How Popular Is Magic: The Gathering IP? | Dies To Removal 45 

I can't believe you'd go and post the 44 previous Dies to Removal episode in the first three minutes of the show. Incredibly brave.

Wizards did have a passionate knowledgeable writer in Brandon Sanderson who is a huge fan of the game. Unfortunately they managed to burn that bridge almost instantly when they decided to get greedy and remove free access to the short story he wrote for them. He had written it for free on the condition it was free to read, and after it was well received wizards removed the online posting of the story and made it available as a full priced novel only. I believe he has stated somewhere that he has no intention of working with them again as a result of bad faith from WotC, though I may be incorrect on that. Unfortunately in recent years it seems WotC is totally fine burning long standing good will in the name of short term profits.

the duffer brothers who created stranger things originally wanted to have magic the gathering in the show but had to change it to d&d because it was set before magic existed. they are only kind of into d&d but as kids they got into film making by creating magic the gathering fan films.

The therapist behind the camera: "Are these 'Wizards of the Coast' in the room with us right now?"

the Dominaria United set symbol is literally the Dominaria set symbol and the Invasion set symbol merged together. I think this theory holds water.

There's a movie called dogs VS Cats. The opening bit of this episode was giving some strong Half in the Bag vibes.

I cannot believe that prof didn't know about the critically acclaimed film Cats and Dogs 2: Revenge of Kitty Galore.

I think a lot of the issues WoTC has with a multi-media approach to the MTG ip boils down to one thing. Management. Now, hear me out. If you look at the majority of WoTC leadership, and to some degree Hasbro as well. Very few have "Media" experience, many of them are focused on systems, financing, business technology. They are good at making number (of dollars made) go up. They are not good at brand management, multi-media strategies, film/movie/tv rights negotiations. That's why a lot of the big moves we have seen them make with MTG are just "turning the dials up" on the existing player base. More sets every year, more supplemental products, secret lair, more commander decks, premium commander decks. They are good at making players spend more, and spend more often. Those are easy dials to turn. They are not good at anything besides that, and largely when they have been, it's been spurred on by individuals within WoTC. Mark Rosewater, Gavin Verhey, The individual story writers/website story team. It largely feels like any vague semblance of a multi-media approach has been an effort by individuals struggling to work within the confines of WoTC, rather than a team being empowered by the company to do so. Why are MaRo & Gavin largely the PR face of any given set? There should be a separate PR & media team. The fact of the matter is, it's very easy to increase MTG profit by doing what leadership knows best. Adjust the number, adjust the product line. It's very hard for them to increase profit in a way that they have no familiarity with and that would be very expensive, by using a multi-media brand approach to increase the consumer base. Until we see more executives hired to WoTC with multi-media/brand management experience, or the announcement that they plan expand, empower, or grow a team that focuses on that for the Magic IP, any efforts will likely fail.

Fun fact! There's a Japan only arcade game called Lords of Vermillion. It collaborated with mtg! You can use Garruk and Liliana in it!

MTG monopoly except each player is Phyrexian and you aren’t “buying properties”, you’re “besieging planes” and you can build up your “compleat” sets that you collect.

A big thing I've seen with MTG is that there are not any characters that I identify with. I'm sure others feel different, but it's not like when I played the Dragon Ball Z TCG back in the day and I wanted to immediately make a Gohan deck. I now proxy my commanders to a different character to make it more fun for me. Magic is going at break neck speeds that keeping up with the lore is just too much.

Saying that about the Strixhaven animations, I loved the college promos that Game Knights made for each school

It's not super well known, but there's actually an ongoing manga about the early days of MTG in japan called "Destroy All Humankind. They Can't Be Regenerated.". It's a coming of age romcom kinda story about a high school MTG player learning to get really good at magic to compete with his crush, and it depicts the strategy and duels of MTG really well. You should read it and make a vid about it Prof!

