Episode 86: Magic: The Gathering

Are you trying to? Mark is actively very far away from the mike because he has a radio voice and it booms. I feel like everybody, if if you're talking normally you can talk into the mike. This is this is me talking into the mic. And I feel like if I have this amazing radio voice and we're doing a podcast, I feel like everybody else should have to adjust to me. But I always find my itself making the adjustment. So does that sound good? In yours? My

blowing and my blow? Nobody will know what you're talking about because the engineer, like Zach Or, he's going to adjust the sound so to them it'll just sound normal. I feel like it's it's that senior right as everyone gets right before Thanksgiving. We all know we shouldn't be working right now. Yeah, it's that like you're just about to take a nice long break for for holidays plural, whether it's like Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then you got a little bit of work wedged in between there, but a

lot of parties and stuff too. So everybody's preparing to put on ten to fifteen pounds. Yes, I mean, are you traveling for Thanksgiving? Traveling for Thanksgiving, going to Florida for Christmas, going to Virginia, amongst other places. I might wage a Seattle in there. I'm doing a college in Wisconsin in the middle of December, worried about running a car and driving in the snow and all that stuff. So it's the you know, the special is doing great,

and now I'm just working on the next one. And in order to do that, in order to hone that new hour, sometimes you gotta go to Wisconsin Stevens Point in December. Shout out all my Wisconsin Stevens Point listeners.

Now they're hype, they're on. They're like, Yeah, it's one of those things where like you look at a map and clearly I can't fly right into Wisconsin Stevens Points because they have like a little municipal airport where like Harrison Ford would fly as World War two planes out of So I need to either land in Milwaukee or Minneapolis and run a car and drive like three hours. So a lot of look, kids, comedy isn't all just being adored on stage and standing ovations. A lot of

it is renting a car. Yeah, I mean I was thinking of Seattle soon too. We should we should go together. That'd be fun. See. I was a great great place for stand up, lots of lots of coffee, um coffee fish. And it's a great place for Halloween. What trigger treating in Halloween in Halloween on Halloween in Seattle because my niece, my niece lives up there, as does her parents, and uh and my little nephew now, and she wanted everybody

to be Harry Potter characters for Halloween. And so she's she she looked at me and she took a pause like she was building up this thing. She's like, uncle Mark, I want you to be Harry. And I'm like, oh, that's the role. I just can't have a baby face as soon as I put the glasses. So so you know, I have friends like work at Warner Brothers and stuff. So I I have like the real stuff. I have, like a real Griffin door robe and like the glasses.

As soon as I put the glasses on, it's like, Damn, I look like I look like I look like Harry Potter, Like after he hasn't cast a spell in about fifteen twenty years, you know, he's still wearing his Griffin door rope like it's his varsity jacket from high school and still trying to get into all the cool college parties. That's that's the Harry Potter I am. But I pulled it off in uh in Seatt at a raging, raging,

downtown Halloween party. Crazy did she do a kickstand? She was so high on sugar that time that that I but I did get to negotiate with her. I got a I believe I got a Snickers out of haven't had Snickers in like ten years, and god, it's just it's the goat. Snickers is the goat of of candy.

So thanks for having me on to talk about that. Guys, Mark, we've been starting out our show with what you're seeking out about, speaking out about this week I do I want you all to go first, sure, I think I said baby Yoda last week, but the baby Yoda fever has just gone out the wall. Put I call him baby Yodi around the house, and people have tagged me in so much Yodi art and uh the memes, and

I just can't. Like there's ice screen captured um him, like when they're pulling him away and he's like making this little crying sound. And I've watched it like forty times. It's a problem. It's a problem. Uh. Yodi is also the nickname of Mark Riley, legendary competitor. So he goes by Yodi because we had someone on our show and she didn't know that he was doing a Yoda p and so she said yo d So that name stuck, and now we have baby Yodi. I call him baby though.

That's little little Yodi, little little Yoda. Uh huh. If I give you the choice right now, you can you can either have a baby Yodie around the house or you can keep Molly. He this man, Okay. So Mark's special is called dog Stepfather because he's the stepfather of my dog. I keep trying to explain to him that he's just the dad of my dog. That there is no other man, so he was just the step dad. I mean, you're not the stepdad, you're the dad, but he likes it better. I think it's you're not you

don't have as much responsibility. Yeah, I'm a little bit of if I was. If I was a direct dad, i'd be like a deadbeat dad to Molly. But as the stepdad, I think I'm like, you know, I come in at the right time and and she she's always happy to see me. Anyway, when you really look at we're all step fathers. Of like we're all stepfathers and like nobody actually had gave birth to a to Okay, this has gotten off the walls. What I was going to say is Mark and I dated years ago. My

dog familiar. My dog thinks that that's her dad is Mark um but wait oh yeah, And ever since then he's been trying to get her by like, hey, I'll give you this if you give me the dog the adoption papers. I've offered some nice trade bait for Molly, and it seems like, you know, I'm this close, If I'm this close, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's all about the art and the deal, the art of the deal,

you know. Wait, so baby Yoda. I think I said last week this week this week, I'm actually I can't remember if I said this, but I'm actually on the c W this weekend. You can watch me this Sunday after Supergirl. So they're doing Crisis on Infinite or so it's like a big crossover between all the c W superhero shows. Kevin Smith is hosting an after show. We have a bunch of guests, some people canonically involved in uh this in d C. That is such a perfect

use of the word I can't even say it. Canonically that's one of my favorite words. Um. But yeah, people that are going to pop up from other DC franchises will be there. So anyways, you can watch me uh this Sunday, eight pm or after Supergirl. So there you go. That's what I'm getting out about. Mark. Oh you wanted if he? If he? What are you speaking out about? I need to see what my competition is. I give away mind. I'm getting out about the game that was

released called Jedi Fall in Order. It's a it's a new YEA game. It's super fun you play. It's takes place between uh. I guess, so which which movies would that be? My belief? It is after Revenge of the Sith. Yeah, but it's like there has fallen the Oh wait, the Empire's falling, No, know, the Empire has written Yeah, I think the Empire has risen, and as they initiated Order sixty six to execute all the Jedi, and then now that's carried out to the rest of the galaxy. So

