Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy, with set designer Gavin Verhey [S1E9]

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Ty, I'd like to tap your blitz ball ass.
Excuse me, you're titest blitzball ass your commander.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Ah, yeah, right the sloop.

Speaker 1 (00:10):
I will move to combat and attack with my jumbo kactoir.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yikes, you've got fun Factor. Two old gamers reviewing old
video game magazine reviews. I'm Ty Schalter, He's a Moher,
and we're two professional writers who grew up loving the
video games and video game magazines of the nineteen eighties,
nineteen nineties and two thousands. Every episode we take a

(00:36):
critical look back on the games media that, for better
and for worse, inspired us to do what we do. First,
go to Funfactor pod dot com and follow the show
on your podcatcher of choice. Leave us a rating or
review on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your media.
We'll read the best, kindest, funniest, and most insightful ones
on the air in our letters section, and today we
have a special episode. We always ask you to please

(00:58):
consider becoming a member of un Factor Ultra. If you
are not a member of the review crew tier, you
are missing out on monthly premium episodes where we get
special interviews with incredible guests on different aspects of gaming
and gaming culture, usually tied to or surrounding the magazines
that we're reading, maybe with a little bit of you know,
contemporary relevance as well. And this month we decided, you

(01:24):
know what, let's just give the people a big taste
of it. So, rather than unlock a bonus episode we
recorded months ago, we have a really hot, really relevant
topic here. Aiden. It's Magic the Gathering meets Final Fantasy,
their new set, and just I'll let you introduce the guest.
I'm so excited I can't even say his name.

Speaker 1 (01:44):
Yes, and I'm really excited for this. It might seem
like a you know, if you're here for the retrogaming mags,
might seem like a weird episode to start with, but
I promise we tie it into the regular topics we're
talking about. I have a magazine related surprise for our
guest for Tie, and I think I'm really gonna love this.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
I didn't know this, I know.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
I found it and it blew my mind and I'm
gonna blow your guys mind. So today we are interviewing
on this special bonus episode of fun Factor, lead set
designer for the Final Fantasy expansion in Magic the Gathering
Gavin Verhey, and it is so much fun.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh my gosh. Gavin is incredible. Not only like one
of the top top creators for Magic the Gathering, he's
also one of the best ambassadors for the game, a
great content creator. He has a YouTube show, Good Morning Magic,
and we are super super excited to talk to him
to pick his brain, but also to give you guys
a taste of just the kind of stuff that we
do for the bonus episodes. You know, I know it's

(02:45):
asking a lot. There's a lot of shows that asking
for your financial support or an independent media. We rely
on the supporters and the audience, and we are trying
to give you folks things that you will love to
have and trying to yeah, just just throw your stuff
at what you're interested in, what we're interested in, what
we love. Again, as Aiden said, based on the conversation
of the discord, a lot of the people who love

(03:06):
our show love this Magic the Gathering set.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Let's go. Gavin's one of the most fascinating people I
could think of to talk to, and you will find
out he's a long time retro gamer as far back
as Ty and I and can keep up with anything
we throw at him, So I think you're really going
to enjoy this episode.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Thanks for listening, absolutely stick around through the break. When
we get back Magic the Gatherings Gavin Fania.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Today, we have a bit of a fun off the
beaten track episode for you with a very special guest.
Magic the Gathering has been part of my life for
as long or longer than I've been a Final Fantasy fan,
long as I've been playing video games, really, and the
two games, digital video games physical trading cards have a
long shared history of influencing each other, from Triple Triad's

(04:10):
debut and Final Fantasy seven to Queen's Blood and Final
Fantasy seven rebirth. Card games have been a staple in
the Final Fantasy series for a very, very long time,
no doubt introduced to the games thanks to the popularity
of Magic the Gathering in the nineties. Growing up, if
I didn't have my nose in a gaming magazine, I
was likely playing Final Fantasy or sorting through my Magic cards.

(04:31):
Full circle, We've got a brand new Final Fantasy set
released for Magic the Gathering. It's like impossible to overstate
how colossal this is for me as a lifelong fan
of both franchises. And today I am exceptionally pleased to
welcome to fun Factor. My friend and development lead on
the Final Fantasy set, Gavin Verkey, Welcome, Gada.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
Hey, so glad to be here, Ty, So glad to
be here. Aiden. You know this that's very special to
me and much like you, I spent.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
A lot of my childhood and youth playing Final Fantasy
and playing Magic, so get to work on this was
really a dream come true for me.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
So I'm really new to Magic. Actually I started playing
almost exactly a year ago. My son had gotten into
it when he was like, you know, a tween. Now
he's like nineteen out Laws of thunder Junction got him,
you know, kind of into it. So I think I
want to get back into Magic, and I flipped it
and so I started to get into it and then
Bloombero hit and that was like a bomb went off.
And our family, so my wife and our two older

(05:26):
kids are like a Commander pod. We play every week,
you know, probably twice a week sometimes, just totally into it.
And when news this set dropped, I was like, they
are going to get all of my money. This is
just such a great idea.

Speaker 1 (05:41):
I've been playing, Like I said, for a lot longer.
But it's funny you bring that up, Tie, because for me,
like Bloomboro was also the set that got my little
kids my kids are a lot younger than yours, but
got them excited about it because cute animals, and it
was one of those things where like I was really
excited and loved that set so much, and I could
hand them cards and be like, hey, look at this
adorable bunny, you know, and they'd be like, oh, yeah,

(06:02):
that's really cool. And then from my older one, I
could be like, and now look at this awesome dragon,
and she'd be like whoa. And then there's dinosaurs, and
then there's like everything they love. So that's sort of gateway.
I think we'll kind of get maybe into that. But
every fan has something about the game, like some set
or something that drew them there. Initially for me way

(06:23):
back when it was you know, just I started playing
during ice age, and it was just there's a cool
teacher at my school who started a club and got
us interested in It's kind of history. But Govin, before
we get to the cards, I want to get to
the games, because, as you said, you've been a lifelong
fan of Final Fantasy as well. And one of the

(06:44):
sorry and one of the things that's very obvious looking
through the new set, is that you and the design
team are obviously deeply knowledgeable fans of Final Fantasy. So
what is your history with the series? What was the
history of the design team?

Speaker 4 (06:57):
Like, yeah, for sure, Well, the first game I ever
bought when I was a kid, really, the first time
I ever convinced my parents to buy for me when
I was the kid was a Final Fantasy one on
the NES right, and so it goes all the way
back for me. I remember sitting at my cabin with
my Nes and Final Fantasy, and it was so funny
because I hadn't really figured out I could only play
it at the cabin, so we were I was only
allowed to play it while we were there, you know,

(07:19):
And I hadn't really figured out the whole save situation.
So I would just play through the opening over and
over and over again, and I fought Garland so many times,
which honestly is like very appropriate. You know that I
kept fighting Garland over and over again until eventually I
figured out the same feature. At one point, what I
realized I actually started doing is just leave the NES
running wall. We would leave right and so we'd leave

(07:40):
for weeks and come back and then would still be
on right where I left it. So maybe not the
most efficient use of electricity, But so anyway, I grew
up playing Final Fantasy. I played, of course Final Fantasy
three aka six when that came out too, and I
absolutely loved it. And then you know, eight, nine, ten
I had had a great time with So basically at

(08:01):
four played the heck out of four two I think
on one of the handheld remix on the advance, I think.
So I've played. I've played the games growing up. They
were a huge part of my e life. Me and
my brother played them together. We look forward to everyone
coming out and so on. After ten, so I played,
you know, the ones who were released in the States

(08:23):
and the first ten. After ten, I fell off a
little bit, just you know, I went to college and
other stuff going on, et cetera. But then I, you know,
I got back in eventually. Now I've never touched the momos.
That was one thing that I just never got into.

Speaker 3 (08:38):
Which one of the right.

Speaker 4 (08:39):
Things about being on this team is everyone's able to
fill different amounts of knowledge on Final Fantasy, right, So
I never played the momos in working on this project.
I even went back and played some of the old
Final Fantasy games to like refresh myself. But I was like,
the momos are a dark well of which I cannot
put my time into, right, Like, I have a lot
going on, I can't suddenly commit a thousand additional hours
to Final Fantasy fourteen. Although I'm sure it's a phenomenal game,

(09:01):
I personally just can't do that. But I'm really fortunate
that my team members already had right, people like Dylan
de venni Put has been playings thousands of hours of
Final Fantasy fourteen over years, and even Daniel Holt, who
led the Commander decks. Actually I never played fourteen before,
but played it for about two hundred hours to just get.

Speaker 3 (09:21):
What he needed for the Commander Deck.

Speaker 4 (09:22):
So I was stranded by folks that couldn't form me
and tell me about what to do and themos. But
the rest of the games I'm more or less had
covered after going back and catching up on a couple
of them.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Yeah, one of the things I really noticed during the
launch and like reveal of the set is they are
Final Fantasy fans, and there are Final Fantasy fourteen fans
and sometimes those van diagrams overlaugh a little bit, but
they seemed like two distinct sort of reactions, and I
think you see that represented in the set because fourteen
has such a large footprint.

Speaker 3 (09:50):
You absolutely do.

Speaker 4 (09:52):
And it is interesting, right, there are some fans who're like, wow,
fourteen's got a lot of repid representation, people that are like,
I know all the games, but fourteen. And you have
the fourteen fans who are you quite excited and glad
and loud to be here. I'm just like, this is amazing,
and I feel like it's their stuff for me, I
think so some of the biggest wins is, you know,
in many ways, fourteen is like the playground of Final Fantasy, right,
A lot of things that are and the other games

(10:12):
have some manifestation in fourteen, And so the biggest wins
to me are things that you see and you're like, oh,
that is It's maybe it's set in fourteen, but it's
a thing that I recognize from one of the other games,
which I think is always a nice connection.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Yeah, there's a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
I'm similar to where I played Star Wars Galaxies like
twenty years ago, and I went take this away from me,
do not. I cannot do this. I have too many
other things going on, and that was like the worst
MMO ever according to many people. So I can't play
the good ones for sure.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
It is it is good to know your own limits sometimes, right,
and know that if you walk down this path, uh huh,
there's a path to which there might not mean no
returning from.

Speaker 1 (10:50):
Absolutely fourteen is funny because I've played like I've beat
the main story quest. I've probably put one hundred and
fifty one hundred and twenty five hundred and fifty hours
into it, but I don't feel qualified to talk about
it despite having played it for like way longer than
I've played Final Fantasy sixteen or Final Fancy four you know,
like I've put so many hours into it, but when
I talk about the set, I have to be like,
I don't really know that much about food Lancy fourteen.

(11:11):
It's a big one all on its own.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
So Gavin, let's talk about the card games in Final
Fantasy First, what do you think drove the creation of
Triple Triad and Final Fantasy A. Do you know that
there's any connections explicitly to magic?

Speaker 4 (11:27):
Well, I mean in a way implicitly, they're kind of
is so. Card games, as I'm sure you two know
many of the listeners probably know, are huge in Japan.
When you go to Japan, the card games are everywhere, right,
It's not like in the US. It's like, I'm not
gonna call it a niche thing. It's certainly not niche anymore,
but it is not as widespread, right. It's like you
can talk to people that are like, I don't know what
a card game is, or may I have heard about

(11:48):
one card game at some point. But in Japan card
games are everywhere, and the market knowledge of an average
person is like most people know what a card game
is and then that they're played. So in terms of
like lineage, I think that like Magic directly inspired Triple Triad. No,
I don't think so, but Magic was the first card
game and inspired all the other card games ergo. In

(12:09):
a way, Magic legit Trible Triad existing, which I think
is pretty cool.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
How satisfying was it to get the Triple Triad card
in the set?

