Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #92 - Mailbag with Matt

Episode Date: January 31, 2014

Mark does his first mailbag column with his special carpool guest, Matt Cavotta

I'm pulling on my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so there's something that people have been asking me to do for a long time on the podcast, which is they want a mailbag show. Now here's the problem. In order to do a mailbag show, I need to have somebody else read me the questions because I'm driving, for those that forget the whole premise of this podcast. So I needed to wait until I had a carpool guest, which of course is Matt Cavada. So today is the very first installment, maybe there'll be more if it's popular, which I call Mailbag with Matt.

So what will happen is I'm on the way to go pick up Matt, and we're going to answer your questions. So let me explain, while I'm driving to get Matt, let me explain what I did. So I went on Twitter, on my Twitter account, and I asked people to ask me questions that they wanted to ask me or Matt or both of us. And then I printed up, I think I have five pages worth of questions, and I'm going to give those to Matt.

Matt's going to get to pick whatever question he wants. So Matt is the determiner of what gets picked. And I, I and or Matt will answer all your questions. And like I said, I, I have no idea how this will go. I've never done a live mailbag before. I've done a mailbag in my column. Obviously on my blog, I answer questions all the time. So I'm used to answering questions, but I'm used to answering questions where I get to think about what I say, and then I can look at what I write, and if I want, I can change it. Mailbag and columns allow me some time to think. This is live, or live for, you know, it's a podcast. So you're going to get me to answer, first answer, No thinking about it. Just the first thing

that comes to my mind. So anyway, I'm off to get Matt. Of course, I'm sitting in traffic because, as we've learned, whenever I leave,

I hit the school traffic. But Matt lives very close, so we will be there very shortly. Anything else to try to tell you here? Oh, people always ask me why when I get questions I tend to go to Twitter. And the reason is it's just the why when I get questions

I tend to go to Twitter and the reason is it's just the fastest way to get questions and by limiting people to a tweet I've learned that I can get concise questions I used to do questions through my email and one of the problems with email questions is people will ask like

three paragraph questions and it just gets too wieldy. The best questions are very short. They're making a point that are, you know... And limiting it to 140 characters seems to be a good way to get people to ask very concise questions. And ask one question.

Often in my email, I would have people asking me, like, here's question number one, and then potential question number two, and then ask me, like, eight questions. I'm like, well, I can't answer that because I just want to answer one question. I'm not trying to get anything else asking as I'm waiting to get to Matt.

Oh, here's what I'll say. I'm curious for feedback on this podcast because I don't know what people think of me answering mail. The podcasts in my column have gone over very well, and blogatog, obviously, the questions have gone over well. So, in theory, this should go over well

while we're doing it. But, I don't know. Like I said, my big worry, honestly, I'll let you know in a little, is that I'm afraid I'll say stuff I'm not supposed to say. And for those that don't know, the way I record the podcast is

I start my microphone, I go to work. If I mess up, that doesn't mean they got to do it again. And Matt and I don't carpool all the time. So messing up with Matt means I might not get a chance to do this again for a while. So now, if you're hearing this, I didn't mess up. That's why you're hearing it. But nonetheless, I want you guys to know that I'm still nervous because this is me doing a mailbag without a safety net in the sense that I guess if I really mess up you'll never hear but it's not it's a little

I used to do improv in college for those who don't know so improv comedy is where you get up on stage and you ask people to give you something, a relationship a place, a subject to talk about and then you just make up a scene on the spot and the audience knows you're making it up because they gave you what to work with. And I love doing improv, so

I don't mind being put on the spot, but it's a little different. I'm used to answering questions where I get a little bit more time to think through my answers. So it'll be fun. It'll be interesting. I'm actually kind of excited to do this live. So anyway, I'm almost to Matt. Of course, of course, I'm in traffic. Recently, by the way, my podcasts have gotten a little longer because for some reason it's getting rainy and that's slowing down my traffic.

