Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #98 - 1996

Episode Date: February 21, 2014

Mark focuses on the fourth year of Magic-1996.

Okay, I'm pulling up my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Okay, so a while back I started a little mega-series I called 20 Years in 20 Podcasts. Based on a 20 years in 20 minutes segment I did at World last year, where I talked about every year of the 20 years of magic, one minute at a time. about every year of the 20 years of magic, one minute at a time. And this podcast series is allowing me to, you know, stretch out, talk about a year a little more than one minute. So each year, or each podcast, I'm talking about a different year. I'm going in chronological order.

I've talked about 93, 94, and 95. So today is, of course, 1996. Okay, where do we begin? Okay, so in 1995, I explained that what I call the second wave of R&D started getting hired. So the first wave of R&D were the people that were actually play tefters for Magic back in the day. People like Scaf Elias, Jim Lynn, Dave Petty, Charlie Cattino, Joel Mick.

People who had worked on Magic as play tefters and would later come to R&D to work in R&D on Magic. Then the second wave were people that weren't play tefters but got involved in Magic early and R&D pulled them in. Bill Rose, who actually was a play tefter, ended up coming during this time period, as did William Jockish and myself. That all happened in 1995. So the fourth member of our little band, Mike Elliott, actually started in January of this year.

Mike had been met at a convention by Joel Mick, year. Mike had been met at a convention by Joel Mick, and they were just looking for people they thought were passionate and smart and understood magic, and Mike got hired. The final person I consider to be sort of the second stage, second age of magic R&D will happen later in the year. But in January of 1996, Mark starts. I just said Mike starts, Mike Elliott. So for those who don't know, real quickly, Mike Elliott, after myself, is probably the most prolific magic designer. He's led the most sets.

There's a few people nipping on his tails like Brian Tinsman and Bill Rose and stuff, but Mike actually, other than myself, Mike has led the design for more sets than anybody else, and he did quite a bit. Okay, in February of 1996, in fact, February 17th to the 18th,

was the very first Pro Tour. I've talked about this a little bit in my, I've talked about the Pro Tour quite a bit on my podcast, but to recap, just for this segment, Skeph Elias came up with the idea that if we wanted people to think of magic as a sport,

we had to treat it like a sport. And that he liked the idea of that part of organized play was you had to have aspirations. Well, what could you aspire to? And so Scaf came up with the idea of creating a pro tour. And I, early on, when I first got to Wizards back in 95, I heard that this was going to happen.

I was very interested, I was very involved in the judging scene at the time because before I got to Wizards, my work on the puzzles had advanced knowledge of sets. I wasn't allowed to play, so I used to judge. And so I had a lot of involvement in running tournaments, and so when I heard that we were going to do a professional tournament I asked Scaf if I could be involved and he made me the liaison from R&D so Scaf and I worked very closely together to get it off the ground

so I was very very involved in the Pro Tour in the early days and the very first Pro Tour was held in New York there was a blizzard one of the few times we got delayed. The night before, there was an open bar for the players meeting. We did that once. We were in the Puck building

in downtown New York. I think it's downtown New York. It was quite the event. Looking back on it with the eye of history, we were just getting our legs under us. We weren't quite, you know, we, well, what we had done was heads and tails above things before. We would find ways to improve it much better. That if you went back and looked at the very

first Pro Tour, it would seem amateurish compared to how we do the Pro Tour now. But it's 20 years later, or whatever, 17, 18 years later, we've learned a lot. And so one of the things that I... I always remember the first Pro Tour fondly in that we tried to do so many different things. Hold on a second. I've got to get out of the way of an oncoming fire truck. See?

My actual drive torque. So what can I say about that? The interesting thing about it was, we had come up with this idea to do a Pro Tour. We put it together, and the very first Pro Tour was rough, but it was exciting. We had never done anything

like it. People came out of the woodwork. Really, it was the first time of seeing the top players all come together. I mean, the World Championship had happened before, so there have been little glimpses of this, but as a regular thing, it was quite exciting. And what had happened was most of R&D had traveled to the event, and so we were all there, and it was very, very exciting. Like I said, a lot of things would happen as I go through the year. I'll

talk about some of the innovations that happened at the Pro Tour. But the innovation of the very first Pro Tour was it was the very first Pro Tour. And there was no PTQs yet. Either we invited you because you had some achievement from before, either based on performance on a previous event or rating. And the way Scaf and I did it was, if we knew you, we just made sure the thing you had done was a criteria. We wanted Dave

Humphries there. Excuse me. We wanted Dave Humphries there. So, the winner of the Ice Age pre-release got invited. Stuff like that. And the people who didn't get in, you had to call on the phone. There's a lot of jokes. There was PT calling. But yeah, if you wanted to get in, you had to call on the phone. There's a lot of jokes.

