Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - #801: Graham Stark
Episode Date: January 22, 2021In this podcast, I interview Graham Stark of Loading Ready Run. We talk about his and LRR's interactions with Magic. ...
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I'm not pulling out of my driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. Coronavirus edition.
Okay, as you know, I've been doing lots of interviews while I've been home. And today is yet another interview.
So, Graham Stark is with us today from Loading Ready Run. So, welcome, Graham.
Hello.
So, I'm going to start with the question I always start with, which is, how did you get into magic?
What is your origin story?
I have two, because I feel like as many people, maybe this is just me and the people I've talked to,
but as many people, I got into the game once and then got into it again, but more seriously, a second time.
got into it again, but more seriously, a second time.
The very first time was my local comic shop just had the cards for sale, and I thought they looked neat.
And I had heard that it was a thing that people
at school were interested in and were playing,
and so I bought a starter box of Ice Age.
And how old were you at this point?
I could not tell you.
I could do some quick math when I figure out when Ice Age...
96 is when Ice Age came out.
1986? Okay, so I was...
I'm sorry, 95.
95, I'm sorry.
I was 11.
Okay.
So, yeah, it was like the 60 card.
See, I didn't understand the concept that there was like the deck building aspect to it.
So I was like, well, I have this 60 card five color deck and I guess this is what I play with.
Wow, that was, you played a starter deck.
And not only that Ice Age starter deck, that is, I don't understand why you took some time off.
I'm off.
Well, it just, it's, I mean, generally speaking, I think that the other people at school that I was, again, air quotes,
playing with also didn't really understand.
There were people older than us who understood actually the game,
but I didn't.
So I was into it more for the collecting.
So I only stuck around for like Ice Age and maybe a set or two after that
in terms of like buying cards because i thought they looked neat and then you know then everyone i'm using
heavy air quotes here then everyone stopped playing magic right yeah magic was no longer a
thing that people played as far as i was aware and then it was dead no no more magic. Exactly. So imagine my surprise years later when I heard someone mention it.
And I'm sure you've heard this before as well.
It was the, wow, magic.
People still play that?
Huh.
And then, of course, the response, yes, Graham, it's more popular now than it's ever been.
And I was surprised. And that was even still years before
I came back to it again, which was at, thanks to a trip to PAX, the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle.
And this is something that we've talked about on our own podcast a couple times of sort of our
origin story is literally we were waiting in line for a panel,
and we had our PAX swag bags.
I know where this is going.
Yeah, they're like 30-card, very beginner, like not starter.
I don't know exactly what they were called, but they were like these 30-card PAX.
Welcome decks is what we called them.
Welcome decks, that's it. And so we just started jamming with the welcome decks while we were
waiting in line for a panel and then we got home from packs got home to victoria and that was in
september and scars of mirrodin was just about to come out and we figured well maybe we should try and do this and we
tried to do a thing where it's like okay we want to keep everything fair so
you can only buy X number of booster packs in a certain
number of time and that just fell apart immediately
but yeah so we were coming into it when
Alara and Zendikar were in Standard and Scars was on the horizon and started going to FNM at the local game store, Yellowjacket, in Victoria.
And then it's been just building since then.
How old were you when you returned?
I mean, okay, hang on, I got to do the math again.
When was Scars of Mirrodin?
I'm trying to remember my years.
Scars of Mirrodin was...
It was like seven or eight years ago, right?
More than that.
There was an eight-year gap, I think,
between Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia.
Is that right? Oh, no, no. There's like six years between Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia, is that right?
Oh, no, no, there's like six years between
Scars of Mirrodin and New Phyrexia, I think.
No, no, no, no, Scars of Mirrodin. Oh, I'm sorry, it was New Phyrexia.
Oh, sorry, I think it was Mirrodin and Scars of Mirrodin, sorry.
No, no, I was gone for a while. Again, I like,
I got a couple cards in Ice Age,
was like, oh, these Elder Dragons seem fun,
dropped the game for like a decade.
Yeah, but Scars of Mirrodin, okay, I'm
not doing, I mean, Scars of Mirage, okay, I'm not doing that.
I mean, Scarlet Mirage is, I don't know, 10 years ago?
2010, yes.
Yes, 10 years ago, okay.
Yeah, so.
Okay.
Mid-20s at that point.
Okay, so a gap.
Okay, so you start playing.
So what happens at this point?
Where do you go from there?