And so you guys are starting to get like 35, 40-minute podcasts. In fact, a few longer than that. But, okay. So as soon as Matt jumps in the car, I'm going to hand him the things. He knows it's a mailbag episode. So what happens is before, whenever I do a podcast with Matt now,

this wasn't true in the very first one, but I tell him ahead of time what the subject is so he can think about it a little bit. The mailbag column, he can't think much about, but he at least knows that's what he's in for. So once he gets in the car, I will hand it to him and we will be off. I've gotten, by the way,

a lot of good feedback about my podcast with Matt. So I plan to keep doing them as long as Matt keeps needing rides to work. And legitimately, by the way, this is not some fabricated thing. Matt, every time

I'm driving Matt to work, he in fact needs a carpool to work. That is how he ends up in the car. Ethan, when he did his kind of, you know, went out of his way to get in my car so we could do a podcast. But every single time Matt has been in my car for a carpool podcast,

he in fact had to carpool. It wasn't just like, oh, we'll carpool so we can do the podcast. Anyway, I'm babbling here. I'm waiting to get to Matt. That's the only problem with having Matt as a carpool guest is I have to wait for Matt before I can start the topic

because I don't want to give anything away aha I see Matt though so we are going to start so once again the first installment of Mailbag with Matt hey Matt okay Matt it's the first installment of

Mailbag with Matt. So here is five pages of questions. You are allowed to ask any question that you want on any of those pages. They're all from my Twitter feed. Oh, they're our names. Yes, they're our names. So you tell me the name when you read the questions

so we know who asked the question. Unless, I didn't double check the names. If the name's dirty, don't say it aloud. Hmm, these are really big, fat questions. Jump in. Okay. From JP Thomason, we have, what do you consider to be the most balanced slash creative

block ever besides Theros? Okay, so not Theros. Theros is off the thing. Now, when he says balanced, there's a couple things that he can mean. It doesn't seem like not related things. Well, well. He could mean an

equal balance between interesting mechanics and interesting creative. He could mean balance in that the creative and the mechanics are equally balanced. Or he could mean what we normally mean by balance, which means the power level is balanced. If that's what he's asking, it's an odd question because how balanced the set is developmentally and how good the creative is aren't necessarily tied to each other. So let's assume he means the other question. That's a more interesting question. Okay.

Which is, what set has the best mix between neat flavor and neat mechanics that kind of are balanced well? And I can't use Theros. I guess my answer is probably Innistrad. Innistrad did a very, very good job, I thought, of having very compelling mechanics that were fun to play, but having a very neat flavor, and the two were really well balanced in that, you know, the mechanics really showed the flavor,

but the flavor really played into the mechanics. Do you have a different answer? Do I? Yeah. I've been reading questions. Okay. Okay, well, that's more of my question anyway. Some of these are for you, by the way.

Some of them, like, specifically said, hey, Matt, and ask you a question. How does the... Okay, this is from TheFoolishDM. Okay. How does the rest of the pit feel about your podcast? Some of them actually listen to the podcast, although... We just heard from a guy yesterday who doesn't listen but reads it. Oh, yes, yes. Well, Natasha transcribes a lot of them, so some of them read it. In general, they're positive.

I mean, I think I'm known in the pit as being the R&D member that does the most outreach to the audience. And so some of them read my blog. Most of them read my articles. You know, a lot of them see my comics. So I think they like it. I mean, I think in general, I'm pretty nice. I don't say mean things about them or anything. I don't trash them in my podcast. So no, no, pretty positive. I mean, I, we can do that though. If you want to talk about some people. Yeah. It's the trashing podcast. So no, it's very

positive. I think they, uh, you know, they, they,, they like that I do all the outreach to the players that I do. Okay. From, I guess I'll call this DC Irish 7. Okay. He or she personally loved Avacyn Restored. Okay. The general consensus was not as positive. Why do you think that is?

Well, the set actually... Here's what goes on. It's an interesting thing. The set sold very well. It sold well. So there was an audience that very much liked the set and bought a lot of it and played with it. Where it got negative reviews was

the real hardcore limited players did not like the limited gameplay. And so a lot of the criticism on the set comes from the fact that it had... the real core drafting crowd did not like... I mean, once again, this is all in context. It followed Innistrad, which some people thought was the best drafting set we've ever done ever. And so I think it was following something that it was hard to follow and that it wasn't as good. And so it was

a low point within our recent you know, not, I don't think it's bad compared to historically. I think it was bad compared to the sets around it. I'd like to say that there is some measure of the public perception of a set's quality being based upon the vocal minority's opinion. It could just be that people at large loved Abyssin Restored, but the people who like

to talk about it might have had a different opinion. Right. Well, I mean, one of the things that's crystal clear is we look at many metrics when we try to figure out if something's a success. But one of the most important metrics is sales, which is, was this something that people were excited to actually take their money and put it down and buy it? And when a lot of people buy something, that does say, hey, there's something going on. People wanted to buy it. So the set sold really, really well. I guess that proves my point. Yeah, I mean, there are clearly, it was an angel set.