I keep seeing the Mirrodin Pure, vs New Phyrexia thing mentioned. It wasn't a 'surprise'. They came out of thed gate saying it was going to be one of two sets, and they gaver us the name of both, and just said we arent telling you which. It wasnt "Oh the next set is Mirrodin Pure' and then they snuck it in. We knew from the start it would be one of two, and they even gave two separate promos out for it depending on which side you wanted to win.

To the point of WotC having too much of a grip on their IP: In the very comics you mention here, they wanted to show a scene of Jaya Ballard drawing mana from the mountains. Tapping lands, basically. And WotC literally stepped in and told them not to do that. I'll say that again: The people doing the comics wanted to include a scene that references a game mechanic within the lore, out of a love for the game probably, and WotC didn't want them to do that.

Magic IP was the biggest reason I wanted to play this game. And the lore can be really captivating and interesting. But it always feels like WotC doesnt trust Magic's identity to be good enough. And Universes Beyond feels like the ultimate backstab to Magic, the only way to get people interested is to make Magic a fad with random cross brand promotion. Cant wait for Secret Lair Kraft Mac n Cheese

Sorry Prof. There is an early 2000s movie named "Dogs and Cats" Also, in Tom & Jerry, we have our wonderful supportive character named Spike. (American Bulldog)

Popular enough to make the company more and more money than ever before. Not popular enough to actually leave much of an imprint on modern pop culture aside from trending on Twitter when wotc does something gross or hateabls

Hey, I never noticed that the TCC motto is "SEMPER EME SINGULAS"... love it!

I think it would be perfect if they did one 40-60 minute episode for each set that showed the world and major events and characters. but that's probably asking too much for wizards

The IP by nature becomes less valuable as there’s no way to be familiar with it outside of playing the game. You can tell by how many crossovers come to MTG, versus MTG crossing over to other games. It’s because there’s no new people just into the lore/vibe of mtg anymore

The worlds of Magic are it's strongest aspect to me: Innistrad, Mirrodin/New Phyrexia, Kamigawa pre and post cyberpunk, they have so many interesting stages to set a story that have their own developement through set design. The biggest problem to me is that the characters are not actual characters; they're just concepts for characters that have stock personality traits associated with their color identity. What also tends to happen with what I've read of the many short-stories for Magic is that the voice of the writer often comes through rather than that of any given character, meaning that there's no consistency to any character's thought processes or mannerisms, and that each character in any given story just blur together into what feels like the writer using those characters as puppets to tell the story they want to tell instead of having the events of the story be motivated by the characters. I don't think the lore of Magic is lacking in any way, but the characters are so bland because of everything mentioned that it's difficult for someone unfamiliar with the Magic universe to latch onto it. I think it might be important to have characters that someone might identify with or want to familiarize themselves with and learn more about as a "point of entry" into Magic lore.

I believe Prof is talking about the 1997 Microprose PC game which was called Magic: The Gathering but apparently people refer to it by the world it was set in, Shandalar. And I think it was just mostly base set cards and later introduced more cards in another expansion. But you could build amazing broken decks with multiples of Power 9. A property I loved was called Culdcept Saga. It was monopoly and instead of putting down houses or hotels you put down creatures from your deck. It was fantastic and thought it would have been a really good reskin with Magic.

Theres actually one instance of magic giving its IP for something else to use a romance manga called "destroy all humankind they can't be regenerated", it uses 90's magic cards directly and they have full 90's style magic duels. I don't know the licensing of it but it doesn't have a official English translation of it.

I can perfectly see Karn traveling to fix something as a nice introduction of the Starcraft IP. Karn: Look, I found a a strange bug! Jim Raynor: That's a Zerg larva, kill it or I'll do it! Karn: No I will take care of it! Besides, what's the worst that could happen? *Everyone yells: "phyrexia"* Karn: I learned my lesson from that! *fast forward* Next set: New Zerus

By the time Double Masters 4 comes out, the price will be so high that Wizards might as well send you some raw lumber to justify the price. Some 2x4s with your 2X4, as it were.

