9/13/13 Episode 53: Tales from the Boat

All podcast content by Mark Rosewater

Okay, I’m pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It’s time for another Drive to Work.

Okay. So today, many—many weeks ago I did a—a podcast about the Pro Tour, and I realized that there were a lot of fun Pro Tour stories to tell, and that every once in a while I thought it might be fun—so , really quickly, a little history of myself, which is I got involved with the Pro Tour very early on, and so I was with the Pro Tour—I went to every single Pro Tour, you know, barring one or two, for… eight years, I believe? So anyway, I have a lot of stories from those times, and it’s fun to sort of peek back and look at the—look at some of the tales of the Pro Tour.

So today, I dub today’s episode “Tales from the Boat.” Okay. What does that mean? See, Pro Tour regulars will know what that means. But I’ll explain.

So the Pro Tour moves around, and, you know, there’s a lot of different locales the Pro Tour has been in, it’s been all around the world. It’s been on every continent save… I guess we haven’t had a Pro Tour yet in Africa, South America, or Antarctica, but we’ve had—we’ve had Pro Tours on every other continent. And we’ve had other events. You know. In those, for example, Invitationals have happened in both Africa and South America.

Anyway, but one of our most constant—like, most of the time we went in different places. But there were a few places that we’ve repeated. And probably the most famous place that held multiple Pro Tours was what the pros call “the boat,” but it’s known as the Queen Mary. This is down in Los Angeles, technically Long Beach, I believe, and so the Queen Mary once upon a time was a luxury cruise liner that would sail, I think, to Britain and back.

And eventually they retired it, and it got docked in—in Long Beach, and now it’s a hotel. But it’s—it’s a cruise ship. And so they rent out the bottom to do events. And it has a giant—you know, it’s got a lot of space, so it’s proved to be actually very good for the Pro Tour.

Now, so my stories today are about the early—these are the early years, I’m going to tell stories from the first four years of the Pro Tour. Because each year on the Pro Tour, we went on the boat. And I realize that each year, there was a story for me to tell. From the boat. And so I’m going to tell those stories today.

Okay. So we start Year One. PTLA One, which is the second Pro Tour ever held, this—the PTLA was the very first Pro Tour to ever have a PTQ system to qualify. As I explained in my Pro Tour, my first Pro Tour podcast, there was no qualifying tournaments to get into the first Pro Tour. You called up on the phone. Or you qualified through rating and such.

So the other thing about the first PT was it was the first Limited Pro Tour. The Pro Tour in New York was Constructed, and the Pro Tour in L.A. was the first time we were doing Limited play. Drafts. Typically I believe it was Rochester draft. So for those that don’t know what Rochester draft is, you take a pack, you open it up, you spread out the cards, and then each person drafts one. You go one through eight and then eight back through one. Or back through two usually. And so—until all the cards are drafted, and then you shift over a position and do the same thing.

So Rochester draft is very different from booster draft because it’s all open knowledge. Every single pick is a known thing. Nobody has any secrets. You know, in booster draft, for example, the first pick is not known. You know. And later picks, you might see things getting passed so you have some idea maybe what someone has, but you don’t really know. You don’t definitively know who took something other than what you took.

And so, it helps—Rochester is a very different format. Now, it’s funny, when we first got into it we thought Rochester was going to be the thing, it ended up booster draft became the thing and Rochester sort of fell by the wayside. I think what did it in was it was just hard to do. And there’s a lot of feel-bad moments because there’s all this information that players are supposed to think they know.

But here’s an interesting game design—it’s one of the interesting game design phenomena by the way. Which is that—if you give players open information, a certain style of player feels that they’re obligated to know that information. And what happens is, if you give them too much information, they both feel obligated to know it and are incapable of learning it all, and so it’s a feel-bad moment. Where they’re—they’re trying so hard to process all the information, but they’re just unable to.

I mean, booster draft—other than—beside the fact that it’s just easier to run, it’s quicker, it also allows players to kind of not be so public in their mistakes. That one of the things that’s hard for players when they first start out is players are happier if their mistakes aren’t so—aren’t so public early on. That, you know, if they make decisions that aren’t optimal, that they’re not being  judged by everybody in the game. And Rochester, because everything’s open, kind of does that.