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Well, very It was one of those things that we
knew we had to do, right.

Speaker 4 (12:19):
I was like, I have a card triple Triple Triad
in fact, I doubled up because I had Triple Tried
from Final Fantasy eight as its own card, and then
the card collection side quest as another card game reference there,
which of course transforms into the Magic's card.

Speaker 3 (12:33):
As soon as I learned that with an option, I'm like,
we gotta do this.

Speaker 1 (12:37):
But yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:38):
Originally Triple Triad was exactly the design that got printed
in Ether Drift called push your Luck is three red
for an enchantment every turning you flip your top card
you can play at this turn. That's what it was
for a long time, and eventually ether Drift had interest
in that enchantment and I was like, yeah, I think
we do better on triple Triade anyway, I think we
can do something a little more spicy, and I ended
up with this big Triple Triad where you kind of

(12:59):
play little mini game of trying to have a higher
man of costs and all your opponent's cards every turn,
which I think is it was a great flavor hit right,
and I'm always looking for those place as reckon turn
good to great, and that's a case of turning good
to great.

Speaker 2 (13:11):
There.

Speaker 1 (13:11):
Did you play Queen's Blood in Profinancy seven Rebirth No.

Speaker 4 (13:14):
I'm familiar with Queens Blood, but I didn't play it myself,
and really, you know, I only had so much time,
and so I really tried to focus.

Speaker 3 (13:21):
On the mainline games, right, that's what we were making.

Speaker 4 (13:24):
That the set out of plus Rebirth wasn't out at
that time anyway, but really it kept my focus mostly
on the mainline games.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
So I know of.

Speaker 4 (13:32):
It, I know kind of how it works, but I
don't have like a defamiliarity of.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
One of the things that's kind of interesting to me
about it is that it really leverages being a digital
card game of like a player versus a computer or
an AI, and like it's kind of it's it's hard
to explain it for time. I'm not going to go
into explanations of the game mechanics, but it kind of
has this right to left gameplay that would be very

(13:59):
difficult to replicate in person because both players need to
play right to left, but they're also playing towards each other,
so you know, cards would be upside down for one
of the players or whatever. Similarly, like Triple Triad Quad Missed,
which I can never remember its English localization name, and
Magic's Alchemy format are also very difficult to replicate in

(14:21):
physical form. How does this sort of environment change the
way you and the Magic design team think about designing cards,
designing gameplay rules, designing you know, themes in sets.

Speaker 3 (14:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (14:33):
Absolutely, I mean this is going to sound kind of glib,
but it's also just very true. Like we're bound by
the laws of physics and the laws of honesty in
paper games, right, So, unlike what digital can do, we
have to do things that will work with all the
matters other pieces, right we one of our great advantages
we've been around over thirty years, and it's also one

(14:54):
of our biggest challenges because everything has to be interconnected.
It also work with a card that was printed thirty
years ago. And sometimes there's one card that a dark
deal was struck for a long time ago, and now
the rules are written in a certain way, and there's
a lot of things that you can't do because there's
no way to prove them.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Right, So play this card only if your hand contains
no lands.

Speaker 4 (15:15):
All right, Well, I promise, I promise hand has no lands,
and I promise weird that I had to play lands
every turn after that, you know, So there, you can,
of course do all kinds of gimicks like revealing your hand.
But there's there's things like that that you have to
be able to think about as you're designing. You can't
just there's lots of digital mechanics, like you know, pick
a random card from your deck with manicausts three or less,

(15:37):
that are not really plausible to do in a physical environment.
Like theoretically you could do them you look through your deck,
put reveal your whole deck, pull out everything that has
manicasts three or less, rollo dice, but it's not really
gonna happen in a game. So there's just stuff that
you don't get to do because you're a physical game.
But the flip side of that is there something you
get to do because you're a physical game that are advantageous.
When they talk about in design that is not immediately

(15:58):
obvious is what I call kineticism, where sometimes just the
movement of cards in your hands and on the battlefield
feels good. It's hard to describe, and it's really hard
to describe as you've played Magic a decent amount, but
like moving cards in certain places, or the satisfaction of
like Pony of Removals all out their creature and having
it you know, go off the boarder and we do that,
this feels a certain way, and trying to recapture that

(16:21):
feel is really important. So it's all kind of stuff like,
there's so many things like that we think about. That's
only the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker 1 (16:26):
But paper, you're talking about chaos or.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
Yeah, that is a hard one to do. Digital I'll
tell you right now, we don't.

Speaker 4 (16:37):
We don't make that a sterarity cards anymore, but they
are they are to replicate on digital magic.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
Let me tell you, Magic's mechanics have been used as
the basis for NRPG once before, in a ninety seven
PC game colloquially known as Chandlar. That kind of makes
me think about the interplay of different things we would
call role playing games. I've built a Obecca Brute Chronologist
deck and I was kind of play testing it with
my family right then, and I said, ah, yeah, I

(17:02):
put some fight spells in, and they're like, why did
you put fight spells in? I was like, well, because
I read up on the lore of Obecca and I
guess she really likes getting in fights and likes the
finer things in life, you know, And that way I
can like Voltrono and my son's like, why would you
voltron her? She's got a tap ability. I'm like no,
but see then she doesn't tap, so I can put
stuff on her and then get her in fights and
make treasure tokens and then still use the tap ability, right,

(17:24):
because that's what she likes. And my daughter, I mean
goes you play Magic like you're playing D and D.
I'm like, yeah, I don't know, Like this is just
I'm drawn to that, right, Like I like the lower
of the characters and like being able to express that
that way and then go out and then do the
actual thing and play the characters the way they're meant

(17:44):
to be played.

Speaker 1 (17:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (17:45):
So, like now we see this with Final Fantasy. You're
playing Magic kind of playing Final Fantasy at the same time, right, Like,
how do you think this is going to continue to
grow for the future of Magic the Gathering as it
kind of weaves in and out with some of these
other RPGs.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
Wow, Yeah, there's so much to think about there.

Speaker 4 (18:01):
You know, it's funny what you say about suiting up
at Obecca despite it not making sense to do so.
One thing I love about Magic so much is it's
not one game. It's like a hundred games, and you
can play it in so many different ways, right. And
you have people who are hyper competitive who will try
and win every tournament and play as optimally as they
possibly can. And you have people who build Commander decks

(18:21):
that are like, I want to just be lore accurate
to this character, right, winning and losing.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Who cares?

Speaker 4 (18:26):
I just want to play a game and show you
that I did this lore accurate thing. Or I want
to retell a story somehow, or I want to do whatever.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
Right.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
There's a whole long path of things that a magic
card and deck can do, and so it's really cool
hearing about.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Exactly your thing.

Speaker 4 (18:38):
I'm like, well, I read up on the lore and
this is what it would do, because the number of
players would be like lore, Who cares, I just put
cards in my deck that win, right. So it's always funny,
and as gag game designers, we just think about that
a lot, Like when we're building a Commander precon, for example,
you know, okay, well we're making a I'll just make
something up. Let's say we're making a pre con around

(18:59):
Jason and it's got a Jase commander and all this stuff.

Speaker 3 (19:03):
Whatever.

Speaker 4 (19:04):
If you have spells in there that are like Tezer,
It's Gambit or whatever, Vivian's Rage or whatever.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
The case might be.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
It's just like it's weird to be like, well, I
thought I was playing Jase, Why does my thing say
Tesser or another great example, here's actually a really good
example of the time this actually happened. There used to
be a video game called Duels of the planes Walkers.
Now if it wasn't an RPG like Chandelar, was the
aforementioned Chandelar, which is of course a classic, but Duels
of the planes Walkers was had some RPG elements and
that you would like play magic missions, then unlock more

(19:34):
cards to play more games with people and so on
and so forth.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Really really delightful experience.

Speaker 4 (19:38):
And when we were building the decks for Duels of
the planes Walkers, like, let's say I'm building the Chondra deck. Okay,
Chandra is the fire mage uses fire. That's great a
card that it was a classic example of don't put
this in the Chandra deck is lightning bolt because Chandra
does not do lightning. And if you're new and you're
coming into magic and you're learning through Duels the planes Walkers,

(19:58):
drawing lightning bolt in the deck is the wrong message?
You want to say that for overall Xeric's deck, And
this is the time where we actually applied this to
pretty good effect. And if you look at all the
decks in duels of the planes Walkers, generally they really
well mirror that.

Speaker 3 (20:09):
Character's power set.

Speaker 4 (20:10):
It was really really important to us, So we think
about that stuff a lot in design. So when it
comes to what it means for magic and like how
all the history of fantasy kind of builds on itself,
I think this means we have to take it really seriously.
You know, like our players are really invested in our

(20:32):
characters and our worlds. We want to treat them with respect.
And the same is true who do these collaborations. Right
when we do a collaboration with Square Enix, we want
to treat Final Fantasy with the respect that it deserves,
and we want to make sure that it feels authentic
and like what's really going on. And getting to collaborate
with them on this project was really cool because they treat.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
It with the same respect that we wanted to.

Speaker 4 (20:51):
And yeah, so it all kind of has had a
long lineage and no matter what we do, we want
to make the best version of it we can.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
One of the things I really think interesting looking at
the set is just thinking about the ways that magic
sort of spawned out of Dungeons and Dragons and similar
like games that Richard Garfield was looking at way back when,
which go back to Jack Fans's Dying Earth series, and
like Final Fantasy one took its magic system right out
of Jack Fans's work, which was where Dungeons and Dragons

(21:20):
got it from, and then the seeds sort of that
replicated in the set thirty five years later or whatever
has been really nice.

Speaker 4 (21:28):
Well and in many ways, right Final Fantasy one is
based on Dungeons and Dragons in many ways ELEVENS, M,
D and D.

Speaker 3 (21:33):
So it's totally a full circle kind of moment.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Yes, yeah, absolutely, and it feels really satisfying to see that.
And of course, like for those who who don't know,
Magic Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons are both under the
Wizard of the Coast brand, so it really is like
this full circle coming together of all these these you know,
gameplays systems across various different types of games that all
share these origins, also share these ideas and as you're saying, like,

(21:58):
player expression and all of them is so important, right,
Like Magic and Dungeons and Dragons and Final Fantasy have
always been really strong in allowing the player to express themselves.
And I think that's, you know, one of my favorite
things about all three of those. Before we get into
sort of talking about the set itself get into more
kind of technical details about magic, I want to hit

(22:20):
you up with an easy one, both of you. Who
in the Final Fantasy universe do you think has the
chops to top eight of Magic pro Tour? And why
is it? Cipher?

Speaker 3 (22:30):
Oh?

Speaker 4 (22:30):
You see funny you were gonna say Cipher from f FA.
My first thought was Quistas from FFA. I feel like
put in the time, put in the research one. She's
you know, she's she's a she's a smart one, so
I feel like she would be a pretty pretty fierce opponent. Fortunately,
you know, Final Fantasy has no shortage of like people
who are whose power is I am smart and I
want to put in put in time, So that's great.

