Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #1118: Top 20 Mechanics, Part 3

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

This is my third podcast in a three-part series talking about the 20 best non-evergreen mechanics of all time. It's based on a talk I gave at MagicCon: Chicago.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. Well, I had to go to the bank, but it's time for my drive to work. Okay, so today is part three of my top 20 mechanics. This is based on a speech that I gave at MagicCon Chicago, where I talked about the top 20 mechanics of all time. And there are a bunch of parameters. I didn't do evergreens or things that weren't named, you know, keywords or ability words. But anyway, I talked about, so far, everything up to the top six. So we're up to number six. So number six is morph. So morph, so the history of morph. Morph is a mechanic, for those that don't know, that you can, there are things you can play face down as 2-2 creatures

and then turn face up for their morph costs. We redid them recently as disguise, is that, but it has War 2. Anyway, the history of the morph mechanic. So when Richard Garfield first made Alpha, Richard was making a game, no one could anticipate what magic became.

It's kind of hard to predict a phenomenon. And in Richard's mind, most games were played with friends. Like, the idea of tournaments and stuff, Richard wasn't even concerned about any of that. That requires a much larger infrastructure. And so Richard's idea was, hey, there'll be cards that do quirky things, and that the players, they just figure it out and talk amongst themselves. The idea that you needed sort of concrete rules wasn't super important, because there wasn't a giant tournament scene or pro tours,

or, you know, the idea that the rules needed to be at such a tight level when it's just a bunch of people playing at home wasn't that important. And in Richard's mind, I think he thought that having some weird cards that players had to sort of figure out how they work and discuss among themselves was upside. He thought that was cool. So Richard made two cards in alpha, one called Camouflage, one called Illusionary Mask. And both of them made use of face-down cards as a component. The idea basically for both of them is you just didn't know what it was, right? Oh, what is it? I don't know. The problem is the game does not, the game rule system does not handle well. What is it? It's undefined. And a good example is, here's how it used to work before the rules team came up with

what I'm going to talk about in a second. Let's say I target the creature. I say, okay, I'm going to terror the creature. Terror destroys target non-black creature. My opponent would go, okay, it doesn't die. Why doesn't it die? I don't know. Is it a black creature? You can't target it? Why doesn't it die? I don't know. I just know that it doesn't die. And I take that information and go, okay, well I know it didn't die. It didn't die to terror. Okay, is it an artifact creature? Is it a black creature? I don't know, you know.

And the idea was that you just, there's information that you just didn't know, that the person playing face down would just tell you. But in a tournament setting, or in a larger rule sense, it was having undefined stuff is very problematic. Having things that are like, what is it? Ah, who knows? The rules don't like that.

And so one of the things that had been on the list of the rules team was they needed to figure out how to make camouflage and illusionary mask work in the rules. There were a lot of cards that for a while were like, do they work? Kind of, you know. So what they realized was that the way to make them work in the rule was you had to define them. That face down, they were something. Now, maybe you could turn them face up and they were something else, but face down, they had a definition. So the idea that they were playing around with was, it's a 1-1.

If we don't tell you and it's face down, it's a 1-1. Now, if it turns face up, it's whatever it is. But face down, it's a 1-1. And that inspired them to make a mechanic. Well, what if you used this idea and built it into a whole mechanic? What if there were just creatures that you could play for a certain cost? Because it always had to be the same cost. So their idea was, okay, you play it for two mana. You play it face down as a 1-1.

And then you could pay the cost on the card to turn it face up. And they were very excited by this mechanic. So they pitched it to a bunch of R&D. I think they talked to Bill and Mike and a bunch of different people, and everyone was kind of, eh, okay. But they continued because they were excited by it. So they pitched it to me, and I was very excited. I was the first R&D player, I think, that was very excited by it.

The one change that I suggested was, instead of being two mana for a 1-1, I suggested they change it to three mana for a 2-2, just because a 2-2 had a little more substance. Anyway, and what happened was, I then built some decks.

I added in some, you know, morph reveal effects, and I just, I made two decks with them. And then I played it with R&D. Rather than argue why they were good, I just made cards and played with R&D. And when they played with them, they really came around. This was during the time that I was assigned to sort of clean up Onslaught. And I thought this mechanic was cool.