it's like all these Jedi are kind of on the run. Yeah, And so you're playing one Jedi who's been laying low until uh he kind of is discovered and now he has to reconnect with the Force to try and create a new generation of Jedi, which is interesting because like I've seen the other movies, so we kind of know

how this is all gonna shake out, right. I always get myself though, like, well, the galaxy is so big that maybe this maybe the same story that we see in Star Wars the Classic trilogy is also happening in some other corner of the well. Also, like the way I look at it too, is like, you know, we're about to get the last movie. These all are coming out, So anything like from the Mandina Mandalorian series, this could be dropping some new information that's gonna be like played

out in the final movies. So who knows. I'm on record if we got baby Yoda and the mandarrant, I went baby Emperor Palpatine, and that's the one that's doing the laugh and I want a Baby Yoda versus Baby Palpatine show off, and that's the that's the someone did. Someone sent me a picture of a sonogram of Emperor Palpatine, and so you can, like see sonogram. It's just like and we're only in the no pun intended infancy of all of this, this other kind of baby Star Wars stuff.

So Bucky your safety Belton's it's like the baby Muppets, but for Star Wars. Oh my god, Nanny is the is the is the actual villain of the universe. Um So the thing I'm speaking out about is like, I know a lot of you gamers are gonna side with Iffy on this and say, oh, Jedi Fallen Order, that's the video game everybody needs to play. I went, I went a different route. I went back to my roots and the roots of video games in general. I downloaded

Desert Golf from the app Store for two dollars. Let me tell you about a great way to kill ten minutes to kill three hours if you're on an airplane. This requires no WiFi. It's just golf and it never ends, it never resets you just you just keep playing holes in the desert forever. And I keep because I'm such a like a like a nerd about sports and stats. I it's like I'm playing tournaments, so I keep my four round score and I'm writing it down in my

notes section, so I record everything. And uh, if you want a great way to waste time and get and it gets a little addictive, but it's also just like a fun way if you're at the dentist office, or if you are on a cross country flight, or maybe you're going to Wisconsin Stevens Point and you need to kill some time during a weather delay. Download the Desert Golf app. It's like a two dollar, one time purchase and it is a lifetime enjoyment. I'm playing a different

golf app. It's like a mini golf app, but it's from Mini Clip, which takes me back because that was the flash site that I used to play in high school. Yeah, but another classic game that's on the iPhone that you can download is Missed. Is it yeable? Yeah? M Y S T it's available on the App Store, and I'm stuck all over again, so I'm not gonna beat this either. Yeah. I remember point and missed and being like like that might have been the game where it's like, look, thinking's

really hard and I'd rather just like rescue a princess. Yeah. Can I tell you I've been secretly laughing over here since you made the Muppets reference, because I remember sending you a tweet last week that was a Muppets tweet and you didn't get it, and then I read it out loud to you and just laughed for five minutes. I got it. You didn't think it was funny. It's

it's not I didn't think it was funny. It's just that this thing had like thirty million retweets, and I'm like, I just the tweet was it's hard for me to understand why it caught fire. It's not disparaging the tweet. I just like, if you, I'll read it to. The tweet was I hate the Muppets because of the pig girl. She was disgusting. I hate her with my life. She doesn't leave the lizard alone. And Mark was like, I

don't get it. I just thought that there was some other thing I was missing, which is why this She doesn't leave the lizard a lot. It's funny. It's funny. Anyways, we're talking about Magic the Gather everyone, Mark, this is something near and dear to your heart, as you have very expensive Magic the Gathering cards. I was gonna say, it's near and dear to my heart and my wallet. I'm just I'm waiting for the right time to to

offload all of these priceless artifacts. Um. But with Magic the Gathering, I mean, I my love affair with Magic the Gathering start in the mid nineties when my little brother introduced me to it at my dad's office after school, and from there, I just like I've always been obsessed with I don't play it that much anymore, but it's just one of those things where I just love so

many elements about the game. Let me just tell people a little bit about it before we hop into how you got into this for an hour by myself who created Magic the Gathering Doctor, You're correct, Mark, Yeah, and it was. I would have sworn that it was before then. He just feels like it's been around for so long. It's just it's always been It's always been a thing, and I didn't realize at the time how much on the ground for was. I kind of got in on

like the second floor of magic the Gathering. I got in on like the fourth Yeah, because I got in and like the late late ninety four, I think, was when the third Edition revised early had come out. Um, that's a very nice way of saying I'm older than you. Well, a lot of people listening might not have been born then. Um, well, hello listener, thanks for your patronage. Please help support the fund to get me into a retirement community. Um. Actually I don't need your help because I have all these

Magic Gathering cards that are probably um. But yeah, so it was around that time, and so there were there were kind of three and a half editions that had come out. There was Alpha, which which is known for the black boarder um and a different kind of cut of card, and those are like kind of priceless at this point. Then you had Beta, which are some in existence. Then you had unlimited series, and then third Edition revised was the one that took it to another level. But

even those cards are worth a crap ton of money. Now. Yeah, so this is kind of wild because yeah, so it um. Over the last twenty five years, the franchise has exploded digital games, novels. Who's bringing the Magic Gathering? They had a partnership with My Little Pony thousand dollar prize tournaments. Don't know why you're not in that mark. Twenty million players worldwide, twenty billion cards in circulation. That's why there's so many. Those things are so competitive now. Like, I

was always a pretty good player of the game. I love the strategy of it, but I was never a great Like in my local comic book shop, they had Magically Gathering tournaments like once every two months or so, and it usually ended up being me in the finals against my buddy Doug, and Doug beat me every time. Is your little town in Virginia? This is This is Williamsburg, Virginia's colonial colonial Williamsburg. To gather, you're just like playing by candle light. Yeah, we had to ride in a

carriage to get there. Uh. Doug is the Doug's doing well? He lived out here for a little bit. He's actually the Doug whose couch I slept on for three months when I moved out, So he's had you beat for a long time. If you only knew the half of it if but so I made it to the finals a bunch, so like in the nineties, like the joke was, I was the Buffalo Bills of Magic, the gatherings. I could get to the super Bowl but not win it.