There was PT calling. But yeah, if you wanted to get in, there was open slots for so many people. And so you had to call in on the phone. So the event, the finals of the event was Michael Lecanto from the United States versus Bertrand Lestray from France.

Bertrand Lestray was famous for being the finalist in the 1994 World Championship, the very first World Championship. He lost to Zach Dolan. So Bertrand Lachray was famous for being the finalist in the 1994 World Championship, the very first World Championship. He lost to Zach Dolan. So Bertrand came in second again for a while. France coming in second would be a running joke because France would also come in second, the second World Championship, with Marco Hernandez coming in second to Alexander Blumke from Switzerland.

So the French for a while did very, very well, but were coming in second. Eventually they would win at a PT in San Diego many years in the future. But for a running while, France was like this contender that kept coming in second. Anyway, Michael Locanto played a white-blue milling deck, and he defeated Bertrand's white-green Erdőm Armageddon deck in a very long finals. white-green Erdem Armageddon deck in a very long finals. But anyway, it happened. Michael Locanto won. We made a video of it,

which you can hear on podcast me talking about that. And it was history. Okay, let's move on to... Now, one thing that's interesting about 96 is I looked up things to figure out what all happened. And, like, not a lot happened

early in the year. I mean, we started the Pro Tour, you know, but the first release actually wouldn't happen until June. But the second Pro Tour actually happened before that, in May. So the second Pro Tour was held in Los Angeles, aboard the Queen Mary,

where we would be for many of our PTLAs. The finals was Sean the Hammer, or Hammer, Regnier, versus Tom Gavin, both from the United States. Sean was actually a professional arm wrestler who also owned a comic store called, I believe, Hammer's Comics. And he had fostered quite a community of Magic players. Gavin actually was from the same town.

They were both from New England. And Tom will go on to be known as being one of the most entertaining players to watch. I used to put him in feature matches all the time. Because Tom understood that he was being featured to entertain. And Tom was very entertaining. that he was being featured to entertain, and Tom was very entertaining. The finals of PT2, PTLA,

actually were longer than the finals of PT1, which were crazy long. One of the reasons I remember this is Mark Justice and I, so back in the early days, I was doing the commentary, and I would pull in a different pro player to do the color with me. Mark Justice was doing that event, and the only booth they could find for us, now they have a booth they bring with them,

but they put us in a phone booth. It was a large phone booth, but a phone booth. And Mark and I were in there for over 12 hours. The finals of this event were eight hours or something, eight and a half hours. This event was a limited event. It was the first time we had ever done a draft. It was a Rochester draft, for those

that remember what that is. So nowadays we do booster drafts. Back then we swapped between booster drafts and Rochester drafts. Rochester drafts are you lay out the pack and people pick in a sneak-like pattern and then go back. The difference between the two is everybody knows what's there. If you had the ability to remember everything, you know what's in everybody's deck. Now it's hard to remember everything, but we thought that was going to be the way people wanted to draft, and that boot to draft was going to be the secondary way. It turned out that right-handed draft took a long time, made people feel dumb because there was too much information, and boot to draft ended up being the way people liked to draft.

But anyway, the other interesting thing about PT2 was at the time, we had been pushing, the U.S. had been pushing limited play, and Europe really did not like limited play. They thought there was too much luck in it. And so they played very little limited play. If I remember correctly, the top 64 of PTLA, the very first one, was 62 Americans, I'm sorry, 61 Americans, two Japanese, and one European. Which kind of made our case, which is, oh look, the people that are actually doing this format are doing much, much better at it.