And I had really been pushing for a typo theme and I thought that was neat that one of the things about morph was the fact that it would turn face up and be something it'd be a creature type I thought you know would work with uh a typo theme anyway um we ended up making it uh and it was very popular people really liked morph I came back in Time Spiral and then it returned again. When did it return again? Oh, in Khans of Tarkir.

And in Khans of Tarkir, we did a whole thing where we I was trying to make different versions of it, so we went back in the past. The flavor of Khans of Tarkir is we're in a current timeline. We go back to the past and change to a different timeline. And so we went back in the past

and we had cards that you could take the top card of your library and turn it into a face-down card. So we definitely started extrapolating and making different versions of it. And the reason that I put it on this list is that something that we want in gameplay that's really important is mystery. That you want things that one of the players knows that the other player doesn't know.

That there's something really fun about... There's something really fun about sort of having to figure something out. And there's something neat about knowing something that your opponent doesn't know. And so anyway, Morph really has led to a lot of different FaceTime mechanics. Fortel, there's a bunch of mechanics we've done where you don't quite know what it is, and that it's definitely been a fruitful space. And I use Morph because Morph was the first one

to kind of do that successful as a mechanic. And even though, I mean, the reason we changed Morph to Disguise, by the way, is Morph was made at a time where three-mana 2-2 was just proportional against what the creatures were better. Magic creatures were a little weaker early in Magic, and we've done a lot to strengthen them. So,

the other thing by giving Ward to the card was it means it turns up more often. It's harder to destroy in the face-down version. And the fun part of Morph is the turning up. The fun part is, ha-ha, it's this. You know, just being a 2-2 that gets destroyed, you know, that happens. But the more fun mechanic is the mystery of, ooh, then seeing what it is. And so that's why we changed it. But anyway, that is my number six. Okay, number five, Kicker.

So Kicker was created by Bill Rose. In fact, at the very, so, when we made Invasion, the Invasion design team was me, Bill Rose, and Mike Elliott. Bill Rose led the set. And we actually did the first week of design, my dad used

to have a house near Lake Tahoe. And we went up there for a week and we worked on the set. And Bill pitched this idea day one, I think. Kicker. And Bill was fascinated by the idea that X spells meant different things at different times. That if I have three mana and I cast a fireball, I'm doing two damage. But if I have eight mana, I can be doing

seven damage or maybe I split up the damage. But I mean, the reality is what the card is when I have three lands versus what the card is when I have eight lands is radically different. And Bill really internalized that and said, oh, was there a way that spells can upgrade with time? Like one of the challenges in general is you want a widespread of mechanics at different mana values, so no matter when you draw, you know,

every turn there's something I can do. But the idea that spells can sort of change with the game, that if I draw them early they have a function, because a lot of times

expensive spells get stuck in your hand. That's where cycling came from, for example. I'll get to cycling in a second. Anyway, so Bill pitched the idea of Kickr.

We liked it. It played well in a multicolor set because you could kick her in off colors and stuff. And it went right in the set. The reason it's at five, I mean, so the reason it's here is it's a super flexible mechanic. In fact, my biggest strike against it, the reason it's not higher is it's a little too flexible. Too much of the time we make a brand new mechanic and the audience

is like, oh, that's just Kickr. Kickr is so broad that it sort of makes it a little bit harder to play in new space since it is in some ways, I would almost argue Kickr is not a mechanic as much as a tool. I mean, it's technically a mechanic, but it functions a lot like, you know, it,

in a lot of ways, Kicker to me is kind of like double-faced cards. There's a lot you can do with it. And double-faced cards is not a singular thing. You know, there's different mechanics that use double-faced cards. So anyway, that is why Kicker is number five, not higher. It's a little bit too broad, but it is super useful. And if you said to me, you know, you can only, you've got five mechanics to make the, Magic can only have five mechanics other than the Evergreens, and then you can, you know, you have to make all cards in the future with five mechanics. One of the ones I choose is Kicker. I mean, super useful, super flexible.

And the nice thing about Kicker is you can do it anywhere. I guess you can't put it on lands, but you can put it on any car type other than lands. Anything that you cast, you can put it on. And it has,

there's so many different things you can do with it. Almost identifiable by the different mechanics we make that sort of subsets of Kicker. Okay. Number four, I just mentioned, is Cycling. by the different mechanics we make that sort of subsets of Kicker. Okay, number four I just mentioned is Cycling.

