Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another edition of Nerdificent Time. One
Speaker 1: half of your host, Danny Fernandez, and sitting across from
Speaker 1: me is how are you doing? We have another person
Speaker 1: here with us. Yes, he is a comedian. He has
Speaker 1: a new special called Dog Stepfather. You can actually watch
Speaker 1: it for free on YouTube right now, has thousands and
Speaker 1: thousands of views. And that is our friend Mark Ellis. Hello, team, Hey,
Speaker 1: how's it going? How's how's my voice sounding? After all?
Speaker 1: Are you trying to? Mark is actively very far away
Speaker 1: from the mike because he has a radio voice and
Speaker 1: it booms. I feel like everybody, if if you're talking
Speaker 1: normally you can talk into the mike. This is this
Speaker 1: is me talking into the mic. And I feel like
Speaker 1: if I have this amazing radio voice and we're doing
Speaker 1: a podcast, I feel like everybody else should have to
Speaker 1: adjust to me. But I always find my itself making
Speaker 1: the adjustment. So does that sound good? In yours? My
Speaker 1: blowing and my blow? Nobody will know what you're talking
Speaker 1: about because the engineer, like Zach Or, he's going to
Speaker 1: adjust the sound so to them it'll just sound normal.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's it's that senior right as everyone
Speaker 1: gets right before Thanksgiving. We all know we shouldn't be
Speaker 1: working right now. Yeah, it's that like you're just about
Speaker 1: to take a nice long break for for holidays plural,
Speaker 1: whether it's like Thanksgiving or Christmas. Then you got a
Speaker 1: little bit of work wedged in between there, but a
Speaker 1: lot of parties and stuff too. So everybody's preparing to
Speaker 1: put on ten to fifteen pounds. Yes, I mean, are
Speaker 1: you traveling for Thanksgiving? Traveling for Thanksgiving, going to Florida
Speaker 1: for Christmas, going to Virginia, amongst other places. I might
Speaker 1: wage a Seattle in there. I'm doing a college in
Speaker 1: Wisconsin in the middle of December, worried about running a
Speaker 1: car and driving in the snow and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: So it's the you know, the special is doing great,
Speaker 1: and now I'm just working on the next one. And
Speaker 1: in order to do that, in order to hone that
Speaker 1: new hour, sometimes you gotta go to Wisconsin Stevens Point
Speaker 1: in December. Shout out all my Wisconsin Stevens Point listeners.
Speaker 1: Now they're hype, they're on. They're like, Yeah, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where like you look at a map
Speaker 1: and clearly I can't fly right into Wisconsin Stevens Points
Speaker 1: because they have like a little municipal airport where like
Speaker 1: Harrison Ford would fly as World War two planes out
Speaker 1: of So I need to either land in Milwaukee or
Speaker 1: Minneapolis and run a car and drive like three hours.
Speaker 1: So a lot of look, kids, comedy isn't all just
Speaker 1: being adored on stage and standing ovations. A lot of
Speaker 1: it is renting a car. Yeah, I mean I was
Speaker 1: thinking of Seattle soon too. We should we should go together.
Speaker 1: That'd be fun. See. I was a great great place
Speaker 1: for stand up, lots of lots of coffee, um coffee fish.
Speaker 1: And it's a great place for Halloween. What trigger treating
Speaker 1: in Halloween in Halloween on Halloween in Seattle because my niece,
Speaker 1: my niece lives up there, as does her parents, and
Speaker 1: uh and my little nephew now, and she wanted everybody
Speaker 1: to be Harry Potter characters for Halloween. And so she's
Speaker 1: she she looked at me and she took a pause
Speaker 1: like she was building up this thing. She's like, uncle Mark,
Speaker 1: I want you to be Harry. And I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's the role. I just can't have a baby face
Speaker 1: as soon as I put the glasses. So so you know,
Speaker 1: I have friends like work at Warner Brothers and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I I have like the real stuff. I have,
Speaker 1: like a real Griffin door robe and like the glasses.
Speaker 1: As soon as I put the glasses on, it's like, Damn,
Speaker 1: I look like I look like I look like Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: Like after he hasn't cast a spell in about fifteen
Speaker 1: twenty years, you know, he's still wearing his Griffin door
Speaker 1: rope like it's his varsity jacket from high school and
Speaker 1: still trying to get into all the cool college parties.
Speaker 1: That's that's the Harry Potter I am. But I pulled
Speaker 1: it off in uh in Seatt at a raging, raging,
Speaker 1: downtown Halloween party. Crazy did she do a kickstand? She
Speaker 1: was so high on sugar that time that that I
Speaker 1: but I did get to negotiate with her. I got
Speaker 1: a I believe I got a Snickers out of haven't
Speaker 1: had Snickers in like ten years, and god, it's just
Speaker 1: it's the goat. Snickers is the goat of of candy.
Speaker 1: So thanks for having me on to talk about that. Guys, Mark,
Speaker 1: we've been starting out our show with what you're seeking
Speaker 1: out about, speaking out about this week I do I
Speaker 1: want you all to go first, sure, I think I
Speaker 1: said baby Yoda last week, but the baby Yoda fever
Speaker 1: has just gone out the wall. Put I call him
Speaker 1: baby Yodi around the house, and people have tagged me
Speaker 1: in so much Yodi art and uh the memes, and
Speaker 1: I just can't. Like there's ice screen captured um him,
Speaker 1: like when they're pulling him away and he's like making
Speaker 1: this little crying sound. And I've watched it like forty times.
Speaker 1: It's a problem. It's a problem. Uh. Yodi is also
Speaker 1: the nickname of Mark Riley, legendary competitor. So he goes
Speaker 1: by Yodi because we had someone on our show and
Speaker 1: she didn't know that he was doing a Yoda p
Speaker 1: and so she said yo d So that name stuck,
Speaker 1: and now we have baby Yodi. I call him baby though.
Speaker 1: That's little little Yodi, little little Yoda. Uh huh. If
Speaker 1: I give you the choice right now, you can you
Speaker 1: can either have a baby Yodie around the house or
Speaker 1: you can keep Molly. He this man, Okay. So Mark's
Speaker 1: special is called dog Stepfather because he's the stepfather of
Speaker 1: my dog. I keep trying to explain to him that
Speaker 1: he's just the dad of my dog. That there is
Speaker 1: no other man, so he was just the step dad.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're not the stepdad, you're the dad, but
Speaker 1: he likes it better. I think it's you're not you
Speaker 1: don't have as much responsibility. Yeah, I'm a little bit
Speaker 1: of if I was. If I was a direct dad,
Speaker 1: i'd be like a deadbeat dad to Molly. But as
Speaker 1: the stepdad, I think I'm like, you know, I come
Speaker 1: in at the right time and and she she's always
Speaker 1: happy to see me. Anyway, when you really look at
Speaker 1: we're all step fathers. Of like we're all stepfathers and
Speaker 1: like nobody actually had gave birth to a to Okay,
Speaker 1: this has gotten off the walls. What I was going
Speaker 1: to say is Mark and I dated years ago. My
Speaker 1: dog familiar. My dog thinks that that's her dad is
Speaker 1: Mark um but wait oh yeah, And ever since then
Speaker 1: he's been trying to get her by like, hey, I'll
Speaker 1: give you this if you give me the dog the
Speaker 1: adoption papers. I've offered some nice trade bait for Molly,
Speaker 1: and it seems like, you know, I'm this close, If
Speaker 1: I'm this close, yeah, yeah, I mean, it's all about
Speaker 1: the art and the deal, the art of the deal,
Speaker 1: you know. Wait, so baby Yoda. I think I said
Speaker 1: last week this week this week, I'm actually I can't
Speaker 1: remember if I said this, but I'm actually on the
Speaker 1: c W this weekend. You can watch me this Sunday
Speaker 1: after Supergirl. So they're doing Crisis on Infinite or so
Speaker 1: it's like a big crossover between all the c W
Speaker 1: superhero shows. Kevin Smith is hosting an after show. We
Speaker 1: have a bunch of guests, some people canonically involved in
Speaker 1: uh this in d C. That is such a perfect
Speaker 1: use of the word I can't even say it. Canonically
Speaker 1: that's one of my favorite words. Um. But yeah, people
Speaker 1: that are going to pop up from other DC franchises
Speaker 1: will be there. So anyways, you can watch me uh
Speaker 1: this Sunday, eight pm or after Supergirl. So there you go.
Speaker 1: That's what I'm getting out about. Mark. Oh you wanted
Speaker 1: if he? If he? What are you speaking out about?