The editing has absolutely sold me on these new episodes, they're so good

Man, this episode made me go back and watch the WAR trailer. My goodness, it still gets me right in the feels.

Both cinematic trailers for the recent innistrad sets were very good.

I think the IP of MtG WAS popular, but honestly I'd say over the last 10-12 years there seems to have been a BIG shift in how they treat the Magic world. Back in the day they used to have cycles of stories, and the story used to MOVE ONE, but WotC changed this to have the story based around the main planeswalkers and NEVER MOVE ON from there! There is some logic of this strategy, but overall the game suffers as the you miss out on epics like the Weatherlight saga.

Vince is simultaneously both underselling the Horus Heresy novels from the Black Library, *and* overselling them: there are actually *54* individual numbered volumes in the "main" series (a mixture of novels and anthologies of short stories/novellas) covering points up to the start of the actual Siege of Terra... but only *6* Siege of Terra novels (with a 7th coming out "soon") and a pair of novellas, they haven't actually made 50 of those (and that is very much not the plan, I think the full count will be somewhere in the region of "10 or so"). There's also a Horus Heresy series he didn't bring up though about the Primarchs (17 published/announced novels and 3 anthologies, so far - there will be at least 1 more novel), and then 3 more Horus Heresy "character novels" (with presumably more to come). And that's "just" the Horus Heresy stuff: in addition to all the "books and series about various 40K factions/conflicts", that get the normal 40K branding - of which there are... many - you have Necromunda novels/anthologies, the "Warhammer Crime" novels/anthologies, and Warhammer Horror novels/anthologies (though that one at least is split between stuff set in 40K and stuff set in their fantasy setting(s)) - it came out a number of years back that, at the time at least, the Black Library was overall more profitable than the parts of Games Workshop making the ostensible "main line" product of the table-top games. It's very hard to imagine a world where non-card game uses of the Magic IP ever come remotely close to that feat, based on how they've been using the license over its history.

Id love a monopoly secret lair

To add on how powerful a running TV show would help Magic in the long run we just need to look how successful Yugioh based on how popular the show is and how it affected sales. Along with that it can provide a very powerful tool to expand the lore, make something small like basic lands feel larger and more lived in, or focus on a small part the universe like how the old CHAOTIC TV show handled it’s universe. Best part if they use that method is they could definitely time it to each season (12ish episodes) to each main set.

The best use of magic's IP in resent time was Children of the Nameless by Brandon Sanderson and the idiots at wizards didn't even kept it available I think that if wizards will give Brandon the freedom to continue tell the story of the characters he created in Children it would be for the best

Also with how popular commander has become in scope of a 4 player more casual game id love to see a return to the planechase format, I never got to play it physical but it was on one of the duels of the planeswalker games and it was really neat

The main reason WOTC doesn't make more books is because of control. They want to control every aspect of the story line. That's not how books are made, the writer creates the story line based on his or her imagination, i also believe the writer doesn't have the rights of the book. They get a one time fee. I believe that's why no writer wants to make a book and instead we get horrible short stories. WOTC wants to to control to much.

I'd love some MtG minis to paint! (I guess there is always 3d printing)

Vince should start a RU-vid channel. He sounds like a fun guy.

Re MTG trailers: The Japanese Anime trailer for Kamigawa: Neon Dynasty was incredible (and im not even an anime fan) Easily the best one with War of the Spark.

I feel like I just watched everyone of your...podcasts? In the opening skit and I loved it!

No love for the Crimson Vow cinematic. While not as good as War, it was certainly a good one. Edit: As I realize now I even forgot about the Midnight Hunt cinematic. Which is funny because that's the set I was more excited about of the two because werewolves.

It would be a nightmare for any writing studio to try and keep up with the release schedule the sets are under which currently manifests in an endless Preview Season and that's why we don't get any sort of story tension or buildup like Brian is discussing early on in the video. Beyond that, it's pretty clear that WotC focus groups out anything interesting and tries to please some imaginary 'average' audience so much that they end up missing everyone instead. With the WotS novels they managed to both anger longtime fans and become a laughing stock for people who might have tried it out which is why we've seen this huge push afterward to incorporate other IPs. WotC is pulling all of these outside narratives into the game system because they can attach to those stories instead of actually developing their own outside of flashcard-action-tidbits which largely occur in the background behind everything else...