Well, I mean, like I said,
we start pretty heavily just in
kitchen table magic of just playing decks of like whatever cards we have cobbled together you know
we the the folks at the game store are very helpful and you know in explaining formats
they're like well standard is this and we're like yeah let's not worry about that let's just play
whatever and then eventually you know then some
of us would get into standard and then um i'd get introduced into draft which is by far my favorite
way of interacting with magic cards drafting commander but i i really enjoy limited magic
just for its uh variety and the challenge that it presents inherent to the format. And then, yeah, everyone sort of...
Like, eventually everybody would kind of splinter
into their own formats of things that they prefer.
Like, generally speaking, all of us who play Magic,
because not everyone in Loading Ready Run plays Magic,
but all of us who do
can sit down and play whatever format other people are playing.
But some people are like, I really just prefer Commander.
I really prefer Standard.
I like Modern.
I do Draft or whatever.
So everyone's sort of my uh magic progression from that point without couching it within loading
ready run because what we did at the time was so many of us got so involved in magic that we uh
you know we we made a video about it because we do we make videos all the time so can we back up a
little bit i think we we jumped something that's important because we were sort of talking about magic.
So in between you playing magic for the first time
and you playing magic for the second time,
Loading Ready Run happened, right?
How did that happen?
Why don't we talk a little bit about that?
All right, sure.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Let's explain what that is.
That's a really good point
because if anyone's listening to this
and they don't know what Loading Ready Run is,
they're going to be very lost.
So thank you for that.
2003 is when we started Loading Ready Run is. They're going to be very lost. So thank you for that. 2003 is when we started Loading Ready Run, myself and my partner in crime and business, Paul. And
he and I started Loading Ready Run as like a creative outlet for sketch comedy.
And so that was 2003. That was before YouTube, which is wild to say.
There's life before YouTube?
I know.
Isn't it weird?
It was a strange time on the internet.
It seems so trivial now when you think about it, but this is around the time when there were sort of head-scratching articles being put out online about the concept of video on the web right this this
notion of like but what if there were videos on the internet and imagine you know like now
it seems like a baffling thing to talk about but um so we we hosted the videos ourselves
and little tiny quick time files of terrible resolution on our own web server.
And one day, one of them got linked off Boing Boing and got 8,000 views, which was an astonishing number.
And it killed our bandwidth and cost us hundreds of dollars for the month because we were hosting it all ourselves.
And so that's the state of things we're in there.
And then as it progressed, we,
uh, we did the sketches. We did, uh, a sketch comedy short every week and we never missed a
week and we would continue doing those sketches for 11 years. But during those 11 years, we would
start branching out into other internet video content and stuff. And, um, then eventually also, uh,
streaming and then, so now in 2021,
I keep writing 2020 on all my anecdotes.
We are now in a position where we're making, you know,
lots of video content and streaming content all the time. And, uh, a lot of it involves magic and a lot of it certainly doesn't.
And it's just, you know, that's where we are now is a
internet content production house comedy troupe.
It's hard to describe exactly what it is that we do,
but we try to make people smile.
So one of the things that, when I think of Loading Red Run,
is that you have a very strong game element to it.
I mean, not that there's not other things,
but the through line to me is there's a very gaming culture
sort of aspect to all the stuff that you do.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Myself and James met in high school you know playing dnd uh so um
you know we have our sort of origins there and early days you know video gaming and tabletop
gaming was sort of integral to all of our social interactions and i think that was a big part of
why magic grabbed us so much because you know over the years there'd be video games to be like oh
this new multiplayer game is out uh you know let's all play that and so you know we'd all play it
but sometimes it'd be like you know one person playing this game one person playing another game but we all really liked when we could all get together and
play the same sort of thing and then when we rediscovered magic when we were at pax it was
this moment of like oh it's this is something we all enjoy and are all playing at the same time
that's really cool okay so what is the first magic content you
guys made so the first magic content we made was an episode of a show that we do called commodore
hustle which is a i guess you'd call it a sitcom i suppose but it's it's a fictionalized account
of us as ourselves right so it's us playing ourselves but like exaggerated ridiculous
versions of ourselves as the comedy troupe loading ready run making those dumb internet videos and so
a lot of the scripts for that are inspired by things that happen in real life and so we were
all playing so much magic and we were like well we should we should do an episode about we should do
an episode pardon me about us playing Magic.