So Cycling was created by Richard Garfield. Richard noticed that one of the problems is that there are certain types of cards that got stuck in your hand more than others. Maybe they were expensive cards that you can't cast all day in the game. Maybe they're niche cards that just do something

narrow that a lot of the time that narrow thing isn't true, like destroying champions or artifacts. Maybe it is something that's just very specific. You know, oh, I have to pay life to do something, but late in the game maybe I can't pay life. Like, maybe there's just situations where it just doesn't work.

And what Richard said is, is there something we can do? Because one of the problems with some of these cards is people just don't put a lot of them in their deck if they're dead a lot of the game you have to be very careful how many you put in

so Richard said is there some way to help you like is there a way that you trade these cards that you can't use in for something else and then something else

was pretty straightforward how about another card and so Richard came up with this idea of cycling as just well I could put this on narrower cards or more expensive cards it It's just a way to help people take cards that maybe they wouldn't normally play in their deck and play them in their deck. A very useful

tool. Now Richard originally designed this for Tempest. Richard had designed Alpha and then designed Ribby Knights and stopped designing Magic for a while. And I, the very short version of the story was I wanted to be a designer. Richard, in passing, talked about how he missed designing magic. It might be fun to be on a set.

I go to Joel Mick, who was the head designer at the time, and said, hey, could I lead a set if Richard's on it? And he said, ah, sure. So that was Tempest, the first set I led. Anyway,

Mike Elliott and I had not been on a design team before. We had infinite ideas. Richard hadn't designed since Arabian Nights. Um, Charlie Coutinho was also on the team. Um, and between the four of us, we just made so many mechanics that Tempest was overstuffed. There was just too many things. What I handed over in design, Bill's like, uh, it wasn't Bill, it was Joel.

Joel's like, there's too much here. So we had to pull stuff out. Some, well, two of the things we pulled out is we pulled out Mechanical Echo and Mechanical Cycling. And they would be done the following year in Ursa Saga. In fact, the little trivia I mention is, I believe for eight years, there was

a card in every set that had first been in the design file for Tempest. So, anyway. Cycling is one of the most useful mechanics it goes on any car type even lands and it allows you to get things that normally

are hard to get into decks into decks which is a super useful tool it was the first non-evergreen mechanic that got repeated in fact in Onslaught the same time I was trying to get Morphin I was arguing that we should bring back cycling,

which at the time was controversial because we didn't bring back non-Evergreen mechanics. But it was an awesome mechanic, and there's a reason it was the first mechanic that ever came back. It just was super useful and simple and elegant and had lots of design space. So anyway, cycling came back. And it's gone on to be, I think cycling, for non-Evergreen mechanics, I think cycling has been in more sets than any other mechanic. It has since been made deciduous,

so we can do it whenever we need to in small doses. But it's just, it just does what it does so well. It's very simple. When we first made it, all the cycling costs were two, like in Ursa Saga. But we then came back and did it with different costs. And so there's a lot of flexibility and a lot of cool things. And a lot of neat effects. We started doing cards where, like, when you cycle it, it generates a smaller version of the effect.

It's kind of fun. Anyway, a lot of neat things you can do cycling. Number three, transform. So this takes us back to original Innistrad. So one of the goals I had for my team was we were doing monsters and I said, you know, one of the monsters we'd come up with was werewolves. The big three we had done was vampires, zombies, and werewolves. We later would bring spirits in and humans to map out, make an allied

color pair. And we had done lots of zombies and lots of vampires. Magic, enjoyable creatures, magic had lots of them. At the time, we only had three werewolves. And so what I said is, you know what, I really want to make sure we can, I want to make the perfect werewolf. I want to make an amazing werewolf because I feel like that was, if we can capture werewolves, we're really doing something we hadn't done before. And we tried to come up with a bunch of different ways to do that one of which was an early version of Day Night but the version that, I remember my team name Tom Lapilli

Tom had worked on a different game that we make called Duel Masters the short version is we decided we wanted to make a kids game in Japan that we were then eventually going to bring over to the U.S. So we made it in Japan. It was a huge success in Japan. We tried twice to bring it over here without much success.