It made people realize how much skill there was in it. The finals, the two of them knew each other there was a lot of tension Tom excused himself at one point there was a big debate whether Tom had thrown up in the bathroom that was a controversy at the time but there were a lot of jitters and nerves and it was a very hard fought match

Sean I believe milled people out so the first two pro tours were with Dex, with people milled out as if to make it the slowest possible. The third Pro Tour, which I'll get to in a little bit, was much, much, much, much faster. Okay. Oh, the other thing that happened at the very first Pro Tour in Los Angeles

was we had a pre-release for Alliances. So the previous year for Ice Age we had a pre-release, but I mean a singular one pre-release for Alliances. So the previous year for Ice Age we had a pre-release, but I mean a singular one pre-release in Toronto. You had to go to Toronto to be at the pre-release. Alliances were also one pre-release but it was at it was in Los Angeles

at the Pro Tour. There's some chance there might have been one or two more. There might have been a few more, but the main one was at the Pro Tour in Los Angeles. And Alliances, I did a podcast on Alliances, one of my early podcasts. You should go listen to it. Alliances was a very interesting time for us because Magic had had a huge gap. That for the first couple years, we released lots of product.

And then we got to 96, and up until June, until June, halfway into the year, nothing got released. And the previous thing, which was Fallen Empires, had been released, I think, in November. So there was a seven-month gap

where we did not release a set. And if you remember, Fallen Empires was the first time we overprinted. The set quality was in question. The set was overprinted. The set quality was in question. The set was overprinted. The set quality, by the way, was more of, I think we messed up the rarities. But anyway, the set was not received horribly well. We overprinted, which did not make things too well either.

And so there was a lot of pressure riding on the next set. R&D had lots of faith in it. We believed it was going to be really good. There were other factors in Wizards that did not have faith in the set. You can listen to my Alliance podcast. I talk about that in great detail. But in the end, it came out. It was a wild success, and people very much loved the set. So for all the stuttering and draying that led up to it, it actually ended up being very popular. So also, in July, I had to dig deep for some of these.

We released the Rivals Quick Start Set. So one of the ongoing things that happened, and you'll see this as we go through, was we were trying to figure out how to sell magic to beginners. Like I talk about all the time, one of the biggest problems with

magic is what we call barrier to entry is very high. It's hard to learn. It's a hard game. So, we were experimenting. So the idea of Rivals Quickstart was we made some pre-constructed decks. I think there were four of them that you just bought and that you could like, now remember the idea of pre-constructed at the

time was pretty radical. We did not make pre-constructed decks. You wanted to play magic, you bought stuff, you made the decks. It wasn't until Tempest, which would be next year in 97, that we even put out the first pre-constructed deck. So this was, I mean, along with products, obviously. So this was one of the earliest of us making a pre-constructed deck. So this was, I mean, along with products, obviously. So this was one of the earliest of us making a pre-constructed deck. And the goal was to give you a simple deck so you can play and get you to start right out of the gate. Obviously, it did not work tremendously well because we would go on to do other things.

But just to show you early on, we were, you know, New World Order would eventually happen, Doodle the Planeswalkers eventually happened, but that happened many, many years later. We went through you know, New World Order would eventually happen, Doodle the Planeswalkers eventually happened, but that happened many, many years later. We went through lots and lots of iterations to try and figure out how to teach people how to play Magic. So also in July were two things. One was PT Columbus, and the second thing was the U.S. Nationals. Interestingly, they took place the same week at the same event. So we were at Origins, which was the same place Magic premiered back in 93. And it's put on by Gamma,

the Game Manufacturing Association of America. And so what happened was the first two days were the Pro Tour and the second two days were the U.S. Nationals, I believe, and then the finals was both. I might have swapped the two. I think it was the Pro Tour, then the U.S. Nationals. So at the Pro Tour, all the Swedish players had their plane delayed and actually showed up late to the event, except for one Swedish player,

a little guy named Ulla Rade, who I believe was under 18. He was 15, 16, 17, somewhere around there. He was tiny, long blonde hair, and he had a little tiny insect, red-green insect deck, that would go on to blisteringly fast win PT Columbus and put Ularade on the scene. Ularade would go on to become the very first pro player of the year.

He would top eight later that year at Worlds. He topped eight later that year at Dallas. Anyway, there was a lot going on. And he was... up until that time everybody sort of acknowledged that Mark Justice was the best magic player in the world. Mark Justice had won US Nationals, had come in top three, come in third at Worlds, would later come in second this year at Worlds, and then Ula Rai was the person that finally stole the title of best magic player in the world away from Mark Justice.