So we did, and it's called It's Magic. And, you know, it was just sort of a lot of,
you know, a lot of jokes about us playing Magic the Gathering. And the
response online was really positive, you know from the magic the gathering community and then uh i don't know should i continue into sort of how that how that
expanded from that point sure so the community manager at the time was like whoa this is so cool
you know like oh this is great and like retweeted it and we're like hey can we like send you a
like, oh, this is great, and, like, retweeted it,
and we're like, hey, can we, like, send you a booster box of something, and, you know,
they did, and it was very nice, and
then
it was, this was
fairly close to
PAX East, speaking of
PAX again,
and so
we
went to PAX East, and
the community manager who had spoken to us before
said, you know, hey, you should come and say hi to
these folks who work at Wizards because they thought the video was really cool.
Was this trick, by the way, just for the community manager? Was it trick?
No, that was Mike Robles. Oh, Mike Robles. Okay.
Yeah. And so no that was microblast oh microblast okay okay yeah and um so the i met with a couple folks
uh from wizards who i don't believe are there anymore and i was basically like you know hey
i heard you really liked the the video that we did and they they went, yes, we do. And I went, great. What if we made more of those?
Like, I was very keen to push this notion of like, you know, we could make more things like that,
but just for you, wouldn't that be a fun idea? And they went, you know what? Yeah, that actually
would because we're just starting to move into a direction where we want to bring folks on to do video content.
So that same summer following that PAX East is when they brought us on to do Friday nights and they brought on Nate and Sean to do Walking the Plains.
Okay.
So that was all at the same time.
the planes okay uh so that was all at the same time and we did uh this is so it's a funny story because like i've talked before about how great it's been working with wizards uh over the years
in terms of like editorial stuff because you know people ask they're like knowing how how much you
know what do they you know obviously there's things you can and can't say and you know that's
that's true but we've got a great working relationship with them but uh for these first four episodes
this like initial mini-series run uh we asked we were like and so presumably you will want to
you know uh you'll want to to look at these scripts and uh you know like give them give
them approval and everything and they were like no no no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't want to impact your voice in any way.
So we just want you to make whatever videos you would make.
And we went, okay, well, then we will go and do that.
And so we went and shot and we scripted and filmed and edited and everything,
these four episodes and sent them in.
We're like, here we go.
We're done the four-episode miniseries.
And they were like, oh, great.
We have some notes.
And it was a really funny interaction because we were just like,
you should have told us this when it was only words on a paper
because now it's going to be a lot harder to fix.
But we did and we sorted it out.
And we've told that story before as well.
But ever since then, it's been, it's been much better.
So you mentioned Trick because we did those first four episodes.
Yeah.
And it was sort of like a handshake understanding of if the response is good.
Yeah.
Then we'll do more.
And the response was great.
You know, we've had people, we've had innumerable people over the years come up and talk to us about how Friday nights is sort of how they got into magic, which is an amazing thing to hear.
And so the response was really, really excellent.
And then we didn't hear anything.
Okay.
For like a year and a half.
We were like, okay, that was fun.
I guess that's cool.
Then I got a phone call from Trick,
who again was not one of the people I'd talked to prior.
And then so he introduced himself and was like,
hi, I'm now in charge of this department.
Would you like to bring the show back
and actually continue making it?
And so then I said, yes, we would.
And so we made that for Wizards for the next seven years?
Eight years?
Seven years?
Okay, so let's, obviously we do Friday Magic.
So you do some other magic stuff.
Let's branch out to how some other magic-y things happen.
Yeah.
We started, so now we stream a lot of a variety of different things we sort of run our twitch channel which is loading
ready run everything is loading ready run uh we run it like a little tv network basically where
we have a bunch of different shows and there's a weekly schedule and different hosts and themes
and everything like we have a show where we just play horror-based video games and one where we have a bunch of different shows and there's a weekly schedule and different hosts and themes and everything like we have a show where we just play horror-based video games and
one where we play minecraft and one where it's live improv or a diy show or something but the
first thing that we streamed was once a week james and i streamed playing magic online and we were
just we just did that for fun because we were like oh this seems like a cool
thing you know like we'd watched um new madanami uh back when kenji was doing his 365 day challenge
and we thought okay you know that could be fun so i think it was i think even then it was thursdays
james and i would just draft and magic online for a few hours. And then we started doing goofy draft videos with a site called MTGO Academy.
And that's where we started picking up some steam there after the success of our Innistrad plane hat draft,
where we picked cards in an Innistrad draft based purely on
how good we thought the characters' hats
were. Yeah, there's a strong hat theme
in Innistrad for those that didn't know. Very good hats
in Innistrad, yeah.
