Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #74 - Magic Invitational, Part 2

Episode Date: November 29, 2013

In this podcast, I talk about the Duelist Magic Invitationals in Barcelona and Kuala Lumpur.

Okay, I'm pulling out my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so last time I started talking about the Invitational, the Duelist Invitational slash Magic Invitational. And it was clear, it was clear that it was going to be a multi-part episode because I got through two of the eleven Invitationals. And then I said I was going to spread this out and do them over a bunch of time, and that is true, but I decided to do one more just to sort of... I had a few things I wanted to say. I realized I missed a few things last time, so I'm going to do one more episode, a little

more invitational stuff, and then the rest of it I will do later on. But I'm fickle, what can I say? Okay, so a few things that I forgot last time that I wanted to correct, and I wanted to do this episode not too far away so I could correct those things. Number one is, I claimed when Ula got, when he won the very first Invitational, that he turned down

his prize. Not technically correct, and let me, for Ula's sake. Ula did turn in the card. The card was called the World of Bums. It cost a single red mana, and it was an enchant world that didn't do anything. I think the idea was, it was an enchant world that just stopped other enchant worlds. For those that don't know, in the set Legends, there's a series of cards that, at the time

they were called enchant worlds, we now call them world enchantments. And the way it worked was, when you played a world enchantment, it would remove any other world enchantments from play the flavor was you were traveling you were taking your combat to a new plane you were fighting in a new place

and so when you shifted the battle well now you're in this new place and not in the old place the problem was by the time he had turned that in we had decided not to do them anymore so having a mechanic that does nothing except something we don't support, so essentially it was like, rule the bums, was like,

R, do nothing, and the only thing it did, we didn't do anymore. So I went back to Ula, and I asked him to make another card. I think he made one more, which essentially was another joke card, and I'm like, look, if you're not going to treat it seriously, you know, and then he sort of said, eh, yeah, and he didn't turn anything in. So, he did not respect the prize when he won it. That

is true. Um, but it wasn't, he didn't simply just not give me a card. He kind of gave me a joke card. And, and when I tried to get a real card out of him, I couldn't really get a real card out of him. Um, but later on years, years, years later, he came back and said, okay, I did not, I did not, this was something that was more valuable than I understood. I now have much more respect for it, and I would like this card. And so we made it for him. Okay, so we talked about Hong Kong. We talked about Rio.

So the next year, the European offices said, okay, okay, our turn, our turn. We want to host the Magic Invitational. And they suggested Barcelona. Sounded good. I'd never been to Barcelona, and so it sounded like it'd be a fun trip. In fact, I think that was my first trip to Spain. I've since been to Barcelona a couple times

for the Invitational. Not for the Invitational, for the Pro Tour. But that was my very first time, was for the Invitational. So, let's try to set the stage here. So, at this point, after a few years set the stage here. So, um, but this point, the Invitational, after a few years,

the Invitational started, um, started getting up sort of a format to how it worked. Um, it was now, other than the first year,

we got into the groove of, it was three constructed, uh, five formats, three rounds each, three constructed, two limited, um,

and we started having, like, you got invited because you, you know, three rounds each, three constructed, two limited. And we started having, like, you got invited because you, you know, did certain things you want. Like, each winner of the Pro Tour would get invited, and the World Champ got invited, and, you know, certain, the top-ranked player from each region got invited. So we started having a more set system for how we invited people. Now, the, oh, so let me have a little behind the scenes, because there's an ongoing story that I want to tell while I tell this, and I didn't really get to it last time, because the story doesn't really pick up to right before Barcelona. So, what happened was, I was very gung-ho in making this event. It started as a way to promote the duelists, but really, I just thought it would be really cool to have an all-star game, and I just saw an opportunity to make an all-star game.

The problem was, behind the scenes, a lot of people just saw this as kind of Mark throwing a party for his friends. Because I was very friendly. I went to all the pro tours at the time. I knew all the pro players. I was on good terms with them. And a lot of people internally didn't quite get what we were trying to do. Instead of seeing it as the All-Star Game, which is what we were doing, they saw it as some... I don't know. They saw it as some... I mean, literally, they would refer to it as Mark's party.

I was just like, Hey, I want to have a party in some exotic location, and I'll just have some people come. And anyway, there was a lot of negativity within the company in that they saw it not as an important thing, but kind of as a frivolous thing. And so I was told after Rio, but before Barcelona, that the invitation was being canceled.