I can’t find the video now, but there was a ~45 minute video here on YT about Nico Bolas’ lore and I was gripped the entire time. There’s actually a lot to work with when you dive into it but I do find it odd that there’s never any attempt to do so.

Apropos of cats and dogs, Homeward Bound was a great film from my childhood. Watched that VHS all the time.

If there was a novel in a bundle for every set like in the past I would look forward to every single one. And not feel set overload because I'd have a coherent story to sink my teeth into. I'm just discovering all the old MTG books and am going to start with Rath and Storm, and the weather light saga. So excited

I can really think of four pieces of self published content created for MTG on MTG's IP I've consumed: Office Hours, the skits and music videos of Remy (which are mostly on the game aspect themselves), Spice's analysis on Police Abolishionism and Eugenics through MTG characters and Brandon Sanderson's novel. Of those, the only one that feels close to what Kenobi and the Prof were talking about is Sanderson's. And that needed someone like the man himself ASKING WotC to make the novel FOR FREE. AND THEN THEY SCREWED HIM OVER.

Been catching up on Dies to Removal all day while at work, awesome :)

IMO the thing is, it's only until very, very recently that Wizards has begun to treat Magic as an IP and expand it to an audience that's beyond it's core audience. For better or for worse, Magic has always dedicated it's story and content for Magic players and people who love Magic- but it's never really tried to cater to people who otherwise don't necessarily *know* Magic. That's why you get these ads and trailers that feel so cookie cutter- they're trying to reach those kinds of people. And that's not really a bad thing- what I think people miss out on is just how high the barrier for entry to recognizing Magic is. It's like if pop culture interests were a circle and the most common way to enter a circle is through an intersecting circle, then Magic is a circle that has very few intersections. I've been into anime, comics, games, and trading card games for most of my life but it's only for the past 5 years that Magic has really fallen under my radar, and it was because of Magic Arena providing an accessible entry point into the game. Magic is popular to the people that know it, and there are a lot of them, but sometimes you see how many people inside a circle and think that it's already a lot and miss just how small it is compared to the number of people *outside* the circle. The problem with Magic's recognition as an IP is that has had a lot of other media over the years, but most if not all of it like the novels & comics caters to the already existing fanbase. In R&D terms, Magic is like a parasitic mechanic that cares only about itself and not how it interacts with anything that's not Magic. Street Fighter can have Secret Lairs because Magic players are likely to be Street Fighter fans, but the reverse might not be true. But Street Fighter can do that AND have cultural staying power because they've done the homework. There's Street Fighter movies, anime, merchandise, etc. Or take Pokemon- there are Pokemon fans that *just* play Pokemon GO, just play the console games, just collect the cards, just watch the anime, or just collect the merchandise because they're cute. But there are more than a dozen entry points that can potentially lead people to become a Pokemon fan and engage with the IP in multiple ways, each one potentially benefiting the others. Media mix strategies are so successful because they do just that. But with Magic? There is no Saturday morning cartoon, no RU-vid series, no anime, no non-card game video game that random people can stumble upon, then think "Hey, this Magic thing seems pretty cool and the characters are neat enough, maybe I *should* try playing the actual card game even if I have to learn how to do it." The good thing is, the core Magic product itself is already really, really strong as anyone that plays Magic can attest to. It has so many compelling characters and settings waiting to be fully explored, and I truly feel it's one the greatest games ever made. WotC & Hasbro just needs to create more and more ways for everyone not already in the know to care about it, which I feel they've been doing very slowly over the past couple of years. But even for something like with Marvel and the MCU, it took over two decades for them to get to this point, and they started with having to sell their film rights to a bunch of studios because they almost went bankrupt in the 90's. It takes time. Magic as an IP can make it big, but they really need to introduce more ways for people to interact with Magic that's not with a card game.

