Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #400 - Top 10 Supplemental Products

Episode Date: January 13, 2017

Mark talks about his choice for the Top 10 supplemental products Magic has made.

I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time to drive to work. Okay, so today is a top ten episode. So I'm going to talk about my top ten favorite supplemental products. Okay, so the idea is magic. The main part of magic is we put out normal expansion sets, what we call standard legal sets. magic, the main part of magic, we put out normal expansion sets, what we call standard legal sets. But sometimes we put out other things. And so today I'm going to talk about some of those other things. And once again, the thing I always say with my top 10 list is, ask me another day, my list would be slightly different.

But this is today, today my top 10 favorite supplemental products. And number 10, from the vault. So this was the brainchild of a guy named Mark Purvis. So Mark is one of, on the brand team, he's on the brand team. It's been for quite a while, one of the senior people on the brand team. And Mark

came up with an idea. Mark has always been a collector. He loves magic. I mean, he came, he played magic long before he worked at Wizards. But he's always been a collector. And he came up with the idea of a product that played into the idea of collecting. Something that was kind of cool and special.

Something you could sort of stick on your shelf or, you know, just... And he loved the idea that what it would do is it would represent different kinds of themes, that there's different, you know, collectors collect different things. And so his idea was that we would make this box set every year. It would have 15 cards in it. They would have a special sort of premium version, and they would hit some cool theme. The very first one we ever did was dragons. That's the idea he had for the first one.

And I was involved on From the Vault in the early days. I haven't done a lot recently, but the first couple I was very involved in. And then on the second one, they didn't know what the theme was. And they brought me in to help find a theme. And so I did band cards. That was the one we did the second theme. But all the time we've done a lot of different themes.

Lands and angels and lots of different themes. I'm trying to remember them all. We did legendary things and anyway it is fun. It's something that needs to play into sort of the

flavor of just the flavor of just the idea of some product that says you know what magic is collectible people like to collect these

there's themes to magic and that the idea there's lots of different ways to play magic and so you know we definitely have made different

From the Vaults that have focused on different groups you know we've made ones that are more cube friendly or made some that were more commander-friendly and stuff. So, anyway, it's a fun product, and it's definitely a product that sort of gets to show things off.

You know, they also are done in a unique version. Some will have new art. Definitely sort of for people who like to collect things, it's something that's its own unique sort of thing to collect. So that is my number 10 from the vault. Number nine, the World Champ Decks. So this is not a product we do anymore, but so when we did the very first Pro Tour in New York, PT1 in 1996, to commemorate it, we made three, I'm sorry, we made, we took all of the top eight.

Is that right? All the top eight? We took all the top eight and turned them into decks. And, you know, not only did we make the decks, but we put the name of the person who played them on it. So it was like Mark Justice had a deck. And, you know, Michael Locanto had a deck. And Bertrand Lestray had a deck. George Baxter had a deck. So you could actually have a chance, you know, Hammer had a deck and Bertrand Lestray had a deck. George Baxter had a deck. You could actually have a chance, you know, Hammer had a deck.

You could actually play the decks from the people that did well. And then we started doing this thing, I mean, that wasn't obviously World Champ, because that was a Pro Tour, but we started doing it for the World Championship, which every year we made four decks. It wasn't always the

top four. The way it would work is we would always do the winner and then we would do the second place provided that the second place person didn't play the same deck as the winner. And then we would go down from there and then we would prioritize both interesting decks and

interesting players. Because the decks were associated with the player. And it was just sort of neat. It was fun to sort of... Usually you could replay the finals, because normally, unless the finals was a mirror match, we would give you both the winner and the finalist, and you could play that match.

And you could play other matches. It was a chance just to sort of take top level... Now, the World Champ decks had different backs. They didn't have normal magic backs, and they had, I think, a gold border to them, because they were... They didn't have normal Magic Bax and they had a, I think, a gold border to them because they were, in order to sort of sell them at a decent price, we had to make them so they didn't have Magic Bax.

But anyway, it was something that we used to do every year. In fact, Henry Stern was in charge of the decks and he would always go to the World Championship and his job was to figure out what decks we're going to use. Some years it was super easy because some years it's like, oh, hey, the top four are all different, they're named players. We were trying to balance having cool decks and named players. And so Henry usually would have to go and figure out, I mean, it was always the winner, the champions deck we always had, but then figuring out the other three.