But it is just a giant. In fact, it's still going on. We thought we were making something that's going to last three, four years. And now it's been well over 20. So it obviously has become one of the staple trading card games in Japan. Anyway, something that Duel Masters definitely pushes boundaries a little more than Magic does, and something Duel Masters had done was they made a double

face card, where it, I think it lived in another zone, that you had a card that brought it in or something um but anyway you would put it in and then it could change and go back and forth between them um and so tom said well we he knew we had the ability to print double-faced cards because we were doing it for duelmasters and said what if we had double-faced cards um and it was i was it was daunting at first i was like wow can we do that that really was a big step to like can a card not have a back but we played with it as we always do

to test things out and it just played great like it's a human and you knew the threat was coming that it was going to be a werewolf and that was really awesome and it played well and you went back and forth from human to werewolf and we made other cards with it in fact it led to a whole dark transformation theme in the set.

That it's a vampire that turns into a bat. It's a little girl that turns into a possessed demon. Or it's a possessed girl that turns into a demon. Dr. Jekyll becomes Mr. Hyde. The fly becomes his ghastly experiment and stuff. So it was definitely interesting that we could... It really allowed us to do a cool thing and that

the first version we used of double-faced cards was transformed, meaning it starts at one side and it can go to the other side. Sometimes it can come back. And the reason this is so compelling, the way I explain this in the in my talk is the card

I used was Werebear. So Werebear's from Odyssey. So the flavor of Werebear is it's a man that becomes a bear through like, like entropy. Like, sort of like I become a werewolf, he's a werebear. But the problem is we either can show him as a man

or show him as a werebear. We can't show him in both forms. And so, usually we pick the form that's more exciting, werebear. We can't show him in both forms. And so usually we pick the form that's more exciting, werebear in this case. But you sort of miss a little something. The nice thing about double-faced cards is you have two cards.

You have two pieces of art. You get to actually do something that magic doesn't often get to do. You get to tell a story, a two-part story. You can see here's this guy and then boom, now he's this. You know, oh, he's the mayor of the town, but oh, he's-part story. You can see here's this guy and then boom, now he's this. Oh, he's the mayor of the town but oh, he's a werewolf. That was a really compelling...

He's a vampire but he turns into a bat. That's just really compelling. And the transform... One of the things that is interesting to me is we do a lot of transformation. We do a lot of two-state things. I'm this, I'm that. And now, whenever we do a lot of transformation. We do a lot of two-state things. I'm this, I'm that. And now, whenever we do one of those, the question is, oh, do we actually want to use double-faced cards? Do we want to use transform?

Do we want it to actually turn into a second card? And the issue is, it's so compelling, it is so flavorful, that everybody wants to do it. It's very funny that when I first tried to do transform, I was fighting wants to do it. Like one of my, it's very funny that when I first tried to do Transform, I was fighting to even do it. There were people like, we should never do this. The back of the card should

always be there. And I had to fight to get it done. And now, I'm fighting like, whoa, whoa, whoa. We don't have to do this all the time. We can do this some of the time. Which usually is a sign of a pretty strong mechanic. Like I have to sort of hold people basing, okay, we can't do this too much. Because there's real cost that comes with double-faced cards.

There's logistical cost, there's printing cost. It's something that we don't want to do all the time. But, it's become very popular. As much as people were worried about it when we actually made them, the double-faced cards were very popular. Double-faced cards respond to other things as well, not just transforming. But transformation was sort of the first.

And it's one of the smoothest, cleanest mechanics. It's super flavorful and much beloved. Okay, the number two mechanic, landfall. Okay, so this mechanic takes us back to original Zendikar. So basically what happened, or go back a little further than that. So my boss at the time was a guy named Randy Bueller. And now we have a whole arc planning team. Back in the day, I was the arc planning team. I would just sit down. I would pitch to Randy five years worth of sets. Randy would thumb them up and then we'd start making them. We've evolved since then just because there's a lot more that goes into making sets and there's more market research and such. But there was one time I would pitch a five-year plan.

And one year I had so many ideas, I pitched a seven-year plan. One of my ideas I called Lanzapalooza. I really was fascinated by the idea that there were a lot of land mechanics and that I thought we could build a set built around land, much like we built

around multicolor or the graveyard or typo themes. Randy was skeptical or Randy was... He didn't know quite what to make of it, but Randy trusted me, although he did put it at the seventh set of the seven-year plan. But eventually, we got

there. Now, Bill Rose was not... He was skeptical. Maybe Randy was skeptical, too, I don't know. Randy at least put it on the schedule. Randy felt like we should be experimental and try things. What Bill said to me is, okay, here's what we're going to do. I'll give you two months.