Clearly not popular enough that they feel the need to borrow other IP's to help make it sell.

But... Gaea's Cradle WAS printed onto a planeswalker, and actually improved. Xenagos can add red or green.

"Cats & Dogs" was a movie about cats being evil take-over-the-world organization and the good dog "secret-agents" trying to stop them, all while pretending to be house pets.

I might be missing the joke but Xenagos the reveler is a gaia's cradle on a planeswalker and better with it adding green and red to the pool

It sounds almost as if Magic: The Gathering lore would benefit from the age old comic of a Crisis event. The point in which some massive multiverse event results in us jumping to a multiverse jump/reset and we start from scratch with story.

Been saying for years, if you want to do a magic series, make it an anime. Won't have to worry about finding the right actors and won't have rubbish CGI.

I love how honest you are with all your videos!

In fact they did print Gaea's cradle on a planeswalker. My favorite gruul boi

"Won't be as good as Arcane" which is true and there are few shows better than that. I have such a hard time convincing people to watch it because it is one of the best things to ever come out of western animation. Also Arcane took about 10 years to complete and they were willing to create a niche show that didn't need to appeal to everyone. Hasbro will never allow a show to be niche in the same way Arcane was because this is the same company that holds the Transformers IP. Unless there's someone at Hasbro willing to throw money at something and let it sit to grow overtime, which they aren't due to the nature of corporations and a cyclical leadership cycle, it's not gonna happen. Riot Games still as their founders on staff who are willing to sit and wait to make something good instead of something to prove my worth in the company. They also have a cash cow of a really quite good and fun game (ignore the user base. the game is fun) which allows good shows like Arcane to happen. Please people watch Arcane. It is simply phenomenal.

Yeah, WOTC really needs to just catch up to how fandoms work and just go all in. That and hire folks that are competent at writing intriguing and meaningful narrative, invest in that specifically. Also, I sincerely hope there is somebody that watches this podcast and takes notes.

the editor quips are quickly becoming my fave part of TCC vods. great hire!

Fun fact, according to IMDB, the Magic the Gathering show is set to come out this year!

I'm a fairly new player to Magic. I've tried a few times to get into the storyline, but I can't figure out a good way to do that outside of RU-vid explainers. I actively avoid MOBAS like League of Legends, but thanks to Arcane I know more about the lore than I do Magic. Even if it doesn't hit that level of quality, shows like DOTA and Rage of Bahamut really bring people into the world. All the show needs to do is exist and not be terrible.

I enjoy both games. My play group for 40k petered out due to "adulthood " ... a few of us die hards continue to play MTG ... the novels in the 40k universe is dark and layered. Great video guys.

Hey Prof, just wanted to say that I listen to this before going to bed and the new sound bits (music, samples, etc) while cool and flashy make it hard to relax. I usually set a timer to fall asleep with the talk, to have sth interesting to listen to after a day of work.

As always Prof and Vince have a great dynamic in this video. Love knowing Prof also enjoyed the old Master of Orion games!

The story leading up to War of the Spark, a novel written by Django Wexler that got published through an email newsletter (of all places) is one of the best Magic novels written _ever_ and it got like no press and no reach 🙃

i find this episode extremely interesting because i didn't even know magic existed until a few months ago and now i love it. What makes D&D and League of Legends more popular and recognizable than Magic?

There is a manga called Wizard's Soul - Koi no Seisen that is basically the writer's love letter to Magic. It's original enough while maintaining basic playability and really gets into ideas like combo versus aggro and the difference between control and prison strategies. One of the better moments is when during a game a player attacks with the equivalent of a 1/1 and the defender shrugs it off because it's literally the smallest creature possible, only to show through bounce and removal and counterspells, over 20 turns, they're dead. Basically 20 panels of "...and attack you for 1". Lots and lots of fan translations out there to check out.

I love the Prof’s AD&D 2e collection on the bookshelf behind him. The man has good taste!