And I said, but we've already scheduled for Barcelona. We've, you know, announced it. We've told people about it. I think people were invited at that point. And so I said, okay, okay, we'll have Barcelona, we'll have Barcelona, but that's it. After Barcelona, there's no more Invitational. Dun, dun, dun!

Well, obviously, since there were eight more, we'll get to that. That's one of the one of the ongoing stories is behind the scenes that the, the invitation struggled a lot. As you will see, um, it was a little tournament that, uh, that was constantly on the move trying to, trying to stay alive. Um, so anyway, what happened is, um, we, Barcelona got announced. So I, I got permission to do Barcelona. Um, and it was still, Barcelona was still the duelist invitational. And, in fact,

I think it's the last duelist invitational. The next one will be a magic invitation. We'll get to that story in a minute. So, in Barcelona, the interesting story was,

well, the finals of Barcelona was Mike Long versus Sterla Bingen. Sterla, I think, is from Norway. I hope I'm not, he's Scandinavian. I hope I'm not picking the wrong place. And Mike Long,

famous for being Mike Long, I guess. Mike had been in the finals of the very first Invitational, but this was his second finals. As is always the case. By the way, what happened in Barcelona was that there was a Grand Prix.

What started happening was all the invitations were held in conjunction with the Grand Prixs. And so, there was a Grand Prix in Barcelona. We had the event. The funny thing about the event was that we... There were a lot of things we were trying to do.

We always were trying to do different things. Like, one of the things I think that Barcelona did was, there was a pre-release. What set was it? There was a pre-release for a set, and I got permission to run a draft with the product, and it was set up so it would be the same day as the pre-release, so that part of the invitation was,

the players were drafting with a product they had not seen, which was a lot of fun. Although, the funny thing is, normally I did drafts early on, because what happens is round robins do weird things near the end, and in order to do a draft, I have to separate them into two groups of eight.

And there's a way to do that. There's a way to do a round robin in which three of the rounds segregate into two groups of eight. We figured out how to do that. But it just did some wonky things. And what you don't want is a draft in which not everybody cares as much as other people. So normally you put it early. But in order to get permission to do it, I had to do it on the day of the pre-release, which was the third day of the tournament.

So we actually, the first thing on the third day, we did the draft. It wasn't the last event, but it was the second last event. And it did these quirky things. So one of the funny stories is Mike Long ends up in the same pod as Sterla, Sterla Bingham, and he recognized the fact that Sterla was one of the people in contention for the top two, and he realized that Randy Buehler, who was sitting to his left, was going to most likely play Sterla. In fact, no, he to his left, was going to most likely play Sterla. In fact, no, he knew for sure he was going to play Sterla because Randy, within our pot of eight,

there's only three people that Randy had not yet played. So he knew for a fact that he was going to play Sterla. So what Mike did is he fed a crazy strong deck to Randy so that Randy could beat Sterla. Anyway, and one of the things about Mike, by the way, for all the negative things people want to say about Mike, he was very, very smart and a very, very good player. I mean, one of the sad things about the fact that he had some shady qualities

was I think he just could have won straight up. I mean, he was an amazing deck builder. I mean, I watched him play plenty. He was a very strong player. I mean, he tried to use everything to his advantage, and some of those things are less sportsmanlike than others, but the actual play value, his actual play skill was very, very good.

I know people love to diminish him and want to say like, oh, well, he couldn't have won if... The sad thing is he could have won if. He was actually a really good player. So, the finals of Barcelona. Oh, one of the things that started happening, and I think this might have happened in Rio,

but for sure happened in Barcelona, is I explained that I did something called the duplicate sealed, where every player got the exact same card pool. So one of the things I started doing was I started making my own cards. So I think what I did in Rio was they were all existing Magic cards, but I changed their cost. I think what I did in Rio was that they were all cards you knew, but not at a cost you knew.

And then I think in Barcelona I did something similar where I added some, well, I think they were existing cards, but I made some new cards just for the event. So not only were there existing cards, but some of the things you were trying to figure out were cards you'd never played with before. And in fact, I believe this is where I first did the mix and match I would later do in Future Sight. So what I thought at the time was

we thought we weren't going to repeat mechanics, or if we did, we wouldn't repeat two mechanics at once. And so, I made a bunch of cards that took two different mechanics from Magic's Pass and intertwined them, thinking, oh, we'll never make that card, so that I wasn't making cards we later would want to make. And, so one of the funny stories