(22:52):
There's also canonically a line in Final Fantasy nine from
VV talking about card games, so I feel like VV
might might have a shot.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
VV was the first one I thought of yeah, you know,
Cipher's just so intense. I feel like Chistas would be
the one who could top at a Magic pro Tour.
But she's she'd kind of like John Finkle it where
she's like, yeah, I could, I could top a pro tour.
I could go do that this weekend where I could
go do something, you know, like anything else, because he
can just let you know, like h.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
Or she's not very committed to it, you know, yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:19):
Because yeah, her ambitions are just like, you know, it's
almost too easy for what about you tie?

Speaker 2 (23:25):
Yeah, No, I thought of Hojo almost immediately. Also, I
mean it's low hanging fruit, cheap, that's that's the thing.
He'd get kicked out, he'd play band cards, he'd do
something horrible. I mean, any of the sids technically right,
But I'm also drawn to I think eight because it's
said in the maybe the closest to like future sci

(23:46):
fi timeline, so many of these characters you could so
easily play the game. Plus it's where Triple Triad has
actually played. So I think that Sid a headmaster, a
school headmaster, having.

Speaker 1 (23:55):
That that kind of chops that wouldn't surprise me.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
I'll tell you who play and like all the tournaments
and loses them, complains about it and has like a
lot of bad beat stories as Emmett Selk.

Speaker 3 (24:05):
That guy is just like.

Speaker 4 (24:06):
Playing in every EVERYQ and he like always, you know,
loses for top top eight and he's really salty about it.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
And then there's Red thirteen who shows up, plays like
a round and just drops and kind of hangs out
by the merch table like bumping into friends the whole time.

Speaker 3 (24:22):
He plays like Stompy every time.

Speaker 1 (24:23):
Yeah, exactly, I'm Mono Green Stompy for sure.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
Well, before we get too far down this road, because
we could spend the whole show doing this, We've got
to take a break, and when we come back, we
are going to look at some reader mail right here
on fun Factor. Welcome back to fun Factor, where two

(24:57):
old gamers review old video game magazine reviews. Of course
we want you to review us. Do we get a
full five point zero in fun Factor? Leave us a
review on Apple Podcasts and we'll read the best, funniest,
kindness and most entertaining ones on the air.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
Okay, Gavin, Whenever we have a guest on the show,
we always put them to work a little bit. It
wouldn't be fun factor if we didn't have some retro
magazine content. So right here in front of us, I've
got issue twenty one of a classic Magic the Gathering
magazine called Duelist number twenty one, which I believe your
colleague Mark Rosewater was like the editor in G four
maybe during this day, yeah, maybe before. Usually, like Ty said,

(25:33):
we do lettermail. But I've got a fun little surprise
for you. Can you turn to page ninety eight for
me and describe to the readers what you find there?

Speaker 3 (25:39):
All right, let's do it. I'm so excited.

Speaker 4 (25:41):
I mean, the Dualist for anyone doesn't know, this is
like you know, nowadays everything's online, of course, but back
then you would like a new set would come out
and you'd wait for the duelists to come in your
mail so you could hear all about.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
It, which is kind of crazy. But see what we got, Well,
look at this.

Speaker 4 (25:54):
It's a review of Final Fantasy seven inside of the Duelist.
That's unbelievable. It's not like an AD, all be clear,
it's not an AD. It's like a full on, a
full on review of what's going on with this game
and tells you all about the stories it's got Chocobo's
talks about its successes and its failures.

Speaker 1 (26:13):
It's actually a pretty good review. Maybe Ty and I
can review this review later, but I was tickled to
find this when I was looking through dualist content to bring.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Up The wild thing I'll call out too is I'm
looking at it now.

Speaker 4 (26:25):
The person who wrote this this little section is what
nick Guy named Tom Wiley, who would go on to
also work out Wizards and has had quite the history
of playing Magic as well, so it's not just truly
written by someone who's deep into Magic. I like the
summer here at the end, just so you know what
the final review is for everyone out there curious. All
in all, the game is solid and certainly worth the
fifty odd hours will take to finish, plus the time

(26:47):
you spend at the Golden Cloud Chocobo Racetrack.

Speaker 1 (26:50):
Outstanding stand and that stands a test of time, right,
Like I would say, follows he said one's probably worth
people's worth people's time.

Speaker 4 (26:56):
I would say so, I would say, one of the
most iconic video games of all time is worth a yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
Solid for sure.

Speaker 1 (27:01):
I think it's impressive. Like this is like a full page,
Like it's probably a five hundred word review. Of Final
Fantasy seven, and it's like it goes in depth. It's
a good one. If it showed up in one of
the gaming mags we were reading for the show, I'd
probably give it pretty high marks. My favorite part, though,
is there's this cutout with some like data about the game.
So it says Final Fantasy seven Squaresoft Coscamasa California format,

(27:23):
Sony PlayStation, and then it has contact information for Chris
nice Debt has email address at Fleischmann dot com and
then his phone number, and then you were a URL
for the PlayStation website, like, who's Chris nice Debt. Why
would somebody reading a review need to email him or
phone him? I don't know. Different time.

Speaker 4 (27:44):
Yeah, can you imagine just a time in the world
where you just drop your email address as like the
contact for Final Fantasy seven in a magazine.

Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, this is a normal thing to do, no problem.
I'm not going to get five million emails like.

Speaker 1 (27:56):
A nationally distributed magazine. Yeah. It's insane, but very cool.
A little glimpse into to where we were back in
nineteen ninety what seven.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
This review is from January ninety eighth.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yes, all right, so we have now Final Fantasy seven
in the Magic the Gathering world back in the day. Now,
let's talk about the actual thing, the real deal.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
Okay, Gavin, why Final Fantasy? Like what did that bring
to Magic Gathering? How did that come together?

Speaker 4 (28:26):
In retrospect, It's kind of like, why not Final Fantasy?
Like it is such a perfect fit for Magic in
so many ways, right, Like, if you think about Magic,
every set is its own world, has its own story,
its own characters, you know, its own creatures. So that's
some amount of like general lineage of vibes. A few
characters translate over, but in general it's just own bespoke thing.

(28:46):
When you think about Final Fantasy, every game same kind
of deal. It's its own world's own characters, and there's
some similar vibes for sure. But you know, you can
go all the way from Dystopians to cyberpunk to high
fantasy and bad and in working on the set like
it was, there's so it was so easy to bring
a lot of this stuff over. I mean, sorry, I'm
not gonna say that the set was easy to make,

(29:08):
but the because they certainly took a long time, right,
we worked on this thing for what almost five years,
But it's so much felt natural. I guess it's how
I would say. And I think one of the things
that was a big takeaway for me is when you're
translating a video game into magic, not a TV show
or a movie or a book, but a video game,
so many things just transfer over. You're like, well, we

(29:29):
already know what health like. If I play Final Final Fantasy,
you get health, and you get manna, and you get
building a party, and you get you know, a tinkering
with with with all your stats and all this stuff.
And if you can do all of that, if you
understand those basic concepts, a lot of magic is going
to come much more naturally, and a lot of the
card designs are going to come naturally too.

Speaker 3 (29:48):
Right, what does a blackmage do?

Speaker 4 (29:50):
Well, it makes sense that a blackmage who is constant,
you know, shooting little fireballs at you would also in
a game of magic kind of sit back and just
shoot fireballs at you from from behind. Right, So trying
to find those through lines, so much of it felt natural,
just like, oh, this character would do this thing, this
kind of mechanic would do this this thing, and it

(30:11):
created a really good bed to build out the set
with that way, not saying that it was easy by
any stretch, and there were certainly characters that were challenging
that took a long time to get right. But there's
also a lot of things that we got a really
good running start on because it just made sense. And Yeah,
one of those things I just look at and I'm like,
what a perfect fit for it for Magic. Not to mention,

(30:31):
I think that the audience overlap, Like all three of
us have played both games, and many of us have
touched them, you know, for a long time, like you
and me Aiden, And they also came out not that
far from each other, right, Like Magic come out in
nineteen ninety three on Fantasy comme ount only a few
years before that, and so we've grown up with both
these things together. So just the overlap and the course

(30:52):
of it all is is so high, I think, which
really helps.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Can you talk about how the set came together? Like
did I'm not even sure if you are allowed to
talk about this, but did you guys approach square Enix?
Was it the other way around? Was it something more
kind of natural and symbiotic?

Speaker 4 (31:05):
Yeah, so you know, we have a team, an emerging
business team that does work to help figure out deals
and talk with folks, and now sometimes folks will email
then and I don't really get involved in that part,
so I don't. I wasn't there when like the you know,
the first discussion ever happened or whatever. But I do
get involved somewhat early, like after, you know, after we've
had those initial conversations, kind of met things out a

(31:26):
little bit. And one thing that I'll say was a
parent from the get go is square Enix. The folks
on their side were big magic fans. I think that
really really helped and really made it feel like such
a more holistic project because you know, I remember, once
we kind of kicked off the project and I moved
on to it, we had a call every Tuesday night
for the whole project's life cycle. So for years now,

(31:48):
I wasn't on the call every time. Some other people were, though,
They give up their Tuesday night every every week for years.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
And in my first call.

Speaker 4 (31:56):
Though, the one of the lead guys is like, hey, yeah,
we went to four pro releases last weekend and I
got much new card for my modern deck and all
this stuff, and I'm like, oh, wow, you guys are
like really magic players. You really know what you're talking
about here, and that really made for some great collaboration, right,
So I was able to go over there with them
and play the set with them in Japan, which was

(32:18):
very cool to kind of hand carry. You ever want
to feel terrified, just pack a bunch of highly confidential
things for one of the biggest magic sets of all
time in your suitcase and just hand carry it onto
like your airplane and the Tokyo subway, and just hope
you get there, okay, terrifying.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (32:35):
And we have to play at play then.

Speaker 4 (32:36):
And they would also send feedback on cards sometimes as well,
so they really cared a lot. I think I think
that that, like love on both sides, us our final
fantasy and them for magic, helped us create the best
thing we possibly could.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
You mentioned Daniel Holt earlier, the lead designer for the
Commander decks, and I actually noticed you and he talked
to a TCG player right around the release, and you
said that there's no change, and all the permutations of
the cards and characters and everything that you worked on
over years and years, it's no change. I look back
on and I'm like, man, I regret that change. I
wish we hadn't done that maybe ask me in three
months and I'll have a different opinion. So it's been

(33:09):
like one month or so since then, not three. Is
there a decision you made that's maybe still itching at you?
And if not, you know either way, how do you
feel about their response that sets received?

Speaker 4 (33:20):
Yeah, I mean there's some really micro stuff that is
like just super ticky tacky based on how some of
the cards hit, Like you know, looking at the limited balance,
which is really good, Like the draft balance for the
set has been like phenomenal. We've got really applauded for it,
which which feels really good. But there's like, oh, okay,
maybe I should have put a third toughness on this card.
You know, we knocked sum in gf iffertt from a

(33:40):
three to three to a three to two.

Speaker 3 (33:41):
Maybe should have been three three.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
But it's like all on that level, right, it's like
really ticky tacky stuff like ooh, maybe Dark Confie I
should have been a rare and not a mythic and
all that, all that kind of stuff. You know, maybe
we should have gotten one more concept from Final Fantasy
Vive and or something like that, right, But it's all
on the very minor scale of just tiny things I
would adjust, but the overarching mechanics, the set structure, most

(34:02):
of what's going on the draft darg types.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
I feel we execute it on great.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
You know.

