, instead of having a singular number to be the generic mana, of having a generic symbol that represents one mana and a symbol that represents five mana. And so the idea is, the way Prodigal Sorcerer would read, so right now it's two and a blue. I'd be tempted to have it say, blue, generic symbol, generic symbol.

So whatever, let's call that C for right now. It would be blue C, C. That each colorless mana would have its own... When I mean colorless mana, I am in generic mana, not colorless mana. But each generic mana would have its own symbol so that every mana paid has its own symbol, not all the generic mana bundled up in one thing with a number. That has also proven to be a little confusing to people.

Okay, number four. So if you look on the back of a card, one of the things you'll see on the back of the card is that there is a Duel Masters logo on the back. And a lot of people have, what is Duel Masters? What is that? So, one of the things that happened when Richard first made the game, the idea was, they realized that they had something cool in trading card games. And the plan was that Wizards was going to become the definitive

trading card game company. So, shortly after they put out Magic the Gathering, they put out a game called Jihad, that was later recalled Vampire the Eternal Struggle. They put out a game called Netrunner. They put out a game called Jihad that was later recalled Vampire the Eternal Struggle. They put out a game called Netrunner. They put out a game called Battletech. There were a bunch of different trading card games. And the idea of Deckmafters was that that was going to be the brand for Wizards trading card games.

That we'd make so many trading card games that we wanted to brand it. So then we saw a Deckmafter game. You knew that was a quality trading card game. That was the idea. The problem was, when they started Magic, they had that idea, they included it. And the early trading card games all had it. But quickly they realized

that it wasn't something we wanted to support. So Duel Masters is pretty unsupported, but it's on the back of the card. We've never changed the card. People ask me all the time, have we thought of changing the back of the card? Yes. In fact, there's some people in R&D who are big champions of us changing the back of the card. I'll get to in a second why.

There's some upcoming about why you might want to change the back of the card. Oh, here's another thing that I didn't include that's a fun one about the back of the card. If you look on the back of the card, you will notice that there's this little sort of hair on the back of the card that a lot of people think is like texturing for the back of the card. There actually was a hair caught in the press. That is an actual hair. Or on the other side, not hair. Not hair.

It's an ink pen. There's a little ink. Jesper got some ink, a little ink on the back of the card with a pen. There's a little ink mark on the back of the card. Sorry. The hair is actually on a rune sword, which is a card in the dark, I believe, that has got a hair cut on the press. The back of the card has an ink mark on it by mistake. But it kind of looks like texturing.

But it was actually made by a pen. It's an ink mark that kind of got caught after the fact and sort of just is there. Okay, next, Duel Masters. I'm sorry, number five, the color of the logo. So another reason that people want to change the back is if you look at the back of a Magic card, the logo, if I say to you, what is the logo of Magic? If you look at the back of a Magic card, it's blue. But if you look anywhere else, it's yellow.

So what happened was when Magic first started, it had a blue logo. That's what's on the back of the card. The problem is blue does not pop very much on the shelves. The part of what you want out of a logo is something that really crisp and pops. And so they wanted a lighter. So what they did is the brand team changed it

from a blue logo to a yellow logo long, long ago. And if you ever watch Magic, anywhere you'll see Magic, in ads, on boxes, anywhere, other than the back of a Magic card, anywhere you'll see Magic has a yellow logo. But because the back of the card doesn't change, it still has the old blue logo. In fact, we've even sort of cleaned

up the logo a bit. The logo on the back of a Magic card is, if you look at the box, per se, you'll notice that we've cleaned up the logo. The logo is not the same as it is on the back. The back logo is a little messier, and it's blue, and just the font choice is a little tiny different. But anyway, compare them. You'll realize we've changed it over time. Magic Online, by the way, has the actual logo. You'll realize we've changed it over time. Magic Online, by the way, has the actual logo on the back. We've changed the back of the Magic Online card. So those cards reflect the new logo. Also on the back of the card, you'll notice that Magic the Gathering has a simple trademark. We now actually have a registered trademark, but here's the interesting thing. When Magic first came out, we didn't have the register trademark done yet,

so they weren't allowed to put that on the back of the card. They just put a simple trademark because it hadn't yet got the register trademark. So the funny thing, so the difference is a trademark's a TM, and a register trademark's an R in a circle. And the R in a circle's more official. It's got more protection and stuff. It should have an R in a circle, but they didn't get it done in time. So they weren't legally allowed to put it yet when Alpha came out.