You and your team come, like, sell me the idea of why to do a land set. And then if you do, we're fine, we'll make it. But after two months, if I'm not satisfied, we're going to audible and we're going to do something different so my team spent two months just knee deep in doing land mechanics we actually made 46 different land mechanics so the story I want to tell is of the 45th the penultimate land mechanic that we made

we made a mechanic called Land Short. There's a kind of rock jockey that, I mean, sort of is this mechanic, although it's a singular card. The idea being that it uses your land drop as a resource. Meaning, oh, well, if I don't play a land, my creature can get better. And the idea is you sort of use up your slot as a cost. Okay, my creature gets better,

and it doesn't cost me any mana. Oh, but it cost me playing a land. And the idea at the time was, look, there's times in which you just can't play a land. And so if you're careful with it and use it properly, you know, here's a resource that would be nothing that becomes something. But the thing we realized when we were playing is you've got to becomes something. But the thing we realize when you're playing

is you've got to be careful. You want to use it when you're not going to use it for something else, meaning most of the time if you can play a land, play a land. Every once in a blue moon, there's a reason not to play a land to use it, but you want to be very careful. But what we found when we playtested with people

is they just used it all the time. They would manuscript themselves. Like, oh, I have my creature, I can make it bigger. Okay, I won't play a land, I'll keep making it bigger. And then they would fall behind because their opponent was playing the land properly. Essentially, the problem it came down to was the correct way to play this

was when you can play a land, play a land. Don't not play a land when you play a land. Only very sparingly do that. And so what we discovered was if you understood how to play, if you were a really good player and you really understood the dynamics

of what you were doing, you could play it well. And there was an actual skill to it. But players who were unfamiliar, and maybe not even necessarily, maybe you were a strong player that just was unfamiliar, it just caused a lot of problems

and made for bad gameplay. Like, it incentivized players that didn't know better to make the game worse. That's the problem. So what we said is, okay, well, what if we inverted this? What if we stuck it on its ear? Right? What if instead of

rewarding you for not playing land, what if we're rewarding you for playing land? And there was a little skepticism at the time, because we're like, but like land and there was a little skepticism at the time because we're like is it good to just play land I'm like well let's just reward people and the moment I knew

we had something we were playtesting and it was late in the game and I was drawing I had no cards in my hand I'm drawing dead as they say I'm just drawing off my library and I remember going come on I remember going, come on land, come on land, come on land. I was hoping I was going to draw a land late game. And that was, that had never happened.

When do I play Magic where I'm hoping? I mean, every once in a while I'm trying to make an 8 drop or something, I guess. But it's not often when you're playing dead. Normally, the reason you want to draw a land is I have a card stuck in my hand. But when I have no cards in my hand that I want to draw a land, that's never the case, or very rarely the case. And it excited me. It said, oh, it just makes you care about something in a different way. And it made you, like, the fun thing is playing the land got you the effect. And so the more advanced players came to learn,

sometimes you don't play land because you want to save the effect for a different turn. But the default was to play your lands, which meant you didn't manuscript yourselves. And it really tapped into something that was really important. And the reason this is so high on my list is, this is the mechanic that really centered the idea of, you don't have to make people struggle. That part of enjoying a game isn't like tension. It's not like all gameplay has to be tension.

That every decision has to be, oh, it's a hard decision to make and I have to make a decision. That sometimes part of good gameplay is just making people happy because you're rewarding them for doing the thing they were already doing. There's this feeling when I'm playing Landfall and I play a land that I was going to play anyway. If this card didn't exist, I would play this land.

But I get a bonus. It feels good. And there's something really compelling about that. It inspired constellations when you play an enchantment. Magecrafts when you play instant or sorcery. Alliances when you play a creature. And I swear we'll do artifact ball one day.

There's just something fun about it that encourages, that is just... It really taught me that I think when you first start in game design, you really get caught up on the drama of making things happen and making tough decisions and then not that the game shouldn't have that the game can have tough decisions but this idea that the game is nothing but tough decisions is just wrong part of making a good game is making

a fun experience making something that people just are genuinely happy and part of that is giving little rewards for little things along the way of just making as they play like there's this thing that goes on and, well, sorry, I just got off topic. But in general, in game design, giving people little rewards so that along the way they're just happy as they do things just promotes happy gameplay. And that is something we should do. Okay, the final mechanic, number one in my poll.