Speaker 4 (34:07):
I feel like if your set comes out and you
don't have anything you'd want to change about.

Speaker 3 (34:11):
It, you've done something wrong.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
You know, Like that is such a hallmark of just
being a designer for anything, being a creative for anything. Right,
You go through the process and you look back and
you're like, oh, I would have changed some things, but
in terms of how much I would change in the
scale of it, it would be pretty small.

Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, that's excellent. That kind of rolls into one of
the questions from one of our listeners who's a big
time Final Fantasy fan, James Halliday. He wanted to know, like,
how do you design a card? Maybe you can talk
about a specific card in the set or make up
a card, but how do you design a card for
an existing property like Final Fantasy that maintains the essence
of that series while also meshing in with existing magic mechanics, sets, themes.

Speaker 4 (34:51):
Yeah, I mean I think a lot of it is
kind of what I was mentioning earlier, where some stuff
transits over really well, because the question is just, okay, well,
here's what it does in a video game.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
What does it that mean for magic?

Speaker 4 (35:00):
And so you kind of look at its power set
in the video game and then maybe it can translate
over in a satisfying way. Now, sometimes that's straightforward. You
look at a card like Bomb and you're like, what
is what is Bomb going to do? Well, we all
know what Bomb does. It's going to explode and deal
damage too to something right, and so of course the
first thing that card got was ability to sacrifice itself
to deal some damage. But for characters, it's a little

(35:21):
more tricky because the thing about Final Fantasy is the
characters are really well written and they evolve a lot.
Every character usually evolves a decent amount over the course
of the story, and they could do so many things right.
And one of the things that we are bound by
in a physical treating card game is just text on
the card. There's only so much room for game text,
and we want to ideally leave room for flavor text
too where we can.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
So one of the things we kind of.

Speaker 4 (35:44):
Pioneered for this set is a term I call the
snapshot moment, and the idea is you pick a character
and you look at them through their whole storyline and
you're like, right here, this is the moment that we're
going to focus on for this card, right and it's
like a snapshot of the character right then, and that
is what the card is going to be. And that's
how where all do make different magic cards out of

(36:05):
the same characters. That is how we're able to kind
of figure out where along the line to show it.
So to give a great example, cephar Off in the
main set is Mono black. He is you know, he's
about to become the one winged angel.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
He is. He's he's villainous, he's.

Speaker 4 (36:18):
Ready to go, and that's you know, he took a
snapshot of that moment in time all the way down here.
But if you look at the Sepharroth in the Commander deck, well,
actually this is for a different moment, the moment he's
learning about his past. He's he's filled with rage learning
about kind of what happened. And that's a red white Sephroth,
which is two very different versions of the same character,
and both kard of the card mechanics have stories that
kind of mesh with that. So that's some of the

(36:40):
tricks that we use, but of course every card requires
something a little bit different, you know, but yeah, that's
that's that's the somethings are just like what is what
is the famous Internet thing? It's like you got to
have the sup Plex and the Phantom Train, you know,
so like really everything has everything has different inspirations.

Speaker 1 (36:55):
I think, like I remember looking back at Lord of
the Rings, which I'm also very familiar with and Final Fantasy,
and where I find friction is when I see a
character and I'm like, oh, they wouldn't be you know,
Demir or whatever. So your snapshot an analogy is really
really interesting to me because you know, you can have
those two Terrors in the set, the Commander Faced card

(37:15):
and the main set Terra, and they're very different cards,
but they don't both feel you know, consistent with Tara
because I think and correct me if I'm wrong. But
when you're creating characters or plots or whatever conflicts within
the Magic IP universe, you can say, Okay, this character
is sort of these color combinations and so they're going
to behave within sort of expectations of those color combinations,

(37:38):
whereas existing characters you have to find that moment because
Terra does go through so many, you know, so many
different conflicts and is in so many different places throughout
her story, and same with Steph roth as to describe.
So that's really interesting to me because that kind of
like gets to the heart of one of the hardest
things I can imagine about Honey.

Speaker 3 (37:57):
One of these sets, Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 4 (37:59):
And you know, great example, we have reddy green Tearr
in the main set, and we have white black red
Terras the face of the Commander decks and the white
black red Terras from which he's trying to you know,
bring everybody back and from the second half of the
game the world of Ruin, and then red Green Terra
is more from the first half, right, so ons in
that snapshot moment really coming in handy.

Speaker 1 (38:16):
All right, Gavin, We're going to do some lightning round
as we kind of come to the end of our conversation.
Joke like quick questions. Don't feel the need to go
too deep. Let's let's go for speed. Some of our
listeners submitted questions, We've got some of our own. First
up is Andrew Blewett, who is one of the best
Final Fantasy YouTubers and historians out there. He asked how

(38:38):
you divy up which cards that have sort of appeared
generically over the Final Fantasy series, So you mentioned Bomb earlier,
or you could look at something like ultimat He and
I talked about how we see, like, for instance, several
Final Fantasy fourteen cards that could have easily been included
in a different game to up the numbers, and it

(39:01):
kind of evenly distributed that a little bit more. Omega
is a good example of one that I was like, Oh,
this this must be a Final Fantasy five card, and
then I look and I see it's a Final Fantasy
fourteen version. How did you guys come up with the
numbers for like how you distribute those? How like the
generic ed Final Fantasy core ideas got distributed from game
to game.

Speaker 4 (39:18):
Yeah, I mean we had some rough targets of kind
of what we were looking for for each game really
early on, Like, for example, we knew that fourteen was
incredibly popular, so we wanted to make sure that it
was well represented, and it certainly is. You know, ultimately
this was a decision on our creative lead. You know,
Dylan was incredible and putting in a lot of work
on the set, and you know when it came came
of matters like this, I just trusted whatever he wanted
to do.

Speaker 3 (39:39):
Right, It's like which.

Speaker 4 (39:40):
Motoya should we use, Like should we use one or fourteen?
Settled on the fourteen version, but we could have gone
either way on that, right, And so you know, in
many ways, fourteen, as I mentioned earlier, is kind of
like the playground of Final Fantasy, and so grabbing the
version of that is kind of like the amalgamation of
so many different versions.

Speaker 3 (39:57):
It feels like a very true version, I think for
a lot of people.

Speaker 4 (40:00):
But ultimately it was you know, Dylan's calling, and I
kind of trusted what he went with.

Speaker 1 (40:03):
Yeah, Crial is a fun one in the set because
I really love Final Fancy five, so I was excited
to see Cryle, but I know Crial is also you know, uh,
really well liked for like among the Final Fancy fourteen
crowd twos and like, so I was like, oh, I
wish this was Final Fancy five. But then I'm like, actually,
this makes a lot of sense as a fourteen card,
and the mechanics behind it are really fun because of

(40:25):
that differentiation as well. Okay, Ty, you got the next question.
Let's go Lightning round.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, I was. I was about to say, as a
former All Conference Quiz Bowl player, we are failing at lightning.
That is fine because.

Speaker 1 (40:40):
No, no, no, no, not you, No, it's me, it's me.

Speaker 2 (40:44):
But no, so okay, So, Kevin, what's your favorite piece
of mechanical flavor in the set? Like I saw Zach
Fair being like can sacrifice himself to give his plus
one plus one counter and indestructible to another creature, like
you know, like well, like we're like real ones will
know when they see that card what it's referencing, yeah,
and why it's like that?

Speaker 4 (41:04):
To me, my favorite, by far, I think the one
that really showed a lot play testing is Edgar, who
has this random line about flipping coins. You get to
choose the result or whatever it's or its heads. That's
in playtesting. If you did no Final Fantasy, I kept
in the feedback of like, why is this here?

Speaker 3 (41:20):
Makes no sense?

Speaker 4 (41:21):
And if you did no Final Fantasy, you were like
this card's perfect and I was like, yep, I'm hitting
my audience exactly on this one.

Speaker 3 (41:26):
So to me, that's a that's good. A perfect example
of that.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Outstanding listener Quabi Lay wants to know how you decided
which Through the Ages cards would use existing art and
in gamart as opposed to brand new art. Like most
special guest prints, they want to know how you decide
on which cards make through the Ages in the first place.
Some of them felt spot on, like Zadanna's Ragavan, and
some of them felt like maybe weird flavor matches they

(41:52):
put in here, tim and and the Weaver and Thracios
being two characters from different games with different art treatments.

Speaker 3 (41:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Well, so, first of all, through the Ages rights all
existing art, concept art, stuff from video games and so on,
so we didn't use any new art on the through
the age of the Bonus sheet cards. So basically this
whole thing came from we learned we had access to
the concept art, and we're like, we have access to it,
we got to use it. It's so iconic, and so
we started making the bonus Sheet and picking cards that
we thought would be would be cool to do here.

(42:19):
You know, some we some were like, slam ex exiting
was my idea as Ragavan. I was like lock it
in you, we're done, And some of them were more like, hey,
just be cool to get this card out here. In
a final fancy treatment, you know, but I think, you know, like, yeah,
maybe tim and Anthiascios is a kind of a fun
example to me, because yes, they are iconically played together
in U in Competitive Commander, but there's no reason why

(42:42):
they like why we have to make these two in
the same game, and using like Cecil as tim Anda
made a lot of makes a lot of sense to me.
So yeah, I mean they're not all perfect flavor fits,
but many of them are. And I'm really happy with
how the sheet turned out.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
This is gonna be terrible podcast material, but I'm holding
up a copy of my favorite It's foil Barts. Nice
that Okay, next Lightning Round question before I slow things
down too much, what is the most like Gavin ver
He card in the set? And then what's the most
Gavin vere Heat card that didn't make it into the set?

Speaker 3 (43:18):
Wow, it was really hard to choose my most me
card in the set?

Speaker 4 (43:21):
Uh, you know, off off the top of my head,
maybe I would say, like Tara, I just really love
I really love the character. I really love like the
saga creatures matter thing. I love it flipping back and forth.
So that that that's one that comes to mind, though
I thought about more. I might, I might give you

(43:42):
a different answer of what my what My favorite is
the one, the one that didn't make the set. I mean,
there's so many cool cards that did not make the set.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
The one that.

Speaker 4 (43:51):
I thought was very charming that I left on the
cudding room floor because it's had a lot of implantation problems.
Is a card with the text restart the game. So
I thought'd be fund have a game, so you My
original design for a realm We're Born involved the game restarting,
but that has tons of implementation problems for digital We've

(44:12):
only never done on one other card, carn Liberated.

Speaker 3 (44:14):
So yeah, not for this time, not for this time.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
Deep cut. I love that you mentioned Tara. I'm going
to skip ahead to one of my other Lightning Ran questions.
Who is the genius who thought to give Tara magical
adapt esper colors when you flip her like.

Speaker 3 (44:30):
I designed the incredible Did you've ever heard of that card?

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Is me? I?

Speaker 4 (44:35):
Yeah, you know, it's tough because esper means something in
Final Fantasy. There's a different one Indy in Magic. But
I did think it was a cute nod that she
picks up all three other colors to become ass become
five color including esper.

Speaker 3 (44:46):
Here's your terror right there? Perfect?