But um, yeah, I I think that That's when I got hooked on, just the fact that it's a collectible card game. So right from the get go, you have me intreatue because I grew up like collecting sports cards like baseball and football cards. I love them. And so now you have these things that are, you know, appealing to my nerd sensibility, but they also are of value.

You have three rankings of cards. You have common cards on common cards and rare cards, and the rare cards can be worth a lot of money, and so you have that, But then you also have this competitive angle where you have to put together a deck that is going to defeat somebody else. Because the whole thing with magic is that you and your opponent both take on the role of wizards in this other world called Dominia, and you're casting spells to try to hate down the

life points from the other person. Each start out with twenty life points. Whoever gets the other person down to zero life points first wins that duel. So they were actually inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame earlier this year, alongside the matchbox car and the coloring book. That's wild because the coloring book is like, I mean, it's just

everyone uses. That's like being in the text book. I would just I would love to be at that ceremony, Like it's like Krans we conducted Krans and and magic the gathering who gives the speech for coloring books like here to accept the award word for coloring, but I didn't look. I just like to thank Crans. Colored pencils

wouldn't be out here without you either. And yeah, so I don't know what the Toy Hall of Fame inductees or ceremonies like, but I imagine it's a great time and magic is worth that, uh not acknowledgment in case there's some magic. The gathering listeners who aren't o g s and they're listening and they want to I'm actually you for saying that there's three rarities. Mythic card rarety wasn't introduced until two thousand eight. October two th eight, with the shards of a Laura Block. So now so

now there are four levels of rare. After rare, there's mythic rare, and of course it was introduced to drive up sales. But yeah, but yeah, now there's four levels, but back then it only was rare. Two thou eight was after well after my hey day. But yeah, because they've done things like that, and they introduced like foil cards that are rare cards, which is which is something that that sports car companies have done in the nineties to try to drive up those prices because you want

your things to be valuable. And as somebody who has collected Magic the Gathering Cards for over twenty five years, now that's the huge question for me is when does this bubble burst? Because at some point the apocalypse is gonna happen and nobody is going to care about Magic the Gathering Car. Dude, I've been telling you to sell your cards. Now, well, it's so funny because like it

always fluctuates like the stock market. Like I think, you know, your cards passed a certain point will be worth money because they're just old. But because you have game modes like uh a legacy and you have you know, uh, what is it called commander um, you know, d h um. And then there's which one is the other one? It's I did a tournament for too modern uh so those those sets usually use older cards. So really it's just the meta also still affects cards that you have from

way back. You know, they're exclusively collectors items to like, nobody in the right mind would ever play with these, and and and it's it's interesting when you watch magic tournaments happen now as any time Danny, as you can attest, any time I go to a convention like a like Comic Con or something like that, I always look for where Wizards of the Coast is set up. I always look for where the tournaments are. This is I kind of like to check out the gameplay and just like

to be around it for a little bit. But people play every match they have and all of their cards are in these protective cases. That's how they shuffled. Back in the day, we were just shuffling cards like we're playing pinnuckle or something, And so it was just horrible for the value of the cards. Like to think that there's cards out there that are fetching north of fifty thou dollars that I was just shuffling around. It's uh, it's nuts. But hey, we were kids. We didn't know

no better. You were supposed to open and play with it. Smell the packs. Oh god, Okay, this is a child's friend. This is family friendly. This his family friendly show. Good with Uh. A little bit more about Richard Garfield, who created it. So he actually lived in Nepal. He was unable to communicate with the local kids, and he relied on games like Marble's Actually to build friendships. When he got back to the US, he started playing D and D but couldn't find a rule book, so he made

some up and taught his school pals. He got the idea from Magic after meeting with Peter Atkinson, who was founder of the Wizard of the Coast, which is a company. It's a Hasbro company that produces Magic the gathering. Um. But gar Field did say Magic is closer to role Plane than any other card or board game I know of. Uh, each player's deck is like a character. Well, he said it's closer to role Plane than anything else. Yeah, I

mean that's that, I mean maybe back. I mean Magic has been through so many changes, but it essentially was like a deck building version of role playing games, which is why you had all these characters and elves and so on. There was a wager feature where like you would have to wage your cars, but then then they got at risk. They were at risk of being like

accused of gambling, so they got really that feature. But now Magic as a stands is a lot of meta gaming, which I was like always looking for because meta gaming in role playing games is always often looked at negatively because you're using like real world you know, knowledge, knowledge that your character that you're r p s might not

have to win. But meta gaming as a stands and gaming was there was an acronym uh, which I'd never even heard of, but I'm just gonna take that word for it, which was the uh most effective tactics available. And the reason I'm gonna go with that acronym is because that's the basic way to describe what meta gaming is.

So lots of times, and I remember my first time hearing it was someone was telling me why they didn't like playing Magic at the card shop that I was playing at, and they said it was because they would met a game. And meta gameing is what you pretty much need to do if you want to do tournament play, you're doing the most effective ones, and sometimes a lot of people are sharing the same ones. Some are well

known by your like first few moves everyone knows. I mean, you see it nowadays where like a sort of a a few cards come out and they go, oh, they're doing

this deck, and there's an element of it. I like, I personally am not the biggest fan of it either, because it just takes the creativity away from magic the gathering because with one billion cards, there's so many possibilities of to build different wind conditions, but everyone's just gonna go with the most efficient one so they can do tournaments, you know, hopefully, But I feel like when you're playing

with friends, there's no need to met a game. Well, that's what attracted me to it is that it is that that ideal that I can always beat any deck that I'm faced against. Because in a tournament setting back in the day, it used to be three rounds and so you would have your deck, which was probably about sixty cards, and then you had a sideboard which was fifteen cards that in between matches you could shuffle in

and out. So it's kind of like you're you're shifting your personnel if you're trying to like, look at this like it's a football game. You're Bill Belichick and you're making halftime adjustments in your you know, your sideboard. That's like your special teams plays are like in basketball, as you're out of bounds, play does those little X factor things. And I always went up against Doug's stasis lock deck, which the whole key to his deck was stifling any

move you wanted to make. It was a very frustrating deck to play against because I love the land destruction deck where lands are the source of manna in magic. So if you can't if your opponent can't get lands out, they can't generate any manna, which is how you summon all of these other spells and things. So if you can't get land out, you're screwed. I love destroying people's lands, and then I also love getting a lot of small

creatures out. You're planning against the status lock deck, you are just so handcuffed from any of these maneuvers that you want to do, and so it was a very tough pill to swallow losing. But it's also like, no, you beat me, because that was the straight you used a superior strategy and I couldn't combat it. So yeah, I think this is a good time to talk about how to play the game because I think going forward

we will be referencing that, and it's just easier. We'll get into that right after these messages and we're back. One thing I don't know if we actually mentioned was that because magic was so popular, are Wizards of the Coast was able to buy Dungeons and Dragons. They bought the rights to it because of magic. That's kind of fascinating.