is that Randy did not do very well at the tournament. In fact, the only thing he 3-0'd was the one round where Mike fed him in the draft. And one of the reasons I later came to realize is that what made Randy such an awesome player was he put in the time and energy to understand everything. That he would play and play and play and play and do his homework. And that the Invitational was all about these wacky, crazy formats that it was kind of hard to do your homework. You've never

experienced this before. And some of it, like the Duplicate Sealed, Randy couldn't practice for it. Until he got here, he couldn't see what I did. And so I remember Randy getting mad at me because he went 0-3 in the Duplicate Sealed. And he yelled at me because he said it was my fault

of how I made the packs. But I was like, Randy, everyone had the same packs! You had the same knowledge as everybody else. Other people went 3-0 because they were able to figure out what it meant. Anyway, Randy's awesome and I worked for a long time with Randy. Randy is

a very, very good player, but one of Randy's weaknesses is he really needed to do his homework and that he had a lot more problem on the fly with crazy things. And what I've learned, by the way, is he needed, he really needed to do his homework, and that he had a lot more problem on the fly with crazy things. And what I've learned, by the way, is some players are really good at just kind of intuitively, like Finkel's great at that, of just like, seeing crazy things

and just somehow getting the right answer, you know, even though you've never seen them before. And other people just need the homework, you know, need to sort of crack it down and figure it out. That's how they process things. Oh, another interesting thing that was going on in this tournament, by the way, was

that the Grand Prix going on was won by a man named Kai Buda. In fact, so what happened was, before Kai would later go on at the end of the season to win Worlds, but at the time, he was having a run on Grand Prix. I believe he went second, first, first. So he went three at the time, he was having a run on Grand Prix. And I believe he went

second, first, first. So he went three in a row where he was in the finals. And I think that had never been done before. And not consecutively, for sure. And so, anyway,

he definitely gained some talk on the European circuit of, oh, who is this guy? Who is this up-and-comer? And I remember later when he would win Worlds, a lot of people were worried

because it was like, oh, this is another nobody winning Worlds. And I'm like, no, no, no a lot of people were worried because it's like, oh, this is another nobody winning Worlds. And I'm like, no, no, no, this is, he's a real deal. He's a good player. And obviously, he would go on to really, really prove that. Okay, so after Barcelona was

Kuala Lumpur. Oh, well, let me explain. I left this with a little cliffhanger. So, when last we left, this was the last Invitational. And so what happened was the person who canceled the Invitational was at the time the Magic brand manager. And so what he did was he went to his team and said, how much money is being spent on the Magic Invitational, the Duelist Invitational at the time? And the funny thing, by the way, was the money was being spent by the Duelist.

It wasn't being spent, zero money was coming out of the Magic Budget. But, he instructed his people, he said, okay, how much money does this event cost? What could we be doing with this money? What's a better way to use this money? And so, he actually had a few people spend a little time to say, okay, how could we better use this money? What's the best way to use this money? And the people came back, and what they said to him is, we've investigated.

There is no better way to spend this money. This is the best way to spend the money. Because what they realized was, we didn't spend a lot of money on the event. Basically, we flew the players to the event and put them up in a hotel. But I mean, there was no prize on the event and it was very low key and the overhead was very small because we just needed a single room and we were always tied to a Grand Prix. So, you know, the room was free. And so we actually had set up a system where our overhead was very low, mostly because the doulas were paying for it. And so they came back

to him and they said, yeah, this is the most efficient way to spend the money. We can't, you know, people really seem to like this. It has a lot of splash. It's getting a lot of press. The players enjoy it. You know, we don't know how we can do something better for the amount of money. You know, they're like, Mark's actually doing a pretty good event very cheaply. Um, and so, uh, the, the brand, the brand manager said, he called me in the office.

He goes, okay. He goes, okay, we're not going to kill it, but we're gonna make a few changes. Number one, number one is we're going to call it the Magic Invitational, not the Duelist Invitational. Um, that is not going to be sponsored by the Duelist anymore. Magic's going to sponsor it. Uh, it's going to call it the Magic Invitational. And I said, oh, fine, fine, fine. Magic Invitational, that it's not going to be sponsored by the Duelist anymore. Magic's going to sponsor it. It's going to call it the Magic Invitational. And I said, oh, fine, fine, fine.

Magic Invitational sounds good. And I guess, anyway, one of the things that had been going on at the time was different offices were trying to get the Invitational. And so even though internally I was told the event had been canceled, externally people had still been jockeying. And so the Kuala Lumpur, Asia really, really wanted, the Asian office really wanted to, you know, it was Asia's turn, right? We had been in, I guess we had been in Asia and Hong Kong.