Now once again. Among really established players who know what they’re doing, Rochester’s a lot of fun and a very skill-testing format. A very skill-testing format. But it does not work as well—like I said, for a bunch of reasons. It also takes three times as long to run, and—there’s a bunch of issues that keep it from being—why we ended up going more with booster draft than with Rochester draft. It’s just interesting to note that we thought we were going the other way when we first started.

So anyway, we’re on the boat. PTLA One. And so what happens is, we cut to the Top 8.

So one of my jobs, when I was on the Pro Tour, was I was in charge of the final day and the video. In the beginning, I actually did the commentary, in fact for PTLA, Mark Justice and I, what I would do, I’d always get one of the pro players to do color with me, and then we—you know, we’d—every Pro Tour would be a different person or persons to do it with me.

Eventually after a year we clued out that I was not the best to do it, doing commentary, and I got other people to start doing it. Which will probably be another whole podcast. But this particular one I was still doing it, and Mark Justice and I, I think I explained this in the other podcast, did a giant long podcast which took forever. It was like a ten hour—it was long. And we were in this phone booth because that was the only place they could find that was a soundproof booth. Anyway, I explained this story already.

Okay, so, here’s the story of the day is, we’re cutting to Top 8. Now my job was to—I would meet with the Top 8, I would discuss, I’d sort of walk them through what the next day entailed, what the video was going to be, and I would usually gather information from them. Usually information so the next day when we’re doing the broadcast, I could—I’d know their ages and where they’re from and what they did for a living. Stuff like that.

So anyway, one of the Top 8 was a guy named… I’m blanking on his name. Dominic Crapuchettes. So by the way, this is a real quick—I like to give—toss to the side credit where I can. If you guys have ever played the game Wits and Wagers, Dominic Crapuchettes is the designer of that game. He went on to have a career as a game designer.

But anyway, this was the second-ever Pro Tour, it was Dominic’s first Top 8. He would later go on to Top 8—his most famous was he played in the finals against Jon Finkel in New York, which was the very first Pro Tour Jon Finkel won. He beat Dominic in the finals to win. Anyway, this is Dominic’s first Top 8, he’s very excited, and I talked to all of them, and Dominic goes off.

So, after everybody leaves, Scott Johns comes up. Scott Johns, I mentioned him previously, he spent a while working at Wizards of the Coast as the editor-in-chief of Magicthegathering.com, he also worked for many other websites, he had a—he did a lot of editing and work with the writers. He also is one of the few people in the world to have five Top 8s. Anyway, I’ve talked about him.

Scott Johns comes up and says to our—our—our person doing the scorekeeping, the scorekeeper, says to them, “Oh, I don’t think this is right. You have me down as having one less win than I did.” You know. And so they look through the records, and they realize that Scott’s final match he had won, but they had—they’d inadvertently marked it down as a loss. And so it turns out that Scott actually was in the Top 8.

And so—now it’s funny. One of the things about the Pro Tour in general was, we had procedures about how we did things. And a lot of the way it worked was, we’d make a mistake and then we changed the procedure. So after that Pro Tour, whenever we had a Top 8, we would announce the Top 8, and then give people X amount of time to come talk to us if they feel that it was in error. But after, you know, five minutes or whatever, then we’re saying “This is the final total.” So—to prevent this from happening, where like we had already talked to everybody, they had already left.

But anyway, Scott legitimately was in the Top 8, we hadn’t done that yet, so we’re like “Okay, well, who is—who’s eighth? Who actually is in the Top 8? Who’s ninth?” It was Dominic Crapuchettes.

Okay. So I have to find Dominic, because I’m—I’m essentially—like I said, my job—not only was I in charge of doing video and stuff, but I was what they call the player liaison. Which meant that—essentially meant that if there’s an issue, I was the guy. I was the forward-facing guy. If—there were all sorts of different reasons I would talk to people. But you know, I was the deliverer of bad news a lot. SO they’re like “Okay Mark, you’ve got to let Dominic know he’s not in the Top 8.”

So the problem was at the time was, we didn’t get information from them of where they were staying. Once again that changed, very next Pro Tour, when they’d tell me their name and their age and all that I’d get their contact information so I could reach them. Also notice, this is back in 1995, so cell phones really aren’t a thing yet, I mean they existed but most people didn’t have them yet.

So anyway, I’m trying to figure out where Dominic is. And—is he at the hotel? No. Is he at some of the other hotels? No. And I ask around, and nobody knows where Dominic is. Turns out he’s not staying at any of the hotels.