So it has the TM. But since it had the TM, we continued it. We keep the back the same. So anywhere else you'll see Magic logo, you'll see it's a registered trademark, not a simple trademark. But not on the back of the card. So another thing about the back of the card is a lot of people say, what is that supposed to be? You ever look at the back card and trying to figure out, like the corners are kind of curved and there's kind of little brivity things. What exactly is that? So if you've ever seen the alpha

starter deck, so back when Magic first started, not only were there booster packs, there was also starter decks. 60 cards, I think they had two rares in them, a bunch of land. The idea is that if you got a starter deck, you could play right out of the deck. It had the right mix of land. It was five color, it was slow, it wasn't particularly... You could make a much better deck than a starter deck, but it did let you play

out of the deck. Anyway, the starter deck actually demonstrated what the back, or what the back of a magic card was. It's a book. It's a tome. It is a magical tome. And if you saw the starter deck, it actually, on the sides, had pages. The top had

a little book, or one of the sides had a little bookmark. But it's supposed to be a book. That's the cover of a tome. That's what the back of a magic card represents. The cover of a tome. That's what the back of a magic card represents. The cover of a tome. The other interesting thing about the back of a magic card, so we get to number eight, is the original plan was not to have a

unique back. Remember, Richard was going to change the name each time, so, in fact, Arabian Nights, which was the first expansion, a lot of people have seen this, there was a purple back. At that point, they decided to keep it called Magic of the Gathering. But it had a

different color back. And the idea was, oh, each version of Magic will have its own unique back. And then finally, what they realized was that people wanted to mix their cards together and it just would be it would cause problems if the back weren't the same. And Scaf Elias, a long-time R&D person,

one of the original play tefters, designers behind Antiquities and Fallen Empires and Ice Age and Alliances, he claims that his greatest contribution to magic was convincing them to stop changing the back for Raby Nights. They were very close to going to press. I've since, by the way, heard from others that other people claim that they were the

one that stopped the back. So I'm not sure if Scaf's claim was true or not. I just know that other people, whenever I tell that story, I've heard other people chime in and say, no, no, no, they were the person that kept the back from being changed. So there's some debate on exactly who changed the back. Anyway, Scaf's the one that told

me first. I always say Scaf's the one that did it. Anyway, there is a lot of debate, by the way. People ask about the back of, okay, but the back has the wrong logo on it. It has the wrong trademark on it. It has a deckmaster thing we don't do. There's a pen mark on the back.

You know, it is not the perfect back. It is not really where, you know, there's a lot of things we'd fix if we could. And so one of the interesting things in R&D is, so Mark Lobis is one of our producers and he is the biggest, he really, really, really wants to is the biggest he really really really wants to change the back. He really feels like the back

is outdated. You know that the back is a you know there's no larger sort of advertisement for a game and that it's just outdated and has a lot of qualities about it. It has a logo from over 20 years ago. It has a DeckMetro logo that we have not supported in forever.

That's all sorts of things. It's like, why don't we get an up-to-date card? And his argument is, the research we've done says that the vast majority of people, the vast, vast majority of people in constructed play with sleeves. That something like 95% plus people play in sleeves. Not everybody plays in sleeves in limited, but it wouldn't matter in limited, because in limited, they'd all have the same card back.

They're coming from the same set. So his argument is it doesn't matter for limited, and for constructed, most people use card sleeves, so it wouldn't matter. But anyway, we have not chosen to change that. Mark's very adamant about it. Other people are very adamant in not changing, so there's always a big debate.

Clearly, not changing keeps winning the day. So I'm not saying we'll never change it, but right now, it does not look like the way the winds are blowing. Okay.

Okay, number nine. Another early thing we did in Magic. So one of the things that was Richard's original vision of the game was he wanted it to be something that you explored as you played. So what Richard wanted was the game had a lot of different cards, but he didn't want to tell you the cards.