But they really wanted to be back. And so they had set something up in Kuala Lumpur. And so I was like, oh, okay, Kuala Lumpur. I'd never been to Kuala Lumpur. And it was awesome. It was very cool. It was a quite neat city and so the interesting story about Kuala Lumpur is for those that don't know their history,

Kuala Lumpur would go on to have one of the classic finals of the Invitational. It was Chris Bakula against John Finkel which is an awesome story. So let me set the story up because this one was, this is one of my favorites, maybe my favorite of all time, Invitational story. So the Invitational happens and we invite the people we're going to invite. And the way it would work is, like, if you won a pro tour, you got invited. And if you have a high rating, each region, the highest rated person in each region got invited.

And the overall highest rated got invited. But I always left a few slots for vote, for players' votes. And the idea being is, look, I wanted people to think of the All-Star game as something that, the spectator game, the people's game, something that would be fun to watch. And so I would say to them, now, in order to get on the ballot, you had to have a certain qualification, so you had to be a good enough player to get on the ballot. But we had a ballot and then people got to vote on the ballot, you had to have a certain qualification, so you had to be a good enough player to get on the ballot.

But we had a ballot, and then people got to vote on the ballot. And I think for a while, we would... There's a period of time where, like, the players would vote one person in and the audience would vote one person in. But anyway, the audience tended to vote in Chris Bakula. They liked Chris Bakula. In fact, I think Chris and John actually tied the record for the most invitationals attended.

So anyway, the we get oh, a little side story, just because I forgot to tell the story about Barcelona and Rio. So Bakula got invited to both Rio and to Barcelona.

He was obviously going to be later invited to Kuala Lumpur. And so he also got invited by a guy named Dave Price. Dave Price was a very good friend of his. The two of them were together, had a team together. And Dave Price won the Tempest-only event in L.A., which was the second, I think, L.A. Or third. The third...

Yeah, the third Pro Tour in LA. Anyway, Dave and Chris got voted in a lot. They were popular and people liked them. They wanted to see them. Both of them were vegetarians, or still are vegetarians, I believe. And one of the funny things is that both Rio and Barcelona and Spain

are very meat-centric countries. In fact, I remember we went to this place in Rio, which there's a name for it, but they have a little dial, and the dial, you turn to green, and when you turn to green, they bring the meat, and when you turn to red, they stop bringing meat and bringing vegetables, I think.

And so we were eating out, and the problem was I was trying to make sure that there was food for them but we were meat central and the players were like, meat dial, give us more meat and Pakula and Price

kept wanting to get the vegetables because they're like, no, stop the meat, no, more meat and we were having this little fight over the meat dial and then in Barcelona, they were trying to get some vegetarian food,

and the guy did not speak English, and so they finally convinced him, like, okay, you know, we do not eat meat, you know, no carne, and... And the guy goes, ah! And he brings him a salad. Like, that was vegetarian food in Barcelona. We'll give you a salad.

Anyway, so Chris Bacula gets invited yet again to the Invitational big fan favorite I mean for those who don't know real quickly Chris Bakula he plays every once

in a while now if he got in the Hall of Fame which he should have he'd be playing a lot more but he was one of my favorite people

to put in future matches he was entertaining he was fun he had tons of integrity. He was one of the people that, there was a point in time early in the Pro Tour where judging was finding its feet. There was a lot of shenanigans going around. And Chris and Dave and the people that stood up and said, guys, if we want a clean Pro Tour, this is not just the job of the judges. It's the job of every player. And they really said, look, if you watch people do shady things and you don't report it,

you are allowing the shady things to happen. And Chris really was one of the people that sort of pulled the Pro Tour into the more modern era of just getting the players to say this isn't acceptable. You know, of just the peer pressure of saying, hey, being shady is not okay. And on top of that, Chris has three top eights. He almost had a fourth. He was one bad play away from having a fourth top eight.

And it's a shame to me that he's not in the Hall of Fame. I tried last year to get him in the Hall of Fame because he was falling off the ballot because we were changing the point threshold, but we gave away less points earlier, so of the older pros, they just have less points. Not because he didn't do the same thing as modern people, but just we gave less points away, and we counted less things, we don't count in Grand Prix's and stuff. So, anyway, hopefully he can get back on and get voted in.