Speaker 1: I need to see what my competition is. I give
Speaker 1: away mind. I'm getting out about the game that was
Speaker 1: released called Jedi Fall in Order. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: new YEA game. It's super fun you play. It's takes
Speaker 1: place between uh. I guess, so which which movies would
Speaker 1: that be? My belief? It is after Revenge of the Sith. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's like there has fallen the Oh wait, the
Speaker 1: Empire's falling, No, know, the Empire has written Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think the Empire has risen, and as they initiated Order
Speaker 1: sixty six to execute all the Jedi, and then now
Speaker 1: that's carried out to the rest of the galaxy. So
Speaker 1: it's like all these Jedi are kind of on the run. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so you're playing one Jedi who's been laying low
Speaker 1: until uh he kind of is discovered and now he
Speaker 1: has to reconnect with the Force to try and create
Speaker 1: a new generation of Jedi, which is interesting because like
Speaker 1: I've seen the other movies, so we kind of know
Speaker 1: how this is all gonna shake out, right. I always
Speaker 1: get myself though, like, well, the galaxy is so big
Speaker 1: that maybe this maybe the same story that we see
Speaker 1: in Star Wars the Classic trilogy is also happening in
Speaker 1: some other corner of the well. Also, like the way
Speaker 1: I look at it too, is like, you know, we're
Speaker 1: about to get the last movie. These all are coming out,
Speaker 1: So anything like from the Mandina Mandalorian series, this could
Speaker 1: be dropping some new information that's gonna be like played
Speaker 1: out in the final movies. So who knows. I'm on
Speaker 1: record if we got baby Yoda and the mandarrant, I
Speaker 1: went baby Emperor Palpatine, and that's the one that's doing
Speaker 1: the laugh and I want a Baby Yoda versus Baby
Speaker 1: Palpatine show off, and that's the that's the someone did.
Speaker 1: Someone sent me a picture of a sonogram of Emperor Palpatine,
Speaker 1: and so you can, like see sonogram. It's just like
Speaker 1: and we're only in the no pun intended infancy of
Speaker 1: all of this, this other kind of baby Star Wars stuff.
Speaker 1: So Bucky your safety Belton's it's like the baby Muppets,
Speaker 1: but for Star Wars. Oh my god, Nanny is the
Speaker 1: is the is the actual villain of the universe. Um
Speaker 1: So the thing I'm speaking out about is like, I
Speaker 1: know a lot of you gamers are gonna side with
Speaker 1: Iffy on this and say, oh, Jedi Fallen Order, that's
Speaker 1: the video game everybody needs to play. I went, I
Speaker 1: went a different route. I went back to my roots
Speaker 1: and the roots of video games in general. I downloaded
Speaker 1: Desert Golf from the app Store for two dollars. Let
Speaker 1: me tell you about a great way to kill ten
Speaker 1: minutes to kill three hours if you're on an airplane.
Speaker 1: This requires no WiFi. It's just golf and it never ends,
Speaker 1: it never resets you just you just keep playing holes
Speaker 1: in the desert forever. And I keep because I'm such
Speaker 1: a like a like a nerd about sports and stats.
Speaker 1: I it's like I'm playing tournaments, so I keep my
Speaker 1: four round score and I'm writing it down in my
Speaker 1: notes section, so I record everything. And uh, if you
Speaker 1: want a great way to waste time and get and
Speaker 1: it gets a little addictive, but it's also just like
Speaker 1: a fun way if you're at the dentist office, or
Speaker 1: if you are on a cross country flight, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're going to Wisconsin Stevens Point and you need to
Speaker 1: kill some time during a weather delay. Download the Desert
Speaker 1: Golf app. It's like a two dollar, one time purchase
Speaker 1: and it is a lifetime enjoyment. I'm playing a different
Speaker 1: golf app. It's like a mini golf app, but it's
Speaker 1: from Mini Clip, which takes me back because that was
Speaker 1: the flash site that I used to play in high school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but another classic game that's on the iPhone that you
Speaker 1: can download is Missed. Is it yeable? Yeah? M Y
Speaker 1: S T it's available on the App Store, and I'm
Speaker 1: stuck all over again, so I'm not gonna beat this either. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I remember point and missed and being like like that
Speaker 1: might have been the game where it's like, look, thinking's
Speaker 1: really hard and I'd rather just like rescue a princess. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can I tell you I've been secretly laughing over here
Speaker 1: since you made the Muppets reference, because I remember sending
Speaker 1: you a tweet last week that was a Muppets tweet
Speaker 1: and you didn't get it, and then I read it
Speaker 1: out loud to you and just laughed for five minutes.
Speaker 1: I got it. You didn't think it was funny. It's
Speaker 1: it's not I didn't think it was funny. It's just
Speaker 1: that this thing had like thirty million retweets, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I just the tweet was it's hard for me to
Speaker 1: understand why it caught fire. It's not disparaging the tweet.
Speaker 1: I just like, if you, I'll read it to. The
Speaker 1: tweet was I hate the Muppets because of the pig girl.
Speaker 1: She was disgusting. I hate her with my life. She
Speaker 1: doesn't leave the lizard alone. And Mark was like, I
Speaker 1: don't get it. I just thought that there was some
Speaker 1: other thing I was missing, which is why this She
Speaker 1: doesn't leave the lizard a lot. It's funny. It's funny. Anyways,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Magic the Gather everyone, Mark, this is
Speaker 1: something near and dear to your heart, as you have
Speaker 1: very expensive Magic the Gathering cards. I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: it's near and dear to my heart and my wallet.
Speaker 1: I'm just I'm waiting for the right time to to
Speaker 1: offload all of these priceless artifacts. Um. But with Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering, I mean, I my love affair with Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering start in the mid nineties when my little
Speaker 1: brother introduced me to it at my dad's office after school,
Speaker 1: and from there, I just like I've always been obsessed
Speaker 1: with I don't play it that much anymore, but it's
Speaker 1: just one of those things where I just love so
Speaker 1: many elements about the game. Let me just tell people
Speaker 1: a little bit about it before we hop into how
Speaker 1: you got into this for an hour by myself who
Speaker 1: created Magic the Gathering Doctor, You're correct, Mark, Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it was. I would have sworn that it was before then.
Speaker 1: He just feels like it's been around for so long.
Speaker 1: It's just it's always been It's always been a thing,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize at the time how much on
Speaker 1: the ground for was. I kind of got in on
Speaker 1: like the second floor of magic the Gathering. I got
Speaker 1: in on like the fourth Yeah, because I got in
Speaker 1: and like the late late ninety four, I think, was
Speaker 1: when the third Edition revised early had come out. Um,
Speaker 1: that's a very nice way of saying I'm older than you. Well,
Speaker 1: a lot of people listening might not have been born then. Um, well,
Speaker 1: hello listener, thanks for your patronage. Please help support the
Speaker 1: fund to get me into a retirement community. Um. Actually
Speaker 1: I don't need your help because I have all these
Speaker 1: Magic Gathering cards that are probably um. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: it was around that time, and so there were there
Speaker 1: were kind of three and a half editions that had
Speaker 1: come out. There was Alpha, which which is known for
Speaker 1: the black boarder um and a different kind of cut
Speaker 1: of card, and those are like kind of priceless at
Speaker 1: this point. Then you had Beta, which are some in existence.
Speaker 1: Then you had unlimited series, and then third Edition revised
Speaker 1: was the one that took it to another level. But
Speaker 1: even those cards are worth a crap ton of money. Now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is kind of wild because yeah, so it um.
Speaker 1: Over the last twenty five years, the franchise has exploded
Speaker 1: digital games, novels. Who's bringing the Magic Gathering? They had
Speaker 1: a partnership with My Little Pony thousand dollar prize tournaments.
Speaker 1: Don't know why you're not in that mark. Twenty million
Speaker 1: players worldwide, twenty billion cards in circulation. That's why there's
Speaker 1: so many. Those things are so competitive now. Like, I
Speaker 1: was always a pretty good player of the game. I
Speaker 1: love the strategy of it, but I was never a
Speaker 1: great Like in my local comic book shop, they had
Speaker 1: Magically Gathering tournaments like once every two months or so,
Speaker 1: and it usually ended up being me in the finals
Speaker 1: against my buddy Doug, and Doug beat me every time.
Speaker 1: Is your little town in Virginia? This is This is Williamsburg,
Speaker 1: Virginia's colonial colonial Williamsburg. To gather, you're just like playing
Speaker 1: by candle light. Yeah, we had to ride in a
Speaker 1: carriage to get there. Uh. Doug is the Doug's doing well?
Speaker 1: He lived out here for a little bit. He's actually
Speaker 1: the Doug whose couch I slept on for three months
Speaker 1: when I moved out, So he's had you beat for
Speaker 1: a long time. If you only knew the half of
Speaker 1: it if but so I made it to the finals
Speaker 1: a bunch, so like in the nineties, like the joke was,
Speaker 1: I was the Buffalo Bills of Magic, the gatherings. I
Speaker 1: could get to the super Bowl but not win it.