This is the Best, Satire and Serious ...Keep it up Prof!

We had Manastrike, which, even though was a very flawed game, it was genuinely pretty awesome. Nobody knows it even existed and died. One of my favorite mobile games of all time.

Homeword Bound is my favorite dog & cat movie. Haven’t seen it in years but it was on heavy rotation during my childhood.

I would really love if they adopted the Whispering Woods book into a series. You know, the classic Greensleeves discovering her magic, the drama of the Wizard's plans, etc.

The thing about brawl, I was super excited for it and had all the cars I needed for a Tezzeret the schemer instant win deck. Built it, was super happy with it, no one to play with and it rotated out before I had a chance to get any real games. It was a sad day for me

If I could make a comment that might be completely out of my depth. I think the setting is actually a pretty good reason why you don't see a lot of fanwork about MTG as opposed to other IPs. Why would I make a movie about Innistradt, when I could just make one set in the usual Gothic world? Why set a story in Theros as opposed to just writing my own Greek myth? Why go to Strixhaven when I can do Harry Potter or any of a half a dozen other mage school settings out there? Why put my fan project in Dominaria at all? Is Benalia really that interesting? If I wanted a pseudo-medieval fantasy nation Gondor and Westeros both have way more depth and personality in the setting. And I think people are drawn to that. And part of that is just how the game is set up. And honestly for the game that's a good thing. You can bounce around to a dozen different worlds with completely different aesthetics and issues and make a kick ass card set. But a lot of these settings are going to be pretty skin deep and often drawing from other more well realized sources of inspiration. I think only Ravnica really comes out of it looking really deep and its own unique thing. What sets Magic apart and made it special has always been the magic system, with the color wheel and mana. But that's a game mechanic. You don't see people making stuff about 40K because they like the method for determining movement and range of the pieces. They write a lot about 40K because it owns its very particular oppressively dark setting that is pervasive through all of it billion planets. People love the factions and the brutality and so they are invested in recreating it. For MTG the best the color wheel gets us is personality tests to determine which Ravnica house you belong to. Other than that, we have to rely on the characters. And on average... they're fine. I guess. I've read more interesting characters, I've read less interesting. Some are better than others. But on the whole, they're, you know, fine. And that's not enough.

I just want to say whoever did the thumbnail art did a great job; you both look really cool!

Magic’s strongest aspect is it’s settings. You don’t get very much character-based lore, but each card is piece of worldbuilding for the plane.

To be honest, I've never really been grabbed by the MTG IP. I like the cards, I like playing occasionally. I like collecting pretty things. But the only story elements that really grabbed me is the D&D ones. :) I'll show myself out.

For the most part, the Magic IP isn't doing anything you can't find elsewhere. High-concept theme park worlds have been a genre staple since before Star Trek in the 60s. Other anthology IPs like Final Fantasy and DnD have iconic creatures they can use to set themselves apart from other universes. If you look at the playable cast of Magic Legends- the most recent attempt by MtG to break into video games- the only indication that the characters are from Magic is that the black preacher has the symbol of Avacyn on his robe. Is the Dimir assassin even wearing Dimir's logo?

There was a time that you could buy a "fat pack" for the new set that included a full visual catalog of the cards in the set and also a 250 to 400 page paperback novel related to the set.

The RedLetterMedia bit in the beginning is fantastic.

TBF, Riot is really really f'ing good at multimedia. They spend a lot of time focusing on making really good things that elevate the main brand rather than shallow attempts at promotion or cheap cash grabs.