And then Henry had to do a bunch of stuff. We would have the players get their autograph, and then we'd put their autograph in gold on all the cards. And we also wanted to turn the product around really quickly, because we wanted people to get their hands on them. And so one of the things that we did was Henry would go and then it would be a super, super fast turnaround. One of the fastest I've ever seen us do on a Magic product.

And it was star building. It was neat. I remember one time, Henry, there wasn't four unique decks in the top eight and Henry had to go outside the top eight. That's how Randy Buehler got a deck. Randy Buehler's deck actually wasn't even in the top eight. But it was a really cool deck.

It was a blue control deck. And I remember one of my stories about this is I used to always bring the decks to the players. I used to go to the Pro Tour of the day, and I would get the advanced decks of the players so that at the Pro Tour, I would give each of the players their deck, assuming they were at the Pro Tour. A lot of them were, obviously. And Randy Bueller's deck, the outside got misspelled. His name on the

box got misspelled. And so, I remember having to, and I knew that when I saw it. Once I saw it, I realized it was misspelled. There's nothing we can do about it. It was too late. It was printed. And having to give Randy his deck, because he was all excited, and it was misspelled. Bueller, I realized it was misspelled, but nothing we can do about it. It was too late. It was printed. And having to give Randy his deck because he was all excited and it was misspelled. Bueller, I think it was like,

it had the E and the U swapped. But anyway, one of the things that I loved about the product was it really was a chance to sort of, it's not often we can combine magic pro tour history with a deck product. And it was neat. I always loved the chance to deck product. And it was neat. I always loved the chance to do that. And it was fun.

It was fun to see how the different players played up and have different decks. And it was neat to sort of replay the finals, usually. In the end, though, the reason the decks went away, well, the biggest reason the decks went away, I think, is not enough people bought them. Usually when we stop something, it's because not enough people wanted it. But the other problem was,

the way we used to do rotations is you would play, the Worlds used to be in August, and it would be the last time people would play Standard before the decks changed because the new set would come out. And so we'd make this product that had a Standard that wasn't legal by the time we released it. And so there were a bunch of reasons. That was one of them.

It also, I don't know. But anyway, I put a number 9 on my list because I always liked the World Champ decks. I always thought they were a lot of fun. I always would get them at the company store. And, you know, I enjoyed them. In some ways, I think the decks from the very first Pro Tour, which would later become the World Champ decks,

was one of our inspirations that got us to start doing pre-constructed decks. We started in Tempest doing pre-constructed decks. We started in Tempest doing pre-constructed decks. And I think that part of that was watching people enjoy having a deck already put together. So I think the World Champ decks and the Precursor, the original PT decks, definitely influenced us doing more pre-constructed decks. So number nine, the World champ decks. Number eight, Vanguard.

So we used to have a thing called Arena, which I mean, right now we have Friday Night Magic and we've always done a lot of in-store play but Arena was a league that we ran and the idea was I mean, we still have leagues but this was a different branded

league thing. It was different ways to play in store, and we would do different things. And they came to us and said, you know, we would love to do something where it was some unique kind of format. And we have a budget to be able to make some stuff. We can make cards or something. You know, can R&D come up with some cool idea? And we did. We had a neat idea, which we called Vanguard. So what Vanguard was is they were oversized cards and that you chose a Vanguard card

to play with. And then what it did was it changed your opening hand size and your opening life total and then it gave you, the player, some ability you could use. Usually it was the ability to use the whole game. Some of them were once per game you could do something. And then at the time we made them, we were rolling out the Weatherlight Saga. So I convinced them that we should be doing the Weatherlight characters. And so we made, I think there were four seasons of Vanguard. And so there were basically we put out two batches of Vanguard one year and two batches the other year. The first year we did it coincided with Tempest and so

they were the Weatherlight Saga. They were characters directly from the Weatherlight Saga. So it was like Gerard and Sisay and Hannah and Tongarth and Karn and Squee and Orim and all the key Weatherlight crew members. And they had different abilities.