I think Chris is an awesome person, and I'm... Anyway, one of the reasons this is my favorite story because it involves Chris, and Chris is one of my favorite pro players. Okay, so Chris gets invited. So there always was a pro tour where I would hand out ballots, invitations. So what happened was, some people knew they were going to get invited

because they won a pro tour and such, but there's always a pro tour. We would make these fancy invitations, and I would hand them out. It says, you know, you're formally invited to, you know. But a few people, like, the people who got the votes, they didn't know they got in until I handed them an invitation. And so I remember handing Chris an invitation,

and he was like, oh, wow, thank you, Mark. This is a big honor. He goes, but I don't know if I can go. And so he goes, I'll let you know before the tournament's over. I'm like, Chris, I need to know because if you're not going to go, I need to have a replacement. And so later on that weekend, he comes up. He goes, Mark, I love the Invitational.

It's an awesome tournament. But, you know, it's hard for me to get away from work. There's a lot going on. And, you know, I'm not sure how best to use my time. Maybe I should just be using this to take off for pro tours. And, you know, I've been to a lot of eventationals. Maybe I should let someone else go.

And I said, no, Chris, the people want you to go. You got voted in. You know, I think this is a great opportunity. I think you'll be sad if you don't go. And I basically talked him into going. Like, he officially had turned me down. He officially said, no if you don't go. And I basically talked him into going. Like, he officially turned me down. He officially said no, he wasn't going. And I talked to him, and I convinced him to change his mind.

And so he came to Kuala Lumpur. And the funny thing was, I don't think he had done a lot of prep work. But one of the things that we tend to do at the Invitational was, I front-loaded a lot of the limited stuff to give the people time to get adjusted and to get their decks together. So I think what happened was day one was like duplicates sealed. Oh, no, day one was probably a draft. I always did the draft.

Usually we did a draft. I did drafts on day one. So day one was probably a draft and maybe like standard, something like that, which I knew they had decks already. One of the three constructed formats was usually just here's a format that people play, you know, a normal format. So end of day one, I believe Chris was six and zero. And Chris was like, I could do this. Because one of the things about Invitational Jif to Understand was it's a round robin.

And so you, in order to get to the top two, you don't need to do nearly as well as in a normal Swiss in the sense that you can be much lower down. So being 6-0 was a real leg up. In fact, I think Chris was, I think there was one person in 5-1 and a bunch of people in 4-0. Chris was significantly ahead. And so what happened was Chris went to Dave Humphries. Dave is another person who currently is in the Hall of Fame. He was with Your Move Games,

and he was part of that team. At the very first team event, he, along with Darwin Castle and Rob Doherty, both of which are also in the Hall of Fame, won the team tournament. Dave now works, he's now the development manager. He's in charge of all the developers at Wizards.

Anyway, this was Dave's, I think, one Invitational that he went to. Anyway, Dave was at the Invitational, and Dave is a deck builder, a very good deck builder. And Dave had done his homework. Dave actually had prepared for the event. Like I said last time, not everybody prepared for the event every time. Some of them saw it as just kind of something fun and didn't put a lot of energy ahead of time.

A few players, though, did, and Dave had. And Chris, like, all of a sudden was like, I can actually win this. I can win this tournament. And so he went to Dave and said, Dave, I need some decks. And so he said, here's the deal I make for you, Dave. If you give me decks and I win, I will fly you to the next Invitational.

Whether or not you're invited, you know, or the next Invitational you're not invited to. Anyway, basically he said, next year, I will fly you to where the Invitational is. And so Dave said, okay, gave him decks. and so Dave said okay gave him Dex so anyway there is the last few rounds were very tense Mike Long was in contention again

and for those that don't know there is nobody in the world that I believe at the time at least that Chris Bakula disliked more than Mike Long the two of them two of them did not like each other they were almost opposing forces in the

magic world. As far as Chris was concerned, Chris stood for all the good that there was in magic and fair play and doing the right thing. He saw Mike as literally the opposite of that. They had a big rivalry. Mike was doing all sorts

of things. Mike convinced some players to swap decks so that Mike basically had built a deck that would be really good against one of the players he needed to beat, and then convinced another player to swap decks with him before they turned in their deck lives so that that player would have a really good deck to take on the player that he needed to lose so he could advance. Anyway, Mike long shan again. I mean, that particular one was not against the rules or anything. Anyway, so it came down to the wire, and I believe that the final round, I think,

was actually Chris Bakula playing Mike Long, and the winner ended up playing John Finkel in the finals. Now, Chris Bakula and John Finkel were very, very good friends. Very good friends. And they both had been on the team. Chris's team was called the Dead Guys. And for a while, John eventually joined their team and became part of their team. And they were very good friends.