A lot of people love that. There are a lot of fun things to do with it. When people hear the criticism, and I think you're right, it's a vocal minority, but that criticism mostly was aimed at the limited play, the drafting in particular. And to be honest, if I'm going to critique the set, I do believe that we made some mistakes in the limited play and that it was not our best work of the last five years. Although I believe comparing to the last 10 or 15 years, it was good.

You know, I think we've upped our game. Okay, next question. This isn't a question, but rather a command. Okay, command. For you to tell me that I need to write more feature articles. Oh, well, Matt, you need to write more feature. You did awesome. So Matt used to write, it was called Savor the Flavor.

Taste the Magic. Taste the Magic. I'm sorry, Doug did Savor the Flavor. It's called Taste the Magic. It was the very first column about the creative team and all the work the creative team does. And then Matt left the company

and Doug took over and changed the name to Savor the Flavor. And then Doug Byer wrote that for a while. But then Doug had so much going on he couldn't continue anymore.

And then Jenna took over but it switched over to a more about it's fiction now. And then a bunch of different people write it. I think in fact

Jenna handed over to Adam Lee, who now oversees it. Well, I think at this point it is a, like a community effort. Yeah, yes. And I think that, that is indicative of my response to this particular command,

which is, like, Doug has too much to do. Jenna has too much to do. The creative team has too much to do. Any one human has too much going on right now, myself included. So I appreciate that thought, Muskrat. But for the time being, there's probably not going to be much opportunity for me to scribble the one thing i should point out because i i've been writing forever um for for example look at the development column they're on their sixth writer for the development

column where i'm still the still doing the design column the reason that i am writing is i my background is writing i love love writing. I just, I can't not write. And so I figured since I have to write, I might as well write about magic. So, um, I also have a very, very busy schedule given by the fact that I'm doing podcasts in my car on the way to work. Um, but I, I decided that from my job, interacting with the public is so crucial for what I do because I have to understand what people want in order to design for them that I've carved out time so that I can do a lot of this public interaction stuff. But it does take a lot of time, and I'm not doing other things because I'm doing this.

And I know Matt and the creative team, and we are busy. The amount of awesome things coming to you in the next three years, hell, in the next seven years, but mostly right now we're working on the next three years. A lot of fun stuff coming, but it keeps us busy. That's right. This is an interesting question. You've probably heard this one before, but it's worth the podcast crowd hearing. Well, if it's a podcast crowd hearing,

is there anything you wish you could tweak about magic but that you feel is too ingrained to do at this point? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That is from Colonial Pink. One of these days I'm going to write a column about this. It's such a meaty topic, there's a whole column worth. I will hit a couple of the highlights. And these are answers, if you've heard me answer this question, these are answers I give a lot. But some people have not heard couple of the highlights. And these are answers, if you've heard me answer this question, these are answers I give a lot.

But some people have not heard me answer the question. So number one, I wish that instant was a super type and not its own card type. So that spells were just sorceries, and then instant sorceries are what we now know as instants. And instead of having flash, you would have instant creature, instant enchantment, or instant artifact. A, I would do that. Like Planeswalker?

I wish that we had more consolidated our subtypes such that, and not just creature subtypes, but I'd love to have spell subtypes. For example, fire magic would have fire as a subtype, and then fire wizards could interact with fire magic. I think that would be fun to do. I have one. What?

I wish that we would have started the power and toughness range from zero to like a hundred. So you wouldn't have a case where a human is the same size as a rat. Yeah. Or, I mean, some of them get ridiculous,

where you could have a human that's the same size as a house-sized beast. Yeah. It just doesn't make a lot of creative sense. Yeah, I mean... To have that flexibility. Right. The only problem that would have is

if you have too wide a range of numbers, it does become a lot harder to process all the stuff. Sure. I'm trying to think what else.

I mean, I definitely would have carved out the color pile a little differently. There's some stuff that's got so ingrained that it's just, it's very, very hard when you go, oh, this should change, but it's, people are used to, so many years of doing something. So there's some tweaks I'd make to the color pie. There's a long list of things. Ah, but now I'm on

the spot. I think that I would also, what else would I do? I have a list I'm keeping on my phone about things from my article when I read it eventually. And I have like eight or nine things on my list. So there's a whole bunch of stuff. I have one. What? This is a hot topic at the office. Okay.