And then someone finally says, “Oh, I think Dominic’s sister lives in Los Angeles. I think he’s staying with his sister.” And so we try to figure out, but it turns out that his sister’s married, so her last name isn’t Crapuchettes, so we can’t find in the phone book, and we just—we can’t find him. We just can’t find him.

So, okay, so I wake up early the next morning, and when Dominic shows up I had to break the news to him that, “Dominic, you’re not in the Top 8.” And it was not—not a fun time. And to be honest, to Dominic’s credit he took it very, very well, I explained the situation to him, I explained that he actually wasn’t Top 8, that he was ninth, and he understood.

And I mean—obviously, he was a little upset—saddened, you know, he—he had prepared for, you know. And that’s the reason we had wanted to get him the night before, because he spent all night working and preparing for his final match, which didn’t happen. I’m happy to say he would later go on to Top 8 and do quite well. But anyway. That is my—my first story from the boat. The time I had to tell somebody that they weren’t in the Top 8. Luckily the only time I ever had to do that. Because that was not fun.

Okay, we move on to the next year. Oh, by the way. So PT One was won by a guy named Shawn Regnier, who was nicknamed “The Hammer.” Or “Hammer Regnier.” And Hammer was a professional arm wrestler who also ran a comic shop called Hammer’s Comics. He used to play—the favorite quote at his store is someone in his shop said, “He doesn’t play to win, he plays for fun.” And Hammer goes, “We play for fun. You know what’s fun? Winning.”

Anyway, Hammer was quite a character. Hammer played Tom Guevin in the finals of the second PT. The first Los Angeles PT. It was a grueling, grueling long match, I think it was ten hours for the whole thing. The match is famous for numerous things. Hammer was really good at sort of playing mind games, and—and Guevin, like I think he—oh, no no no, that was a different—Hammer was playing Preston Poulter in the semis, I believe, and Preston like just barely, barely loses, and then just Hammer got into his head and he sideboarded, completely changed his deck for the second game. Even though his first deck almost won the first game.

And then in the match vs. Guevin, this incident where Guevin like, just—got so nervous I think he threw up in the bathroom, and—anyway, Tom Guevin, by the way, is one of my favorite people to put in—to put into Pro Tour coverage when I used to do the feature matches. But he was super entertaining. And in fact, he just played in an event. A team event. And so I’m glad he’s still playing Magic. He’s—I like Tom. Tom’s a lot—Tom is a cool guy, a lot of fun, always an awesome feature match—I would always pick him for feature matches because he would entertain.

Okay. We flash forward a year to the boat. So this is now ’96. So LA Two. So this is a Pro Tour that Tommi Hovi—Magic Hall of Famer Tommi Hovi—it was his first Pro Tour he won. Tommi won two Pro Tours. He also would win Rome a year later, a year and a half later. Anyway, so this story is about Tommi and—actually I have two stories. From this boat. So let me tell you—I’ll tell the lighthearted story first. And then the not-so-lighthearted story second.

Okay. So the first story is, so Tommi is from Finland. And, interestingly, his English is decent, but he wasn’t super comfortable in—speaking English even though his English was actually pretty good. And he was—he was kind of shy at the time, which is funny by the way, because I would later be a guest of honor at Ropecon, which is the largest Finnish gaming convention in Finland. And I had a chance to see Tommi in his natural habitat, and he was not remotely shy, you know, at home, so it’s funny to watch him, how on the tour he’s a little shyer.

But anyway, one of the things we used to do is in between matches, I would go and interview the contestants. Uh, the contestants—the finalists. And so the finals was between Tommi Hovi and a guy named David Mills. And so David Mills was part of Mike Long—Mike Long had a team, what was the team name? See if I can pull this out. It was called… I should know this. I’m blanking on it. Maybe it will come to me in a second. But anyway, David Mills was part of Mike Long’s team. And—anyway, we’ll get to Dave Mills in a second.

So anyway, I was interviewing each of them beforehand. So I’m interviewing Tommi Hovi. So anyway, I have a whole list of questions and stuff for him, and so I said, “So Tommi, you’ve made the finals, you know, how does it feel to make the finals?” And Tommi’s like “Good.” And so like, I keep asking questions, and he just keeps answering with one-word answers. So I keep asking more and more elaborate questions to try to just, you know, get him to open up, and answer, and just he keeps answering with one-word questions.