Speaker 1: But um, yeah, I I think that That's when I
Speaker 1: got hooked on, just the fact that it's a collectible
Speaker 1: card game. So right from the get go, you have
Speaker 1: me intreatue because I grew up like collecting sports cards
Speaker 1: like baseball and football cards. I love them. And so
Speaker 1: now you have these things that are, you know, appealing
Speaker 1: to my nerd sensibility, but they also are of value.
Speaker 1: You have three rankings of cards. You have common cards
Speaker 1: on common cards and rare cards, and the rare cards
Speaker 1: can be worth a lot of money, and so you
Speaker 1: have that, But then you also have this competitive angle
Speaker 1: where you have to put together a deck that is
Speaker 1: going to defeat somebody else. Because the whole thing with
Speaker 1: magic is that you and your opponent both take on
Speaker 1: the role of wizards in this other world called Dominia,
Speaker 1: and you're casting spells to try to hate down the
Speaker 1: life points from the other person. Each start out with
Speaker 1: twenty life points. Whoever gets the other person down to
Speaker 1: zero life points first wins that duel. So they were
Speaker 1: actually inducted into the Toy Hall of Fame earlier this year,
Speaker 1: alongside the matchbox car and the coloring book. That's wild
Speaker 1: because the coloring book is like, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: everyone uses. That's like being in the text book. I
Speaker 1: would just I would love to be at that ceremony,
Speaker 1: Like it's like Krans we conducted Krans and and magic
Speaker 1: the gathering who gives the speech for coloring books like
Speaker 1: here to accept the award word for coloring, but I
Speaker 1: didn't look. I just like to thank Crans. Colored pencils
Speaker 1: wouldn't be out here without you either. And yeah, so
Speaker 1: I don't know what the Toy Hall of Fame inductees
Speaker 1: or ceremonies like, but I imagine it's a great time
Speaker 1: and magic is worth that, uh not acknowledgment in case
Speaker 1: there's some magic. The gathering listeners who aren't o g
Speaker 1: s and they're listening and they want to I'm actually
Speaker 1: you for saying that there's three rarities. Mythic card rarety
Speaker 1: wasn't introduced until two thousand eight. October two th eight,
Speaker 1: with the shards of a Laura Block. So now so
Speaker 1: now there are four levels of rare. After rare, there's
Speaker 1: mythic rare, and of course it was introduced to drive
Speaker 1: up sales. But yeah, but yeah, now there's four levels,
Speaker 1: but back then it only was rare. Two thou eight
Speaker 1: was after well after my hey day. But yeah, because
Speaker 1: they've done things like that, and they introduced like foil
Speaker 1: cards that are rare cards, which is which is something
Speaker 1: that that sports car companies have done in the nineties
Speaker 1: to try to drive up those prices because you want
Speaker 1: your things to be valuable. And as somebody who has
Speaker 1: collected Magic the Gathering Cards for over twenty five years,
Speaker 1: now that's the huge question for me is when does
Speaker 1: this bubble burst? Because at some point the apocalypse is
Speaker 1: gonna happen and nobody is going to care about Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering Car. Dude, I've been telling you to sell
Speaker 1: your cards. Now, well, it's so funny because like it
Speaker 1: always fluctuates like the stock market. Like I think, you know,
Speaker 1: your cards passed a certain point will be worth money
Speaker 1: because they're just old. But because you have game modes
Speaker 1: like uh a legacy and you have you know, uh,
Speaker 1: what is it called commander um, you know, d h um.
Speaker 1: And then there's which one is the other one? It's
Speaker 1: I did a tournament for too modern uh so those
Speaker 1: those sets usually use older cards. So really it's just
Speaker 1: the meta also still affects cards that you have from
Speaker 1: way back. You know, they're exclusively collectors items to like,
Speaker 1: nobody in the right mind would ever play with these,
Speaker 1: and and and it's it's interesting when you watch magic
Speaker 1: tournaments happen now as any time Danny, as you can attest,
Speaker 1: any time I go to a convention like a like
Speaker 1: Comic Con or something like that, I always look for
Speaker 1: where Wizards of the Coast is set up. I always
Speaker 1: look for where the tournaments are. This is I kind
Speaker 1: of like to check out the gameplay and just like
Speaker 1: to be around it for a little bit. But people
Speaker 1: play every match they have and all of their cards
Speaker 1: are in these protective cases. That's how they shuffled. Back
Speaker 1: in the day, we were just shuffling cards like we're
Speaker 1: playing pinnuckle or something, And so it was just horrible
Speaker 1: for the value of the cards. Like to think that
Speaker 1: there's cards out there that are fetching north of fifty
Speaker 1: thou dollars that I was just shuffling around. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's nuts. But hey, we were kids. We didn't know
Speaker 1: no better. You were supposed to open and play with it.
Speaker 1: Smell the packs. Oh god, Okay, this is a child's friend.
Speaker 1: This is family friendly. This his family friendly show. Good
Speaker 1: with Uh. A little bit more about Richard Garfield, who
Speaker 1: created it. So he actually lived in Nepal. He was
Speaker 1: unable to communicate with the local kids, and he relied
Speaker 1: on games like Marble's Actually to build friendships. When he
Speaker 1: got back to the US, he started playing D and
Speaker 1: D but couldn't find a rule book, so he made
Speaker 1: some up and taught his school pals. He got the
Speaker 1: idea from Magic after meeting with Peter Atkinson, who was
Speaker 1: founder of the Wizard of the Coast, which is a company.
Speaker 1: It's a Hasbro company that produces Magic the gathering. Um.
Speaker 1: But gar Field did say Magic is closer to role
Speaker 1: Plane than any other card or board game I know of. Uh,
Speaker 1: each player's deck is like a character. Well, he said
Speaker 1: it's closer to role Plane than anything else. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean that's that, I mean maybe back. I mean Magic
Speaker 1: has been through so many changes, but it essentially was
Speaker 1: like a deck building version of role playing games, which
Speaker 1: is why you had all these characters and elves and
Speaker 1: so on. There was a wager feature where like you
Speaker 1: would have to wage your cars, but then then they
Speaker 1: got at risk. They were at risk of being like
Speaker 1: accused of gambling, so they got really that feature. But
Speaker 1: now Magic as a stands is a lot of meta gaming,
Speaker 1: which I was like always looking for because meta gaming
Speaker 1: in role playing games is always often looked at negatively
Speaker 1: because you're using like real world you know, knowledge, knowledge
Speaker 1: that your character that you're r p s might not
Speaker 1: have to win. But meta gaming as a stands and
Speaker 1: gaming was there was an acronym uh, which I'd never
Speaker 1: even heard of, but I'm just gonna take that word
Speaker 1: for it, which was the uh most effective tactics available.
Speaker 1: And the reason I'm gonna go with that acronym is
Speaker 1: because that's the basic way to describe what meta gaming is.
Speaker 1: So lots of times, and I remember my first time
Speaker 1: hearing it was someone was telling me why they didn't
Speaker 1: like playing Magic at the card shop that I was
Speaker 1: playing at, and they said it was because they would
Speaker 1: met a game. And meta gameing is what you pretty
Speaker 1: much need to do if you want to do tournament play,
Speaker 1: you're doing the most effective ones, and sometimes a lot
Speaker 1: of people are sharing the same ones. Some are well
Speaker 1: known by your like first few moves everyone knows. I mean,
Speaker 1: you see it nowadays where like a sort of a a
Speaker 1: few cards come out and they go, oh, they're doing
Speaker 1: this deck, and there's an element of it. I like,
Speaker 1: I personally am not the biggest fan of it either,
Speaker 1: because it just takes the creativity away from magic the
Speaker 1: gathering because with one billion cards, there's so many possibilities
Speaker 1: of to build different wind conditions, but everyone's just gonna
Speaker 1: go with the most efficient one so they can do tournaments,
Speaker 1: you know, hopefully, But I feel like when you're playing
Speaker 1: with friends, there's no need to met a game. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what attracted me to it is that it is
Speaker 1: that that ideal that I can always beat any deck
Speaker 1: that I'm faced against. Because in a tournament setting back
Speaker 1: in the day, it used to be three rounds and
Speaker 1: so you would have your deck, which was probably about
Speaker 1: sixty cards, and then you had a sideboard which was
Speaker 1: fifteen cards that in between matches you could shuffle in
Speaker 1: and out. So it's kind of like you're you're shifting
Speaker 1: your personnel if you're trying to like, look at this
Speaker 1: like it's a football game. You're Bill Belichick and you're
Speaker 1: making halftime adjustments in your you know, your sideboard. That's
Speaker 1: like your special teams plays are like in basketball, as
Speaker 1: you're out of bounds, play does those little X factor things.
Speaker 1: And I always went up against Doug's stasis lock deck,
Speaker 1: which the whole key to his deck was stifling any
Speaker 1: move you wanted to make. It was a very frustrating
Speaker 1: deck to play against because I love the land destruction
Speaker 1: deck where lands are the source of manna in magic.