And from
that, we started doing our
podcast,
Tap Tap Concede,
because the joke
there was
when we played on Magic Online when it was
clear that we were about to lose the game
we wouldn't concede
but we'd let our opponent like go to attacks
or something and then we'd tap
two lands to make them think we had
something that was going to save us from this
obvious dead on board scenario
and then scoop just to
just to make them feel something, you know? Um, and we just, uh,
today actually at time of recording this podcast,
we've just recorded episode 343 of that podcast.
Yeah. Um,
and so then as we started doing more streaming,
we, uh we did more
weekly
magic, playing
more and more magic online and that particular
show, that time slot has now transitioned
to Magic Arena
over the last couple years
we've added a paper magic
stream, which we call the
Friday Night Paper Fight
and obviously that's in in
in these current times that's some of that is still paper we do some some amount of webcam
stuff but you know some of it's arena and we're all we're all making do and then uh also we have
another magic podcast called north 100 which is all about the canadian
highlander format or cam lander uh which is uh just a super fun format you should you should
check out north 100 if you're into the idea of like a a format that uh plays like constructed
cube is one of the ways that they refer to the refer to the format and then a couple years ago i say a couple
years ago what is time probably like five years ago now we pitched wizards on making uh on doing
like a a release event um in in advance of the actual pre-release and that that was how the
the loading ready run pre pre-release was born that was how the Loading Ready Run pre-pre-release
was born. And we've
been doing that ever since. And that's a big
sort of stream event. And it also goes up
on YouTube as well. But it's a fun sort of celebration
of the launch of the set.
I had a chance to do a pre-pre-release.
Well, the line wasn't technically a pre-pre-release
I think, but
it was the equivalent. So for Unstable,
I said the deal I struck Unstable, I said,
the deal I struck with my wife,
I don't travel a lot,
but I said, whenever I make an unset,
she's like, okay,
you can do some traveling to promote the unset.
So that's the trip I came up to you guys and it was a lot of fun.
Yeah, that was amazing.
So I'm going to talk a little bit
about what a pre-release is
and we can talk a little bit
about this particular one
just because I was there.
So the idea is I got there the day before, and then we did a draft.
Are they all drafts?
Generally, they're sealed.
They're sealed, okay.
Because we're trying to sort of mirror the pre-release thing.
But for Unstable, it's intended more to be drafted.
Correct, yes. so we did a draft
right yeah yeah unstable had a not a pre-release but it had a release event and we had recommended
to be drafted because it was too hard to balance it both for sealed and for draft and we're like
look people just complain draft and so we made it for draft but then we drafted on the
the first night before and then you you stayed up all night editing our draft. Yep.
And then, I guess,
during the course of the day,
there's eight matches,
and so each person,
there's eight people,
and each person plays twice,
and then there's usually four Loading Red Red people
and four not Loading Ready Run people.
That's a typical structure, yeah.
Yeah.
And then, I i guess it's been
different recently but yes right it's correct so i and i played i think each of the non uh
we played one like i played you and i played what did i play i put one in a person um
but anyway so it's it's hard to keep track of because Wedge was playing Cameron and called you in as his partner
for Two Heads or Better.
Yes, I played Cameron
in the middle of a two-headed giant
Shaharizad game.
That also happened, yes.
Yeah, the thing there is...
So the people that were invited
that weren't the Loading Red Run people
was me, Wedge,
and then Megan Maria
from Good Luck High Five.
And, right, there was a...
So Wedge was playing, and he used Spike to go get a Scheherazade.
Yeah.
And then he...
We had one.
We had a copy of Scheherazade as an ornament, basically,
on the set
that we broadcast
our stream from
and Wedge was like
uh okay
I want to get
hand me that card
and then
before he cast that
he had cast
better than one
which is
it turns
you turn into
a two-headed
uh team
so he brought me in
and then he cast
the Shaharazad
so then we played
the sub game
in the Shaharazad
so anyway it was this is all on on youtube you went to track it down but uh
it is one of the most yeah it was one of the silliest magic games i've ever played it was a
lot of fun yeah um yeah so we play all day long everything streamed and um i got to see you guys
your big all your setup and everything um and it was a lot of fun. So it was, and I dressed up like a squirrel.
Well, yeah.
I mean, obviously.
Because you had dressed up previously, right?
Yeah, for Unglued, I dressed up like a chicken.
And for Unhinged, I dressed up like a donkey.
So anyway, apparently all unevents I have to dress up.
The thing is, I don't even know if we had necessarily cleared that with you ahead of time.
Oh, no, you did not.
No.