He wanted you to experience the cards. Part of what he wanted Magic to be is I sat down against an opponent I hadn't played before, and they made me play cards I'd never seen before. So part of that philosophy in early Magic, they did not release card lists. In fact, the earliest card lists were released not by Magic, but by other companies that sort of backward figured it out. And early Magic did not have numbering on it, so you didn't know how many there were. There wasn't rarity on cards, so you didn't know what rarity cards were. There's a magazine called Shadis that was a Southern California gaming magazine. That's the first I remember that listed all the cards

and took honest attempts at rarity. They were wrong on a couple things because they were just opening up packs and sort of guessing from what they opened up. So like, they were sort of making educated guesses. And they were wrong on a few things. There are a few uncommons that they said were rare. They're like, oh, look at all these rare cards I have. I'm like, oh, because they're uncommon, that's why I have so many. But anyway,

in fact, the first world championship, in fact, the first two world championships, I was not allowed to give deck lists out. Like, I covered both of them

and I had the deck lists, but I wasn't allowed to give them out. Now, years later, when we sort of changed our philosophy on that and started being much more free-willing of giving out deck lists, but I wasn't allowed to give them out. Now, years later, when we sort of changed our philosophy on that and started being much more free-willing of giving out deck lists, I think the problem, Richard, really what happened was the world had changed.

It wasn't, I mean, Richard sort of made a game for the moment that existed when he made it, not realizing that you're on the cusp of something big, and that something big was the internet. realizing that you're on the cusp of something big. And that something big was the internet. So, if you go back to 1993, the internet was in its infancy from a public step. I mean, universities had it for a while.

But as far as the average public having it, I believe the World Wide Web, if you will, might not exist in 1993 or was just starting to exist. I know, for example, when I first went to Magic's website, like, I didn't have any way

to see any of the images. Like, it was so early that, like, the idea that you would have a web browser, like, not everybody had a web browser. It wasn't like something that just, you automatically knew what it was. But anyway, we,

I think Richard's idea was, well, we could hide information that if we didn't tell you, you wouldn't know. And what he missed was with the advent of the Internet, information became free and easy to share. And it just became a lot easier for people to figure out complex things by sharing information. And once it became clear that that was what was going on, the company changed. We started releasing deck lists. I actually had saved the deck lists from the early ones, so I started publishing them in the duelist. So now it's public. Like now what Zach Dolan played and Bertrand Lestrade played in the first World Championship in 1994, that's now public knowledge. Okay, number 10. One of the things about Wizards is,

Wizards was a role-playing game company, and so they had a relationship with a printer named Carta Monday, and the time was in Belgium. Carta Monday's gotten bigger since then, a lot because of Magic, I think. And so they, I think that's where they printed their books.

So they knew when Richard came to pitch RoboRally and Peter said, no, I need a simpler game that I can produce that's cheaper. He pitched the idea of cards, that he could make cards. And then Richard said, oh, I have an idea for a card game. And also, Peter had access to artists. So he knew that he could make cards that he could illustrate them so anyway the the

one of the early things about magic was they had never done printing before and there are a lot of mistakes made in early magic so alpha alone just the number of printing mistakes so for example orcish aura Flame was supposed to cost three and a red. It cost one

and a red. Orcish Artillery was supposed to cost one red red. It cost one and a red. Elvish Archers was supposed to be a 2-1 first striking creature. It was printed as a 1-2 first striking creature. Cyclopean Tomb forgot to have its

mana cost. It didn't have a mana cost on it. The Red Elemental Blast was supposed to be an interrupt. It was printed as an instant. There just was a whole... And there were a lot of things in which it was supposed to be a mana symbol, but it ended up being printed

as a letter. So, like, I think Force of Nature, all the green mana, instead of being green mana, was a G. And they did, right near the end, they were trying to swap something

and the word card shows up all capitalized in something. So some things that discard things, the card of discard is all capitalized because they use

card name, I think, to replace names of cards as a filler. Anyway, there are a lot of mistakes made in early alpha, and so it is a it's kind of funny because a lot of the fun things about collecting early alpha is there's lots of sort of misprints, if you will.

Also, early alpha, there were a couple card types that didn't even list their card type on the card type line. Creature, for example, was Summon. So we're getting back to number 11 here. Creature was Summon, and Enchant Creatures were Enchant blank, like Enchant Creature. So it didn't say Enchantment. Creature didn't say Creature. So instead, Destroy Tiger Creature, you had to figure out what Creatures were,

even though the Creature cards didn't ever say Creature on them. Enchantments, at least, said enchant, helped you get a little bit of a clue they have enchantments. But it's funny that some early cards, for flavor purposes, didn't actually tell you what they were. Those were fixed, I think, during 6th edition rule update. So another thing they did to try

to fool people in early magics, number 12, is they, because they didn't tell you rarities, they were trying to confuse you which slot was which rarity. So they put some land, in fact, all islands, in the rare slot. So there are actually some cards on the rare slot that are islands.