And no matter what I do, I just can’t—I cannot get him to say more than one word. And I’m trying, I’m dancing around, I’m asking all sorts of questions, and finally I just—I mean, you can tell I’m not a professional interviewer, I just—the whole situation, I just—it’s the craziest situation is—that I just can’t get him to say anything.

And I start laughing. And I mean I really started laughing. And I cannot stop. I think there’s a video clip you can probably see with me on YouTube or something. (Right here.) Although it cuts. You see me start laughing and then cut. But I—I did not stop laughing for a couple minutes. I just couldn’t stop laughing. And I’m apologizing to Tommi, but it just—it was so funny to me that I just could not get him to talk. Anyways, that’s the lighthearted story. Learn about my bad interviewing skills.

Okay. So, now let’s get to the real meat and potatoes of PTLA Two. Now—because I’m about to tell you about the riot. So let me explain what happened. Yes, there was once a riot at a PT. Not—I mean, there was no—nothing got burned or anything, just—I’ll explain.

Okay, so, David Mills, like I said. Oh, Tongo Nation. Tongo Nation was the name of Mike Long’s team. And David Mills was a member of Tongo Nation. So one of the things that David Mills did was he had a tendency to play a spell before he’d tapped his mana. Now, out there you’re saying, “What is wrong with that? You are allowed to play your spell before you tap your mana.” And the answer is, “Now you are.” But back then you were not. And back then, you had to tap your mana before you played the spell. And it was considered—it was an offense. I don’t know how high, but it was an offense.

But David Mills was just used to playing that way. And so what happened was, in the course of the game, he would get warnings from the judges for it. Now, it was not a major warning, you know, it was not a—no one thought he was cheating, it was just—the rules say you couldn’t do it, and he kept doing it. So he would—he’d get warned by the judges.

And so finally we get to the Top 8, and the judge pulls him aside and says, “David, you’ve got to stop doing this. You have to play…” You know. And so David says, “Okay, okay, okay,” but he knew that he just—it was—it wasn’t something he was consciously thinking about. It was just how he played. And this was a stressful day. He was on camera in the finals of the Pro Tour. He—his energy was very focused on, on winning and playing and—it just wasn’t on changing the style of how he played his cards.

And so he kept playing a spell before he tapped his mana. And the judges would warn him. And the warning escalated. And so finally the judge said to him, “That’s it. Next time, you lose. You’re going to lose the next time you do that.” And so it’s in the—so I think what happened was, I think Game 1… I think Game 1 is won by Mills, I think that Game 2 was won by Hovi? And then Game 3 was won by Mills. So we’re in Game 4. If Mills wins this, he wins. Okay.

So Mills is playing, and he needs a land to play something in his hand. I don’t remember what it was. But it was something good. It was something that if he got out—remember this was a limited Pro Tour by the way, they draft—I think they Rochester drafted. But anyway, Mills had something in his hand, I know it was a black flier, I don’t remember exactly what the card was. But anyway, he’s waiting to get this land. And once he plays it, this really good creature, his chance of winning goes way up.

So he’s stuck on land. Draw, no. Draw, no. Draw, no. Finally, he draws the land, he throws it down, and he throws the spell from his hand on the table. But he didn’t tap his mana. And so the judge stops him. You know. Now be aware, be aware, David Mills pretty much this card’s going to help him win. Like he’s, you know, turn two from winning with this card. And so he’s just excited because he’s like “Oh my God, I’m going to win a Pro Tour.”

And the judge stops him. He says, “You did not tap your mana.” Now be aware, the spell that he played cost all of his mana. There’s no—no possible advantage he has to gain from this, he’s just excited, and he’s going to tap all of his mana to play the card. There’s no information he gleaned, it’s not like he could gauge the opponent and tap the right mana to save something up for whatever. No. He’s tapping all his mana to play this card. But he’s excited.

And the problem is the judges have given him warning after warning after warning. And so the judges officially say, “That’s it. You’re out.” And… “What?” David Mills… he is—lost the match. “What?” Okay. So… behind the scenes, we have a little pow-wow. I’ll get to that in a moment.

In front of the scenes, the players are watching this game, and all the players—now be aware. The way it worked is, we’re off in a separate room with a camera on us. So that the audience could ooh and ahh and say stuff and the players don’t—don’t—because we were showing hands and things. We didn’t want the player reaction to—to give information to the finalists. And so they’re—they’re sequestered in a room.