I think Gerard, you started with less cards in your hand, but you drew two cards to turn. And I think Mirri let you tap mana for any color. Each of them did things in a different way and gave you a different ability. And then we put out a second batch and the second batch was with Urza Saga so they were, Weatherlight Saga

but the earlier versions of stuff. So there was Urza and Mishra and Ashnod and then we then did some of the stuff that was early I think we got into doing Raffelos and stuff but the idea really was

that the first batch was more Weatherlight crew and the second batch was older school Urza type characters that tied in and anyway the way Vanguard worked was they were given away you just could play if you played in the arena,

we gave you all, I think each batch had eight cards in it. So I think there was two batches of eight twice. So my math's correct. I think there's 32 Vanguard cards. But anyway, it was definitely a popular format. A lot of casual people would play it. And then after those two arena seasons it went away. We then brought it back to Magic Online for a while, and for a while you could,

I think they tied into avatars, that avatars had certain abilities and you could play certain avatars and it would affect your game if you played in the Vanguard format. Vanguard is one of those things that I, one day, I would love to bring Vanguard back. I think it's a fun, flavorful way to play. Anyway, I always enjoyed Vanguard, and I always found Vanguard to be neat. Actually, we once did Vanguard at Invitational in Rio. The problem was that it turned out that a few

of the, like, once the pros went to break it, there were a few that were just better than the others. And although they played a lot of different decks with the cards, I think only four different Vanguard cards actually got played. But anyway, Vanguard was fun and different

and quirky. So, you know, and I think it was a neat thing to do. And so Vanguard is my number eight. So number seven, I'm going to call the Masters series. So Modern Masters and Eternal Masters. So the idea of this is sets that bring back old cards, and they're more complex. They're meant for drafting, but they are much denser.

Normally, for example, in a normal, you know, standard legal set, we limit how many mechanics we have, you know, not kind of the evergreen mechanics. Normally a new set will have, you know, four or five mechanics, but it'll be something that's kind of manageable. Master sets are like, okay, let's just have fun with what magic has been and it's really meant for a little more enfranchised players and it is definitely a deeper draft experience there's a lot more going on there's a lot more mechanics at play and it's kind of a blast from the past because all the cards are old cards and all the mechanics

are you know older mechanics and having a chance to like play again with stuff that you haven't played with for a while and watching them mix and match. Like one of the neat things is, I mean not that people can't combine them in older formats, but it's neat to sort of play limited where like, oh wow, these mechanics from completely different blocks that I've never played before in limited start colliding with each other and it does really neat and cool things. Like, one of the things that we often talk about is, for all the standard legal sets, we really want to make sure that every, like, no matter what in franchise level you're at,

that we make things that are approachable. And so, you know, we do want to make drafts that have depth to them, but we also want to make sure that newer people drafting, you know, aren't overwhelmed. Like, Time Spiral Block, we definitely learned... Like, Time Spiral Block, we did this thing where we're like... We looked back and brought back a lot of mechanics. In fact, we brought back a lot of mechanics. And what we found was the newer players were just overwhelmed because,

hey, look, it's... We brought back something like 40 old mechanics during the course of the block. When normally, like, in a whole block at a time, we'd look, it's, we brought back something like 40 old mechanics during the course of the block. When normally, like in a whole block at a time, we'd have, you know, eight to 10 mechanics total. And so the idea that there were like 40 is just overwhelming. But it is fun to be able to do that somewhere. Time Spiral was really well received by the franchise players. So shouldn't we have the opportunity to do something like that? You know, occasionally, it's fun to say, hey, okay, this is not a product for beginners this is a product for people that really

want to go knee deep in magic and I think the master sets get to do that it also allows us to repeat older cards cards that people want we've had opportunities to definitely take some cards that we haven't printed in a while and print them again

and that can be quite exciting. So, but anyway, I think that it is, I think that it is a neat product that really hits an audience and sort of scratches an itch. We don't get a scratch all the time. And so anyway, so Mafters comes in at my number six. It's funny. The Masters started as an innovation.

So we do what we call the Innovations Cube, which is every summer we do something that's just a different way to play Magic. I'll talk about a bunch of them soon. And the Masters series started out as an innovation product. Like, oh, hey, is there a way for the franchise players to just draft with more of a collection of old things?