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (44:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
I bought the Revival trans pre con and then I
like reworked it almost entirely to get the five color terra,
and I love that.

Speaker 1 (44:55):
It's funny. I've got it here too. We're holding up
cards character excellent podcast material during the Lightning Round you've
talked about someone like the clever designs in the set.
What was the most challenging card for you to design
in the set, the one you're sort of most proud
of the work that went into it.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
Well, I mean I could name so many cards for
this because so many of them got iterated on for
so long. But I do think the card that by
far I went through through the most versions because we
knew we had to get it right was Sepherroth.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
This is a car that we knew we had to
make a banger. He's one of those iconic.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
Characters in all the video games, like it is it
is Cephroth right, So we had to do Sepherroth right.
We did a lot of work and a lot of
iteration on him, but I'm really happy with how he
turned out yet and seeing you know. I mean see
him show up in some modern decks and I'm like, oh,
that's very cool.

Speaker 1 (45:39):
So he did too good a job because I cannot
afford to buy a copy.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
My son actually pulled him in the pre release event
and it was like, whoo, we went three and oh
is the whole thing. So Darren Hupkey another friend of
the show. He makes the physical retro game zine magazines,
is very very cool. He wants to know if there
are any plans for cards representing spinoff Final Fantasy games.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (46:05):
You know, we limited ourselves to just the mainline sixteen
games here for a number of reasons, not least of
which was there's already so much content to cover, and
so we had the lease stuff on the cutting room
floor that if we expanded it to include even more games,
we just have to leave more stuff on the cutting
room floor, right, So we had to draw ourselves kind
of a line somewhere.

Speaker 3 (46:23):
Look, I would love to go. I'm a huge tactics fan.
I would love to go.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
And honestly, I like Crystal Chronicles a decent aount as
well as well as many many others.

Speaker 3 (46:31):
You know, X two dress spheres. Sign me up.

Speaker 4 (46:33):
There's a lot of a lot of stuff. I love
to spinoff games. You know, who knows what the future holds,
But for now, no spinoff games here, and I'm really
happy with the success of the set. If we ever,
if you know, we ever do another collaboration Squartings in
the future, we'll certainly talk about it as an option.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
What's your favorite Easter Egg?

Speaker 4 (46:50):
I really like there's a card called the Coin of Fate,
not to go back to the Coin game, but the
Coin of Fate in Commander that where Edgar's showing off
his coin and you can see that the reflection is
armor both sides or heads. I think it's like a
really nice touch on that card. I know that the
fourteen cards have a ton of little Easter eggs in them,
but I don't know fourteen well enough to be able

(47:11):
to recap them accurately. But I know that team was
constant flipping out about the ton east eggs are putting in.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
That's fabulous. I love that Edgar the coin card as
seen as I saw it and saw the like head.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
In his armor, I was hollering. I was hollering. I
loved it.

Speaker 1 (47:26):
Okay, so you know what I was gonna go with
a heavy hitter. Last question, how you can cut this part?
But I think we've already kind of touched on a
lot of this. I just really wanted a Fairest card
because I love Farris. But instead I'm gonna ask do
you have any questions about for us about the set,
as fans, as people who have played long, Like, what

(47:47):
do you you know anything we haven't talked about today
that might be uh.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Yeah, I guess I'd be curious to know what is
the thing that was missing that you most wanted.

Speaker 1 (47:57):
A Fairest card.

Speaker 3 (47:59):
Yeah, it's tough. We looked at She's so awesome, isaid she.

Speaker 4 (48:02):
We looked at Ferris, and we we had We never
had a Firest card in the main set, but we
did have a Fairest card on the bonus sheet for
a little while and through the ages bonus sheet and
ended up getting cut unfortunately.

Speaker 3 (48:14):
But She's awesome. Would love to do something with Ferris,
so it's a it's a good choice.

Speaker 2 (48:19):
Yeah, I'm racking my brain because I think we dovetailed
a lot in terms of you know, it was a
huge six fan, huge seven fan. I did not like
eight mechanically, you know, the story wise was a pretty
cool nine. I loved. Maybe it would have been more nine,
but even so, we did get Freya in there, so
like I was almost looking to be disappointed, right, and

(48:40):
it was kind of the same thing where like every
time I was like, they're not going to get in
this and there and actually Dovetails. Is something I love
about the Final Fantasy remake series is you know, they're
probably not going to have that moment where Red thirteen
is walking in a Shinra uniform for like, you know,
two and a half seconds. Oh no, no, that's like
a four minute long cut scene that you know, blows

(49:02):
it all out to the you know, they're probably not
gonna have a house as an enemy. Oh no, no,
that is a like hour long sequence Voss fight in
the remake, you know. So it's like that same sort
of thing where like every step of the way, it's
just been like I can tell these people love this
as much as I do, and the things that they
loved about are the things that I love about it.

Speaker 3 (49:20):
Nine is my favorite Final Fantasy. And so there's an
ICO card that I had to leave on the cutting
room floor that was in the main Oh.

Speaker 1 (49:26):
No, that would have been nice. Nine got some good representation, though,
I was really happy about that. I'm a huge nine
fan as well. I do have one last question that
kind of ties into storytelling and magic, because that's important
to me. Like my background is as a book blogger,
and I'm a writer, and I love magic story, I
love following the like the magic, the gathering story stuff,

(49:47):
and obviously I like Final Fantasy. One of the things
that really struck me about the set is that it
has so many deep cuts. It goes so deep into
so many of the games, but it avoids very specific spoilers.
So there are there's a card harmonized in the Commander
deck I think, or is it a mainset card, but
in any case, harmonize and it shows Earth Prain, which

(50:09):
is perfect for that card. And then there's ceph Roth's intervention,
which is him dropping down to like get her to
stab her, but like there's no card of that actual moment,
so like people who know know, but it doesn't actually
spoil that moment for new players. What was the balance
there trying to find like impactful story moments. Final Fantasy

(50:31):
is full of so many twists. You want to represent
those emotions that people had played in the games without
sort of, you know, breaking the bank for new players. Maybe.

Speaker 3 (50:40):
Yeah, we wanted to avoid a lot of really heavy.

Speaker 4 (50:43):
Spoilers where we could, because what we found was it's
I honestly use the exact example that I always use
when I talk about this is when you show Sepharroth
plunging down with his sword. If you've played seven, you
know what's happening, right, I don't need to show I
don't need to show anything else.

Speaker 3 (50:59):
You know what's going on.

Speaker 4 (51:04):
And so we kind of took that and did that
across across the set a little bit right where you
see an art piece and if you know, you know,
and if you don't, you don't know, and then you
know then when you go to play seven. Because one
thing I really noticed it really played out. We expected
this would happen, and it really played out more, even
more than I think I could have ever anticipated, is
how many Magic people were like, Wow, this set is cool,
or these cards look cool.

Speaker 3 (51:22):
I want to go play the games now. Though it
might sound silly.

Speaker 4 (51:25):
To be like, you know, here's a spoiler for a
twenty year old video game, a lot of people are
going to try them for the first time, and yeah,
you know, it's cool when they see the character and
be like, oh, I know the character and not spoil
too much. There's some place where it was inevitable, like
a lot of the transforming legends is the place where
it's like, well, we kind of just have to show
who this person becomes, right, And even then you'll note
that it's alte Mesia turning into aulti Mesia, not Ada

(51:48):
turning into Altimsia.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Right, so be story to preserve some of that. Yeah,
so yeah, you're right, you.

Speaker 4 (51:54):
Basically about the exact cards that I always mentioned in
this case, and we did some of that set.

Speaker 1 (51:58):
But sure. Yeah. It's been amazing to see the crossover
because I've like have a foot in Magic fandom and
I have a foot in like gaming fandom, and now
all of like my gaming friends are now playing Magic
the Gathering and I'm like, oh, like, this is amazing.
Everybody is into it, discovering this game for the first time,
and that's what I love about fund Like Magic the

(52:18):
Gathering is the gathering part. And I'm watching, like, you know,
people I've worked with in gaming sites, all of a
sudden they have they're putting together commander pods to play
and it's just it's beautiful to see those those fandoms
come together the sets. The set's wonderful. It's everything that
I wanted it to be, which is hard because my
expectations were very high. But but I appreciate you taking

(52:42):
the time to talk to us today. I appreciate all
the work that you and the rest of the team
has put into this. It's fabulous. I just need my
stories to get more stock. It's impossible for me to
find cards. I buy anything I see that I need,
I buy immediately, so my wallet's not not happy. But
I assure him.

Speaker 3 (52:59):
Yeah, well, and I'm glad you glad you enjoyed.

Speaker 4 (53:02):
It means a lot coming from someone that is so
deeply entrenched in the RPG space, right and it's really
the best for you I could have hoped for.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
So thank you very much, Devin.

Speaker 2 (53:12):
It's been our pleasure. You want to plug any of
your latest work, let people know where to find you.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Yeah, well, first of all, there's a set called Magic
Gathering Final Fantasy. If you if you want to, you
want to go, you know, try it out. I would
you wouldn't. I wouldn't tell you not to. You can
always find me online.

Speaker 4 (53:28):
Everywhere that has my name, so you know, whether it's
Blue Sky or Instagram wherever, you can google me and
find you wherever. But the other thing I have is
I have my YouTube channel good Morning Magic, where I
talk about magic design every week on there and kind
of the background of everything what goes into it. So
go follow me there for all kinds of fun inside
inside magic stuff.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
I highly recommend that you doube channel for like longtime fans, newcomers.
It's one of my favorite pieces of like magic content
on the web. It's it's fabulous.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
Yeah, I can promise you if you like this, you
will like Good Morning Magic. Thanks so much to Gevin
there He, principal Magic designer and set lead for Magic
the Gathering Final Fantasy taking time with us. Spend a
little more time.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
With us if you like.

Speaker 2 (54:07):
We get back after this break, Aiden and I will
go deep into our experiences playing for release, Commander, Arena, etc.
With all of our favorite characters, spells and settings in
Magic the Gathering Final Fantasy right after the break here
on fun Fashion. Thanks so much to Gavin ver Hey,

(54:43):
lead developer for the Final Fantasy set for Magic the
Gathering And if you don't listen to Good Morning Magic,
or you haven't been paying attention to Magic Gathering at all,
you're near to it. Gavin has a ton of content
out there. He's a great ambassador for the game. And
also just what a trust at hand at the tiller
of a game that a lot of people have a
lot invested in it, whether you're brand new like me,

(55:05):
or you've been doing it forever like Aidan. Okay, say, Aidan,
what do you you think Gavin had a ton of
great stuff for us? Man?

Speaker 1 (55:14):
I mean you could tell from my enthusiasm that I
could have talked about that set for hours and hours
and hours with the most like deep cut minutia like questions.
But I mean that's just kind of reflective of how
impressed I am with the set. And it's one of
those things where when they were first revealing cards like
one at a time, I was kind of like, oh,

(55:35):
where are my favorites? I was, you know, disappointed when
we didn't get Ferris or like I wanted, you know,
in my mind Tara did something different or whatever, I
would have designed her different. But now that I have
the cards and I've been putting them in commander decks
and I've been playing Arena and I've done a pre release,
Like everything just feels so cohesive and well put together.