Speaker 1: So if you can't if your opponent can't get lands out,
Speaker 1: they can't generate any manna, which is how you summon
Speaker 1: all of these other spells and things. So if you
Speaker 1: can't get land out, you're screwed. I love destroying people's lands,
Speaker 1: and then I also love getting a lot of small
Speaker 1: creatures out. You're planning against the status lock deck, you
Speaker 1: are just so handcuffed from any of these maneuvers that
Speaker 1: you want to do, and so it was a very
Speaker 1: tough pill to swallow losing. But it's also like, no,
Speaker 1: you beat me, because that was the straight you used
Speaker 1: a superior strategy and I couldn't combat it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I think this is a good time to talk about
Speaker 1: how to play the game because I think going forward
Speaker 1: we will be referencing that, and it's just easier. We'll
Speaker 1: get into that right after these messages and we're back.
Speaker 1: One thing I don't know if we actually mentioned was
Speaker 1: that because magic was so popular, are Wizards of the
Speaker 1: Coast was able to buy Dungeons and Dragons. They bought
Speaker 1: the rights to it because of magic. That's kind of fascinating.
Speaker 1: It kind of game full circle. Yeah, it's a great right,
Speaker 1: Like he found D and D and then he made
Speaker 1: his own thing, and then he helped a company buy
Speaker 1: the rights to D and D. That's pretty I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna buy Dungeons and Dragons and And it's so funny
Speaker 1: because I always forget that that's the uh sequence of
Speaker 1: events because Wizards is so synonymous with D n D.
Speaker 1: Now that I forgot that, there was a time where
Speaker 1: they did not own it. It was just a Gary
Speaker 1: Gygax's baby. But let's getting how to play. You know,
Speaker 1: this isn't gonna tell you how to win, but it's
Speaker 1: just going to be the basics of the of the game.
Speaker 1: So the the game. The card game itself is broken
Speaker 1: up into uh you know, three main cards. Uh the
Speaker 1: land cards which Mark was talking about earlier, which is
Speaker 1: the source of manna. You get to play one land
Speaker 1: per turn and you have to tap the land to
Speaker 1: use that manna. So if you that's a very important
Speaker 1: aspect of the game because this is also how you
Speaker 1: can gauge where your opponents at. If they're tapped out
Speaker 1: on your turn, which means all their manner is tapped,
Speaker 1: you know that they can't retaliate, which we'll get into
Speaker 1: once we get to the spell cards. So then you
Speaker 1: have the creature cards. The creature cards are spells that
Speaker 1: you pay manna to come out, and they they just
Speaker 1: the basic of The basic of a creature card is
Speaker 1: it has a power and toughness. The powers the damage
Speaker 1: it does. The toughness is how much it can take.
Speaker 1: It doesn't take. It doesn't save the damage and magic
Speaker 1: unlike hearth Stone for people who may play, it doesn't
Speaker 1: save the damage done to the card. It resets every
Speaker 1: uh every turn, so if you don't destroy the card
Speaker 1: on one turn, then it will heal back up in
Speaker 1: the upkeep. But the but essentially the creature cards come out.
Speaker 1: Some of them have effects on like when they come out,
Speaker 1: they'll trigger effect. Some of them have death that's uh
Speaker 1: so I was gonna say death rattle. But some of
Speaker 1: them have effects where if they're destroyed or killed or sacrifice.
Speaker 1: But mainly the main purpose of a creature card is
Speaker 1: to live on the game board and it can attack
Speaker 1: the player, and the player usually starts off with twenty health. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we have the spell cards, which can be both
Speaker 1: offensive and defensive, and these can be so many different
Speaker 1: things because you have instant spells which can which can
Speaker 1: be used at any point of the game as long
Speaker 1: as you have Mana available. You have sorceries which can
Speaker 1: only be done during your main phases. And enchantment same deal,
Speaker 1: but enchantments usually affect the gameplay on the board and
Speaker 1: live on the board. And artifact is an object that
Speaker 1: usually can increase the character's abilities, and it could be
Speaker 1: a creature, it can be some type of uh equipment
Speaker 1: that can equip to it. Sometimes it's an item that
Speaker 1: you can use to tap. It can be so many
Speaker 1: different things, but pretty much these are all the cards
Speaker 1: in the deck. One thing that this list isn't mentioning
Speaker 1: is and it's probably because these were a type of
Speaker 1: card that came in later, or planes walker cards, and
Speaker 1: when planes Worker cards came it shifted the game a bit.
Speaker 1: Usually at the time when planes Walkers cards were introduced,
Speaker 1: all the removal spells, uh, you usually referred to either
Speaker 1: a creature or player or artifact, but there wasn't There
Speaker 1: weren't any spell cards that referred to planes walkers. So
Speaker 1: that means you couldn't use creature removal because that's a
Speaker 1: plane's walker, not a creature. You couldn't use a a
Speaker 1: player because it isn't a player. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: if I remember correctly, I'll double check. But you also like,
Speaker 1: because I think it technically wasn't a permanent you weren't
Speaker 1: able to use that. And this is very important. Magic
Speaker 1: is the game where all the people who yell them
Speaker 1: actually and our pet this online thrive. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: that it's built for them because Magic is a game
Speaker 1: that is so malleable that you need judges there because
Speaker 1: it's all it all depends on the language of the card.
Speaker 1: This game is perfect for lawyers. The language of the card.
Speaker 1: It's there's a lot of challenges happen. For example, you
Speaker 1: might have a spell where or an enchantment out that's
Speaker 1: living on the board that says every every turn at
Speaker 1: the beginning of your upkeep, you may receive one life.
Speaker 1: Because the language says you may receive one life. A
Speaker 1: player can try and ping you if you don't declare
Speaker 1: that you receive one life, because there's an option to
Speaker 1: not take one life. It's a lot of those, like
Speaker 1: like if you don't get to receive your meal is
Speaker 1: free exactly that if we don't greet you with a smile,
Speaker 1: you get a free taco. Every organized magic event that
Speaker 1: I've got to, I've always almost beat someone up everyone.
Speaker 1: Like there's even things to do during your turn where
Speaker 1: it's like you have to untap all yours and when
Speaker 1: you're just playing casually amongst friends, and especially if you're
Speaker 1: newer to the game, it's like, oh, yeah, I drew
Speaker 1: a card, but I forgot to untap my stuff. It's like,
Speaker 1: we know there's an untapped phase before that, but but
Speaker 1: in technical tournament play iff, you don't execute in the
Speaker 1: correct order, you're screwed, and nine times out of ten,
Speaker 1: your opponent won't get nitpicky until they start to lose,
Speaker 1: and that's what will drive you. Because if you're like
Speaker 1: that the whole game, I don't mind, but when you
Speaker 1: start to lose, and then now I'm literally watching you
Speaker 1: trying to come up with some reason to win. To me,
Speaker 1: you're cheating now because there's you're not trying to play
Speaker 1: the game right. You just realize you can't beat me
Speaker 1: on the board, So now you're trying to search for anything.
Speaker 1: You're just spending this through litigation. Yeah, exactly. I think
Speaker 1: the first instance was I was at the Grand Prix
Speaker 1: doing Modern Masters, had a okay deck. It was master,
Speaker 1: I mean it was modern. Modern is not my format
Speaker 1: of choice. I was just doing it for fun. One
Speaker 1: I was out there. This one was the most nitpicky.
Speaker 1: In a general Grand Prix large tournament, you usually have
Speaker 1: about fifteen minutes to make it to your opponent, uh
Speaker 1: and the the like. It's it's a huge convention center
Speaker 1: with thousands of tables and matchup and you have to
Speaker 1: like look at your sheet to know where you're matched up.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I think it took me maybe five, maybe
Speaker 1: even ten minutes. Even if I went tin, that still
Speaker 1: meant I had five minutes. And when I got there.
Speaker 1: The guys like, oh, I'm gonna call it, judge, you
Speaker 1: took too long to get here. The judge was like, no,
Speaker 1: he didn't play on anyway. Long story short, he I
Speaker 1: beat him first round, he beats me second round. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I'm against the against the wall, literally about to
Speaker 1: lose this match. And what happened was, I'm like, I
Speaker 1: need a removal. He had a big worm. He had
Speaker 1: one of those worms that grow every turn. I was like,
Speaker 1: I need some way to get rid of it. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh, I have an oh ring and I
Speaker 1: was like, wait, I don't have any white cards. What
Speaker 1: happened was he oh ringed one of my cards and
Speaker 1: I accidentally shuffled it into my deck. So it was
Speaker 1: a double disqualification because I had an unauthorized card in
Speaker 1: my deck and he had not enough cards to uh
Speaker 1: play with. And he was talking all types of smack,
Speaker 1: being like I knew I shouldn't have took that match,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what are you talking about. You
Speaker 1: had to you you you were not you didn't do
Speaker 1: a charity. You had to take that map. But it's
Speaker 1: like it's truly there are some players where there's a
Speaker 1: wire loose and they just think that they it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: The second time was that Emerald City Comic Con, and
Speaker 1: I hope you're listening because I'm still I'm still wiled
Speaker 1: up about this um same thing. Um. This one was
Speaker 1: a little wilder because it was one of those like
Speaker 1: shops sanctioned matches and uh, he had me against the corner.