And it went over so well that we realized we just made it a yearly thing. And just said, okay, wow, people really like this. Let's do a Masters every year. And we mix around where we go. This year was Eternal Masters. That went back a little bit further. Then Modern Masters. We had a couple of Modern Masters

that stayed within the modern format. So i really i uh it's fun because i i enjoy time travel block i enjoy i do like you know i do know magic mechanics i've been playing magic for a long time and it's you know it's fun to see old mechanics that i i a lot of times, had a hand in making, but, you know, definitely design sets with, and so I enjoy the masters. I think master drafts are really a lot of fun, and it's neat to be able to, I mean, from a design standpoint, it's neat to be able to build something solely from pre-existing things. It's a challenge, like, not that I don't personally design, I haven't yet designed any of the master sets

because I'm busy but watching them get designed it's a neat experiment and one of the things I always say to people I mean, in some ways Cube is this that if you really want to have a fun sense of what it's like to design magic

the first place to do it is okay, make a magic set of pre-existing magic cards which is exactly what Cube is doing it's like, hey, make a magic set of pre-existing magic cards, which is exactly what Cube is doing. It's like, hey, make a set in which, you know, you're not making new things, you're just, you're combining old things in different ways. And I think that is, I think Masters is us kind of doing that, but you can do it yourselves through Cube products.

Okay, number seven, the Master Series. Number six, Conspiracy. So Conspiracy was the brainchild of Shawn Mane. I think he really took two different things he liked and smashed them together to make a very different kind of format. One of the things I like about Conspiracy is it really shows how magic, you know, magic, I mean I say this all the time, magic's not one game. It's really a whole bunch of games that have a shared rule umbrella.

And conspiracy is a very different way to play magic. It is, I mean, so what he did was he said, I love drafting and I love multiplayer play. So let's find a way to do something interesting with drafting. And so that has all the draft matter cards and, you know, it's really interesting to go, oh, like there's all sorts of neat things that happen. Like, how do I want to draft this? And what do I want to do? And it makes drafting itself part of the game in a way where the cards

get to interact with it, which it never has before. I think that was very cool. And then, you know, Sean is just a huge fan of multiplayer play and the idea of let's make a product that's about multiplayer play that's a limited product, it's a sealed product. You draft it, you know, that there really hadn't been a multiplayer draft product before. There'd been multiplayer formats, but they were all constructed. And so Conspiracy really, I love when people come up with sort of like, as a designer,

it is neat to me when you can see people's passions come out and they make a product that no one else was going to make like the neat thing about conspiracy is i don't feel like if sean was not at wizards i don't think we make a conspiracy i don't think that product gets made because it's really something that sean had a passion for um and obviously it was so popular we made a second one so like people you know sean really had this passion product and he made it. And other people shared that passion and really enjoyed it. And we made another one.

And so I really like to applaud that. I love, I mean, and the other thing that Conspiracy did, which was really neat, is they built a world for it. You know, they made Fiora. They took this world that I guess first talked about in the comics with Dax Faden and they really

sort of fleshed it out and built a whole story around it and really made a world that was its own world. That was the first supplemental product that really kind of

made its own world. It had its own continuity to it. I mean, we do that all the time for standard legal stats but we'd never all the time for standard legal sets, but we'd never really done that for a supplemental product.

And so, conspiracy is this neat thing. It really, you know, like, for example, the Conspiracy 2 played around with the crown, capturing the crown. You know, that was a very neat thing. It is fun watching something that really plays around in neat and innovative space. I love that. I mean, part of what maybe today's theme is is I love how many different things you can do with magic.

Standard's awesome. Draft is awesome. Sealed's awesome. You know, draft is awesome. Sealed's awesome. Those things are all great. But it's neat that you can do so many other things with magic. That magic is more than just... It's more than just any one thing. That it's many, many different formats.

And each format has lots of different ways to play. And I look at something like Conspiracy, and I'll be honest, that the thing I love about Conspiracy is not that it's my favorite format. Part of what today I'm looking at is sort of what I appreciate as a designer, what I appreciate that it exists. I'll be honest, I'm really upfront that both, you know, I'm not a big multiplayer fan, what I personally play. But I love the fact that it exists. I love the fact that these formats are out there

and that so many people do embrace them. That Magic does have this quality of, hey, I'm interacting with my friends and a whole bunch of us are just playing together. And I love that Magic isn't just a two-person game, that you can play Magic with as many people as you want to play. I think that's really cool. And so my number six is Conspiracy. Hats off to Conspiracy. I really think Conspiracy, I love its innovation. I love the neat places it plays. I love the creative vision it created for itself.