And this was the event that he showed up with for the first time and got the nickname The Littlest Viking. Now, the interesting thing was the reason he was not playing the juniors, remember the time when the Pro Store started, there was a senior event and a junior division. In fact, the junior division way back in New York, a lot of famous players, including John Finkel, Zvi Mausiewicz, Stephen O. Mahoney-Schwartz, a lot of people that would go on to be major players, Hall of Famers, got their start in the juniors. And the reason Ulay didn't play in the juniors was all his friends were playing in the seniors, so he played in the seniors, even though they all got their playing delayed and didn't end up showing up in the event. But he had signed up for the seniors, so he played in the seniors, even though they all got their playing delayed and didn't end up showing up in the event. But he had signed up for the seniors,

so he played in the seniors and went on to win it. Also, that event was the U.S. Nationals. The interesting thing about U.S. Nationals that year, I mean, Dennis Bentley would go on to win, but that wasn't the most interesting story. The most interesting story was Mike Long and his friends, I guess Matt Place and a few other people, I'm blanking on all their names right now. They built a deck called, I mean, well, they didn't build it. The Finnish, some people from Finland had made a deck called Turbo Stasis. And they had been tracking the other nationals and then tweaked their version of it. And it showed up and nobody knew what to expect of it. And it went on to both Matt and

Mike made top four, made the U.S. national team based on this deck. That was this rogue deck choice that people just didn't know how to deal with. Now this summer was also what we know as Necro Summer in which Necropotence ended up becoming this dominant deck. It very much dominated the U.S. nationals of which Dennis Bentley, the U.S. champion, would play. And I believe that George Baxter, who came in second, had a deck prepared to beat the Necro deck. So that was the top four for that year,

and they would go on to win the team championship. So it was Dennis Bentley, George Baxter. George Baxter wrote a whole bunch of books on magic at the time. Mike Long and Matt Place. Matt Place would go on to work for Wizards later on. Anyway, the four of them would be the U.S. national team. They would go on to win the world championship later that year and continue U.S.'s dominance for a while.

Oh, in the finals, by the way, Ula Rada beat a guy named Sean Fleischman who was from the U.S., had a feathered hat, was associated with Neutral Ground, which was a big organization back in New York at the time

that was one of the first ones to do, you know, lots of cash tournaments and things. And definitely a lot of the pro tour borrowed some of the ideas from some of the stuff they were doing. I think they called the Gray Matter definitely a lot of the Pro Tour borrowed some of the ideas and some of the stuff they were doing.

I think they called it the Grey Matter was the name of what they used to do the tournaments. Okay, so now we come to August. So August was the World Championship actually held in the offices of Wizards of the Coast in Renton. actually held in the offices of Wizards of the Coast in Renton. That event would have Tom Champagne of Australia defeating Mark Justice in the finals. It was the Necro Summer. Mark Justice was playing a Necro deck.

Tom was playing a white weenie deck that was designed to defeat the Necro deck. And there was a famous play in the end where Mark did a double demonic constipation. He did it slightly wrong. Justice almost beat Tom Champin, but obviously made an error. Justice had very good performances and came in second twice at Pro Tours. He also came in second at Paris the next year.

But he never did win. I'm not sure. He's never made the Hall of Fame. He's one of the Hall of Famers, him and Mike Long, that are, in my mind, like were so famous and such a key part of Magic. I'm surprised. I mean, I guess

I understand why, but to me, they both should be in the Hall of Fame. In fact, back in the day, back in 96, if you had said one day there's going to be Hall of Fames, but that Mark Justice would not be in it, the response of most Magic players would be, then why are you having a Magic Hall of Fame? That's how big he was.

Anyway, most people don't remember that. But Mark Justice was, at the time, the man of Magic. Also that happened, oh, by the way, at the World Championship, Tom Champagne won, uh, the 1996 World Champion card, which was a one of a card we made, literally we made one of, well, we made a sheet of them and then had a video of us destroying the rest of them. Uh, and it was encased in a trophy then given to him. I think he's since sold it to a collector, I believe is what happened. But anyway, there is one copy of 1996 World Champion. In fact, I designed it. A little trivia for you. It has a weird design in that it allows you to activate it while it's in the library,

which doesn't actually work. When I talked to the rules manager at the time, which I think was Beth Morrison, either that or Tom Wiley, I was told that it wouldn't work, but that, since no one would ever play it, since there's only one of them embedded in a trophy, that it didn't matter. So anyway, there's a dragon, by the way, that I cannot pronounce the first name of, but there's one other card that we made also that year for a tournament opening in Japan that was our partners, that was a one-of-dragon card that I also designed,