Speaker 1: Then I put out a card that he couldn't handle
Speaker 1: and I started beating him and he was just looking.
Speaker 1: He was like, wait, that card isn't in the set
Speaker 1: and uh, and he was right. It was like literally
Speaker 1: a day before it rotated out. But the organizer was like, yo, yeah,
Speaker 1: no we set that because we ran out of cards.
Speaker 1: We were just running it and he and he was like, well,
Speaker 1: you could get into a lot of trouble for this,
Speaker 1: and the guy's like no, I'm a judge. I like,
Speaker 1: I like, there's no reason, and he's like, I can
Speaker 1: report you was like, no, you you can't, and he calls.
Speaker 1: He really threw a tantrum until like him and the
Speaker 1: like organizers like when went over and they were sitting
Speaker 1: for like fifteen minutes. I'm standing in front of this
Speaker 1: place set and then uh and then they agreed to
Speaker 1: give him like some amount of cards that made him happy,
Speaker 1: and then he came and sat down. He's like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's I'm like, why do you think I want to
Speaker 1: play with you anymore? Like you? You you just did
Speaker 1: all that. But it's like that is the player base.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's an interesting game because it attracts a
Speaker 1: lot of different types of people. It attracts people who
Speaker 1: have never played organized sports in their life. And it
Speaker 1: also and and and it's not that you should or
Speaker 1: shouldn't play sports, but it's if you have played sports
Speaker 1: a lot, you just there's something in your brain that
Speaker 1: that that acknowledges these little minutia of rules and regulations
Speaker 1: and what is fair play and what is a play
Speaker 1: on and when you come to magic, and if you
Speaker 1: don't have that, or if you're playing against somebody who
Speaker 1: has a different level that than you do, then it
Speaker 1: can the wires can get crossed and and nerves can
Speaker 1: get frayed very easily. But the most fun thing about
Speaker 1: magic to me is that you really can make the
Speaker 1: deck based on your personality, what you feel like. Because
Speaker 1: there's five colors in magic. There there's five colors of
Speaker 1: man and there's white, there's black, plain, red, swamp and
Speaker 1: mountains and blue yeah right, ocean and um green is forests. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they each have their own legal per personalities. So
Speaker 1: like green is of nature and like things cos of
Speaker 1: growth in the ground, lots of rebirth, you can use,
Speaker 1: lots of lots of like health plays, lots of drawing
Speaker 1: manna if you want to mana ramp, which means you're
Speaker 1: like trying to garner as much from manna in a
Speaker 1: short time. Green usually is that route. Black is death,
Speaker 1: very necrotic, lots of card removal, lots of card kill spells, vampires, vampires,
Speaker 1: you know, just able to just disable a lot of
Speaker 1: cards with negative one, negative one damage, uh fires, flame quick,
Speaker 1: it's a lot of um, high momentum, quicktion, quick damage.
Speaker 1: Usually those are the agro decks which you know you
Speaker 1: are trying to kill you and as a few turns
Speaker 1: as possible. Those were really fun to play. Those were
Speaker 1: really see good people play red and green then blue.
Speaker 1: If you're a bad person, if you play Blue, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're your manipulative, you are vindictive. Blue is a
Speaker 1: is the is the it's the wet blanket of the party.
Speaker 1: It's the Hey, we're all having a good time, and
Speaker 1: then and then then the lights flash on off because
Speaker 1: the cops are here to break it. That's what a
Speaker 1: blue deck is. Yeah, the blue deck does a lot
Speaker 1: of like card control, a lot of mill which means
Speaker 1: because you start with the most standard formats have you
Speaker 1: start with sixty cards. If you run out of cards,
Speaker 1: you lose the game. So mill our decks that will
Speaker 1: just remove cards from your library deck so that you
Speaker 1: can be closer to that. Uh yeah, lose a lot
Speaker 1: of rejection. Like every time you're planning again deck you
Speaker 1: try to play a cool creature, I'm so excited about
Speaker 1: this car car and Blue says that creature is going
Speaker 1: right to the graveyard. Yeah, just all types of any
Speaker 1: type of deception blue. If you're playing against someone with
Speaker 1: a blue deck, always watch how much manna they have open.
Speaker 1: You might as well not even summon a creature they
Speaker 1: have all that manna open because they probably have a
Speaker 1: counter waiting for you. You got to misdirect them somehow.
Speaker 1: And and and with with white decks, it's usually a
Speaker 1: lot of smaller creatures and justice a lot of lockdown cards.
Speaker 1: Pacifism was a big one, which it's an enchantment that
Speaker 1: you use on an opponent that makes it so they
Speaker 1: can't attack or defend. O Rings, which was my my
Speaker 1: favorite card. You banish a card unless the enchantment is removed. Yeah,
Speaker 1: lots of lots of stuff like that for Right and Justice, Life,
Speaker 1: lots of life gain Life Link, which is a feature
Speaker 1: on a card where the damage you deal is how
Speaker 1: much you get in life, and so yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: like Mark said, you can it's a lot of personality
Speaker 1: in the cards you play, and you can play many
Speaker 1: different styles. Some people popular combos are red and green.
Speaker 1: Uh you know mana ramp with heavy aggro. Uh you know,
Speaker 1: white and blue. Uh. Yeah. I used to love the
Speaker 1: I used to love the green black because you had
Speaker 1: all this manna and it was being used to summon
Speaker 1: the dead and they would come attack you, and you
Speaker 1: have some really dark spells in there. I loved white
Speaker 1: and green because white and green again, you're just pumping
Speaker 1: so much manna into this and then you just kind
Speaker 1: of set up it's almost like you're setting up a
Speaker 1: safe defense around you, like a protective force field, and
Speaker 1: then you can eventually get creatures out that will destroy
Speaker 1: your Wizard opponent. And that's just the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: you look forward to, is when you get like a
Speaker 1: rare card and you're so excited to get it out
Speaker 1: and summon it, and and you know that that everything
Speaker 1: is right and and your opponents tapped out something and
Speaker 1: do about it, and boom, here comes that big creature
Speaker 1: card and you just see the look on their face
Speaker 1: and they're just like, oh God, like did they know
Speaker 1: what just happened? Oh yeah, even before you even see
Speaker 1: the card. Whenever you see someone just tapping a lot
Speaker 1: of manna, you just they're like, Okay, what's about to happen?
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get into some of the lore,
Speaker 1: if that's okay. The game war um so at first
Speaker 1: when it came out, there actually wasn't much of a storyline.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until when the Mirage set was released at
Speaker 1: the storytelling element expanded into full stories and told mostly
Speaker 1: through the cards themselves. The fan reaction was mixed, as
Speaker 1: I imagine things are, especially when you change anything, it
Speaker 1: kind of like whether it's good or bad, it always
Speaker 1: kind of like startles fans, uh, and Wizard has since
Speaker 1: adjusted how the stories and cards were Late the first
Speaker 1: of these card stories was the weather Light saga, which
Speaker 1: to me is just funny. It just reminds me of Skywalker,
Speaker 1: but like different, like a thesaurus, a hero's journey starting
Speaker 1: to say, is that sure? Did I say? Okay? Captain
Speaker 1: of the weather Light sky Ship. Wow, this sounds very familiar.
Speaker 1: Allowed for multiple locations in the story as well as
Speaker 1: a wide variety of creature interactions. This saga lasted into
Speaker 1: until two thousand one. Then, Uh, and in Magic the
Speaker 1: Gathering players are play walkers, which was what if he
Speaker 1: was talking about? Uh? These creatures are special. They can
Speaker 1: travel the multiverse with ease. As a storyline via novels
Speaker 1: has developed, I forgot that the novels come into play
Speaker 1: to kind of back up this story. The most beloved, revered,
Speaker 1: and feared characters entered the game with their own cards.
Speaker 1: Senior Magic the Gathering game designer Gavin Verhey said, all
Speaker 1: of our worlds are inspired by something like Star Wars.
Speaker 1: We have I'm just kidding, don't don't tweet at me.
Speaker 1: It just sounded like it. We have the Star Wars
Speaker 1: was inspired by Flash Gordon and Joseph Campbell. No, it's
Speaker 1: just cute that they have a weather Light, sky like
Speaker 1: a sky ship, whatever, it doesn't matter. All of these
Speaker 1: all of these things are influenced by each other. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm barn weather Light. I'm here to rescue you, Anakin,
Speaker 1: weather Light. We have Pharaohs, which is a Greek inspired word.