I think it's pretty cool. Number five, Deck Builder's Toolkit. So this is probably one people didn't expect to make in my top ten, nor, hey, make it in number 5 one of the things that's really hard to do is make stuff that's good for new players and we do a lot of pre-constructed decks

and intro decks and different things but the Deck Builder's Toolkit was a really neat idea that was a very different product that one of the things we said is you know what beginners really want? they want a whole bunch of cards. You know, when you're a beginner, it doesn't matter, you know,

we realize that we can make a product with lots of commons and uncommons, and say, you know what? Because we're not giving you our mythic rares, we can give you a whole bunch more cards. And I like the idea that it was a product that just said, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're A, just going to get a lot of cards in your hand, give you a lot of choices. Because one of the neat things about Magic is deck building.

And if you don't have a lot of cards, you don't have a lot of choices. And the Deck Builders Toolkit went one further which, I don't know if you've ever seen the Deck Builders Toolkit, the idea inside is not only is it giving you a bunch of cards, but it's giving you parts of a deck. It's giving you themes to play with. That it's saying, hey, you know, we're going to give you a couple different themes that you can build around. and we're going to give you cards of that theme. So we're going to give you sort of the beginnings of a deck. Not all of a deck, you still got to build it. We want to teach you how to build a deck, but we're going to give you a helping hand. And the idea of, I mean, one of the things I love in supplemental products is innovation in them.

And the Deck Builder's Toolkit really was such a different way to approach new players. Like I said, I have nothing against intro decks or pre-constructed decks. Those are really good ways to learn. But this product is a product that goes beyond just teaching you how to play Magic. This product is a product that teaches you how to build decks. How to really sort of get you know get from the shallow end of the pool to the deep end of the pool

how do you really involve yourself in it and it's such a cool product I really like the deck builder toolkit and it's really done such a good job at filling the void it needs to fill and I don't know I just like it for the I mean we spent years trying, like,

we spent a lot of energy trying to figure out how to initially teach people. That's important. But what we realized was the next step is just as important. It's like, okay, you know the basics of the game. How do we get you involved? How do we get you to understand the joy of, you know, deck building, of making your own deck, of creating something that's yours? And the deck builders toolkit, I felt like,

did that in a really artful and cool way. So at number five, the Deck Builders Toolkit. Okay, number four, Arch Enemy. Okay, so way, way, way back when, Bill Rose came up with an idea for a set that we used to call Power Lunch. And the flavor of Power Lunch was, this was Bill's vision. He goes, imagine if you made a set where Ancestral Recall was the baseline power of the set.

That the set is like, Ancestral Recall was an average card. And the idea was, what if we made a set where the power level was just through the roof? The cars were just crazy powerful. And the idea was, you know, we would make this product, and the idea was so you could take on not one of your friends, but multiple of your friends. You know, the idea that, you know, I'd have cars so powerful that I could take on many people at once. And we never actually made that product itself. We talked about it for years.

But many years later, we stumbled upon what I consider sort of the... I mean, not the person who made... I'm trying to think who actually made Arch Enemy. I think it was Ken Nagle, I think, did it. I don't know if Ken Nagle even knew of Power Lunch. But he came to a similar place, which was, can we make a product where many players get to play against one? We were trying to figure out different ways to do supplemental stuff,

and Ken was looking at different multiplayer products, and the idea that everything is one-on-one, which is how most multiplayer products worked, pretty much the way multiplayer works in one of two ways. Either everybody was on their own or usually you had teams. Either you had teams of two or in something like Emperor you either had teams of three or teams of five. But everything in multiplayer was either everyone's on their own or there's equal sized teams. And Ken really loved the idea of what if the teams weren't equal-sized? What if the teams were unbalanced? In fact, what if one team was one person? And so he set about to make Arch Enemy.