It kind of game full circle. Yeah, it's a great right, Like he found D and D and then he made his own thing, and then he helped a company buy the rights to D and D. That's pretty I'm just gonna buy Dungeons and Dragons and And it's so funny because I always forget that that's the uh sequence of events because Wizards is so synonymous with D n D. Now that I forgot that, there was a time where they did not own it. It was just a Gary

Gygax's baby. But let's getting how to play. You know, this isn't gonna tell you how to win, but it's just going to be the basics of the of the game. So the the game. The card game itself is broken up into uh you know, three main cards. Uh the land cards which Mark was talking about earlier, which is the source of manna. You get to play one land per turn and you have to tap the land to use that manna. So if you that's a very important aspect of the game because this is also how you

can gauge where your opponents at. If they're tapped out on your turn, which means all their manner is tapped, you know that they can't retaliate, which we'll get into once we get to the spell cards. So then you have the creature cards. The creature cards are spells that you pay manna to come out, and they they just the basic of The basic of a creature card is it has a power and toughness. The powers the damage it does. The toughness is how much it can take.

It doesn't take. It doesn't save the damage and magic unlike hearth Stone for people who may play, it doesn't save the damage done to the card. It resets every uh every turn, so if you don't destroy the card on one turn, then it will heal back up in the upkeep. But the but essentially the creature cards come out. Some of them have effects on like when they come out, they'll trigger effect. Some of them have death that's uh

so I was gonna say death rattle. But some of them have effects where if they're destroyed or killed or sacrifice. But mainly the main purpose of a creature card is to live on the game board and it can attack the player, and the player usually starts off with twenty health. Uh. Then we have the spell cards, which can be both offensive and defensive, and these can be so many different things because you have instant spells which can which can be used at any point of the game as long

as you have Mana available. You have sorceries which can only be done during your main phases. And enchantment same deal, but enchantments usually affect the gameplay on the board and live on the board. And artifact is an object that usually can increase the character's abilities, and it could be a creature, it can be some type of uh equipment that can equip to it. Sometimes it's an item that you can use to tap. It can be so many different things, but pretty much these are all the cards

in the deck. One thing that this list isn't mentioning is and it's probably because these were a type of card that came in later, or planes walker cards, and when planes Worker cards came it shifted the game a bit. Usually at the time when planes Walkers cards were introduced, all the removal spells, uh, you usually referred to either a creature or player or artifact, but there wasn't There

weren't any spell cards that referred to planes walkers. So that means you couldn't use creature removal because that's a plane's walker, not a creature. You couldn't use a a player because it isn't a player. And uh, and I if I remember correctly, I'll double check. But you also like, because I think it technically wasn't a permanent you weren't able to use that. And this is very important. Magic is the game where all the people who yell them

actually and our pet this online thrive. Yeah, it is that it's built for them because Magic is a game that is so malleable that you need judges there because it's all it all depends on the language of the card. This game is perfect for lawyers. The language of the card. It's there's a lot of challenges happen. For example, you might have a spell where or an enchantment out that's living on the board that says every every turn at the beginning of your upkeep, you may receive one life.

Because the language says you may receive one life. A player can try and ping you if you don't declare that you receive one life, because there's an option to not take one life. It's a lot of those, like like if you don't get to receive your meal is free exactly that if we don't greet you with a smile, you get a free taco. Every organized magic event that I've got to, I've always almost beat someone up everyone.

Like there's even things to do during your turn where it's like you have to untap all yours and when you're just playing casually amongst friends, and especially if you're newer to the game, it's like, oh, yeah, I drew a card, but I forgot to untap my stuff. It's like, we know there's an untapped phase before that, but but in technical tournament play iff, you don't execute in the correct order, you're screwed, and nine times out of ten, your opponent won't get nitpicky until they start to lose,

and that's what will drive you. Because if you're like that the whole game, I don't mind, but when you start to lose, and then now I'm literally watching you trying to come up with some reason to win. To me, you're cheating now because there's you're not trying to play the game right. You just realize you can't beat me on the board, So now you're trying to search for anything. You're just spending this through litigation. Yeah, exactly. I think the first instance was I was at the Grand Prix

doing Modern Masters, had a okay deck. It was master, I mean it was modern. Modern is not my format of choice. I was just doing it for fun. One I was out there. This one was the most nitpicky. In a general Grand Prix large tournament, you usually have about fifteen minutes to make it to your opponent, uh and the the like. It's it's a huge convention center with thousands of tables and matchup and you have to like look at your sheet to know where you're matched up.

But anyway, I think it took me maybe five, maybe even ten minutes. Even if I went tin, that still meant I had five minutes. And when I got there. The guys like, oh, I'm gonna call it, judge, you took too long to get here. The judge was like, no, he didn't play on anyway. Long story short, he I beat him first round, he beats me second round. Uh, and I'm against the against the wall, literally about to lose this match. And what happened was, I'm like, I need a removal. He had a big worm. He had

one of those worms that grow every turn. I was like, I need some way to get rid of it. I was like, oh, I have an oh ring and I was like, wait, I don't have any white cards. What happened was he oh ringed one of my cards and I accidentally shuffled it into my deck. So it was a double disqualification because I had an unauthorized card in my deck and he had not enough cards to uh play with. And he was talking all types of smack, being like I knew I shouldn't have took that match,

and I was like, what are you talking about. You had to you you you were not you didn't do a charity. You had to take that map. But it's like it's truly there are some players where there's a wire loose and they just think that they it's just crazy. The second time was that Emerald City Comic Con, and I hope you're listening because I'm still I'm still wiled

up about this um same thing. Um. This one was a little wilder because it was one of those like shops sanctioned matches and uh, he had me against the corner. Then I put out a card that he couldn't handle and I started beating him and he was just looking. He was like, wait, that card isn't in the set and uh, and he was right. It was like literally a day before it rotated out. But the organizer was like, yo, yeah, no we set that because we ran out of cards.