The card back. Oh, yes, the card back. It's so ugly. Yes, we would do a different card back if we were to start it over. It would look prettier. It wouldn't say Deckmaster on it. But that is absolutely too ingrained right now. Yes.

Although that is... So we have a lot of arguments at work. And one of them... Like, we've been having this ongoing argument for years and years and years, which is, should we change the card back? And what would it mean to change? And the funny thing is, every year goes by that we don't change, and it makes it that much harder to change it.

Right. So. Here's an interesting one, and I know that the answer has got to be yes, I just can't think of one. Maybe you can think of one. This is from Sweet Tooth TKC, not to be confused with other sweet teas. Has there ever been a card whose art inspired the rest of it as opposed to the other way around? The answer is yes.

Let me see if I can come up with a few where that is true. The most famous story is the original Birds of Paradise in Alpha was not the art made for Birds of Paradise. It actually was made for Tropical Island. It was turned in for Tropical Island and Richard thought the bird was too prominent. So what he did is he ended up making a card for that picture and they ended up getting a new piece

of art for Tropical Island. So Bird of Paradise exists only because Richard was making a card to match the art that was on the original Birds of Paradise. Now, we also do something that we call slush, where we have art that for some reasons didn't get made. So in Unglued, there's a card called Gus, and Gus was, one of the things I was doing for Unglued was like, look for the slush pile, see if you can find anything.

And Tempo the Damned and Gus, I know, for the slush pile, see if you can find anything. And Temple of the Damned and Gust, I know, were both slush art that I just made into a card. Yeah, that happens quite a bit, actually. And there's a bunch of other cards that have come out of slush. So the answer is, it doesn't happen all the time, but yes, there are definitely cards that were inspired by the art.

There are also examples of pieces of art that because they come out particularly good, end up inspiring the team not to create a card for it, but to switch it on to a better card. Oh, yes. Yeah. I can think of some examples, but I don't want to give them because that would sort of tip the hand as to which art we thought was inferior and worthy of the worst card. So I'd rather just say that sometimes it happens, because if you know a card is going to be super popular,

it makes sense to put the best piece of art on it. So that happens. Yes, well, we definitely, I mean, instead of, what happens is we have a card we know is going to be awesome, and sometimes we'll go, let's swap art to get the best art we can get on this card. Oh, one other example, by the way, is the third You Make the Card, which was Vanished into Memory, started with the audience turning in art. We chose art, and the entire card was designed from the art.

So that's when you guys made a card from the art. Right. Okay, next question. That's when you guys made a card from the art. Right. Okay, next question. Since we both worked on... Hey, this is also from Sweet Tooth. Sweet Tooth asking a lot of good questions.

Guys on a roll. Since we both worked on Future Sight, how serious is R&D about making contraptions a reality? Okay. Well, I actually talked about this in my podcast. So here's what happened. When we made contraptions, we made it as a joke. We had no actual intention of making contraptions.

The idea was, I liked the idea of making a car that just had all this crazy terminology on it as kind of a joke about what it might do in the future. And then Aaron got his hands on it and made it even crazier. And then when the set came out, Aaron wrote a column, because Aaron was the development columnist at the time, and he gave up the fact that we had never planned to do it. And I'm like, Aaron, Aaron, you can't tell them that. So once the audience knew that we didn't plan on doing it,

of course now we have to do it. But the problem is, that we didn't plan on doing it, of course, now we have to do it. But the problem is, because we didn't think we were going to do it, we did all bunch of crazy things with it. For example, here's one of the hardest part, is it's not that you, the player, build contraptions. It talks about when a creature builds. When does a creature do stuff? That's not something that we normally do.

Other than... A few famous examples where we templated portally and you have to ask the floral spasm which artifact it wants to destroy. So here's the thing. There's a lot of demand for contraptions. Once... As soon as I solve all the problems

that we... Basically what we did is we set up this crazy set of problems for ourselves because we thought we'd never have to solve the problem. So we just did crazy, crazy things. The day I solve those crazy, crazy problems, I promise you I will make contraptions. That's right. Here's a question that sort of swings back to something we were talking about earlier

I don't know why this one is particularly aimed at me but we'll just say Herb Derpliss wants to know or wants one of us to explain the size comparison between a traveling philosopher and grizzly bears

I have an answer. Do you have an answer? No. I just assume that it's because we're stuck with a small number of numbers. Okay. Well, here's my answer. I think people, when they think of philosophers, are thinking of earthbound philosophers. So one of the things on earth, when you become a philosopher, well, mostly it's about the

mind. You think a lot. But one of the things that on Pharos is in order to become a philosopher, you have to wrestle bears. And only those that survive get to be philosophers. By the way, that might not be endorsed by the creative team. By the way, that might not be endorsed by the creative team. This is an interesting question from Geraint Ultimus. Okay. I'm going to assume he's directing this question. He or she. He or she is directing this at me.