So Arch Enemy, for those that have never played, one deck is giant cards, literally, you know, oversized cards. And that's your Arch Enemy deck. And the Arch Enemy deck is each turn you get an Arch Enemy card, and they do just crazy things. They just, for free, every turn they do things for the Arch Enemy. And the idea is

they allow the Arch Enemy to take on a much wider role. You know, usually with the Arch Enemy, you have three or four people taking them on. And it was just, once again, and the reason I like a lot of these supplemental products is it's just a different way to play magic. And this one,

you're still playing magic, it's just making the shake-up of sort of the dynamics of how a multiplayer game works. It's an unbalanced multiplayer game. We've never done that before. The other thing that was fun about Arch Enemy is they really had fun with the titles for the cards

and it really had a super villainous quality that was kind of neat. You know, the Arch Enemy, the names of the Arch Enemy cards were very kind of like over-the-top James Bond villain kind of things. You know, very kind of like, you know, over-the-top James Bond villain kind of things. You know, I formed the ultimate plan and I shall crush you.

You know, your doom shall be met by all. It really had sort of like lyrical kind of purple prosy, you know, bad guy monologue sort of feel to it. And it was just a neat, cool thing. And I've always liked Arch Enemy. And it was a neat, cool thing, and I've always liked Arch Enemy. In fact, we announced there's a new Arch Enemy coming next year, where the Arch Enemy is going to be Nicol Bolas. So we'll see something cool there.

I don't want to give too much away, but it's definitely going to be a fun thing. Okay, at number three, Commander Decks. So this is another thing that started as a supplemental product thing. The Commander format was started by some judges. I've done a podcast on Commander. There were a bunch of judges, Sheldon Menry and a bunch of other judges that were at the Pro Tours. They wanted to blow off steam after the event was done, and so they came up with their own format, originally called Elder Dragon Highlander, because you picked one of the five Elder Dragons from Legends.

It went on to be called Commander, and the idea is you pick a Commander. It's a 100-card singleton, meaning you have 100 cards, but only one of each card, one of which has to be a legendary creature, which is your Commander, and that sits outside your deck. And the idea is you can cast your Commander from the command zone and then if they ever die, it goes back to the command zone and then I think it costs two more, two extra for each, so it costs two extra, then four extra, then six extra. And the idea is that you build your deck around the commander, the commander has a color identity, meaning whatever colors show up on your commander

card, you know, if your Commander's red and green, although it also counts other mana symbols on the card besides just the mana cost, but let's say your Commander's red and green, then you can only play red cards and or green cards. You can't play anything but, you know, you can't play anything that has anything on it other than red or green. Now, I will say once again, Commander, not really my cup of tea. I'm not into multiplayer play, but, man, it's changed things. And the

Commander decks have been... I love watching different designers build different Commander decks. We do them every year now, and such creativity. This year, we had the Partner mechanic. Previously, we did Experience Counters. We did Planeswalkers that could serve as

Commanders. Like, really, so much creativity. And the commander sets have also been a chance for us to sort of dig back and make cards. Like, this year, Ethan managed to make a card that I couldn't even make during Time Spiral. He made Siddhar Kondo, which was Gerard's adoptive

father, and Voul, Volrath's father. Voul was who became Volrath. And so it's neat seeing that. It's neat, you know, I like the fact that the decks always have themes

to them and it allows us to always, like this year we're playing to four color. So it is neat to sort of see us

always experiment and do cool things and it is a very popular format and, you know, I'm glad that so many people,

even though I don't play Commander, I'm glad that Commander exists. I work hard to design cards for Commander and make sure that we have not just Commander products, but that every set allows you to sort of enhance your Commander experience. Because it is a fun format that's allowing a lot of people to play, to play casually, to play with their friends. You know, it's definitely a fun way to play Magic, and I'm really glad it existed and became what it is today. That's number three, Commander. Okay, number two, Plane Chase.

So Plane Chase was created by Brian Tinsman. So the idea of Plane Chase is you have these oversized cards that represent different planes, and when you play Plane Chase, you're always on a plane. This format came about inspired by something called Enchant World tournaments. In Legends, there's this thing called Enchant Worlds.

Actually, we now call them Worlds Enchantments. They're Enchant Worlds. And any of Worlds Enchantments is, it represents where you're having the battle. And so it creates things for the battle that affect the battle. And it's just basically an enchantment that affects things. But when you play a new world enchantment, the old one goes away. And so Planar Chaos was trying to play, not Planar Chaos, Plane Chase plays in a similar space where you're always having

your battle somewhere and that plane affects things. And then you have this die you get to roll. And each turn you get to roll the die once, and you can pay mana to roll it additional times. And sometimes you can roll the effect to make the effect go off. Sometimes you can change the plane. And it's really neat. It's a very different format. It gets to show off the multiverse. It shows off all the different planes.