But we were like, we understand this is a thing, and we have acquired a squirrel costume.
I show up, basically, and you guys, they fly in, you guys drive us to your place,
and then they go, one quick question, and they pull this out, they go,
how do you feel about wearing a squirrel suit?
And I'm like, okay, I game so uh and then i wore it i think i wore it for the introduction you you we we uh we did an introduction i wore it and then i wore a little bit later in the day but i didn't
wear it the whole the whole whatever eight ten hours very warm but uh and i occasionally put on
the hat for from time to time so yeah um and then the next day, I did an interview with you, and I did one with Megan Maria.
I did a bunch of podcasts up.
Yeah, because you were there, so why not?
Yeah.
So I have been on one of your podcasts.
Yes, that's true.
So now, see, you return the favor.
Now you can be on my podcast.
Aha.
Perfect.
So in Loading Ready Run, for the people
that don't know, you do the most
these days, most, at least all
premiere sets and some of the supplemental
sets. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We did five,
I want to say, pre-pre-releases
in 2020, and
there's more coming this year.
Actually, I'm not sure exactly when this
episode of Drive to Work is going up, but the Kaldheim PPR is coming up.
Yeah, this will be about two weeks from us recording it.
Okay, so pretty soon then?
Wait, this goes up two weeks since we record it?
Yeah.
It might be today.
Oh, how's that?
That would line up.
That would line up incredibly well.
What's two weeks from now?
You know what? Let's not worry about it okay um okay so uh i'm not i'm not too far away
from work but there's a uh one or two more things i like to talk about um so this next thing i want
to talk about is not actually a magic thing but it's such a cool thing that i said to talk about
anyway um so talk a little bit about Desert Bus. How did that happen?
What is that?
Oh, yeah.
Okay, Desert Bus.
Okay, I'll give you the quick version
as much as I can.
So Desert Bus for Hope
is a fundraising charity marathon
that we at Loading Ready Run and a bunch of other folks combine forces to organize
every year that raises money for Child's Play, which is a charity run out of Seattle that
supports children's hospitals all over the world to make it be less awful to be a child in hospital.
less awful to be a child in hospital. And we do that by entertaining people on this 24-7 marathon that runs for about a week. And the conceit of it is that we're trapped in this
space, essentially, playing Desert Bus, which is the worst video game ever made. It was a minigame designed by Penn & Teller
on an unreleased Sega CD Penn & Teller video game. And in Desert Bus, you drive a bus from
Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada at 45 miles an hour in real time. So it takes eight hours. And it's a perfectly
straight road, there's no traffic, there's nothing to do, you just drive. But the bus has a slight
pull to the side, meaning that you have to hold the controller down and keep correcting with one
of the directional buttons to stay on the road, or you will drive off the road and your engine
will overheat. So you can't just tape the controller down, you must interact with the controller for the entire eight hours.
And when you get to Las Vegas, you are rewarded with one point, and then the bus turns around
and drives back. So the game literally doesn't end, it just goes for an infinite amount of
time. And so the bit is that we play this game until people stop donating money.
And we started the first one in, oh gosh, this was what, our 14th?
I need to double check this.
But we started the first one a very long time ago.
And 2007 was the first one. All right.
Because we wanted to do something...
The Game Desert bus had just been...
Because it was never released,
but a review copy had been found and put online,
and the Sega CD doesn't have any copy protection
because the system was out before people had CD burners.
Right.
And we wanted to do something funny with that,
and we figured that
we could do something to raise money
for Child's Play. And then
Paul, who I mentioned earlier,
was like, what if we did both of those things?
And so we just
figured we'd turn on the stream
for one weekend. This is before streaming
was as big as it is now. And we're
just like, okay, let's see if we can raise
$5,000. And we raised eight hundred and five dollars in the first year
and we were like well i guess we're doing that again next year and then we just did the uh 2019
one in or sorry the 2021 in uh 20 in november and uh we uh once all the final numbers came in,
we raised over a million dollars in the 2020 edition.
And how long?
How long were you driving the bus?
We went for six days, 20 hours.
Wow, that's great.
Yeah.
We do take turns. So, you know great. Yeah. We do take turns, so
people get to sleep.
But yeah, it was a wild event.
But it
goes as long as people participate.
Is there a time in the future where that's all you do
all year long?
The way that it works is through the
magic of compound interest.
The first hour costs
$1, and then it goes up by a percentage
every hour okay to mean that it's self-limiting and to reflect that as it gets worse for us right
it costs more to keep us going sure and so you know by the end of it it's like you know like we
just crest to earn one more hour and it's's like, okay, now the next hour costs $45,000.