(55:58):
And as I revisit games, so you know, the new
set encouraged me to go back and I'm replaying Final
Fantasy ten for the first time, a game that typically
I haven't really liked all that much. But you know,
there's so many cards from the from ten in the
set that I like and want, and I'm like, ah,
like kind of gets me excited about those games. Reinvigorates
that love of those games for me, and that's everything

(56:19):
I would want it from the set, And so I
look at it now and it just feels so wholly
inclusive of like everything I love about Magic and Final Fantasy.

Speaker 2 (56:28):
Yeah, I'm the same way when he asked, like what's missing,
and I'm like, I, I honestly don't know. One of
the weird things for me was around Tifa the like
the Commander Deck version Tifa Martial Artist, right where like
it's it's designed with Cloud and Sepherroth where it all
kind of works together because it's like get them out
all the seven power and then her power like is
built off that. Like that all makes sense to me.

(56:51):
The regular Tifa. You know, I saw like Mono Green Landfall.
I'm like, okay, that's one I wish I could have
had another few minutes. And he was come up against
this hard stop, you know, and go okay, like is
this Tifa like in the life stream? You know. I'm like,
I'm trying to picture, like what about like land gives
Tifa h you know, power, but gosh if she's not

(57:13):
the most fun to play.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
Well yeah, right, Like then you play against her and
she whoops your ass because she's like a twenty four
to twenty four all of a sudden.

Speaker 2 (57:21):
Then it's like, oh, but like the toughness, but it's
not plus one plus on. Because I was just talking
about this with my son and because I was saying
the same thing because he saw me playing, he's actually
making fun of me because I was playing Arena while
waiting to get ready for family Commander night and then
everybody was ready but me and I was playing, and
he's like, what is Dad playing while we're supposed to

(57:42):
be playing like that? And then he's like what and
what is that landfall? You're doing? Gruel landfall? Like what
the heck?

Speaker 1 (57:48):
Dad?

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Like counters come on? If you're gonna sell your soul
just like play is it prowess? And I'm like, okay
with some no, but like this is one we were
talking about it. Yeah, well he's like, but hey, listen,
like it's a more it's like a balanced moss Borne hydra, right,
it's not plus and plus on encounters. It doubles every
turn and it goes away at the end of the turn,

(58:09):
and it only does the power, not the toughness, you know.
So it's like, you know, so if you can kind
of get the hit through, or you can you know,
bolter or something, you know, like that kind of stuff.
So it's like it's it's more balanced, and then like, man,
it's it's fun to play with and it rocks, but
it also doesn't break the set. It doesn't break limited
at all. You know. It's like it's not a super

(58:31):
easy thing to pull off in a limited environment, and
yet it's it's awesome and it works.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
If we'd had more time, I would have loved to
have talked to Gavin about how designing the set for
Standard changed their approach because some of the other Universes
Beyond sets like Lord of the Rings specifically had the
Wondering orchesh BO Masters, stuff like that they could never
get away with putting in a standard set. There are

(58:56):
archetypes in there like that you couldn't get away with
putting it in a standard set. And it does feel
like in a way, being a standard set brought the
power level down a little bit. So you get those
good cards, you get those strong cards like Tifa, but
nothing that's like absolutely blasted, you know, a format open
the way that like Lord of the Rings did with

(59:16):
the wond Ring. And I think that's better overall for
the Final Fantasy set, even if, like at first I
was like, oh, where are the cards that I'm gonna, like,
you know, are just gonna make my deck like so
much better? Whereas the reality for me, like I have
a Tom blaum Medl deck that's a Sagas deck, and
so I've put a bunch of cards in and none
of them are like except for maybe Nights of Around,

(59:38):
none of them are like huge home run, like you know,
change the deck. All of them make the deck incrementally better, though,
And I feel like that's sort of where Final Fantasy
is really interesting, that it doesn't warp like the formats
around itself it just sort of like ads options, and
you know, that comes out back to that player expression

(59:59):
as well that we've talked about that it gives people
more options to like, you know, build out the decks
that they want. Curious to see how rotation goes, because
I was surprised not to see many I watched a
bunch of Pro Tour Final Fantasy and did not see
many Final Fantasy cards at all, outside of I think
VV was in some of the is it Prowess decks,

(01:00:21):
and so I was surprised by that because you know,
typically like Lord of the Rings had a lot of
cards that were played right away in the formats it
was available in. But Final Fantasy as like the last
set before a big rotation. It's entered into a stand
the biggest standard ever, so it has the most competition
of any set ever released in the history of the game.

(01:00:42):
And so I'm kind of curious how all of that
dynamics sort of changed the way that they were like
you know, designing this set, designing power level, you know,
and how they sort of anticipate that then moving into
the next era of standard as some of these older
sets rotate out in a couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (01:00:59):
Interesting side bar. I think it's uh uh wi Wilds
of Elderid is still going to be in there. Okay, yeah, sorry,
I was just looking at it because like I'm so
new to this, you know, I've only literally only really
been in this hobby for a year, and already like
arena popped up. It's like, oh yeah, like Wilds of
Eldrain is rotating out of arena, and I was like, okay,

(01:01:19):
but that's the first deck I got was a Wilds
of Eldraid pre con that was only like a year
and a half old at the time, Like I had
fade a minion, and I was all right, cool, like
I'm building. I'm like what, like, you know, the cards
that I like first started playing this game with or
like rotating out you know. It's it's funny, but I

(01:01:40):
think Final Fantasy I'm also very curious to see as
there as you know, we get a year from now
with a bunch of more sets have come in exactly
and and Final Fantasy. And again, like you said, it
seems like Age of Eternities is almost built to be
and now here comes.

Speaker 1 (01:01:56):
Kind of disappointed with in Final Fantasy, like the frand
in BALFI your card. I love those characters. I was
kind of disappointed with the design, but now all of
a sudden, I'm like, oh, okay, because Edge of Fraternity
has a bunch of vehicles and like, you know, it's like,
oh okay, some of these cards just you know, they
were designed to like pop later and so that's been

(01:02:17):
really fun. Edge of Eternity just looks like a bonker
set that.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
Was actually on my on the tip of my tongue
for a second when he's like, oh, what was missing?
You know, I kind of want to be like I
really thought there'd be more airship stuff for the airships
would be better. Yeah, but I didn't quite say because
I was thinking, I'm like, okay, no, but there is
sets there, there is the plan, there is you know.
I was like the Delta or.

Speaker 1 (01:02:41):
Wasn't in there?

Speaker 2 (01:02:42):
No, right, and so like so there was there was
a few airships and like it was fine. You so,
like I was like, no, but like that is something
that had caught crossed my mind, like the airship is
like one of the very few things that is like
beginning to end final fantasies and yeah, that's like so like,
you know, why didn't we get more of that or
why wasn't it better? Okay, well it's gonna be better, yeah,

(01:03:06):
post mechanically at least.

Speaker 1 (01:03:08):
Yes, did we get a high Wind card?

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
Think so?

Speaker 1 (01:03:11):
Yeah? Like that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:11):
I don't think so unless it's in one of the
two precons I don't own, which, by the way, for
those of you were talking, I bought two. I bought
the Tara Deck and the Cloud Deck and then the
other two. Costco has these bundles that just dropped and yeah,
and I literally just stocked like today, like I checked yesterday,

(01:03:32):
not there checked today, So I might be after this
recording going and getting the other two Commander decks I
don't have. Yeah, this is tie from the future. I
did go run out to Costco and turns out that
the stock was only available for delivery in my area
online only, not at the actual Costco store, where they
once again made fun of me for trying to get

(01:03:52):
an item that doesn't exist in their system and they've
never heard of. I mean, the high Wind would be
in seven if it's in anything.

Speaker 1 (01:03:59):
But yeah, anyway, I'm having trouble finding Commander cards. Yes,
so they've been really hard. I needed again, like an
Awaka card from the final fansy ten Commander Deck, and
I like could find one copy in Canada, Like I
searched a bunch of Canadian like magic card stores, and
I found one copy and just bought it, uh, shipped
me from like Edmonton or something. And so I do

(01:04:22):
feel like maybe I just need to go out and
buy I bought, you know, as everybody saw earlier on
this audio podcast, I did. I bought the Tearor deck,
made a bunch of tweaks, but kept them in universe,
so only final Fantasy cards, uh for my additions. But
I kind of just want the cards from the other decks,
even if I just kind of tear them apart over time.

(01:04:43):
What are your like, what are some of your standout cards?
What are your favorite cards from the set? Either power level,
fund to build around, fun to play, or just like flavor.
We asked Gavin flavor Wins, what are some.

Speaker 2 (01:04:53):
Of the Yeah flavor with Zach Fair, I would like, dude,
that's so good, clever concealment, being Cloudy dressed up for
the Honeybee in the It's like pulling together the pieces
something like that. It's it's all the shadow, oh dreams, Yes,

(01:05:14):
stitch together, Stitch together. Yeah, so that one was really
cool flavor wise. And I I cause, like I said,
I rebuilt basically the tear deck. I actually just compared it.
I think it only has like twenty two percent the
same cards original blessed now because I made it, you know,
five color, it's Fuburg. So it's with with the flip

(01:05:36):
Terra and put in as many of the summons as
I have, I still need to go get more. You know,
I don't have a Vehama yet. But like and some
of the some of the summons just truly don't go
mechanically the deck, Like it can't just be like all summons.
It won't go with what Terror's ability is, right, And
I was also trying to avoid doing like all the

(01:05:57):
TIFA Chocobo landfall beat down. Also as a sub theme,
I try to go, like, let's give me lock in
Google's right to make it more on flavor right. But
also that's difficult because oh that's because the only like
not the only the only the two best Google cards
by a long shot are in two different decks, and
I have one of them. I have the Mog actual

(01:06:19):
Mog yeah car six, but then the from the six
precon but the good King Mog the twelfth or whatever
is in the ten fourteenth Freak fourteen freakon right. So
it's like and then like like the stilts can google like, oh,
gift them a card, so you have to have like
bad cards to gift them or whatever.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
Is weird. It's a fun card though. Our friend we
mentioned James earlier, James Halliday, he and I played some
Commander with a pod and he has a Stiltskin deck
and he would like he just loads it with bad cards,
like so the Big Boogie Man. The whole game was
this Firexian war Beast that like, if it dies, it's
like an old card. So it was like whatever, it's

(01:06:59):
a three four or something for three, which was good
well costed back in the day or whatever, so it
needed a downside. The downside is if it dies, you
like have to like sacrifice land and like lose some
life or something like that. So like it just got
passed around and around and around, which is pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
That's odin. Actually, the odin Summon Yea with stage two
is if it deals combat to edge to a player,
that player loses the game.

Speaker 1 (01:07:29):
That rocks.

Speaker 2 (01:07:30):
Not only is it so on flavor mechanically, but it's
also like talk about it if you know then you know,
like you know, I see Odin, I go, oh god,
what is that gonna do? Am I gonna die instantly?