So your rare card, if you open up an alpha pack, your rare could be an island. And what's worse is, it's not even a unique island. It looks just like the common island. It was just there to try to confuse you. But there were some packs in which

you didn't really get a, I mean, you got a rare off the sheet because you got an island, but you didn't really get a rare. Okay, what is the most printed basic land? So, all the basic lands have been printed the same number of times except for one, and that is Mountain. So, that's number 13. Mountain got printed in Arabian Nights. The reason was, originally they were going to print all five basic lands in. Because they were going to change was, originally they were going to print all five basic lands in. Because they were going to change the back, they wanted you to be able to make a deck of all the same back.

And they knew you needed basic land to do that. So they were originally going to put the basic land in. Once they decided not to change the back at the last minute, they took all the basic lands off, but they forgot one. So actually Mountain showed up. So Mountain is the only basic land to show up without the other four basic lands in a set. And it happened in Arabian Nights. Also, by the way, there are a number of cards that have never been released in a booster pack product.

We did six cards that were from books. Early on, we did a book promotion with our earliest books. That when you bought a book, you would get a card. And the way it would work is you'd rip off a last page and send it in. book, you would get a card. And the way it would work is you'd rip off a last page and send it in. The problem ended up being that the cards ended up being more sought after than the books. So people were just like buying books, you know, buying all the books out of the bookstore so they get access to the card. And anyway, we decided that it wasn't, well, I'm sorry, five of them were book cards and one we gave away at a convention. The

Last Knee Dragon was given away at DragonCon. And that caused quite a stir. After that, we decided not to do that anymore. All cards now show up in Magic Product. So we don't do any of the book promos anymore. The book promos had a pen on it, saying they were book promos. Mana Crypt, one of them, ended up being a really powerful card. And so that card, because it was in very limited quantities early on,

it definitely is super hard to get. Okay, not only were there misprints in Alpha, but there were mistakes. The first three sets, so Arabian Nights, Antiquities, and Legends, all had major printing errors. So much so that there was a recall, not a recall, but there was a buyback program where you could send in,

if you opened up, so Arabian Nights, what they would do is there were a series of cards that got printed twice that had misprints in how they were printed. And you could send those in

if you got the misprints. Antiquities, occasionally would give you the same common in a pack. So you get duplicates of the same common. And then Legends had this problem where the uncommons, half of them showed up in one box and half in another. So if you opened up any one box of Legends, you only got half the uncommons. It either came from the A set or the B set. So if you only bought a singular box of legends, you couldn't get all the cards or all the uncommons. Okay, number 16.

So a lot of people love the tap symbol, but what they don't realize is the tap symbol actually didn't start with the game. Early magic told you to tap things. It would spell it out. It would say to tap it. In words, it would say to tap it. But eventually they decided we wanted to have a symbol.

The earliest magic symbol actually was a T, but then we found out as we were translating that the word tap didn't start with a T in all languages, so we then changed to the current version that's a card. But the tap symbol actually went through a bunch of iterations. What people know as

the modern tap symbol didn't happen for a little while. Also, early magic artifacts were a bit weird. There actually were four types of artifacts early on. The artifacts were the one thing that tapped but didn't show you or say they tapped. Didn't say the word tap on them, didn't have a tap symbol. And that was, there were things called mono artifacts.

And what mono artifacts did is they had an activated ability and in the word mono was implied that they tapped. So there were mono artifacts, poly artifacts, continuous artifacts, and artifact creatures.

Poly artifacts had activation that you could have activated as many times as you wanted. And continuous meant it just had an ability, a global ability that affected things. And continuous meant it just had an ability, a global ability that affected things. And so if you ever look at early alpha, one thing that's funny is like you have something like Icy Manipulator, which you have to tap to use it. But the only reason you know that

is you have to understand that mono artifact meant that it tapped. Okay, next. Number 18. So, the mana symbols. Do the mana symbols, do all the mana symbols go back to alpha? And the answer is kind of. They were introduced in alpha, but one of the mana symbols actually changed.

That we changed it. Which mana symbol did we change? The white mana symbol in Ice Age. We decided that it wasn't quite what we wanted, so we went back, and so Ice Age actually has the revamped white mana symbol. There are a few promo cards that were done before the mana got changed.

So we used to... We still do this from time to time. We had promo cards that existed in another product. I think these were promo. They weren't in another product, but things we gave out through promotion. And it was a card that... There were some cards that were coming up to be in Ice Age.