And I thought long and hard of this. And as I said, I think in the very first podcast, if I did this on a different day, maybe be in a different order, a lot of the top ones are all really good. But I put Flashback as my number one. So Flashback came about, first showed up in Odyssey, which was a graveyard set. The story behind Flashback is a cute story.

I used to be the head judge, or I used to be the, I don't know if head judge is the right word, the main judge of the feature area. I would pick the players that played in the feature area, and I'd judge the feature area. I usually would have one or two judges helping me. But I ran the feature match area. So I watched a lot of really good players play a lot of Magic. And one of the things I would do, sometimes what would happen is some player would just get ahead and it was clear that they were going to win, and you're just sort of watching

go through the motions, but there's a lot of lines, the pro tour, you know, a lot of times, even though you're going to win, you want to be cautious because you want to make sure you're going to win. And so there's a lot of games where it's clear they're going to win, if it was a little bit more casual game, maybe they'd be a little bit more aggressive, but it's the pro tour, so they're taking every step to are clear they're going to win. If it was a little bit more casual game, maybe they'd be a little bit more aggressive, but it's the pro tour,

so they're taking every step to make sure they're incrementing everything they can to get the win. But what that meant is a lot of times, you'd have a player who was like, it looked like they were going to lose. They were in a losing position, but it just was playing out for a while. So what I used to do for fun is

I would give little special abilities to the losing player, and then I would like, okay, could they get out of this if they had that ability? And I would just make up fun abilities. One of the abilities I gave that was just entertaining me was, what if you were allowed to cast spells out of your graveyard?

Okay, what would happen? Well, look stuff in your graveyard. Could you dig out of this and you cast spells out of your graveyard? And so when we got into making a graveyard set, I was really fascinated by the playing cards out of the graveyard. And so when we got into making, we were making a graveyard set, I was really fascinated by the playing cards out of the graveyard.

So I was like, okay, well, the straightforward of this is what if there were cards that just you could play? And originally, I think the very first version, you just could play them a second time.

And I think we made them slightly weaker than normal, but that is you can play them once and then you can play them out of your graveyard. What we found was it was a little too good. The better what we found was

it makes them cost close to normal up front, and then kind of expensive. The second casting cost of them, the second cost was expensive. But that can happen late game, and the point is, I already spent the card. I'm just getting this free effect that's already there. So the fact that it cost a lot

turned out to be okay. Like yeah, you know, I find this effect costs one or two up front and maybe it costs six or seven on the back end but hey, I just wasn't going to have it so here's, you know, it was kind of a free spell in my hand and that even if it costs more, I could do stuff with it.

The other thing that Flashback had going for it that Cycling and Kicker didn't, is Cycling and Kicker are both kind of flavorless. You know, they're both words that kind of describe the action of what you're doing in a larger game sense, but they don't mean anything, really

in a flavor. But Flashback, one of the things that's fun is different elements of the game represent stuff. And your graveyard, among other things, represents the past. And so the idea that I'm coming back and I play the spell and I'm remembering the spell I played, so I'm playing it again, was pretty cool.

And, the other thing, by the way, that we learned before flashback, but playing your spell more than once is fun. Players, like, we had done it a few times. Players universally liked it. And so, and flashback also is like kicker and cycling. Just generally universal. I mean, it only goes in instant sorceries.

And you do have to be careful what kind of effects. We don't tend to like putting, we don't make instants with flashback that tend to affect the combat, just because people can miss it in the graveyard and then start up. So there's certain effects that we're more careful about. If we're going to affect combat, we tend to make it a sorcery, so you do it ahead of time, so the player's aware that you're doing it,

rather than not understanding that there's a trick that they can't see that messes them over. Anyway, that is why flashback. It's very useful, has a lot of design space. It's a trick that they can't see that messes them over, you know. Anyway, that is why Flashback. It's very useful. It has a lot of design space. It's a lot of fun. Well, I put it at number one. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the talk. I like doing this series from time to time.

And I really enjoyed the talk that I did. So I wanted you guys to sort of experience it. Once again, if you want to see the live talk, it's on YouTube. You can watch it. I take a little bit longer on the podcast. The talk was an hour. The three podcasts are an hour and a half. So if you listen to the podcast, you're getting extra details you can get in the talk.

But the talk has lots of pictures, which I can't do in the podcast. So they're both fun in their own way. But anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this. But I'm at work now. So we all know what that means. It means it's the end of my drive to work. So instead of talking magic, it's time for me to be making magic. See you guys next time.

Bye-bye.