a little cooler design that probably maybe could make a black border. Anyway, and that also is one-of and stuck in some sort of thing in the tournament center. I don't know where that is. I assume the collector must have that one out as well. Okay. Also in August, we did, or not in August, in September,

we did the very first pre-release in which many, many cities had a pre-release. I think there were 25 cities. And what we did is every pre-release had a Wizards employee flown in. I actually went to Toronto. I was supposed to

go to the one in Alaska, but the last minute they changed me to Toronto because they were worried about something and they wanted me to oversee it. Anyway, I lost my chance to go to Alaska. One day I will, but I have not yet. Anyway, that was the first time we had a whole bunch of pre-releases. And pre-releases became a big thing.

That's the first time we had really done them. Now, Mirage, which came out in September, what I call the second age of design. It's the beginning of what we call the modern block. You know, for the very first time we had block design. It was the first set that really took limited into account at all. The sets prior to that, I mean, people played limited with them, but man, they were some painful limited. I was going to say ice age and Limited, but you could open up just decks that you couldn't play,

you couldn't win with. And there were not a lot of flyers, and so, you know. Anyway, it was, Ice Age is a fun set, but it was more designed with Limited in mind, where Mirage very much was designed with Limited in mind. And it's the first set.

One of the reasons I call it the start of the second Age of Magic design is A, it introduced the idea of blocks. I mean, Ice Age kind of retroactively got one, but Mirage started as a block and was put together as a block. And it was put together with Limited in mind. Also, oh, so in September, not only was there a pre-release, but actually before the pre-release, I'm getting a little ahead of myself,

in September, there was a PT, there was a Pro Tour. And the Pro Tour was Pro Tour Atlanta, where we played Mirage for the very first time. We did a pre-release Pro Tour where no one had ever seen the cards before, and they played with the cards. The winner would be

a guy named Frank Adler from Germany. He would defeat Darwin Castle in the finals. Darwin would go on to be a Pro Tour Hall of Famer. And a top eight was a very good top eight. I mean, Frank Adler, interestingly enough, the winner was probably the least, historically the least accomplished. But, you know, Chris Bakula and Mike Long

and Terry Boer would go on. Actually, Terry Boer would make a big mistake at that Pro Tour where he was going to win his semi-final match against Darwin Castle and he trying to be tricky said do you have any fast effects basically what happened was he was going to win

all he needed to do was attack, do something and he was going to win but he wanted to make sure that Darwin couldn't do anything and he had seen something the previous day that Mark Chalice had done. Mark Chalice had done it to him, I'm sorry, the previous day at the team event. But Mark Chalice had done it correctly, and Terry Boer forgot who was the active player. And so when he said to Darwin, do you have any fast effects, he was giving a priority.

And so when Darwin said no he did not, it meant that Terry was no longer allowed to cast a spell that would have won the game for him. He ended up losing that match, and had he won that match, he would have been Pro Player of the Year for that year. So I've dubbed it the worst mistake in Magic's PT history. There's some other pretty bad mistakes, but that's a pretty bad one.

Blowing not just your chance of winning the tournament, but also blowing Pro Player of the Year. not just your chance for winning the tournament but also blowing Pro Player of the Year. His fellow Canadian Paul McCabe would actually end up

going to win later on. So in 1996 that Pro Player of the Year was Ulurati. The following year would be Paul McCabe. We'll get to Paul McCabe

in a second. Anyway, so PT Atlanta was September 13th through the 15th. It was very exciting. It was swingy, because it was a limited event, and a lot of people who did well opened up, you know, Hammerbogan,

or just there were a few cards that were strong. Also, so in October, after Worlds was done, or sorry, in September, after Worlds was done, Henry Stern got hired. So Henry Stern is the last member of what I think of the second age of R&D.

And the five of us would go on to be the development teams of all the sets for quite a while. Henry would go on to be the lead developer of Tempest, which would be the first set I designed. By the way, in 97, I was designing Tempest. That would come out next year. I'm sorry, in 96, I was designing Tempest. It would come out in 97, but we'll get to that in 1997. But this was a year in

which I pitched myself. I really had wanted to design. I was hired as a developer. I pitched the idea. Richard said he would work with me, and so I was allowed to do Tempest design. So me and Richard and Mike Elliott and Charlie Coutinho, in 1996, we started by going down to Portland to Richard's parents' house. I worked for a week Coutinho. In 1996, we started by going down to Portland, to Richard's parents' house. I worked for a week and came back. And anyway, that was the beginning of the design of Tempest, which will play out in 1997.