Speaker 1: We have in Estrade, which is Victorian horror inspired world.
Speaker 1: And those are two worlds. You will get totally different
Speaker 1: cards out of. Beverly Marshall Sailing, the company's executive editor,
Speaker 1: entered the company with a unique job. In n she
Speaker 1: would edit the rules for clarity while I'm gonna stop
Speaker 1: making fun of things. Um, no, you you need simplification
Speaker 1: with this game. No, that's true. She would edit the
Speaker 1: rules for clarity and to shoot. I just can't imagine
Speaker 1: that job, like having to read over all of the
Speaker 1: but I guess that's what my lawyer does, so never mind.
Speaker 1: She would edit the rules for clarity and to choose
Speaker 1: the quotations that lent the cards. It's fantasy flavor, so
Speaker 1: Saline worked with Jasper my pros Uh Magic's first art
Speaker 1: director to make sure the hyper sexualization. I did not
Speaker 1: know this was happening. And extreme whiteness of fantasy popularized
Speaker 1: in Western culture. Didn't take over their community. That's actually
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, yeah, he's one of the He's he's
Speaker 1: like one of those. There's a few, like like Douglas
Speaker 1: Shore is another one that's really good that I remember offhand,
Speaker 1: as far as doing these really cool unique styles of
Speaker 1: art on each card, and then they would also be
Speaker 1: inspired by you know, you could see the inspiration of
Speaker 1: other things, like going back to your point, Danny Valley,
Speaker 1: howeverything is inspired by something else, Like you can you
Speaker 1: can sense like some Lord of the Rings inspiration and
Speaker 1: totally the tiny bit of of Star Wars. But it's
Speaker 1: more so just like these these kind of fairy tales. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come to like, yeah, this is more mythical and mystical
Speaker 1: than right right then, um our star soap opera. It
Speaker 1: was Sailing who actually encouraged the development of the Arabian
Speaker 1: Nights Deck. So that's really cool. So Sailing actually. In
Speaker 1: an interview with The New Yorker, Drew said that she
Speaker 1: drew from her own experiences playing fantasy role playing games.
Speaker 1: This is quote. They'd say stupid stuff like, oh, you
Speaker 1: you know, the girl characters have to make sure that
Speaker 1: they don't get their periods because the monsters will smell
Speaker 1: the blood, or oh, you're here because your boyfriend plays,
Speaker 1: and it's like, how do you know he's not here
Speaker 1: because I play? You tell them, Beverly. So this is
Speaker 1: Atkinson said, Beverly really trained me on a lot of
Speaker 1: these topics. Right from the very first game we made.
Speaker 1: You had different ethnicities and both genders represented in the
Speaker 1: example text. So Beverly actually really really like changed and
Speaker 1: helped grow this community, make sure that there was representation
Speaker 1: and magic and it. It might have been one of
Speaker 1: the smartest hires that you'll have in collectable card game
Speaker 1: history because she came in at a point that was
Speaker 1: so early on in the game, like it was pretty
Speaker 1: much still in its infancy, and so you didn't have
Speaker 1: all of this backlog of either a male dominated or
Speaker 1: you know, gender or race bias kind of card point.
Speaker 1: Because there was there was there. They had the cognizance
Speaker 1: to say no, early on, we we don't want this
Speaker 1: kind of thing in our game. We wanted to feel equal.
Speaker 1: And it's a smart It's a smart thing to do,
Speaker 1: not only because a lot of kids are playing it
Speaker 1: and they're very impressionable, but it's also because, look, you
Speaker 1: have five different colors that are represented, and you're a wizard,
Speaker 1: you can choose whatever you want, and so it makes
Speaker 1: sense to have a smorgess board of of options at
Speaker 1: your hands. And I think that a lot of the
Speaker 1: values and lessons that are encouraged by Magic the Gathering,
Speaker 1: our society would be better off if more people took
Speaker 1: the time to at least invest themselves to just at
Speaker 1: least give it a shot, because not only is it
Speaker 1: a great escape as for a little bit, but it's
Speaker 1: one of those great mythical tales where you can apply
Speaker 1: a lot of that to your everyday life, and I
Speaker 1: think it will be of benefit. I think also, yeah,
Speaker 1: the one just to take that and run with it
Speaker 1: is applying it to your life. It's very interesting because
Speaker 1: if you look at magic Gathering, if you're like a
Speaker 1: kid picking up you you know, we never got to this,
Speaker 1: but there's there's The main modes of play are going
Speaker 1: to be standard, which is a deck that you build
Speaker 1: of sixty cards with the sideboard that you have sealed
Speaker 1: deck tournaments where you receive six booster packs to build
Speaker 1: that deck, that's usually gonna be only a forty booster drafts,
Speaker 1: which is even more intense which is a fun one
Speaker 1: that I like to play, where you everyone open the pack,
Speaker 1: each picks a card and pass it down and you're
Speaker 1: drafting cards as they go. Um. And the common format
Speaker 1: is the one that's usually in the current quote unquote rotation,
Speaker 1: which is the past usually the past two blocks of
Speaker 1: the past to three years, sometimes it will be three.
Speaker 1: It fluctuates magic changes for balancing, and the modern is
Speaker 1: all the cards from all course sets, beginning with the
Speaker 1: eight edition course set. I say all that to say, typically,
Speaker 1: you know, going in, at least when I first started
Speaker 1: playing in high school, I just thought you just bought cards,
Speaker 1: pick the best ones, and go. But really it's about
Speaker 1: gaming the system, right. So you can have up to
Speaker 1: four of the same card in your sets, unless it's
Speaker 1: a legendary then you can only have one of those.
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, you can have four, you just
Speaker 1: just can only have one on the board. So the
Speaker 1: fun of that is like the idea of like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, played by the rules, but you also have
Speaker 1: the game it a bit. You also have to create
Speaker 1: create more chances to get the cards you need to
Speaker 1: achieve your wind conditions, So keep more irons in the
Speaker 1: fire so that you have more chances to pull out
Speaker 1: a winner, and it fosters interaction with other players, Like
Speaker 1: you're literally building social skills because if I have a
Speaker 1: card that Danny needs and Danny has two cards that
Speaker 1: I really like, it, you're brokering trades, the article deal
Speaker 1: and and and it's about sitting down and trying to
Speaker 1: see what is what is the best thing for my
Speaker 1: deck right now? And then maybe you evolve and you
Speaker 1: want to play another style. But like in the very
Speaker 1: early days of magic, it kind of had that knock
Speaker 1: on it that it was just a rich kid's game,
Speaker 1: because what you're saying, if you where it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: if you had all the money in the world, you
Speaker 1: can just go out and buy a Black Lotus. You
Speaker 1: can buy all these moxes and he's like stack your
Speaker 1: deck and and for kids, they can't do that. Either
Speaker 1: you learn how to be very savvy with trading them,
Speaker 1: or you just figure out a strategy that can beat
Speaker 1: the people who have the Willy Wonka father, I want
Speaker 1: a Black Lotus. Yeah, oh yeah. And that's where the
Speaker 1: term budget decks come from, because right and out, a
Speaker 1: tournament ready standard deck can run you to three dollars
Speaker 1: and if we're talking about where you're trying to go pro,
Speaker 1: you're gonna add another couple more hundreds to that. But
Speaker 1: you know, if you're just looking to play for fun,
Speaker 1: Friday night magic is such a big thing now where
Speaker 1: every Friday at most local comic book shops it'll be
Speaker 1: a magic tournament, sometimes a draft, sometimes standard. If you're
Speaker 1: new and you just want to try it out, I
Speaker 1: suggest a draft because it's you know, you open the cards.
Speaker 1: And the reason I like drafts is it takes out
Speaker 1: that element because in standard is where you have to
Speaker 1: worry about Daddy Warbucks buying his son all the best cards.
Speaker 1: But in draft, everyone's on an equal playing field. It's
Speaker 1: all the luck of the draw and how well you
Speaker 1: can like build a deck with whatever you're you pull out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I made I made a deal with my parents,
Speaker 1: um one summer where then my parents never thought I'd
Speaker 1: be able to pull this off, but I said, look,
Speaker 1: if you all float me a couple of hundred bucks
Speaker 1: right now, then I'll you know, earn it off there
Speaker 1: the summer, moan lawns and doing whatever I have to do.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take that money and I'm gonna invest
Speaker 1: it into magic the gathering because the sports card mentality
Speaker 1: that I have them, like, these cards are gonna be
Speaker 1: worth something. They're gonna be worth a lot more than
Speaker 1: they're worth now. So I'm gonna buy these like five
Speaker 1: six boxes. I'm gonna keep them unopened, and I'm going
Speaker 1: to save them up. And so that's what I did.