Meanwhile, everybody else is watching on TVs in the main part of the boat, and so, you know, the people watching understand that what’s going on—it’s a tiny technical foul. You know. That he made a mistake, but there’s no advantage to come from it, it’s just a tiny technical foul. And the fact that the Pro Tour’s gonna, you know, that he’s gonna be disqualified because he made a tiny technical error that doesn’t even impact the gameplay?

So the players go bonkers. And Mark Justice, for those that don’t know Mark Justice—so Mark Justice was in my mind the first player to kind of be universally considered the best player in the world. He won Nationals—U.S. Nationals in ’95, he then went on to be third at Worlds that year, and then at the very first Pro Tour he came in Top 8, and then at Worlds the following year he came in second—Mark is someone who is just—I mean, in my mind he should be in the Hall of Fame, he has four Top 8s, his actual play average—he only played a short period of time, because a lot—a lot of his career was pre-the Pro Tour existing. Like, they don’t count his Nationals or his Worlds or—the early stuff that pre-Pro Tour, though I do, and I feel like the Magic Pro Tour is a little bigger than just the Pro Tour.

But anyway—and Justice is one I was doing commentary with. But anyway, Justice was, like, just out—Justice was jumping on tables, and like “We can’t let this happen.” You know, because Justice was like—he was very invested and wanted to be a pro player. And like, he thought that this was a great injustice. Ironically, Justice felt that it was an injustice.

So he is jumping on tables and trying to rally the crowd, and—and the crowd is getting mad. So while that is going on, on the outside, behind the scenes, there are five people having a conversation. Let me spell out those five people for you. First person was Tom Wylie. So for people that don’t know Tom Wylie, Tom Wylie was the first Rules Manager. I mean right now, the Rules Manager’s Matt Tabak, but if you dial back, Tom originally—I think there was a—a newsgroup that answered news questions, and Tom used to jump in all the time and answer rules questions, and Wizards was impressed with him, so they ended up offering him a job.

And when I first came to Wizards—in fact, when I flew to Gen Con to try to get more work out of Wizards, that’s when I first met Tom, and Tom and I hung out there, and we became friends. So anyway, Tom was the Head Judge of the event. Tom was our first Level 5 judge. And he had judged a lot of the early things.

The reason he head judged was we liked the idea that the Rules Manager was the Head Judge. Most of—most of our head managers have had judging experience, and it’s also—they’re someone that really knows the rules real well. And so they can help in judging.

So there was Tom. There was Skaff Elias. I’ve talked about Skaff, Skaff is part of the East Coast playtesters. Part of the team that designed Ice Age and Alliances and Fallen Empires, Antiquities. Skaff—I also talked about being the creator of the Pro Tour. So Skaff was one of the major players that helped run the Pro Tour and organize how it got put together. Skaff was a major player on the Pro Tour.

Next is Andrew Finch. So Andrew Finch no longer works for Wizards, but he for a long time was the Tournament Manager. He was the person that would run—he was not running the—he was not the Head Judge, but he was the person in charge of organizing tournaments, making sure all the logistics and everything were happening. You know. That the—the sealed product for the draft was there and all the tables were set up and—all the logistics. He ran the tournament. So Andrew was the tournament manager.

Then there was Henry Stern, Henry Stern, former pro player but at the time he was in R&D, and Henry was another person that went to a lot of Pro Tours, and Henry had been very involved in the Pro Tour before he joined Wizards, so he went to a lot of the Pro Tours and helped out.

And then there was me. As I explained, I—mostly I was head—I was judging, mostly I ran the feature—I ran the feature match during the days of the matches, and then I ran the video on the third day of the… so I was running the video. I was the one—in fact, I was pretty sure I was doing commentary for this Pro Tour.

So the five of us are in a room. And like, “What is going on?” Now be aware, we are the five Wizards people who are kind of the most responsible for what’s going on. And so the five of us pow-wow to say “What’s happening here?”

So let me walk through each person’s opinion on what is happening. So—Tom Wylie is like, “The judges made a ruling, we have to support the judges.” He is the Head Judge. He goes, “There is no question. If they have DQed him, he is DQed.”

So next is Skaff Elias. So Skaff is like, “Look, guys, this is marketing, the point of the Pro Tour is to show off what the game can do, having—having a Pro Tour end on a technical foul is crazy. It’s not good marketing. We should not be doing this.”