We've even teased planes that you haven't seen yet. So it is really a fun format. We did a plane chase planes that you haven't seen yet. So it is really a fun format. We made, we did a plane chase and then did a second plane chase. And it is something that, I know people that love this format love it. And that it is neat

to just watch. It's just a nice flavor, you know. It's usually played multiplayer. And it really creates a lot of neat, fun, cool moments. I've run a lot of Enchant World tournaments. So Enchant World tournament is where you have an enchantment and it affects the whole tournament.

And every once in a while you say, freeze! And now instead of being Mana Flare, it is Hongmine! I guess they're not always enchantments sometimes. They can be global artifact effects too. But the idea is things just change, and sometimes they're not always enchantments sometimes. They can be global artifact effects too. But the idea is things just change, and sometimes they're beneficial,

sometimes they're harmful, but it can just swing the match, and so it's neat to sort of, all of a sudden things are a little bit different. So Plange Ice is my number two. So number one, if you do not know what number one is, you just don't know me.

Number one is the Unsets. So I've done entire podcasts on the unsets. So if you want to hear more in-depth stuff on them, feel free to listen to that. I've done one specifically on both unglued and then a separate one on unhinged. One of the neat things about the unsets, so what are the unsets? The unsets started because Joel Mick and Bill Rose came up with the idea of a silver border. And the idea of a silver border is, imagine a product that wasn't tournament legal.

We didn't need to worry about all... A lot of magic has to go through a lot of hoops because we play tournaments with the cards. The cards have to work. They have to be consistent. The rules need to make sense. There's flavor guidelines. There's a lot of rules we have on black border cards. And the idea was, hey, what if we took that constraint off us? What could we do? And so they came to me and said, Mark, look at, you know, you're an imaginative guy. Okay, you have

no constraints. Silver border, the only rule was don't make things we could make in black border. And then I ran with it. And one of the things I decided to do was I wanted to imbue some humor into it. The thing I decided I wanted to do was magic has a lot of seriousness to it. There's tournaments and pro tours, and there's all sorts of things that play into the idea of magic as a serious game. And I wanted to go to the opposite end of the spectrum.

I wanted to say, you know what? Magic's also fun. It's a fun game. There are fun things you can do with it. And so what I did is I played around in the space where I really did things that magic wouldn't normally do. I found rules that the magic wouldn't normally do. I found rules that the magic rules couldn't handle. I found space that was a little silly, that's a little

beyond what we wanted to do with our creative. I wrote jokes, and I had other people to write jokes, and I made cards that were just, idea was look this is fun to play you and your friends are going to laugh and have a good time and that you're going to do things you've never ever done uncards have physical components and verbal components

and I play around in rules like a lot of the uncards that I'd made where I try to make things in normal magic and the rules people said no you just can't do that like there's a card called staying power that I try to make in in normal magic and the rules people said no, you just can't do that. There's a card called Stang Power that I tried to make in a real set. Stang Power just says things that last until end of

turn instead are permanent. So by giant growth it's just forever plus three plus three. And I tried to do that in normal magic and what the rules people said is the game just doesn't allow that. You just can't do that. And what I realized was players could understand it.

It wasn't like it was an incomprehensible thing. Hey, you know that thing that normally ends? It doesn't end. And so it allowed me to just break all sorts of rules that normally I couldn't break. You know, normally I can't put your cards in my hand. Unchurched said, yeah, I can. You know, I can't.

There's just all sorts of things that I was allowed to play around with. And one of the neat things about the Unsets is that it really, like my background is comedy writing. You know, I was a comedy writer. That's what I did. And, you know, I used to write flavor texts. And, okay, I put some comedy in the flavor text back when I did flavor text. But I wasn't, I'm a huge fan of parody.