But we did the early promo versions and they had the old white mana symbol. So there are a few cards in Ice Age that if you have the promo version of the card, you have the old white mana symbol. And the normal Ice Age have the current mana symbol. Okay. Number 19. So, Games Magazine, which Okay Number 19 So

Games Magazine which still kind of exists it's definitely gone through a rough time now I think it's Games, Rules, Puzzles For a long time though there was a Games Magazine

that was sort of the magazine all about games they had a Hall of Fame and one of Magic's claim to fame was in order to be in the Hall of Fame you had to be at least 10 years old

and you had to be still on sale. And Magic was, I think, the first game to get entered into the Games Hall of Fame the very first year it was eligible to be in the Hall of Fame. That Magic was the first one to have that, what's the word, have that honor. Okay, next.

So this is fun. This tells you sort of how long ago this article was. So number 20 was, I was talking about how there were over 10,000 unique cards in the game. We're now up to 16,000. So it gives you a rough idea. I think this article was probably over 10 years ago. We now make, let's see if there's a 6,000 difference. We make somewhere between 600 and 800 cards a year.

I think we're closer to 800. So, I don't know, 6,000 cards. So probably this article was 8, 9 years ago is my guess. But anyway, we do keep making new unique cards. Okay, number 21 was a story about the making of Magic the Gathering. I'm sorry, Magic Online. When it first came out, they were trying to do an ad for it. So they came to R&D because we were the mathematicians in the building.

And they said to us, okay, if you had all the cards available to you, so when Magic Online started, it had Invasion Forward, which I think was, it might have been three years worth of cards. So we had three years worth of cards and said, okay, assuming we wanted to make a deck of cards, let's assume it's a 60 card deck and you had access to the cards you had available. So these cards, 60 card deck, how many different combinations of decks can you make? That's what they wanted R&D to find out. So R&D did the math and what we realized was it was such a large number that it wasn't going to

work for the ad because it was so large that people couldn't fathom the largeness of the number. So the number, I'll put it this way, the number was larger than there are atoms in the known universe. It's a giant, giant, giant, giant, giant, giant number. And that's just three years worth of cards. I'm not even talking about, now we have 23 years worth of cards. But three years worth of cards and 60-card deck. The amount of different possibilities that were possible just with those combinations

was not quite infinite, but pretty close. Okay, number 22. Now we've consolidated. Magic boosters have 15 cards in them. That's pretty locked. That's what they do. But for a while, that wasn't the case in Magic. So how many other cards,

card numbers can you name? Okay, so first there's eight. There were a bunch of, the small sets in the early years, or maybe Knights, had eight cards in them. Then there were 10, Unglued had 10 cards in it.

And there was 12, I think like like Renaissance. Some of the, there's some early products that were sort of to get cards out there that were not a full 15, but not eight. They were 12. So eight, 10, and 12 are the sizes that other stuff we've done.

So 23. I just wrote down 1994 in my notes. What does 1994 mean? I'm not sure what 23 is. The I don't know. The match that came out in 1993. I don't know what 1993. I wrote a shorthand to myself. I don't know what that means.

We're going to skip on to number 24. So number 24 is one of the fun I had during Unglued was I decided it'd be neat to put the, to put the, to break some records because I had some flexibility. So what I did, first off, is I made the shortest name ever in Magic.

Previously, there had been a bunch of three-letter names like Fog or Hex. But I made Ow, which at the time was the shortest, two letters, shortest name. I also made the ultimate nightmare the time was the shortest, two letters, shortest name. I also made The Ultimate Nightmare of Wizard of the Coast Customer Service, which was at the time the longest name ever. In fact,

I cheated. I ran the name down the side of the card. Not something you can normally do. So when I got to Unhinge, I said, you know what? I can do better. Two letters? How about no letters? So I made a card that has no name. It's the card without a name.

So how can you have less than no letters? And then I did a card where I wrapped the name. I think I can remember the whole thing. It's like, our market research shows that players like very short names. So this is the short... Our market research shows that players like really long names. So this is the longest name

ever, Elemental. Close to that. And that was the name that wrapped that players like really long names. So this is the longest name ever, Elemental. Close to that. And that was a name that wrapped all the way around the card. And so it's sort of like, well, it's harder to get short than nothing. It's kind of harder than all the way around the card. It's harder to get longer than that. So Unhinged managed to break it, so that was fun.

Okay, number 25. The last bit of trivia is, at the time, and this was funny, it was a while ago, I listed every designer that had led the design for both the large set and the small set. I mentioned Aaron, because Aaron had done Dissension and had done Lorwyn.