Speaker 1 (01:07:42):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:07:42):
And then like in Arena, people just literally don't know.
Like I have done things where it's like okay, cool,
I send Tara and I send Odin and they block
Tara like I'll just take whatever this is. But bam
they lose, and I'm like that is absolute riot.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):
I love that it's a fun card and it's funny
and like Command or two because it won't win you
the game, but it sure puts people on edge, right,
and if you have like Terra, because you have like
counter manipulation in that deck, so you can kind of
keep it on chapter two if you want to. Yeah,
so that like, yes, it will always take someone out
of the game if they let it through. So pretty

(01:08:21):
funny card. I really like the Secret Rendezvous cards. I
love how they have art so it depicts the date
scene from the Golden Saucer. I love how it has
art for every one of the dates, which is just
really really funny. As Yeah, the kids are just such
a like slamm donk Home run having fourteen of them,
and the fact that like they work well in a

(01:08:44):
deck running all fourteen of them without like, yeah, that
deck back and be mechanically strong. I have I really
wanted to build, as I've said many times on this episode,
I'm a big fon Fancy five fan, really wanted to
build a Bart's deck.

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
I did have this.

Speaker 1 (01:09:01):
I do have the Through the Age's Barts, which is
a Winoda deck, but I already have a couple of
Boros like Agroy decks, so I didn't want to build
another one, and I don't really care like Barts and
Boco are a single card. It's a bird typo card,
but it's just not you can't run it as a commander.

(01:09:21):
It's monogreen, not enough birds, and it only has like
one enter the battlefield effect. So I ended up building
Choco Seeker of Paradise, which is like a bam Bird deck,
and it's been really fun and one of my favorite
kind of like combo flavor combos. There is Sas from
Fies thirteen and it's a little chocobo and.

Speaker 3 (01:09:42):
A little choke bo.

Speaker 1 (01:09:42):
It's like it's kind of like Tifa in a funny way,
but it's a one drop one one, and every time
a land comes in to play, it just gets plus
one plus one. You play that on turn one and
it just like snowballs and it's just funny. And then
sas of course, can either search up a bird or
a lamp, and so it's synergized as well because you
can either find the joke about or you can find

(01:10:03):
a land of power it up. But then when he attacks,
he puts a plus one plus one token on any
creature and then doubles the number plus one plus one tokens.
So it's just like it's not necessarily good or overly powerful,
but it's just a cute little synergy between like two
cards that that they're just fun to play, and I
think that there's just a lot of fun to play.
Cards in this set absolutely make me really happy. One

(01:10:26):
of my biggest disappointments was Strago and Realm. Though I
ye Realm as a character, I was really hoping she
would get a good card. I don't mind that they
got combined, but it just didn't really mechanically do what
I wanted it to. Some of the go Go cards
feel a little like closer to what I would have
thought Realm would do with her sketch ability or the

(01:10:48):
Blue Mage ability.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
So did you see Rachel Weeks from the Command Zone
built a Go Go deck and played it? Ohay nights nuts?

Speaker 1 (01:10:58):
Now that I didn't really realized because I bought the
six deck and Go Go's in there, and Go Go's
kind of nuts. I haven't watched that episode yet, but
now I want to.

Speaker 3 (01:11:09):
Sigfreed is really.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
Funny and the good. I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:11:13):
He shouldn't be good, No, he shouldn't. Maybe that's a
flavor miss, I'm not, but it's a total flavor miss,
but he's he's pretty good. I like him, which is fun.

Speaker 2 (01:11:28):
Actually the same thing Tara Branford. It's funny to me
because it was like, you know, I liked I don't
like to bling out the decks when I can, right,
you know, I was like, okay, cool, Like let me
get a cool Tara. Okay, well, like the Esper Tara
like has the Amano art, which is really cool. But
except I've never actually liked the Amano Tara that much,

(01:11:49):
you know, because I prefer well, I prefer the pixel art. Right.
Oh gosh, I just I forgot. I meant to plug
I meant to get I have uh art for their
an artist who I always thought has had the best
like squares, the circle tra of like, this is the
amount of art, this is the art, this is what
she would really look like. And I meant to actually

(01:12:09):
like have it behind me for this recording. Yeah, but
so then so then it's like, okay, so then the
anime art, like if you look like anime Tifa is
anime tifa, anime cloud is anime cloud. You know, all
these looks good. The anime Tara to me looks a
little sort of generic gotcha wifu anime girl.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
Yeah, you know, it's weird to like transition a mono
art into that art style like once no Mura kind
of took over character designed with like seven and stuff
that matches up with like, like you say, the anime
style treatments for these cards. But it is strange to
go back to some of the Amano driven games and

(01:12:54):
be like, oh, this is like it's weird to see
these represented in this way. And that was something I
talked with Andrew so Fun Factory listener Andrew Blewett. He
and I are working on a video where we're going
through every card in the set. It's been so much fun.
And one of the comments I had is that, you
know the art, it's very strange to me when we

(01:13:14):
see some of these characters, especially the older characters, like
depicted in like a realistic style, when it has sort
of like that comic bookie like magic the gathering, you
like staple look to it. I really like these stylized
stuff that we got in the set. There's some beautiful
cards and then there are some that I sort of

(01:13:35):
look at and I go, ah, this doesn't really feel
authentic to me. And I mean that's not a knock
against the artists. It's just very hard to adapt something
that's pixel art or like low polygon like the older
Final fantasies, because so much of that happens in my head, right,
I see that character one way, you see that character

(01:13:56):
in another way. The artist is in a third way.
But on the flip side, there's so much beautiful like
stylized art. They've gone like so far afield bringing in
different art styles into this set. And I particularly like
the wood block borderless versions of cards. There's like a
fantastic Extalibur two with Steiner or the skilt skin one's beautiful.

(01:14:20):
There's so many good, good cards in the set, and
I've just been like going crazy trying to get like
nice versions of cards that aren't like too expensive.

Speaker 2 (01:14:29):
Yeah, sorry, okay, the two more on that number one.
So then the other Tara card is the Through the
Ages card and it's the Lord High Artificer. What it's like, Okay, yes,
she's like in the Magic Tech Armor or whatever, but
I'm like, why is why is she a reprint of

(01:14:50):
the Lord Artificer? Why is it like an artifacts? Like
I don't I don't get that at all. There's no
to me, there's no flashpoint moment where Tara or snapshot
moment where Tara is Za. That does just makes any
sense to me.

Speaker 1 (01:15:05):
Yeah, I agree, I think that. Like there's a lot
of beautiful cards on the Through the Age of stuff,
there's also some not very nice cards, Like I don't
really like the treatments where they just use like a
screenshot from like the FMV from the game, Like some
of those don't look too great.

Speaker 2 (01:15:21):
Yeah, but hit and Miss, I think hit and miss.

Speaker 1 (01:15:24):
But then the home runs like Zidane as Ragavan, I
love my birth card, like some of the ones that
they hit they like hit and I acknowledge how hard
it can be like to kind of get those those
flavor wins because these are pre defined characters having a
slot on top of pre defined characters, right, Like, yes,

(01:15:44):
Tara exists and Erza exists, and they're different characters, and
so it's never gonna reconcile except in like exceptional cases
like Zidane and Ragavan. I think, so, you know, I
can sit back and be like, oh, like, they shouldn't
have done Tima and Thracios as like Titus and Cecil.
They should have done them as two characters that go

(01:16:05):
together in the game or whatever. But as Gavin sort
of explained, it's like, well, like, yeah, people play these
together a lot, but you know it's not really that.
That's not the be all and end all of how
we need to kind of pair these two together, right,
Or is a is a super popular commander and Tara
is a super popular character, Like let's get a version

(01:16:25):
of Tara that people are gonna want to instead of
putting her on like some random character that maybe is
more of a flavor fit, but isn't going to be
like a sought after commander for people to play.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
No, totally, and Devin even kind of said that right.
It was kind of, hey we got some basically he
we got some cars we want to reprint. Hey we
got some art we can use, you know, let's make
it work. And I get that too. And then you
know there are people that are out there, the Titus
and unaistic studies. You know, there's people. There's people who

(01:16:56):
are like I got the good like Titus and Una
like that moment card and that other people like thank
fuck I needed a Ristic study. Yeah, totally tweet.

Speaker 1 (01:17:08):
Yeah, it's funny because like for me, like I've wanted
a rag Van for a long time, and so it
being Zidane was like, okay, like this is the time
I'm finally going to buy a rag Van because like
this is just too perfect for me. There's other times, yeah,
where I'm like, oh I just need this card, you know,
and I don't really care what the treatment is or
how I get it. It's just like the cheapest version

(01:17:29):
of this card that's come out for a long time.
Which is pretty funny too. There's someone at my pre
release that pulled a foil Ristic study like the it
was like, yes, pretty wild, beautiful cart, what are you
excited to do? With magic. Are you gonna you've got it?
Sounds like two commander.

Speaker 2 (01:17:49):
Decks, Oh dude, I have I have. Okay, so right
now I have Fade Aminion, the pre con that I
upgraded significantly. And then I say upgraded significantly, I actually
because I was new deck. It was a new deck,
and I was like, you know, I didn't you know,
I didn't know what I was doing for starters. And
then also our family is doing a commander pod, so
like the politics around, you know, were learning together some

(01:18:12):
of like removal and some of the like combat tricks
and stuff like. I actually took some of that out
to just do like more fairy like typo and kindred stuff,
you know, just kind of like get swoll of fairies.
And so now I've been kind of like I need
to put some of that stuff back in. I think,
even though I like where it is, but like I
could I could be better with it. Then I tried building.

(01:18:34):
I've got a Phoenixes and Clerics deck, which initially was red, white,
black mardo, but then I've started to do white like
like clerics and red phoenixes, you know, and it was
just like the recursion method on the Phoenixes they're all different,
and they're all very wonky, and they're all highly costed.
And so then when Jumpstart Foundation came out the clerics,

(01:18:59):
it had a cla pack, right, we got a couple
of those, but they're black clerics. They're all vampires. And
I went, this is what I need to do. I
just need to sack them and recur them and then
you don't have to pay the man for the phoenix is.
So I ripped out all the white and so it's ractose.
And what's actually really funny is the I guess I'm
using Chainer Nightmare up for the commander, but sell us

(01:19:23):
Rude Knight actually would work really well with that. Yes,
and so I kind of oh, I could like re
and if I did that, I could bring in uh
I think Joshua's got white anyway, the phoenix whe Yes. Yeah, yeah,
so that that was one I actually should have said
that I wanted more phoenix stuff. He's the he's the

(01:19:44):
only phoenix, the sixteen guy. Yeah, Joshua Phoenix is dominant.
He's the only phoenix thing in the whole set. It's
not a summon phoenix.

Speaker 1 (01:19:53):
Yeah. And then.

Speaker 2 (01:19:55):
The phoenix down is like literally the only other Phoenix
thing in the whole set. There isn't just like a
Phoenix creature Phoenix summs. It's like, ah, I have a
Phoenix's deck, and I was super excited to put phoenix
shit in here, so that would actually work if I
remade it with cell Us as the commander and tweaked
some of that. So I'm excited about that I bought.
I started making that Obeca deck and it's cool. But

(01:20:19):
it's like it's like literally like like high bracket one
at this point, you know, because I've got there's a
bunch of stuff that doesn't make sense together and almost
all of the ooh sick like and turn now abilities
are like of preposterously expensive cards, so you know, and

(01:20:39):
it's and it's like making rules rules based. It's also
like in our pod, is it like how much of
us are like rules sickos right, like procedurally Like hair
splitty stuff is like not necessarily the most fun.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
I like that kind of stuff, but like definitely like
I'm the guy at the table with my playgroup who
has like seventeen triggers on the stack and I'm like
resolving them like in order and stuff in my other
friends are like they're like just like whatever, like I
trust you, so like I'd love to play that against
that Obeca deck. But yeah, it's definitely like.