We were just running it and he and he was like, well, you could get into a lot of trouble for this, and the guy's like no, I'm a judge. I like, I like, there's no reason, and he's like, I can report you was like, no, you you can't, and he calls. He really threw a tantrum until like him and the like organizers like when went over and they were sitting

for like fifteen minutes. I'm standing in front of this place set and then uh and then they agreed to give him like some amount of cards that made him happy, and then he came and sat down. He's like, okay, let's I'm like, why do you think I want to play with you anymore? Like you? You you just did all that. But it's like that is the player base. It's it's it's an interesting game because it attracts a lot of different types of people. It attracts people who

have never played organized sports in their life. And it also and and and it's not that you should or shouldn't play sports, but it's if you have played sports a lot, you just there's something in your brain that that that acknowledges these little minutia of rules and regulations and what is fair play and what is a play on and when you come to magic, and if you don't have that, or if you're playing against somebody who has a different level that than you do, then it

can the wires can get crossed and and nerves can get frayed very easily. But the most fun thing about magic to me is that you really can make the deck based on your personality, what you feel like. Because there's five colors in magic. There there's five colors of man and there's white, there's black, plain, red, swamp and mountains and blue yeah right, ocean and um green is forests. Yeah,

and they each have their own legal per personalities. So like green is of nature and like things cos of growth in the ground, lots of rebirth, you can use, lots of lots of like health plays, lots of drawing manna if you want to mana ramp, which means you're like trying to garner as much from manna in a

short time. Green usually is that route. Black is death, very necrotic, lots of card removal, lots of card kill spells, vampires, vampires, you know, just able to just disable a lot of cards with negative one, negative one damage, uh fires, flame quick, it's a lot of um, high momentum, quicktion, quick damage. Usually those are the agro decks which you know you are trying to kill you and as a few turns

as possible. Those were really fun to play. Those were really see good people play red and green then blue. If you're a bad person, if you play Blue, you're you're you're your manipulative, you are vindictive. Blue is a is the is the it's the wet blanket of the party. It's the Hey, we're all having a good time, and then and then then the lights flash on off because the cops are here to break it. That's what a

blue deck is. Yeah, the blue deck does a lot of like card control, a lot of mill which means because you start with the most standard formats have you start with sixty cards. If you run out of cards, you lose the game. So mill our decks that will just remove cards from your library deck so that you can be closer to that. Uh yeah, lose a lot

of rejection. Like every time you're planning again deck you try to play a cool creature, I'm so excited about this car car and Blue says that creature is going right to the graveyard. Yeah, just all types of any type of deception blue. If you're playing against someone with a blue deck, always watch how much manna they have open. You might as well not even summon a creature they have all that manna open because they probably have a counter waiting for you. You got to misdirect them somehow.

And and and with with white decks, it's usually a lot of smaller creatures and justice a lot of lockdown cards. Pacifism was a big one, which it's an enchantment that you use on an opponent that makes it so they can't attack or defend. O Rings, which was my my

favorite card. You banish a card unless the enchantment is removed. Yeah, lots of lots of stuff like that for Right and Justice, Life, lots of life gain Life Link, which is a feature on a card where the damage you deal is how much you get in life, and so yeah, I think, like Mark said, you can it's a lot of personality in the cards you play, and you can play many different styles. Some people popular combos are red and green. Uh you know mana ramp with heavy aggro. Uh you know,

white and blue. Uh. Yeah. I used to love the I used to love the green black because you had all this manna and it was being used to summon the dead and they would come attack you, and you

have some really dark spells in there. I loved white and green because white and green again, you're just pumping so much manna into this and then you just kind of set up it's almost like you're setting up a safe defense around you, like a protective force field, and then you can eventually get creatures out that will destroy

your Wizard opponent. And that's just the kind of stuff you look forward to, is when you get like a rare card and you're so excited to get it out and summon it, and and you know that that everything is right and and your opponents tapped out something and do about it, and boom, here comes that big creature card and you just see the look on their face and they're just like, oh God, like did they know what just happened? Oh yeah, even before you even see

the card. Whenever you see someone just tapping a lot of manna, you just they're like, Okay, what's about to happen? But I wanted to get into some of the lore, if that's okay. The game war um so at first when it came out, there actually wasn't much of a storyline. It wasn't until when the Mirage set was released at the storytelling element expanded into full stories and told mostly

through the cards themselves. The fan reaction was mixed, as I imagine things are, especially when you change anything, it kind of like whether it's good or bad, it always kind of like startles fans, uh, and Wizard has since adjusted how the stories and cards were Late the first of these card stories was the weather Light saga, which to me is just funny. It just reminds me of Skywalker, but like different, like a thesaurus, a hero's journey starting to say, is that sure? Did I say? Okay? Captain

of the weather Light sky Ship. Wow, this sounds very familiar. Allowed for multiple locations in the story as well as a wide variety of creature interactions. This saga lasted into until two thousand one. Then, Uh, and in Magic the Gathering players are play walkers, which was what if he was talking about? Uh? These creatures are special. They can travel the multiverse with ease. As a storyline via novels has developed, I forgot that the novels come into play

to kind of back up this story. The most beloved, revered, and feared characters entered the game with their own cards. Senior Magic the Gathering game designer Gavin Verhey said, all of our worlds are inspired by something like Star Wars. We have I'm just kidding, don't don't tweet at me. It just sounded like it. We have the Star Wars was inspired by Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell. No, it's just cute that they have a weather Light, sky like a sky ship, whatever, it doesn't matter. All of these