Richard, obviously, had done Alpha and done Arabian Nights. Jim Lynn and Skaff Elias, who led the East Coast Plate Taverns, they obviously did Ice Age and Alliances, as well as Vaan Empires and Antiquities. Bill Rose did Mirage and Visions,

and he also went on to do Shards of Alara and Invasion. Brian Tinsman, who had done Scourge and had done Saviors of Kamigawa. He also had done Time Spiral and Champions of Kamigawa. Me, I've done many small sets. I just, for example, I did Innistrad and Dark Ascension, which is a large and small set in the same block. Only a few of us have done that. Bill did that, obviously, with Mirage and Visions. And Mike did that. Mike Elliott. did that, obviously, with Mirage and Visions.

And Mike did that. Mike Elliott. Oh, sorry. Mike Elliott was the other person. Mike Elliott had done, for example, Urza's Saga and Urza's Legacy. I did Urza's Destiny. Now, that's what I said when I did the article. Those were the people that had done with a large and a small set. The funny thing is, there's a

whole bunch of people since then. So, since that time, Mark Gottlieb, he did Mirrored and Besieged, and he just did Shadows Over Innistrad. Ken Nagel, he did World Awake, and he did Born of the Gods,

and for large sets, he did Return of Ravnica, and he has one coming up that he and I did together, a codename Ham. It's not public, codename's a public ad. I'm sorry,

the codename's public, the name's a public ad. I'm sorry. Codename's public. Name's a public ad. So both Ethan had done Journey into Nyx and he and I together have done a large set coming out

next year codenamed Barrel. Sean, has Sean done a small set? Yes. Sean has done well Sean did Last which is the set? yes Sean has done well Sean did Last which is a set that's not out yet

the barrel goes up with Last and he's done a bunch of he did Conspiracy which I guess you could argue is a small set and then he and I together did Kaladesh coming out this fall and he also did Magic Origins

which is a large set anybody else I'm forgetting that's Origins, which is a large set. Anybody else I'm forgetting that's done with a large and a small set? Those are all the people that jumped to mind. But anyway, as you can see,

just from when I wrote this article a little while ago. So I'm hoping today, the point of today's article was just to sort of, there's a lot of minutiae about magic, a lot of little tiny

random things. I mean, some of these I've mentioned along the way. Some of them I'm not sure I've lot of little tiny random things. I mean, some of these I've mentioned along the way. Some of them I'm not sure I've ever mentioned in my podcast before. I really want to figure out what 19... Number 23 was... All I wrote was 1994.

And I'm like, what is 1994? What happened... Oh, I know what 1994 is. I got it, I got it. It is the year that more magic product was released, more different sets were released than any other year. Because in 1994, Arabian Nights, there was an early shipment that came out in 1993,

but a good chunk of it came out in 94. So Arabian Nights came out in 94, Antiquities came out in 1994, Legends came out in 1994, The Dark came out in 1994, and Fallen Empires came out in 1994. We had five expansion sets in one year The Dark came out in 1994. And Fallen Empires came out in 1994. We had five expansion sets in one year.

We've never done that. We've had four, but that's the only year we've ever done five. That's what 1994 is. It's the year we've had the most sets of product release. Oof, I'm glad I remembered that. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today. Like I said, today's a little more hodgepodge. If you enjoy this kind of show, let me know,

because I can do 25 other random things that are just hodgepodge of lots of little trivia that you might not know about the game. This was fun. One of the things that's fun about looking back at the history of the game is just there's a lot of things that are little tiny things that aren't big enough for a whole podcast that you can fill up lots of little things. Anyway, let me know if you guys like this.

This was fun. I might do it again. But anyway, I am pulling up to Rachel's school. So my final thought here is that if you like hearing lots of little tidbits, let me know. I don't know. I guess just let me know. That's my final thought of today is this was fun.

I think I could... I keep talking about writing another article of doing 25 more random facts, but even if I don't do it as an article, I could do it as a podcast. So you guys might get to hear the sequel to this article before my article readers hear the sequel to this article. By the way, if you...

Oh, and one other thing. If you want to go online, not only did I do 25 random facts about magic, as a little side, I had done my own 25 random facts About Me that I put on my Facebook, and I included it as a bonus section. So if you want to learn 25 Random Facts About Me, if you look up the article 25 Random Facts About Magic,

there's a little bonus feature at the end where you get 25 Random Facts About Me. So you'll learn things like I hate bananas, which you know, but maybe you won't know all 25 random facts about me. Anyway, I'm now at Rachel's school, 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. Bye-bye.