So it's self-limiting in that way.
It can't really go for much more than, like, I think if it went for a full, like a full solid seven days,
then we're earning like one and a half million dollars for the charity, which we would do, but
we would also like
to sleep. All I know is some
billionaire one day just gets fascinated to see how long
he can have you drive and then we'll...
Yeah. I would like
to see that. But anyway,
so we're almost wrapping up here. Is there
any magic aspect I didn't hit? Anything you want
to touch upon before we wrap up for
the time?
I mean,
oh,
actually,
hey,
fun fact,
one of the
Magic the Gathering
pieces of content
we've made
that most people
don't know about
is there is a series
of how to play
Magic the Gathering
videos starring
Jimmy Wong
that you can find
on the Magic website
and we made those videos.
Yeah,
I also know
we had done
one of the, i think it was the
rise of the old drossy um uh we did a show when we uh when it came out at uh we were at
pax and we did a big presentation and you were you you were you put that together so yeah the the
the stage thing at pax for Battle for Zendikar
with Will Wheaton and Ashley Birch.
Yes, yes.
And yourself.
And myself and Doug Byer.
Yeah, and Kathleen and I wrote the script.
Yep.
Yeah, that was super fun.
Yep.
Anyway, so last question before we wrap up today is,
I always try to remember the first time I meet people,
and what I learn is, it's the first time i meet people and what i learn is it's the first
time i remember meeting them and there's a previous time they met me that i just don't remember um
for example so you went to the party at um it was the innistrad right the the packs that you
are talking about would have been the innistrad that by the way that was the party where we did
the reveal of the double-faced cards and nobody understood what we were explaining
yeah like we showed a card we flipped it over it was another card they're like yeah we don't By the way, that was the party where we did the reveal of the double-faced cards and nobody understood what we were explaining.
We showed a card, we flipped it over, it was another card.
They're like, yeah, we don't understand what's going on.
And I'm like, they're both on the same, they didn't quite get it.
That was an amazing party.
I don't know, the people I was hanging out with understood it because they physically spun around.
We did, they did spin around.
But I had physical copies of the cards so I could show people.
That's the first time I remember.
I think I met you.
I think I met you at that party.
Well, so I guess following on with your lead-in, it depends on whether or not that was before or after the Community Cup.
Oh, you were at the Community Cup.
Did I play in the Community Cup you were at?
Yes.
We actually, you and I played.
Oh, did we?
Did we?
Okay.
I beat you with an Infect deck.
Ooh, that's good.
That's some style, Wayne.
That was the Community Cup that Modern was introduced at.
Okay.
Yeah, I only played in one Community Cup, I believe.
I mean, I...
Usually they were there and I came to say hi to everybody,
but I think I actually played in one of them.
That was the 2011 Community Cup.
Uh,
so when did Innistrad come out?
I think,
I think that beats Innistrad.
I think Innistrad came out like 2013.
Right.
So yeah,
I guess,
I guess we would have met there,
but that was a wild weekend.
Yeah,
that was,
I was on a team with Marshall.
Okay.
Marshall Sutcliffe and LSV was on the community team as well.
And we got, like, we did eventually,
the community team did eventually win,
but it was a little touch and go
in the team constructed portion
because a young Gavin Verhey had made all the team,
had made all the decks for the Wizards team,
and they were very strong.
Yeah.
Yeah, I remember the R&D would spend time on the construction stuff.
That's where they'd spend their time, is building decks.
Yeah.
Well, anyway, it was fun having you on the show.
But I can see my desk, 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. So we all know what that means. It means at the end of my drive to work.
So instead of talking magic,
it's time for me to be making magic.
So thanks, Graham.
I'm glad you were here.
And it was fun talking with you.
Thank you so much.
And sometime soon, maybe today.
Well, I don't know when.
But you guys, there's going to be a pre-release.
So if that hasn't happened yet, tune it in.
And if not, there'll be another one in Strixhaven or whatever.
And one day, hopefully hopefully i'll be back hopefully i can make another unset and then
i'll get a return again so oh please yes and you can find out all of that on our twitch which is
loading ready run we have a non-magic comedy youtube at loading to Run and a magic YouTube at LRRMTG
and yeah, come and
say hi. We've got a Discord.
We're a welcoming, positive community
and we would love to have you.
Okay, well thanks everybody.
I'm glad you could be here, Graham.
And to everybody else, I will see you all
next time. Bye-bye.