all of these things are influenced by each other. Um, I'm barn weather Light. I'm here to rescue you, Anakin, weather Light. We have Pharaohs, which is a Greek inspired word. We have in Estrade, which is Victorian horror inspired world. And those are two worlds. You will get totally different cards out of. Beverly Marshall Sailing, the company's executive editor, entered the company with a unique job. In n she would edit the rules for clarity while I'm gonna stop

making fun of things. Um, no, you you need simplification with this game. No, that's true. She would edit the rules for clarity and to shoot. I just can't imagine that job, like having to read over all of the but I guess that's what my lawyer does, so never mind. She would edit the rules for clarity and to choose the quotations that lent the cards. It's fantasy flavor, so Saline worked with Jasper my pros Uh Magic's first art director to make sure the hyper sexualization. I did not

know this was happening. And extreme whiteness of fantasy popularized in Western culture. Didn't take over their community. That's actually really cool. Yeah, yeah, he's one of the He's he's

like one of those. There's a few, like like Douglas Shore is another one that's really good that I remember offhand, as far as doing these really cool unique styles of art on each card, and then they would also be inspired by you know, you could see the inspiration of other things, like going back to your point, Danny Valley, howeverything is inspired by something else, Like you can you can sense like some Lord of the Rings inspiration and totally the tiny bit of of Star Wars. But it's

more so just like these these kind of fairy tales. Yeah, come to like, yeah, this is more mythical and mystical than right right then, um our star soap opera. It was Sailing who actually encouraged the development of the Arabian Nights Deck. So that's really cool. So Sailing actually. In an interview with The New Yorker, Drew said that she drew from her own experiences playing fantasy role playing games.

This is quote. They'd say stupid stuff like, oh, you you know, the girl characters have to make sure that they don't get their periods because the monsters will smell the blood, or oh, you're here because your boyfriend plays, and it's like, how do you know he's not here because I play? You tell them, Beverly. So this is Atkinson said, Beverly really trained me on a lot of these topics. Right from the very first game we made. You had different ethnicities and both genders represented in the

example text. So Beverly actually really really like changed and helped grow this community, make sure that there was representation and magic and it. It might have been one of the smartest hires that you'll have in collectable card game history because she came in at a point that was so early on in the game, like it was pretty much still in its infancy, and so you didn't have all of this backlog of either a male dominated or you know, gender or race bias kind of card point.

Because there was there was there. They had the cognizance to say no, early on, we we don't want this kind of thing in our game. We wanted to feel equal. And it's a smart It's a smart thing to do, not only because a lot of kids are playing it and they're very impressionable, but it's also because, look, you have five different colors that are represented, and you're a wizard, you can choose whatever you want, and so it makes sense to have a smorgess board of of options at

your hands. And I think that a lot of the values and lessons that are encouraged by Magic the Gathering, our society would be better off if more people took the time to at least invest themselves to just at least give it a shot, because not only is it a great escape as for a little bit, but it's one of those great mythical tales where you can apply a lot of that to your everyday life, and I think it will be of benefit. I think also, yeah, the one just to take that and run with it

is applying it to your life. It's very interesting because if you look at magic Gathering, if you're like a kid picking up you you know, we never got to this, but there's there's The main modes of play are going to be standard, which is a deck that you build of sixty cards with the sideboard that you have sealed deck tournaments where you receive six booster packs to build that deck, that's usually gonna be only a forty booster drafts, which is even more intense which is a fun one

that I like to play, where you everyone open the pack, each picks a card and pass it down and you're drafting cards as they go. Um. And the common format is the one that's usually in the current quote unquote rotation, which is the past usually the past two blocks of the past to three years, sometimes it will be three. It fluctuates magic changes for balancing, and the modern is all the cards from all course sets, beginning with the

eight edition course set. I say all that to say, typically, you know, going in, at least when I first started playing in high school, I just thought you just bought cards, pick the best ones, and go. But really it's about gaming the system, right. So you can have up to four of the same card in your sets, unless it's a legendary then you can only have one of those. Oh no, no, no, you can have four, you just

just can only have one on the board. So the fun of that is like the idea of like, yeah, you know, played by the rules, but you also have

the game it a bit. You also have to create create more chances to get the cards you need to achieve your wind conditions, So keep more irons in the fire so that you have more chances to pull out a winner, and it fosters interaction with other players, Like you're literally building social skills because if I have a card that Danny needs and Danny has two cards that I really like, it, you're brokering trades, the article deal and and and it's about sitting down and trying to

see what is what is the best thing for my deck right now? And then maybe you evolve and you want to play another style. But like in the very early days of magic, it kind of had that knock on it that it was just a rich kid's game, because what you're saying, if you where it's like, you know, if you had all the money in the world, you can just go out and buy a Black Lotus. You can buy all these moxes and he's like stack your

deck and and for kids, they can't do that. Either you learn how to be very savvy with trading them, or you just figure out a strategy that can beat the people who have the Willy Wonka father, I want a Black Lotus. Yeah, oh yeah. And that's where the term budget decks come from, because right and out, a tournament ready standard deck can run you to three dollars and if we're talking about where you're trying to go pro,

you're gonna add another couple more hundreds to that. But you know, if you're just looking to play for fun, Friday night magic is such a big thing now where every Friday at most local comic book shops it'll be a magic tournament, sometimes a draft, sometimes standard. If you're new and you just want to try it out, I suggest a draft because it's you know, you open the cards.

And the reason I like drafts is it takes out that element because in standard is where you have to worry about Daddy Warbucks buying his son all the best cards. But in draft, everyone's on an equal playing field. It's all the luck of the draw and how well you

can like build a deck with whatever you're you pull out. Yeah, so I made I made a deal with my parents, um one summer where then my parents never thought I'd be able to pull this off, but I said, look, if you all float me a couple of hundred bucks right now, then I'll you know, earn it off there the summer, moan lawns and doing whatever I have to do.

I'm going to take that money and I'm gonna invest it into magic the gathering because the sports card mentality that I have them, like, these cards are gonna be worth something. They're gonna be worth a lot more than they're worth now. So I'm gonna buy these like five six boxes. I'm gonna keep them unopened, and I'm going to save them up. And so that's what I did. And my parents thought I was going to get those cards and open them immediately, still have them still unopened.