We then come to Henry Stern. And Henry is like “Look, we got rules, we gotta support the rules, if we go back on our own rules, it’s going—we’re going to look weak. It’s not going to—we made the rules, if you don’t like the rules, change the rules, but we gotta follow our rules.”

So then we come to me. And I’m like—now I’m—I’m the—my job on the—on the Pro Tour was the players and the media and coverage. Like the reason I was doing feature matches and the video was I was in charge of, you know, sort of how it all looked from the outside and how—trying to get people interested in the players, and the themes, and the games, and I was trying to sort of, you know, make it exciting and interesting.

And I’m like, “Guys. ‘Pro Tour ends because guy doesn’t tap his mana’ is a horrible, horrible story.” I say, “Here’s what you want to do. It’s game four, give a Game Loss to David Mills, we go to the dramatic and final fifth game. Winner take all. That is exciting.”

Okay. So now we get to Andrew, who in the end is the Tournament Manager, who really it’s his call. So he looks and he says, “Well, two people want to DQ David Mills. Two people want to give him a Game Loss and go back and finish the match. What do we do? What do we do?”

So now originally, David Mills was DQed without prize. Because that is what happens when you get DQed. And so Andrew’s compromise was, he DQed him but he gave him the prizes. So he was DQed with prize. And what he explained was, it was a technical error, he broke the rules so there had to be consequences, but we did not believe he gained any advantage from it, we did not believe he was cheating, so we let—we let him have his prize money. Which was thousands and thousands of dollars. So that was a big deal.

In fact, one of my favorite Pro Tour, you know, moments if you will is—we had a photographer on hand, and when—when Andrew Finch explained to David Mills that he was DQed but without prizes—I’m sorry, but he’d get—sorry, but with prizes, David Mills realized for the first time that he was—he could have lost the money. Which he didn’t understand that he could have lost. And he has this shocked look on his face. That is just like—I don’t know, you know, in the photojournalism of Magic is one of my favorite sort of “capturing the moment.” (I did my level best to find this photo. If anybody else can find it, I’d love to see it—email to nlh.mtg@gmail.com.)

And so Tommi would go on to win. Which is very interesting, by the way, a little—another little side story is a year and a half later, I’m in Rome—the finals in Rome is Tommi vs.—who did he play in the finals? Not Olle Rade, because that was the semifinals—I don’t remember. (Nicolas Labarre.) He was playing somebody in the finals. And Rome is the Pro Tour where—it was the—we talk about it being the craziest, most powerful format we ever played. And like “Oh, what was it? Vintage?” “No! Standard. Just Standard with Urza’s Saga.”

And the joke during that tournament was that there is the early game, that’s shuffling, there was the mid-game, that is rolling for—you know, it’s mulliganing and rolling for who goes first, and then the end-game was turn one. Since there were decks that literally could kill on turn one. And a lot of decks killed within the first couple turns. Anyway, it was a very degenerate environment because Urza’s Saga was very degenerate.

But anyway, Tommi Hovi wins that. And so I am interviewing him the glutton for punishment that I am, and I say to him, I go “Tommi, how do you feel?” And finally I get some words out of him. Tommi goes, “I feel great.” And I go “Oh, well—you know…” And what he says is, “I finally won.” And I’m like “Well, Tommi, you won in L.A.,” he goes, “No no no.” He goes, “I was given—I was given a Pro Tour in L.A. This Pro Tour, I won.”

And that—in his mind, he did not count PTLA as a win because he didn’t actually win it. And he was so, so excited to win PT Rome because, like, he earned that. He had won that tournament. You know, no one got disqualified, no—he wasn’t handed anything. He legitly won it and he was very proud. So.

Anyway, I realize as I’m almost to work, that my grandiose idea—so here’s what I think I’m going to do, I’m not going to make this a two-parter. Instead I will just—I will occasionally come and tell—and tell some Pro Tour stories.

It’s not something I’ll do a lot, but it’s something that I—I do think one of the roles of this podcast has kind of become to kind of be the historian of Magic, and I take that real seriously, and I’m trying to as much as I can sort of help people remember things—or let people know things that they themselves could not have been there for. Or let the old-timers remember stuff too.

But like I said, it’s—we don’t go to the boat anymore, the Pro Tour’s kind of changed how it functions, and the boat really doesn’t make sense. But it is a—it’s a part of PT history. And I have a lot of very fond memories of being on the boat, and of that play space, and like I said, I’ve got a few more stories I can tell later on about being on the boat.