Speaker 1: And my parents thought I was going to get those
Speaker 1: cards and open them immediately, still have them still unopened.
Speaker 1: They're worth a fortune. Yeah, so you should sell there
Speaker 1: in a safe storage facility. To quote the end of
Speaker 1: Writers of the Loss, I'm the worst friend and constantly
Speaker 1: telling Mark literally told me to sell my cards so
Speaker 1: I could go to Hawaii. Yeah, I did. We have
Speaker 1: to take a really quick break that we're going to
Speaker 1: hop back into a little bit more about magic and
Speaker 1: then the future of magic right after this and we're back.
Speaker 1: One thing that I did want to say is that
Speaker 1: they're trying to expand their plusion in the LGBTQ community.
Speaker 1: So in Wizards of the Coast debut their first nine
Speaker 1: non binary planes walker Uh. Two years later, Alicia, their
Speaker 1: first explicitly trans character, arrived with the description she who
Speaker 1: smiles at death want that tattooed on me um and
Speaker 1: then earlier this year, Autumn Burchett became the first trans
Speaker 1: non binary individual to win the Mythic Championship. Yeah, Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering Uh you know, they're the creators have been
Speaker 1: kind of pushing for this. And it's funny because, as
Speaker 1: with any nerd property trying to be progressive and inclusive,
Speaker 1: it's caused for a lot of just whack jobs online
Speaker 1: to be mad about it, and like they're there and
Speaker 1: I can't talk about magic without talking about this, but
Speaker 1: there's like an oddly strong question mark but definitely uh
Speaker 1: solid base of far right magic YouTubers like they're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I wish I didn't know this, but through like essentially
Speaker 1: but through like friends of friends and following the drama
Speaker 1: wormholes within the community, there are like a couple of
Speaker 1: folks in the Magic the Gathering community that are far right,
Speaker 1: very and and use that and it's caused a lot
Speaker 1: of trauma and there, and of course they're like accusing
Speaker 1: Magic the Gathering of trying to silence them, and it's
Speaker 1: a whole deal. I mean, we talk about this so much,
Speaker 1: but it literally doesn't make sense. Like you have like
Speaker 1: spells and magic and like these mythical beasts, Like why
Speaker 1: wouldn't you have people of color and like people that
Speaker 1: aren't just necessarily one gender and people like you can
Speaker 1: it's a fantasy world. You can have anything you want.
Speaker 1: Why would you be so singular in your thought process? Well,
Speaker 1: and when we first brought it up, I wanted to
Speaker 1: highlight this, but I definitely want to highlight this now
Speaker 1: more than ever, which is a lot of times the
Speaker 1: defense that are used in fantasy is that it's like
Speaker 1: because it's in the eighteenth century or whatever, whatever. And
Speaker 1: if you believe that's the case, I need you to
Speaker 1: go to medieval poc on Twitter and Tumbler, where that
Speaker 1: person is documenting art from the era that is featuring
Speaker 1: people of color, not in slave positions, in like noble
Speaker 1: noble pictures being depicted, which is honest to god proof
Speaker 1: that not only did people of color exist back then,
Speaker 1: but we're in places of nobility. But there's a huge
Speaker 1: whitewashing of history that has been gotten away. There's been
Speaker 1: a ratier and one thing I do love about where
Speaker 1: we are nerd Um right now is that we're working
Speaker 1: to remove that erature. The fact that Watchman is talking
Speaker 1: about the Tulsa bombing. Nobody knows about the bombing of
Speaker 1: Black Wall Street. So many black people had to grow
Speaker 1: up with people being like, well, I don't know why
Speaker 1: black people never picked themselves up after slavery, and YadA YadA, YadA,
Speaker 1: and no one knows that when they try to do it,
Speaker 1: they were murdered in cold blood in mass It was
Speaker 1: a massacre and they and there's many more cases like that,
Speaker 1: many more cases where affluent black neighborhoods were burned to
Speaker 1: the ground, not by not just by the KKK, but
Speaker 1: by government institutions. Because i mean, even even the movies
Speaker 1: we do get show you this that a lot of
Speaker 1: people under those hoods had jobs working for the city,
Speaker 1: working as mayor working as the police. I was just
Speaker 1: gonna say, it's also wild because I'm literally looking at
Speaker 1: this magic card of a lion man. Yeah, so like
Speaker 1: you're having a problem with it being a person of
Speaker 1: color and saying that's not realistic for that time, but
Speaker 1: this lion half lions Johnny gold Main. I love that
Speaker 1: in magic. I prefer my lines to be white. But
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm looking at these people that literally have
Speaker 1: horns that like you can but I think that's why
Speaker 1: it's so important to preserve, you know, diversity in games
Speaker 1: like this is because like if what you were talking
Speaker 1: about with The Watchman, it's like stuff like that is
Speaker 1: literally changing, hopefully, the way that history is taught to kids,
Speaker 1: and it expands to not just have this one version
Speaker 1: of history that has been told and so to see
Speaker 1: that in something like Magic where yes, it's his fantasy game,
Speaker 1: but it also it can be a fantasy game for everybody.
Speaker 1: It's not just for one group of people that can
Speaker 1: that can enjoy this style of play. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: hopefully made for everyone, I know exactly, and it's a
Speaker 1: level playing field for everyone. But it's it's just time
Speaker 1: for that change. You know, you have history of oppression
Speaker 1: condensed to a chapter, hundreds of years oppression, and that's
Speaker 1: just black people. That's not even beginning to talk about
Speaker 1: Native Americans, the Native Mexicans who are living on parts
Speaker 1: of the US that were pushed out. All that stuff
Speaker 1: that's kind of brushed away because that is a lot
Speaker 1: of hard work because you don't know, because that is
Speaker 1: like on the one to to to to give some
Speaker 1: other in the insight to what that it's hard to
Speaker 1: know what to do with that information because if you
Speaker 1: when you when you have that idea of like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well what do I do? You know, I'm on stolen
Speaker 1: land built on the backs of other people, what do
Speaker 1: I do? And And honestly, the first step of anything
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're not asking you to you know,
Speaker 1: talk to doc, get a time machine and and prevent slavery.
Speaker 1: It's just acknowledging it and knowing the privilege that comes
Speaker 1: with the foundations of a country being built like that.
Speaker 1: And I think not invalid because I think you you
Speaker 1: all saw last week I talked about Latina equal pay day, um,
Speaker 1: that we make half almost half of what a white
Speaker 1: man makes, uh, and people were just so invalidating it
Speaker 1: Like that to me was wild, not only that that
Speaker 1: happens to us, but that people will deny that it's happening.
Speaker 1: Like at least I can understand people are like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that sucks, but like actively tweeting at me like you're
Speaker 1: you're wrong, actually that's not true, and being like literally
Speaker 1: google it, like look up all of the stats, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's just so invalidating. Well, nowadays it's just too
Speaker 1: easy to google what you want to believe and then
Speaker 1: have like some fringe site that did little to know,
Speaker 1: you know, research, but just saying like yep, no, no
Speaker 1: that's not true based on this, Like I'll never am
Speaker 1: I have to come. I had to who's that? Uh?
Speaker 1: Oh man? I I usually don't, but I'm still like
Speaker 1: I think about this a lot, and I'm still mad.
Speaker 1: It's a Brandon shop. Who's the fighter Brendon shop? He posted, Yeah,
Speaker 1: he posted on after doing the show with Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: about he was like, when you when you change the
Speaker 1: numbers of kills to require mass shooting, it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like all white men. It looks different. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when you change the definition of mass shootings, yeah it doesn't. Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: Like and I had done follow him like this. This
Speaker 1: is such a whack take. And I like him so much.
Speaker 1: He's nice. He can probably kick my ass, but like,
Speaker 1: I'll go toe to toe with you on that every day.
Speaker 1: Like I'm never gonna let b s pass just because
Speaker 1: I think you're funny. So what I'm hearing from you
Speaker 1: all is it Maybe Twitter would be better? Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: had magic the gathering judges. I just want to say
Speaker 1: one more thing. So people don't tweet at me. Um
Speaker 1: when I said Latina equal paid to that, we get
Speaker 1: paid almost half. That's for equal experience, equal work, uh,
Speaker 1: equal education. So like it's not like me comparing myself
Speaker 1: to like, Hey, I was on the show with Kevin Smith.
Speaker 1: He's been in the business longer than me. I don't
Speaker 1: expect to get paid the same as him as saying
Speaker 1: the same experienced, same education, same amount of work. And
Speaker 1: it's not just Danny's saying it. It's it's iff And
Speaker 1: I agree with her on her point anyway, correct. And
Speaker 1: you don't need her or any of us to supply
Speaker 1: you with the statistics because you're already on the They're
Speaker 1: already on the device that's in your phone magic. So
Speaker 1: talking about them, I just want to go over the
Speaker 1: important cards, uh real quick. So we have Black Lotus
Speaker 1: go up for six k. Someone was trying to sell
Speaker 1: it on eBay for k. Somebody was trying to sell
Speaker 1: it on eBay. Um for there it was a mint
Speaker 1: condition because like all these cards are graded now you
Speaker 1: like have them actually graded with which again started with
Speaker 1: sports cards where it's like, well, what's mint near mint?