And so, and John Finkel at the time was considered the best player in the world. And so Chris was like, you know what? There'd be no greater honor than having the finals and play John Finkel. And either, you know, John Finkel beats me and no shame. I'm in the finals of the Invitational and the best player in the world beats me. Or somehow if I win, I not only won the Invitational, but I beat the best player in the world, John Finkel, in the finals. Okay, so there's this tight match between, the final match is between Mike Long and Chris Bakula.

And, like, it is probably the most tense Invitational match of all time. Because Chris wants to win so bad. Mike wants to win so bad. Because Mike was like, there have been three Invitational as far as, this is the fourth one, Mike had made the top two of two of the three Invitational's. That if Mike made the top two here,

Mike was setting history, right? So Mike was very, both of them really wanted it. And in the end, Chris pulls it out. And I don't know if I've ever seen Chris happier, but at the time, I was happier a day later. Chris pulls it off. And I don't know if I've ever seen Chris happier, but at the time, I was happier a day later. Chris pulls it off. So Chris is going to the finals against his friend

and what he believed was the best, and most people believed was the best Magic player at the time, maybe of all time, John Finkel. Okay, so the way the finals worked was you played all five formats. And so, oh, right, the draft. Okay, so the way the finals worked was you played all five formats. And so, oh, right, the draft. Okay, here's an important thing. The draft wasn't just any draft.

The draft was Solomon draft. So Solomon draft, I talked about this last time, it's a format which is a one-on-one draft format where you take turns splitting cards into piles. And, you know, one time you split into piles, your opponent takes them, and then they split into piles and you take them. And I forgot to check whether it was four or six cards,

but there's some number of cards that you split each time. So this is an important thing to remember. I had done duplicate, I'm not, I had done Solomon Draft at every invitational up to that point. Chris was zero for nine. He had never, or zero for eight. I guess it was two rounds in the first one. He had never won a match of the format.

Had never won. It just, Chris could not do it. And John was amazing at it. John might have been undefeated at it. John was really good. Because a lot of what the format is about is just on the fly understanding and the value of cards is constantly changing. Understand how you value them versus how your opponent values them.

And, you know, reading your opponent so you figure out what they'll take and not take and what you want. And, you know, the key to Solomon is like to make things that are slightly unfair but kind of force your opponent to take the, you know, the slightly worse because they have to or it's a little bit better for them, but they're giving you what's better for you. Anyway, Finkel was great at it. So here was what was before him.

Chris had to play five formats, one of which he had never won. So essentially, that format, throw away. John was amazing at it. Chris couldn't beat him. So if he threw that format away, there were four matches to be played. Chris had to win three of the four. So Chris and I were talking the night before

because one of the things we did was stretch things out. So we had the finals on its own day. And we were at dinner that night, and I was talking with Chris, and he's like, he goes, I'm not sure how I'm going to do this. He goes, I can't win Solomon. And he looked, he figured out that of the four matches remaining, he thought he was a dog in three of the four.

He thought he had an advantage in one matchup, and that in the other four matchups, he didn't expect to win. But he was excited, and he was like, you know know what he worked with Humphreys to figure out sideboard sideboarding things and so Chris did his homework he's like you know what

I'm going to do my all I'm going to do the best I can and so the very first format I think was Solomon Draft Chris loses as expected obviously

then the next format I forget what the next format was but Chris wins it. He's won one. Okay.

Chris is like, okay. And he won a format that he didn't think he could win. I think that it was... So then, the next format is the one that Chris thinks he can win.

And he... Oh, no, no, no. Was that right? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The second one was the one he thought he can win. And he... Oh, no, no, no. Was that right? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. The second one was the one he thought he could win. So he goes 1-1. He's now won the one he thinks he can win. He has three formats left that he doesn't think he's going to win. He plays the next format. I believe Finkel wins that one. So 2-1. He's down 2-1.

Chris is rallying. Like, okay, okay, okay. Plays the next format. He wins! Like, he shocks everybody. He just gets a hand. Finkel, okay, okay. Plays the next format. He wins! Like, he shocks everybody, he just gets a hand, single gets a bad hand, whatever. He wins it. So it's down to the final format. And Chris had said that he didn't think the final

format was to his advantage, but he's like, okay, look, I'm in the finals of Invitational, I'm going to win this. And Chris was just a man on fire that day. One of the things I talk about is sometimes when you are in events, that you can just tell there's someone who's almost destined to win the event. Just they're in the zone, like everything goes their way,

and they're just making perfect plays, and somehow they're just there. And for this tournament, Chris was just in the zone. This was Chris' tournament. And I even said to him, that I said, Chris, I'm watching you. I go, Sean's a great player, but I think you just in the zone. This was Chris's tournament. And I even said to him, that I said, Chris, I'm watching you. I go, Sean's a great player, but I think you're in the zone. I think that this is your tournament to win. You can tell us what Chris's general leader is.