I mean, the long and short of it is the MtG IP isn't actually well known. Magic is known, and I'd say a lot of people know about like a Black Lotus. But people don't know Jace, or Urza, or the Weatherlight, or Elspeth, or the Praetors, or Eldrazi or anything else. It's just with so many planes and so many characters, you don't get to connect with the characters. And playing the game the only connection you get is if they've been mentioned in some flavour text and their own cards- it's not a lot to get their personality. While playing League or Dota or whatever else your character is commenting, talking the whole time, and interacting with other characters. How do I get attached to Ajani when Ajani hasn't been in a set since War of the Spark? Or how do I get interested in Garruks redemption, when he just appeared in Eldraine and hasn't been touched since? If I want to have fun in Dota and feel like Tidehunter, I just play a game. If I want to feel like Ajani, I need to construct a specific deck and try to get a game in whatever format (only to beaten down because my decks not competitive) And then you have every different plane, and nothing really ties them together. It's just the planeswalkers fighting over different themed arenas. Magics themings are very very loose, so it's harder to grasp on to them. EDIT: The Street Fighter set was little to nothing to do with the new game still.

Love these, many great points made as a lover of story telling and movies it's would be more than amazing to see an MTG movie or even a TV show or mini series with 5 minutes episodes.

The biggest problem is there's so many good and different stories in MTG. Like take Marvel and you ask "Who is the main villain?" and a lot of people will say Thanos. There's not just Thanos though. You got MODOK, Galactus, Dormammu, Kang, Knull, and that's just super villain territory. MTG you ask "Who is the main villain?" and War of the Spark that's Nicol Bolas. Zendikar it's Ob Nixilis, and there's the Eldrazi. There's a ton of lore to go off of. MTG it's like DC comics dilemma. You got a lot of 'infinite multiverses' it's just a matter of pick one and tell it. Just don't Batman V Superman. Go the Arcane route whatever that is for MTG.

I'd like to add to that first bit: Failing to bring over to the west the AMAZING MTG manga being made in Japan. The Destroy all Humanity It Can't Be Regenerated manga is SOOOOO good. Very disappointed they haven't given us an English release yet.

"destroy all humans they can't be regenerated" is a great manga that is about playing mtg in japan in the 90's. It is a fun read. And it's physical copies have promo mtg cards. I think it would be cool to see you read it and give your opinion on it.

I rewatched the intro like 5 times. perfection.

When is the shuffle up and play coming out?!!!! Love those videos I’m brand new to magic just got my first deck and I’m loving it! Im 27 so kind of young I guess… the shuffle up and play is awesome because deff helps to learn and I love how you guys take your time and explain everything so helpful

WotC abandoned their IP years ago in favor of fast-cash marketing schemes and over-saturated product cycles

The LRR series of FNM-related shorts is what got me out of kitchen table and into competitive Magic

Remember the last time Karn went back through time? That sure worked out well.

When are we getting a compilation of all the skits for Dies to Removal?

I disagree with the Prof's assessment of "old Magic story is too convoluted." I think the success of the Witcher netflix show indicates that people are more than willing to digest a complex, lore-rich story that is entertaining.

Magic could actually make a great Elderscrolls, or Dragon Age, or Final Fantasy type game, even a more difficult, rugged Souls-esque game; or even like a Diablo A-RPG type game... I mean it could have been good.

The thumbnail art is next lvl. Well done guys lol.

I love that Vince is a huge Warhammer 40K fan. This adds so much for me as a fan of both MTG and 40k. Thanks for this episode. I REALLY enjoyed this.

Unfortunately, I've found there's a large group of players who are resistant to MtG being anything more than a card game.

The Phyrexians were trounced by the Sarpadian thrulls when they tried to invade the continent. The Phyrexians studied the thrulls and ultimately concluded that once the thrulls wiped out other sentient life on Sarpadia and found nowhere else to expand, they'd turned inward and focused on their own improvement. New strains of thrulls had been bred repeatedly, their power growing unchecked for many centuries. By the time of the invasion, the thrulls had become so powerful that the Phyrexians were not even a threat to them. The Phyrexians abadoned their Sarpadian campaign, fearing that if the thrulls ever developed an interest in expansion beyond the confines of Sarpadia, that the entire multiverse might be at risk. Dominaria Compleat? More like Phyrexia Enthrulled.

Thank you for more content as always Prof, always great to see you with Kenobi!

that yep yep editing gag was incredible