But the thing that I—I don’t know, one of the things that I always loved about—about going to—like one of the things about the Pro Tour was that it was exciting. Like one of the things I loved about being on the Pro Tour is I went all over the world. You know. I went to a Pro Tour in Japan, in Australia, all through Europe, you know, all through the United States. I mean,

I—I mean, one of the things about my time at Wizards is, I have traveled extensively. You know. I have literally travelled through every—except Antarctica, I have traveled to every continent on the planet to help run a Magic tournament. And that is—that is pretty exciting. In fact, one of these days, I will do a podcast on the Invitational. That actually—speaking of getting to exotic places, the Invitationals were what got me to Africa and South America and Australia and—anyway, all over the planet.

But the—one of the things that is fun about the Pro Tour to me was that there’s the strong sense of—I mean, we’re traveling all around the world, going to all sorts of different places, exciting places, but there’s a sense of camaraderie in that I got to know the players really well. I mean, one of the reasons, you know, I—one of my—I think everybody that comes to the Magic Hall of Fame have different sort of vantage points.

One of my vantage points is I’m very protective of the early years, and I feel that a lot of the early Pro Tour history is—it’s slowly seeping away, it’s why I want to do a podcast like this, and that I feel like there are stars of the game that were mega-mega-stars, that I just don’t think the average person today knows much about. You know.

Like it saddens me today that the—that Justice is, you know, I mean—he had an event in which he did something shady at a, at a Grand Prix, and like forever, that defines him, and I feel like it’s sad that that has to be the thing that defines him because he did so many amazing, glorious things, and he really was the first, in my mind, star Magic player, and that I understand that there’s some lows, but I—he also had a lot of highs, and then I—I’m—I wish some people remembered some of that stuff. You know.

Like I mean—real quickly, because I have a minute before I get there, one of my favorite stories of Mark Justice is—I was—we were—he came to L.A., he lived in Utah, he came to L.A. because there was a—I don’t know, a thousand dollar tournament or something? And back in the day, this was before the Pro Tour, there were not a lot of high-money Pro Tours. This was actually a pretty rare thing. That you were playing, you know, for a thousand dollars.

And so Mark was in the finals. And I’m watching him, and I look at his hand, and his hand is full of land. And I’m trying to figure out what he’s doing. And he’s playing—and his shoulders are kind of sagging, and, you know—and the weird thing is his land—his hand is mostly land, but every once in a while he’ll discard a land. And, you know, his opponent is attacking, and every once in a while Mark will play something to sort of stall with, but—but—it’s a very odd game where he’s throwing away cards and keeping land, and I have no idea what’s going on.

And like ten turns later, Mark draws a Land’s Edge, which is an enchantment, an enchant world that allows you to discard lands to do damage. I think Land’s Edge is the right name. And he draws it, plays it, throws his hand, kills the guy. And basically what had happened was, he had figured out that his only route to victory was this Land Edge kill where he hit his opponent with a handful of land.

And he got his opponent to fourteen or—no, it must have been sixteen. He got him to sixteen. Because he could draw a card every—whatever, he figured out the right number of things he could do to defeat him. And the whole game was about sort of stalling and not making his opponent realize that his master plan was to throw his hand of land at him.

And he figured this out ten turns earlier. I had no idea what was going on. And—I mean, he sold the whole thing, the body language and—it just looked like he just had a horrible luck. And that—you know, he was going to lose any minute. And then just out of the blue, just (???), he wins. And that’s one of the things that I always loved about Justice is, that he thought so far ahead.

That he really, you know, there are certain people that were just naturals at the game, and Justice was one of those people. That he—he really—I loved watching him play. That he—he was a master, and that—it saddens me that some of that drifts away with time, and that people don’t—that—anyway.

So, I am now at work, and I guess that wraps up our tale for today. Some tales from the pro tour. I’m sort of curious what people think of this, I—I want to do this every once in a while because I feel like there’s such rich Pro Tour history that I don’t want to get lost. And I know not everybody is necessarily a fan of the Pro Tour. But I do believe it—a lot of our history, a lot of the game’s history lies in the Pro Tour, and a lot of the classic moments, you know, like I said, not every sport has a riot! So.

Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed today’s chat, and I guess it’s time to go because it’s time to make the Magic.