I mean, as head judge, I was being careful not to... I was just trying to encourage him to have a good final because I believe that if he went into the positive attitude that he had a real chance. Anyway, the finals happens. It's tense. I think Fika won game one and Chris won game two.

So it's down to a final game. And Chris pulls it out. He wins. My memory was the final game was actually a close game. And the biggest fist pump you've ever seen. Like, Chris is so excited. So Chris had turned in a card that he called the Meddler, was his card. And his card was a creature where you could name a spell,

and then you could sacrifice the creature to counter the named spell. And so the idea was essentially like, when you put him into play, he became an answer to a particular card. And I think in Chris's version, there's a little bit of mana he had to pay to activate him. So we were working on it. Now, Chris turned it in as a blue card. This card ended up going into Invasion, which is a multicolored set.

So we decided, we tweaked it a little bit. The idea we had is we improved it, where we said, okay, instead of being, because Chris's card, I think, was three mana for 2-2. And so we ended up making it two mana, but, you know, white and blue for 2-2 and instead of you sacrificing it, it just said name a card. That card can't be played. We ended up calling it Meddling Mage, not the Meddler, but Meddling Mage

and his art was in it. Chris Muller, I think, was the artist. Oh, and there's a great... I've got to tell you the story about the Chris Muller art. There's an awesome story. I'll tell you in a second. So anyway, I called Chris. My job as liaison was I would talk to the player.

We always would let them in on kind of what we were doing so they had some idea of where their card was going. Sometimes I couldn't tell them everything because there was a new mechanic, but this was multicolored, so I felt like I could tell Chris it was multicolored. I didn't really give up. It was a big multicolored theme. So I explained the card to him,

and I said, okay, instead of what you turned into, and Chris was like, really? You'll print that? I'm like, yeah, yeah.

He's like, okay, done, sold, done. You know, Chris was like, that is awesome, and Medley Mage went on to be, I mean, there's some argument

what the best Invitational card is. I mean, Shadow Mage Infiltrator was good, Stepcaster Mage was good. There's a bunch of ones that have gone on to be pretty good cards. But, one of the classics is Meddling Mage. Oh, let me tell you a story about the art.

This is a hilarious story. So, when I see Chris... Oh, so one of the things I would do is each year at the Invitational, I would bring the card for the person who won from the previous year. Every once in a while, I would be able to get the actual physical form of it.

Most years, we'd mock it up. So it would look just like the card, but I'd put it in a hard case. And then it looked like, a lot of times, it was just something glued to a card. It was like us mocking it up and then pasting it to a real card. So it looked like the card. But I always would give them a little trophy the next year. Because one of the prizes of winning, besides getting a card of your own, was the previous winner always got invited to the next year.

So one of the big things about winning the Invitational also was you got another Invitational out of it. Because other, you know, you weren't always guaranteed an Invitational. And so it was one of the quirks of winning, or one of the nice perks, perks, not quirks, perks, was that you got to the next one. So the next year, we're in Sydney. Oh, and by the way, by the way,

so Chris promises Dave Humphreys that the next year he will fly him to the event. The next year, Humphreys is not qualified for the Invitational, and we did the next event in Sydney. Sydney, Australia. So Chris, man of his word, bought a ticket, you know, flew Humphreys to Kuala Lumpur.

And being aware that the Invitational, you know, there's no money on the line, that like Chris jokes that he's the one person who finally managed to win the tournament and loses money on the progress. But Chris was completely to his word, flew Dave to the event. That, you know, when I Dave to the event. That,

as I get to part three of this, I'll talk about the Sydney Invitational. Anyway, so, back to the story. So Chris Muller drew the art. It was a very cool piece of art.

I would later go on to do a parody of it in Unhinged with, I think, the same artist called Meddling Kids, which I thought

was funny. Okay, so, I say to Chris, I give him a little, I give, the same artist, called Meddling Kids, which I thought was funny. Okay, so, I say to Chris, I give him a little mock-up in Sydney. You know, congratulations, here's what your card looks like. And Chris, at that point, the player had never seen their card, never seen all the pieces together, never saw the art. And it's kind of neat. It's one thing to have a card where you hear about it.