I believe that one of the ways to show how much you appreciate something. That parody to me is a love letter. That you make fun of something because you really have some, like, there's a lot of love that goes into parody. And that I had a lot of fun making fun, I mean, I make magic. It's what I do. So, like, I make magic. It's what I do. So like, I understand, I know the things we do. So when I'm making fun of how we make names or flavor text or how we design cards, like I get it. I know what we're doing. I'm having fun. And it is really, I mean, the unsets to me are a way to sort of, um, to

sort of just like, once again, it's a, it's a different way to play magic. You know, it's fun to say, hey, all of a sudden, physicality can matter, or what you're saying can matter, words can matter, or, you know, I can affect games that aren't even my own game. Like, I had a wonderful, there's these two people when I was, I was spell- spell slinging at the World Championship in San Francisco

the last old school World Championship and there are two people that wanted there's me two of us

were spell slinging and somebody asked they wanted to play me but they wanted their friend to play the other person at the same time and what happened was

they had made two decks in which there's a card called Ass Whoopin' from Unhinged where you can affect cards in another game. And the idea is they really just wanted to beat me, but by having play at the same time, they could have the cards in the other game affect me in my game. And they doubled up on me. I actually, believe it or not, I think I won that game even though they doubled up on me.

I had to win arm wrestling. There's a card where you have to arm wrestle your opponent, which I've almost never won. But I managed to win to stay alive. But anyway, there's so many fun stories. I also was head judge of both unglued and unhinged. I dressed up as a chicken for unglued. I dressed up as a chicken for unglued. I dressed up as a donkey for unhinged. In fact, I am

undefeated in unglued slash unhinged draft. I did a bunch of them. For unhinged, one of the prizes we gave away is every night we did a draft with unhinged and unglued. Actually, we did two of them, but one of them I played in, and I won both the ones. We did two or three, and I won them all.

But anyway, the unsets are... I mean, people ask all the time about un-three. The answer I always give is, I do believe... I always say it's a win and not an if. I believe the day will come. The problem is that the first two unsets got overprinted and so there's just people that believe that there was lack of interest in it and the thing I keep trying to explain is anything you can overprint anything you can take the most

popular magic set of all time and overprint it. It's just a matter of and they didn't really get at the time what a supplemental set was i mean unglued really in some ways was the first especially first supplemental booster product and they didn't really know what to make of it and they printed it like it was a small set when it wasn't a small set it wasn't even didn't have as many cards as a small set nor you know it's not a standard legal set of course it's not going to act like a normal small set it's not it's a supplemental set and so the more people that can course it's not going to act like a normal small set. It's not. It's a supplemental set. And so the more people that can voice it's something they want

I mean, not just to me. I'm pretty sure the choir, I mean, I already voiced to people that I can how much I want it. And so my vow to you is I'm not giving up the fight. I'm not, I believe there will come a day where I will get announced that there is

a third set. That day will come and then you guys will get to play with it. And I've not given up the hope. Just keep up. It's important that you guys express to as many different Wizards people that it's something you want. Because when I go and fight for it,

the biggest tool or weapon at my disposal is that there's demand for it, that players want it, that's something players want. So if you want it on set, please let that voice be known. I believe we can make it happen,

but it's dependent upon enough people communicating to the powers that be that it's something they really want. Okay, so let's recap our top 10 supplemental products. In number ten, I had From the Vault, a product all about showing the collector side of Magic. In number nine, I had the World Champ Dex,

something that lets you replay a part of history. In number eight, I had Vanguard, a different way to play with a product that wasn't even ever sold. In number seven was a Master Series, something for franchise players to play Magic, play with a product that wasn't even ever sold. And number seven was a master series. Something for franchise players to play Magic, you know, to look at play with Magic's history. Number six, Conspiracy. Something just a different kind of product. It was a very different way to play Magic. Number five, Deck Builder's Toolkit. A very innovative way to help people make the leap

from beginner to intermediate. Number four, Arch Enemy, showing that you can always play Magic differently. Do you want a bunch of your friends take on just one other friend? Well, Arch Enemy might be the game you want. Commander decks at number three, you know, one of the most favorite and one of the most popular casual formats. Do you want to get in and learn about it? You can buy a deck and shuffle and play. Number two is Plane Chase. Want to travel the multiverse all in one game? Well, you can buy a deck and shuffle and play. Number two is Plane Chase. Want to travel the multiverse all in one game? Well, you can, and it's a fun

and exciting way to play. And number one, The Unsets! Reminding everybody that magic is fun, and that there's lots of goofy and fun ways to play. So anyway, that, my friends, is the top ten, or my top ten supplemental product list. On a different day, it might be is the top 10, or my top 10 supplemental product list.

On a different day, it might be in a different order, maybe a different product or two, but that was today's list. But I'm here 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. See you guys next time.