Speaker 1: And then there's like this service that will actually grade it,
Speaker 1: and a mint graded Black Lotus was online going for
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Keep in mind, this
Speaker 1: is a card that I used to own and play with,
Speaker 1: and I I sold mine for I can remember how
Speaker 1: I got mine, but I sold mine for five dollars
Speaker 1: and I lived like a king. Um. I wish I
Speaker 1: still had it. I don't. But it's the most powerful
Speaker 1: card in magic. Uh you get three colorless man just
Speaker 1: by sacrificing. It's an artifact coust nothing to put out,
Speaker 1: so you can literally put it out on your first
Speaker 1: turn and it might have cost maybe manna of any color,
Speaker 1: I think is what it was. So I could summon
Speaker 1: a ball lightning on my first turn. And it's a
Speaker 1: very powerful card, and my god, that could pay for that.
Speaker 1: That could pay my rent for a long time. It
Speaker 1: looks like Tropical Islands is going for seven K. Tropical
Speaker 1: Island is a dual land. So in third edition revised
Speaker 1: UM and I believe Unlimited might pioneer this too. Is
Speaker 1: that so when we were talking about lands, which is
Speaker 1: what how you get your manna, your land is the
Speaker 1: most common card in magic where you have a swamp
Speaker 1: a plane whatever it is, when you tap it, you
Speaker 1: can get that color manna. You can get black manner
Speaker 1: from a swamp. Dual lands like a tropical island. It's
Speaker 1: you can get a bloom, you can get blue man
Speaker 1: or you can get green manna from it. So and
Speaker 1: and there's all these dual lands for every for every kind.
Speaker 1: There's like Taga that will it's either red or green.
Speaker 1: So those became very valuable and those eat individually in
Speaker 1: mint condition, those can at you upwards of five maybe
Speaker 1: six hundred dollars a card. Then we have mox Sapphire
Speaker 1: of the Power nine that's going k. Yeah, the Moxes
Speaker 1: are it's now banned from regulation play. Yeah, yeah, a
Speaker 1: lot of these cards are. But that's also the thing
Speaker 1: that scares me about these cards in their value, because
Speaker 1: it's like, well or they is, I'm gonna keep going
Speaker 1: up because you can't play with them. Is. It's strictly
Speaker 1: a collector's side at this point, But man, what what
Speaker 1: a valuable artifact. It's not quite as powerful as black loadus.
Speaker 1: But the Moxes it's pretty much like another land that
Speaker 1: you get and if you can put that out on
Speaker 1: a turn where we put out a land card. You
Speaker 1: have such a leg up on your opponent. Um, I
Speaker 1: own a Mox Sapphire, which is the green. No, I
Speaker 1: own a max Emerald, which is a green one, and
Speaker 1: that will fetch You know, I've seen on eBay anywhere
Speaker 1: from five to under the three k something like that. Yeah. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I went back install the last few cards I sold
Speaker 1: on eBay just to see how much I sold them for.
Speaker 1: And I sold a polluted Delta from Battle Lives zend
Speaker 1: a Car for a hundred and seventy seven bucks. Sold
Speaker 1: a Godless Shrine, which was also from Zendercar for fifty
Speaker 1: six bucks. And this one was was this dope? Someone
Speaker 1: sent me a revised edition pack and I opened it
Speaker 1: and there was a Tundra card on there. That's that's bucks.
Speaker 1: That's great, that's a that's a good one. You know
Speaker 1: what Tundras are though. That's what makes the Stasis Lock
Speaker 1: Deck possible because it's it's white and blue, bringing back,
Speaker 1: bringing back old memories, anti take Yeah. Um. One thing
Speaker 1: I did want to say is the future of magic.
Speaker 1: We actually have. The Russo Brothers announced at this past
Speaker 1: comic Con they're making a Magic the Gathering Animated TV
Speaker 1: show for Netflix. This is how you do it, man.
Speaker 1: You know, it's an animated project with the potential to
Speaker 1: spin off into live action, said Joe Russo, because of
Speaker 1: course it is. Um, that's what a lot of things
Speaker 1: are now, everything is both animated and live action. I
Speaker 1: look at this and probably like y'all would at DBC two,
Speaker 1: where it started out as this hugely popular property that
Speaker 1: now it has so many fans that if it were
Speaker 1: to ever transition into live action, there's almost no way
Speaker 1: to do it justice, But I'd be very intriguing. So
Speaker 1: I'm very interested in to see what this animated Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering series is and where it could go. Um,
Speaker 1: but I think, you know, them parting with Netflix, I think, um, hey,
Speaker 1: you ain't getting that on Disney Plus. So Magic interesting
Speaker 1: on a digital scale because everyone's like paper cards on
Speaker 1: a digital scale has been interesting because there's been Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering online, which is not going anywhere. Too much
Speaker 1: money is invested in it. People trade cards on Magic
Speaker 1: the Gathering cars the same way they do paper cards.
Speaker 1: But they've always been trying to get a Hearthstone level
Speaker 1: digital platform going. They had one back in the day.
Speaker 1: I forgot what was it. Duels and many others that
Speaker 1: didn't really hit and everyone was the poster replaced Magic
Speaker 1: Gathering Online, but they finally struck gold with a really
Speaker 1: seeing Magic the Gathering Arena, which has introduced a whole
Speaker 1: new range of people to the game. And it's uh,
Speaker 1: it's free to just try, so if you want to,
Speaker 1: you should check it out. And it's really fun and
Speaker 1: the e sports community for that game is growing. Our
Speaker 1: good friend Becca Scott from geakon Sundry Days is actually
Speaker 1: a commentator on the Probe games. So I think Magic
Speaker 1: is only going to grow more and more and it's
Speaker 1: gonna be interesting to see the place that it goes
Speaker 1: now that it's has this kind of digital landscape that's
Speaker 1: gonna go through And what is that bubble like for
Speaker 1: those old cards? When when do you sell? When when
Speaker 1: do you say, Okay, this is the best it's ever
Speaker 1: gonna be and I'm gonna unload all these cards, or
Speaker 1: maybe I'm such a nostalgia hor that I just keep
Speaker 1: them all for all time. I don't know. We'll find out, Mark,
Speaker 1: where can everyone find you? You can find me setting
Speaker 1: my neck to the Gathering cards on the street corner
Speaker 1: um and you can find me walking Molly when Danny
Speaker 1: is cool with it, and you can find me on
Speaker 1: YouTube with my new special dog, Stepfather. It's at All
Speaker 1: Things Comedies YouTube channel. It's free to watch and enjoy
Speaker 1: over and over again. Thank y'all everybody who has watched
Speaker 1: and supported it's it's been overwhelming and I really appreciate you,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate you Danny, and I appreciate you. If
Speaker 1: he and someday down the road, you'll and I will
Speaker 1: have a long sit down at a table, at a
Speaker 1: very long table, and it's gonna be you and your
Speaker 1: shoe collection and me and my manage to the gathering collection,
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna see what we can manute. Wait,
Speaker 1: what am I there for? You're brokering just between what
Speaker 1: if he and I we have collectibles that we might
Speaker 1: want from each other, so you have to make sure
Speaker 1: it's fair and that if he doesn't, you know, beat me.
Speaker 1: I'm at Danny Fernandez on All the Things. Please watch
Speaker 1: me on the CW this Sunday after Supergirl. Me and
Speaker 1: Kevin Smith have a bunch of guests plan that you're
Speaker 1: gonna love and some iconic ones. And then also I
Speaker 1: will be back on the c W Tuesday, like two
Speaker 1: nights after that, after the flash word crashing in, slash
Speaker 1: crying about crisis, slash laughing. I don't know whatever happens
Speaker 1: at night. Who knows you're gonna have a good week?
Speaker 1: Can you? Can you tease any of the iconic guests?
Speaker 1: I don't think so. Okay, I don't know if they've
Speaker 1: announced it, but there's going to be people from like
Speaker 1: other DC properties that are that's exciting iconic. Okay, That's
Speaker 1: all I can say. And if you wide away on
Speaker 1: Twitter and Instagram, if D's on Twitch, Discord, it's Discord
Speaker 1: dot Forward slash Salt Squad, and of course the t
Speaker 1: Public t public dot com forward slash ner Difficent. Christmas
Speaker 1: is coming up by your family, Nerd Difficent here and
Speaker 1: like we always say, stay nerdy, Stay nerdy,