It's another thing to see, essentially, the printed card. I mean, it's a very cool moment. In fact, one of the things I love is, you know, I'll have cards that I love, but then I finally see it all together. It's just, wow, it's really impactful. Anyway, so I show Chris his card, and I say to him, so Chris, you know, if you're interested in the art, you know, nobody's seen the card yet. No one knows the art yet. That, you know, if you talk to the artist, you'll be the first person. One of the things we learned is if you're interested in getting magic art, that, I mean, wizards in the know,

that if you know of a piece of art that's relevant, that if you go to the artist before, once the artist is in the real world, it becomes really popular, lots and lots of people are clamoring for the art. So one of the tricks is, and one of the perks of being behind the scenes is, if, you know,

for example, usually what happens is, this is for like a card where you're emotionally tied to. Like, when I made Morrow, it was like, look, this is a card, it was named after me, but this was my card, right?

It was as personal as it could possibly be. And so I went to the artist, Stuart Griffin, and I said to him, I would really like to buy the art. And also, for those who don't know the Morrow story, he didn't make the art for magic.

He actually just drew a painting, and our art director at the time, Sue Anharky, loved it, bought the rights to it so she could put it on a magic card. So I actually, when I bought it, by the way, it was like a full-frame picture. I have it at home. But anyway, I knew about it. I went to him ahead of time before it became a big deal because I wanted to purchase it. Once Marl became a big thing, it had been a lot harder to purchase it. Anyway, I said to Chris, Chris, you might want to buy this.

Now, I don't know what happened. I'm not sure why Chris didn't buy it at the time. Something happened and there was some miscommunication or Chris talked to somebody and somehow he didn't end up getting it. So, years go by and Chris is always kind of sad that he never bought the item. Like I said, the card really went on to mean a lot to him.

It was kind of, I mean, when the dust settled, that I think Chris considered this Invitational win to be a shining moment in Magic. Now, he had some top 8s and he did some cool things, but, you know, this was, he won the event of the All-Star Game. He beat the best player in the history of the game

to do it, and his good friend, and, like, it just was a momentous thing. And his card also went on to be his really amazing card, and, you know, obviously people connected to Chris, and so he really wanted the art, but he had missed the opportunity, and someone else had bought the art. So, finally, Chris says, you he had missed the opportunity. And someone else had bought the art. So finally Chris says, you know what?

I'm going to figure out who has the art. I'm going to get the art. I want to get the art. And so, no, no, no, sorry. I'm telling the story incorrectly. What happened was Chris didn't know where the art was. He searched for it. He couldn't find it.

And one day he gets a call from Mike Long. Remember, the history of Mike Long is the two of them did not get along. So what happened was, somewhere along the line, Mike Long stumbled upon the art. Like, he somehow found the person that owned the art and bought it from him. And

he called up Chris. In true Mike Long fashion, he's like, hey, you know, Chris, you know what, I have the art for Meddling Mage. Would you like it? And he charged Chris a good price for it. You know, he definitely made some money off it. But like, this is very Mike Long, like, I know Chris wants it. So I'm going to acquire it to make sure Chris could have it. But, but, you know, I'm going to make some money in the process. That's very Mike Long. And, but, I mean, to Mike Long's credit, like, he actually knew Chris wanted it.

He did make sure that Chris could have it. I mean, he went to Chris. I mean, one could quibble on all the ethics of it. But I do know in his heart of hearts that Mike wanted Chris to have it. And that I... Anyway, it's funny. Chris now owns the art to Meddling Mage, and I'm happy.

I... I was very happy that Chris won that, and I feel like it was a great moment. It was one of my favorite Invitational stories. Also, I'm now at work, so it's the last of today's stories. So I got through two more Invitational stories. Mostly I talked about K at work, so it's the last of today's stories. So I got through two more Invitational stories. Mostly I talked about

Kuala Lumpur today because that was a cool one. Anyway, so the plan for this thing, even though the last time I said this, I mean it this time, I'm not going to do

straight because if I'm doing two at a time, it's going to take me probably five total to this, and I'm not going to do five straight about the Invitational. But I will put this

in the hopper, and I will from time to time five straight about the Invitational. But I will put this in the hopper, and I will from time to time talk about Invitational stories, just because they're fun, and there's more behind-the-scenes stuff about me keeping the Invitational alive, which is actually pretty interesting. But anyway, I hope you enjoyed today's talk, and I've got to go,

because I've got to be making magic. See you next time, guys.