They're worth a fortune. Yeah, so you should sell there in a safe storage facility. To quote the end of Writers of the Loss, I'm the worst friend and constantly telling Mark literally told me to sell my cards so I could go to Hawaii. Yeah, I did. We have to take a really quick break that we're going to hop back into a little bit more about magic and then the future of magic right after this and we're back.

One thing that I did want to say is that they're trying to expand their plusion in the LGBTQ community. So in Wizards of the Coast debut their first nine non binary planes walker Uh. Two years later, Alicia, their first explicitly trans character, arrived with the description she who smiles at death want that tattooed on me um and then earlier this year, Autumn Burchett became the first trans

non binary individual to win the Mythic Championship. Yeah, Magic the Gathering Uh you know, they're the creators have been

kind of pushing for this. And it's funny because, as with any nerd property trying to be progressive and inclusive, it's caused for a lot of just whack jobs online to be mad about it, and like they're there and I can't talk about magic without talking about this, but there's like an oddly strong question mark but definitely uh solid base of far right magic YouTubers like they're like, yeah, I wish I didn't know this, but through like essentially

but through like friends of friends and following the drama wormholes within the community, there are like a couple of folks in the Magic the Gathering community that are far right, very and and use that and it's caused a lot of trauma and there, and of course they're like accusing Magic the Gathering of trying to silence them, and it's a whole deal. I mean, we talk about this so much,

but it literally doesn't make sense. Like you have like spells and magic and like these mythical beasts, Like why wouldn't you have people of color and like people that aren't just necessarily one gender and people like you can it's a fantasy world. You can have anything you want.

Why would you be so singular in your thought process? Well, and when we first brought it up, I wanted to highlight this, but I definitely want to highlight this now more than ever, which is a lot of times the defense that are used in fantasy is that it's like

because it's in the eighteenth century or whatever, whatever. And if you believe that's the case, I need you to go to medieval poc on Twitter and Tumbler, where that person is documenting art from the era that is featuring people of color, not in slave positions, in like noble noble pictures being depicted, which is honest to god proof that not only did people of color exist back then, but we're in places of nobility. But there's a huge

whitewashing of history that has been gotten away. There's been a ratier and one thing I do love about where we are nerd Um right now is that we're working to remove that erature. The fact that Watchman is talking about the Tulsa bombing. Nobody knows about the bombing of

Black Wall Street. So many black people had to grow up with people being like, well, I don't know why black people never picked themselves up after slavery, and YadA YadA, YadA, and no one knows that when they try to do it, they were murdered in cold blood in mass It was a massacre and they and there's many more cases like that, many more cases where affluent black neighborhoods were burned to the ground, not by not just by the KKK, but

by government institutions. Because i mean, even even the movies we do get show you this that a lot of people under those hoods had jobs working for the city, working as mayor working as the police. I was just gonna say, it's also wild because I'm literally looking at this magic card of a lion man. Yeah, so like you're having a problem with it being a person of color and saying that's not realistic for that time, but this lion half lions Johnny gold Main. I love that

in magic. I prefer my lines to be white. But I'm like, I'm looking at these people that literally have horns that like you can but I think that's why it's so important to preserve, you know, diversity in games like this is because like if what you were talking about with The Watchman, it's like stuff like that is literally changing, hopefully, the way that history is taught to kids, and it expands to not just have this one version of history that has been told and so to see

that in something like Magic where yes, it's his fantasy game, but it also it can be a fantasy game for everybody. It's not just for one group of people that can that can enjoy this style of play. It's it's it's hopefully made for everyone, I know exactly, and it's a level playing field for everyone. But it's it's just time for that change. You know, you have history of oppression condensed to a chapter, hundreds of years oppression, and that's

just black people. That's not even beginning to talk about Native Americans, the Native Mexicans who are living on parts of the US that were pushed out. All that stuff that's kind of brushed away because that is a lot of hard work because you don't know, because that is like on the one to to to to give some other in the insight to what that it's hard to know what to do with that information because if you when you when you have that idea of like, Okay,

well what do I do? You know, I'm on stolen land built on the backs of other people, what do I do? And And honestly, the first step of anything we're you know, we're not asking you to you know, talk to doc, get a time machine and and prevent slavery. It's just acknowledging it and knowing the privilege that comes with the foundations of a country being built like that.

And I think not invalid because I think you you all saw last week I talked about Latina equal pay day, um, that we make half almost half of what a white man makes, uh, and people were just so invalidating it Like that to me was wild, not only that that happens to us, but that people will deny that it's happening.

Like at least I can understand people are like, yeah, that sucks, but like actively tweeting at me like you're you're wrong, actually that's not true, and being like literally google it, like look up all of the stats, you know, and it's just so invalidating. Well, nowadays it's just too easy to google what you want to believe and then have like some fringe site that did little to know, you know, research, but just saying like yep, no, no that's not true based on this, Like I'll never am

I have to come. I had to who's that? Uh? Oh man? I I usually don't, but I'm still like I think about this a lot, and I'm still mad. It's a Brandon shop. Who's the fighter Brendon shop? He posted, Yeah, he posted on after doing the show with Joe Rogan about he was like, when you when you change the numbers of kills to require mass shooting, it doesn't look like all white men. It looks different. It's like, yeah, when you change the definition of mass shootings, yeah it doesn't. Yeah, dude,

Like and I had done follow him like this. This is such a whack take. And I like him so much. He's nice. He can probably kick my ass, but like, I'll go toe to toe with you on that every day. Like I'm never gonna let b s pass just because I think you're funny. So what I'm hearing from you all is it Maybe Twitter would be better? Oh my gosh, had magic the gathering judges. I just want to say one more thing. So people don't tweet at me. Um when I said Latina equal paid to that, we get

paid almost half. That's for equal experience, equal work, uh, equal education. So like it's not like me comparing myself to like, Hey, I was on the show with Kevin Smith. He's been in the business longer than me. I don't expect to get paid the same as him as saying the same experienced, same education, same amount of work. And it's not just Danny's saying it. It's it's iff And