Okay. Because the question is, how good a driver is he? It's fine. I've been in your car when you've been driving. We have not gotten in any wrecks yet. We're in good shape. Yeah, I'm waiting for the accident episode. Right.

Thanks. From Andri KSH, in our opinions, what is the most crucial part of the card, mechanic, flavor, or art? The most crucial? Crucial. The funny thing is,

I think each one of them do such an important job, but they're such different jobs. It's literally comparing apples and oranges. Or not literally, figuratively comparing apples and oranges. Well, as much as it pains me to say this, I believe the art is the least of the three, but I'm not ready to say which of the other two. Like, flavor supersedes art. It's the thing that determines what is going to be contained in that art. Whether or not this is a wizard or a ooze, that's important. But whether or not the art is successfully rendered, that we can change by doing alternate art or recommissioning the art in a later set or whatever.

So I can't imagine that a card will live or die. I will say this. From time to time, we will have a fight where the creative and the mechanics don't mesh. Right. And somebody's got to give. Whenever we can, if we can find a solution that mechanically works, that matches the creative, we do it.

But I will say that when push comes to shove, if the card has to be a little bit off mechanically, or a little bit off flavorfully, we will err on the side of mechanics because it's a game. That doesn't mean we don't highly, highly prioritize having good flavor and trying to make flavor good. I do know, though, when, like, when the metal, you know, pedal comes to the metal and, like, something has to give, we tend to err on making sure the gameplay, that the mechanics work.

So... It's a bit of a loaded question. Because if you look at a worst- scenario for flavor or mechanic, for example, you have a perfectly pointed and designed card, but the flavor is of a stockbroker on a bicycle. Right. It has no, you can't do that. Like, obviously, that has nothing to do with magic.

Challenge accepted. Utter failure. And on the flip side, if you have a perfect rendering of Jace doing his most quintessential magic, but the card is completely worthless, broken, or costs 500 mana, no! You can't do that either. They both are very, very important.

That if you stripped the flavor out of the game, the game wouldn't be what it is. And if you flipped the mechanics out of the game, clearly the game wouldn't be what it is.

And that, I think, one of the things that makes Magic magic is that it has such a lovely intermixing of the two. And I think that's the strength of the game

is that it has a very strong defined flavor and a very strong science and mechanics. And then they work so well together. It is a, there is some contention with regard to making Magic cards, but I think the thing that fans should feel really good about is that both on the design and development side and on the creative side, both groups really passionate, really good at what they do, and they have mutual respect for each other. So there isn't going to be a point where somebody wins at the expense of the other.

No, we always try to find something that makes everybody happy. Right. Okay, next question. Okay. From Ruin, no, Ryan Unplugged. Okay.

Will top-down design, that is to say, themes based on Earth's mythologies and concepts, be revisited in the near future? Okay, I can say this. Hold on. Do we want to limit top-down design to things based on Earth concepts?

Well, I mean, top-down design means you're taking a known thing the audience is aware of and then building... Right, it could be a known fantasy concept. Correct. You can do top-down design from creative-built built this awesome, amazing world,

and that is the jumping off point. Like something, say, contraptions. It is possible, yes. You could do top-down from a completely fictional,

you've never heard of it before, but creative spent a lot of time and energy building the world and we started there. Yes. A lot of the top-down we've done recently,

Innistrad and Theros, have been we are starting from a place of a known real world, I mean, one's a genre, the horror genre, the other is obviously mythology. Will we do more of that kind of top-down design? Here's what I will say. We are currently doing the seven-year plan, so I'm mapping out

seven years, and I can say absolutely, we do have it planned. We are going to be doing more of that. But, but, be aware, there's not, I know people seem to think, like, oh, this is awesome, you must have endless, having something that

can inspire something that's as deep as magic is, that is the requirements of the number of creatures and spells and stuff that magic requires, it is not nearly as deep a list as you would think. But there are more. We do have some of them planned. Okay, go ahead. I'm going to read a question from Pseudo-Scorpion, whose answer, I'm sure, will end up destroying part of your soul. Okay, hold on. Let me of your soul. Okay, hold on, hold on.