But the actual design of it started in 1996. So behind the scenes, I was trying to prove myself as a designer. In November, the Multiverse gift box came out, which was, we used to do a gift box every year. Now we do a holiday gift box. But the idea was it was for the holidays. It wasn't named as such. We've since learned to, if you want people to buy things for the holidays, just call it the holiday gift box.

The Multiverse gift box, the quirky thing about it, it came in a neat box, was there was a pack in it of preview cards from Visions, which was the set that would come out the next year. And we had picked 25 cards to preview, and the way it worked was, your pack had some mix of commons, uncommons, and rares. And so you would open up the pack, and it would show you, it was kind of a

preview pack from Visions. And there were 25 cards from Visions that you could see for the very first time. I think they might have a different expansion symbol on them. So for collectors, those 25 cards are pretty rare. You know, we did make tons and tons of them. It also came with a deck box, a long box, which went over very well, which definitely encouraged us to do more long boxes.

Finally, the final event of the year was PT Dallas. So PT Dallas was November 22nd to the 24th in Dallas, obviously. Paul McCabe, Canadian Paul McCabe, would go on to beat U.S. or from the U.S., Jason Zila. Jason at the time was young. It's interesting, by the way, because my memory of Dallas was that the juniors had this very dramatic finals. I did not write the juniors down.

I believe, I know that Brian Schneider's brother, Justin Schneider, played in that. Who did he play? I think Justin did not win. Did Justin win that? Well, I remember there was a very, I think Justin did win that. There was a very exciting juniors match. In fact, the seniors match was not as exciting as the juniors match, although I did not write down the juniors match,

and my memory is foggy. It was Justin Schneider. I think he beat the person he played. I do not remember the name of the person he played. Anyway, Dallas was the final Pro Tour of the Year. So we had had four Pro Tours in the very first year. I'm sorry. We had a pro tour in New York, a pro tour in Los Angeles,

we had five pro tours. A pro tour in Columbus, a World, which was the first pro tour that was a World, and, no, no, and Atlanta and Dallas. Wow, we were chock full that year. We had six pro tours that year. We were starting off strong.

The other thing that's interesting, by the way, is there were a lot of side events at those Pro Tours. So, for example, Atlanta had a team event that the Pacific Coast Legends, which Henry Stern's team, but Mark Justice and Mark Chalice and Mario Rubina and Scott Johns

was on the team at the time. And then in Dallas, there was a vintage tournament called Type 1 at the time, and Scott Johns would go on to win that. In fact, Scott Johns, I believe, on all the official side tournaments, actually won them. He was on the team that won. He was the individual that won Type 1. I still can't believe Scott Johns is not in the Hall of Fame. He's the only person right now, the only person qualified for the Hall of Fame

with five top eights that is not in the Hall of Fame. And as somebody who's done so much for the game behind the scenes, it is a great, great injustice for me that Scott Johns is not in. Anyway, that wraps up 1996. Like I said, probably the Pro Tour was the biggest part of 1996.

We had six events. There were a few releases. Obviously, Alliances came out and Mirage came out. I think also what was happening was you were seeing the second age. It was the work of the second age of R&D starting to first come out. We were the ones that worked on Alliances. We were the ones that had worked on Mirage.

Or Alliances was the transition, but we did work on it. Mirage was all ours. We were the ones that did Mirage. We developed Mirage ourselves. So it was a changeover on R&D. It definitely was a refreshing over on R&D. It definitely was a refreshing year, or a year of refreshing, in that we were sort of getting started up again.

The old guard had sort of gone down. The new guard had come up. There was kind of a gap there. But we started strong. Both Alliantons and Mirage did very well. The Protour obviously did very well. And we were fresh and ready for what would be 1997, which would be a pretty banner and exciting year.

So anyway, thanks for joining me today for 1996. I hope you enjoyed the jaunt through the year. I remembered fondly, and it's fun conveying that to all of you. But I am sitting in the parking lot, so what that means is it's time to stop talking magic and start making magic. Talk to you guys next week. Bye-bye.