I agree with her on her point anyway, correct. And you don't need her or any of us to supply you with the statistics because you're already on the They're already on the device that's in your phone magic. So talking about them, I just want to go over the important cards, uh real quick. So we have Black Lotus go up for six k. Someone was trying to sell it on eBay for k. Somebody was trying to sell

it on eBay. Um for there it was a mint condition because like all these cards are graded now you like have them actually graded with which again started with sports cards where it's like, well, what's mint near mint? And then there's like this service that will actually grade it, and a mint graded Black Lotus was online going for

a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Keep in mind, this is a card that I used to own and play with, and I I sold mine for I can remember how I got mine, but I sold mine for five dollars and I lived like a king. Um. I wish I still had it. I don't. But it's the most powerful card in magic. Uh you get three colorless man just by sacrificing. It's an artifact coust nothing to put out, so you can literally put it out on your first turn and it might have cost maybe manna of any color,

I think is what it was. So I could summon a ball lightning on my first turn. And it's a very powerful card, and my god, that could pay for that. That could pay my rent for a long time. It looks like Tropical Islands is going for seven K. Tropical Island is a dual land. So in third edition revised

UM and I believe Unlimited might pioneer this too. Is that so when we were talking about lands, which is what how you get your manna, your land is the most common card in magic where you have a swamp a plane whatever it is, when you tap it, you can get that color manna. You can get black manner from a swamp. Dual lands like a tropical island. It's you can get a bloom, you can get blue man or you can get green manna from it. So and and there's all these dual lands for every for every kind.

There's like Taga that will it's either red or green. So those became very valuable and those eat individually in mint condition, those can at you upwards of five maybe six hundred dollars a card. Then we have mox Sapphire of the Power nine that's going k. Yeah, the Moxes are it's now banned from regulation play. Yeah, yeah, a lot of these cards are. But that's also the thing that scares me about these cards in their value, because it's like, well or they is, I'm gonna keep going

up because you can't play with them. Is. It's strictly a collector's side at this point, But man, what what a valuable artifact. It's not quite as powerful as black loadus. But the Moxes it's pretty much like another land that you get and if you can put that out on a turn where we put out a land card. You have such a leg up on your opponent. Um, I own a Mox Sapphire, which is the green. No, I own a max Emerald, which is a green one, and that will fetch You know, I've seen on eBay anywhere

from five to under the three k something like that. Yeah. Well, yeah, I went back install the last few cards I sold on eBay just to see how much I sold them for. And I sold a polluted Delta from Battle Lives zend a Car for a hundred and seventy seven bucks. Sold a Godless Shrine, which was also from Zendercar for fifty six bucks. And this one was was this dope? Someone sent me a revised edition pack and I opened it and there was a Tundra card on there. That's that's bucks.

That's great, that's a that's a good one. You know what Tundras are though. That's what makes the Stasis Lock Deck possible because it's it's white and blue, bringing back, bringing back old memories, anti take Yeah. Um. One thing I did want to say is the future of magic. We actually have. The Russo Brothers announced at this past comic Con they're making a Magic the Gathering Animated TV show for Netflix. This is how you do it, man.

You know, it's an animated project with the potential to spin off into live action, said Joe Russo, because of course it is. Um, that's what a lot of things are now, everything is both animated and live action. I look at this and probably like y'all would at DBC two, where it started out as this hugely popular property that now it has so many fans that if it were to ever transition into live action, there's almost no way

to do it justice, But I'd be very intriguing. So I'm very interested in to see what this animated Magic the Gathering series is and where it could go. Um, but I think, you know, them parting with Netflix, I think, um, hey, you ain't getting that on Disney Plus. So Magic interesting on a digital scale because everyone's like paper cards on a digital scale has been interesting because there's been Magic the Gathering online, which is not going anywhere. Too much

money is invested in it. People trade cards on Magic the Gathering cars the same way they do paper cards. But they've always been trying to get a Hearthstone level digital platform going. They had one back in the day. I forgot what was it. Duels and many others that didn't really hit and everyone was the poster replaced Magic Gathering Online, but they finally struck gold with a really seeing Magic the Gathering Arena, which has introduced a whole

new range of people to the game. And it's uh, it's free to just try, so if you want to, you should check it out. And it's really fun and the e sports community for that game is growing. Our good friend Becca Scott from geakon Sundry Days is actually

a commentator on the Probe games. So I think Magic is only going to grow more and more and it's gonna be interesting to see the place that it goes now that it's has this kind of digital landscape that's gonna go through And what is that bubble like for those old cards? When when do you sell? When when do you say, Okay, this is the best it's ever gonna be and I'm gonna unload all these cards, or maybe I'm such a nostalgia hor that I just keep

them all for all time. I don't know. We'll find out, Mark, where can everyone find you? You can find me setting my neck to the Gathering cards on the street corner um and you can find me walking Molly when Danny is cool with it, and you can find me on YouTube with my new special dog, Stepfather. It's at All Things Comedies YouTube channel. It's free to watch and enjoy over and over again. Thank y'all everybody who has watched and supported it's it's been overwhelming and I really appreciate you,

and I appreciate you Danny, and I appreciate you. If he and someday down the road, you'll and I will have a long sit down at a table, at a very long table, and it's gonna be you and your shoe collection and me and my manage to the gathering collection, and we're just gonna see what we can manute. Wait,

what am I there for? You're brokering just between what if he and I we have collectibles that we might want from each other, so you have to make sure it's fair and that if he doesn't, you know, beat me. I'm at Danny Fernandez on All the Things. Please watch me on the CW this Sunday after Supergirl. Me and Kevin Smith have a bunch of guests plan that you're

gonna love and some iconic ones. And then also I will be back on the c W Tuesday, like two nights after that, after the flash word crashing in, slash crying about crisis, slash laughing. I don't know whatever happens at night. Who knows you're gonna have a good week? Can you? Can you tease any of the iconic guests? I don't think so. Okay, I don't know if they've announced it, but there's going to be people from like other DC properties that are that's exciting iconic. Okay, That's

all I can say. And if you wide away on Twitter and Instagram, if D's on Twitch, Discord, it's Discord dot Forward slash Salt Squad, and of course the t Public t public dot com forward slash ner Difficent. Christmas is coming up by your family, Nerd Difficent here and like we always say, stay nerdy, Stay nerdy,