Let me brace my soul. Okay. If you absolutely had to get rid of one of the colors of magic, which would it be? Here's the sad thing is, I've answered this question before, so I've actually had a lot of time to think about it. So you're only,

you're running on 90% of your soul right now. Yes, already. I already lost some of my soul. Now I've got to lose another 5%. I can only answer this question so many times. Okay, so let's assume... I mean, magic is awesome because of the structure that it has.

The color wheel is the underpining of everything. So the first answer is it would be detriment to the game to take any color away, and I would never do that. Okay, now let's answer the question. Assume I have to. Whatever. I'm forced. I have to make the decision. So that what I would want to do is say,

mechanically speaking, how can I take a color away and then take the things that color does and give them to other colors? So I have to look at what color is most duplicated by other colors and from a flavor perspective, what color could I try to group that thing somewhere else? So I actually spend a lot of time thinking about this. My gut says white. Oh, that's funny. I've come to green. Oh. Although, white and green...

Actually, that's a good point. Yeah. If green is, quote, nature... Yeah. All the things that exist in the other colors are representatives of nature as well. Right. They're already, like a shark. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yes.

I believe... Here's why I think green... I mean, if you had to kill a color... And by the way, green lovers, I'm not... I have no intention of killing green. I mean, it's a thought exercise. I mean, remember, I'm spending my soul doing this, so please, please give me some... The green and white are the two colors that overlap the most,

and so it's the easiest for you to capture. The reason that I think I take green is, I think you could spread nature out through the other four colors and just say that, okay, nature has to be represented in white, blue, red, and black. I think you could cover it. And I believe that the white-black conflict and the red-blue conflict are the two most easy-to-graft human conflicts of the five. And so I kind of want to keep those two conflicts alive.

Green and blue is pretty good, too. Green and blue is very good. Nature Nurtures and Awesome. I mean, they're all good. Well, the funny thing about black and green is the life and death, those are, even though they're opposites, they're almost synonymous at the same time. Sure.

It's so natural to think of something like the Golgari in that death to life, life to death cycle. It seems, I don't know, I'm with you. I can live without that one. I don't know. I could... I'm with you. I could... Anyway, so I... I believe that, to answer the question, if I had to get rid of a color, I had to,

and once again, I would never get rid of a color, but if I had to, I think green's the one that we could survive the best. Anyway, I mean, we'd lose stuff and we'd have to figure out, like...

I mean, a lot of... Green has a lot of mechanical overlap, but there's a few spots where it doesn't. We'd have to figure out, figure out what becomes the ramping color and stuff like that, but anyway. Oh, that's true. Okay, I see wizards. We have one last question.

One last final... Okay. So make it good. From ProFlazers. ProFlazers, okay. How long does R&D now think it should wait

before returning to a particular plane uh that is an interesting question because in the seven year plan

we are going back to planes that we've been before um how long oh my god dun dun dun um

what that's an interesting question uh how long should we wait or how Oh my god. Dun dun dun! Um, what? That's an interesting question. Uh, how long should we wait? Or how long? I feel this. We want to make sure that when we go back to a world that is someplace that people are eager to go. So if you go too fast, they're like,

hey, we were just there. If you wait too long, they're like, what is this place you speak of? So there's a sweet spot that my guess is I don't know I mean it's I don't think we can go back

faster like it's like four plus four plus yeah five or more years and that I think if you're going to go back to a place

I mean I guess you could go back ten plus years if you built it up a little bit but if you went back to a place after ten years like you're going to go back to a place, I mean, I guess you could go back 10 plus years if you built it up a little bit, but if you went back to a place after 10 years, like, you're on the hook to kind of explain where the hell you were. So, yeah. A lot of people won't know.

The average player, by the way, plays right now seven years, I think. So, seven years is kind of the sweet spot of, we still have people remembering it, but it's, so. Okay, anyway, we are now at Wizards. So, that was the first installment of Mailbag with Matt. Sweet.

Anyway, so we had... It was a success. It was a success! I said in the beginning my big nervousness was if we make one mistake, we have to tape the whole thing all over again. But we made it. We made it to Wizards.

My nervousness was getting sick reading in the car. So anyway, thanks for joining us, guys. It's always fun answering your questions. And let me know if you like this podcast, because if you do, I'll have to have Matt again, and we'll do some more. But anyway, thanks very much for joining us, but it's time for me to be making magic.

Talk to you guys next week.