Speaker 2 (01:21:15):
A it's a work in progress.

Speaker 1 (01:21:17):
Yeah, sure, there you go. There's a nice card in
the set that because Rebecca gives extra upkeeps. Is that right?

Speaker 2 (01:21:23):
Well, it's it just ends the turn. So any effect
that was going to that says like until end of
turn right x, yeah you end up to and like
it cuts that off. So it's like, I'm sorry the
other way around, not it's it if it ends at
the end of the turn, it still ends at the
end of the turn. But the ones that say until
your next upkeep, so you cut the turn off before

(01:21:45):
upkeep happens or whenever it is right now, and so
that also happens. Like if someone's like that's funny, you
know if someone like plays an instant on your turn, Yeah,
you can just go no you don't, my turn ends
and like every the stack disappears. Yeah, so it's like
it's just boom over the other Obeca I think gives
you an extra upkeep pace.

Speaker 1 (01:22:06):
Okay, that's the way I was thinking of. Yeah, yeah,
there's a funny card in final fantasy that gives you
extra end steps, which seems cool, Like, I like any
of those ones that could sort of like mess with
the regular flow of the game, create new play patterns
and stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
So the big the big thing is extra turns because
it's like, oh, at the end of you know, this
creates an extra turn, and at the end of that
turn you lose the game. Okay, so that before you
get to the end of the turn, you cut it
and like you know, so that kind of final fortune
and stuff like that literally next turn and then you
lose the game at the end of that turn or whatever. Right, yeah,
so you just you just never get to the end

(01:22:42):
step of the second turn, so you just keep playing
and and like tokens that are supposed to disappear at
the beginning of your next upkeep don't.

Speaker 1 (01:22:50):
Yeah, because you just don't have that stuff, right yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:22:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:54):
So the I actually saw one person who was trying
to build a duck like that, but only on upkeep
triggers and then end, Like can I play a deck
that just literally just just keep draw upkeep and then
and the term okay cool and then move on.

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
No main phases, no combat, no clean up.

Speaker 2 (01:23:13):
Yeah, no, none of no actual gameplay. Yeah, and then
like I said, I about the two Final Fantasy and
see the Cloud one, which i've barely I haven't even
touched it really. I just got Buster Sword and put
it in, and then uh, the Tarot one, and then
I'm gonna buy these other two just to have the
cards and you know, kind of pick pick the ones
I want and you know, just have them.

Speaker 1 (01:23:34):
Yeah, for sure. You know you said they're starting to
sell the Commander decks at Costco, which I'm glad for
because like product's just been so hard to get. They
I guess underestimated how popular the set was going to be,
but like I can't you cannot get sealed product in
where I live at all. You know, one of the
stores got three booster boxes of regular like play boosters,

(01:23:54):
which was like a big deal. And because there's no
sealed product, like, people aren't trading stuff in, so it's
like hard for me to get singles as well. And
it's been like an adventure trying to build out some
of these decks and get some singles when I need them.
So I do hope, you know, I do hope that
there's some uh you know, improvement there, which which everybody
I talked about the card store says like, yeah, we're

(01:24:15):
expecting more product, we just don't know when. I can't
tell you could come tomorrow, it could come you know,
two weeks or a month or whatever. But if you're listening,
wizards like hook me in, tie on.

Speaker 2 (01:24:27):
Yeah. This whole time, I like when I saw what
the collector boosters were a msrp'd at and then be
what they're gonna be for the street, I knew. I
knew I was never gonna get a collector box, yeah,
but I was like, yo, let me get let me
just get one collector booster and aid all that stuff
sold out yea open pre sale for my local game store,

(01:24:47):
and then some of the like Myers and Targets and
walmarts around here carry that stuff. But the distribution of
that is like I'm gonna use the phrase mobbed up.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:24:58):
I don't know if I am not alleging any criminal activity,
but like after after pre release, I was kind of like, Okay,
when is it release release? Oh, Then like one day,
I you know, like a week later, I was like, oh,
there's empty Final Fantasy boxes on the card shelf here
at Meyer, like what happened, you know? And so I
asked my local game store and a couple of like
I was like, yeah, okay, so it's this one company

(01:25:19):
and they go from Meyer to Meyer, and they the
Meyer lets them store the stuff in the mynor but
it's not Meyer stuff, and then that that employee comes
out on the cart and that employee you know, stocks it,
and you got to be there when they open. And
I'm like, yeah, I've seen I've seen people just like

(01:25:41):
cash app them and just like hand them product before
they put it. It doesn't even on the shelves Ltstic
card games. So I started kind of like yeah, like
every time I go grocery shop and go to a
different Meyer, right, or like if I happened to be
like I just see. And then one day I see
this big, huge line of people at the card thing

(01:26:01):
of like, hey, so like what's going on? I'm like
Pokemon And so apparently as big as Final Fantasy is,
as much as it's selling out, the Pokemon stuff is
so much worse that Oh yeah, a couple dozen people
are just like waiting for hours at the mire for
the person to show up. And then I actually ran
into the person stocking, and so there's this whole line

(01:26:21):
just waiting for her to stock, and she's like, yeah,
I actually have to take a picture of all the
stock on the shelves, apparently to combat this issue of
the stocka for making it to the shelves. So they
all sit there for like forty minutes while she and
then she's like, Okay, whoever's first in line, get what
you want. Whoever second in line, get with you. And
this is like again a third party contractor, and like

(01:26:43):
the whole thing. And I'm like, all I want to
do is open one Collector Booster, and I might not
get to.

Speaker 1 (01:26:48):
That's like the thing for me, Like I like to, like,
like you said, I like to bring out my deck
when I can and when I can afford it. Right, Yeah, yes,
I'm not really in the audience for like collector boosters.
But what I like about Collector boost is is it's
in Final Fantasy. It's been sort of pushing the price
of like the regular printing down, which is like right
where I want to be. I just want to play

(01:27:08):
the game, Like I'm there to buy cards to play, right,
I don't have intentions of selling my cards, you know,
I'm not there trying to make investments. I just want
to play games and I want to get my hands
on the cards that will let me do that. So
you know, I think that's going to improve, and it's
only going to improve, and like it's a good problem

(01:27:29):
to have, you know for Wizards, Hey, our games too popular.
People are buying too much product. But when it's a
standard set, like if you want people to play Standard,
you know, they got to be able to get the cards.
And I think, to me, there's a different standard standard
when you're printing something into like a format like Standard
versus like a modern only or like a legacy only

(01:27:52):
set like Lord of the Rings and so like it's
got to be on store shelves, right, there's got to
be a lot of product out there if you're going
to put it the standard. So curious to see how
Avatar goes this winter. So the mast like as Eternity,
because that's another universe is beyond that's going to be
in Standard, which I am incredibly excited about. But like

(01:28:14):
let's see what they learn from like funnel Fantasy about
like keeping stock on shelves. I do worry that it's
kind of facing a bit of the Pokemon problem where
it's all scalpers just trying to like get those pricey cards,
which is not great, but and that's hard for someone
like Wizards to control without just flooding the market with product,
which then obviously comes with its own sort of financial risks.

(01:28:37):
I was going to say, kind of transitioning on to
I think like our last topic was, you know, Universes
Beyond is contentious among players, especially when you start getting
cards into standard. I've kind of long ago come to
the just acceptance that Magic the Gathering is a game system.

(01:28:58):
And I love the Magic the Gathering and the world
and the story, but ultimately, at its core it is
like a game system. And going back to the very
earliest iterations of magic, like real world stuff has always
been in there. Aladdin was in you know, in the
set early on, We've had that kind of stuff. So
you know, Universes Beyond is here to stay. I was

(01:29:19):
gonna say, though, like, you know, what if you could
choose like a universe is beyond for ty Shchoulter, like
what do you what are you looking at? What would
you what would you want Magic to make a set of.
Don't say NFL no, because I'm terrified that's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (01:29:40):
We can get Uh yeah, I literally had that thought
like that. I also I also was about this on Reddit.
Someone was like, oh, Pokemon, and somebody else replied, No,
you couldn't do that because you would have to repurpose
all the world world's printing machine to print both that

(01:30:02):
set and money at the same time. And you you
just couldn't do it one or the other. Yeah, But
you know, I've I've had those sorts of thoughts before,
and like one of the reasons and I didn't, you know,
blab at this because I try not to when I'm
interviewing somebody I really think is cool not to just
like ramble and try to impress them or impress upon them.

Speaker 1 (01:30:23):
I don't think we did a very good job with Gavin.

Speaker 2 (01:30:27):
We try We tried it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
We really did.

Speaker 2 (01:30:31):
But like, Final Fantasy is such a great mix because
it's got low and high magic, low and high technology.
There's a little medieval stuff, there's a little modern stuff,
you know, like you can and like you said, it's
it's an anthology series of its own, right. There's like
all these different planes of Final Fantasy that sort of
and sort of don't intersect. And they even have like
the hub world of fourteen where a bunch of these

(01:30:52):
characters in places, you know, can kind of overlap. So
that makes a ton of sense, and my brain wants
to go to Okay, like what other video games? Right?
Avats is interesting, but it's got such a strong color
pie magic system of its own. I'm very curious how
I'm curious about that to translate, Like you think people
are gonna get hung up on like the meaning of
esper Like what.

Speaker 1 (01:31:14):
Wait, wait, don't wait until they get like a Boros Katara.

Speaker 2 (01:31:18):
Oh man, Like see, yeah, that's gonna be weird. And
we already had a couple you know, Like my eldest
was kind of like, did they pick the colors for
some of these characters based on what colors they are?
Because I have, you know, I have doubts about some
of these selections. So yeah, I mean, you know it's
Star Trek.

Speaker 1 (01:31:40):
You know, Star Trek.

Speaker 2 (01:31:41):
We have a Star Trek in spite, you know, like
we have some of these other things. Actually Star Wars
would be the more natural fit because it's the actual
fantasy magic stuff, you know, Star Trek does saying it.
But like I was, I was always more of a
Trekker growing up than Star Wars. It's actually flipped. It
was funny because I used to make friends and make
fun of Star Wars people because like, what do you

(01:32:03):
just do? You just watch the same three movies over
and over and over and over and you're still going
to conventions about it. Yeah, I've got like two whole
TV shows, you know, And now it's like the other
way around, where it's like, yeah, okay, every three years
there's this TV show that everybody hates except for Lower Deck,
even Star Trek fans and h Meanwhile, Star Wars has

(01:32:23):
like the world's most infinite universe of properties to choose from.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
Yeah, those would be good choices. I have a hard
time because like, honestly, of five years ago you had
asked me, like what ips what I want converted into
magic sets, it would be like Lord of the Ring's
Final Fancy and Avatar, Like swear to god, they've had
three of my like absolute tops. So it's like it's hard.

(01:32:49):
I'm like, okay, well, what would be like fourth on
my list? Like what would be my number four choice?
And it would be you know, like yeah, it's hard
to really come up with, uh, with something that I
think would be like a home run in the way
that Lord of the Rings, in the way that you
know we've seen from Final Fantasy and stuff. There's lots

(01:33:10):
that I can think of for like secret layers, like, oh,
it would be cool to get like twelve cards based
on you know, yes, you know obviously stuff like Chrono
Trigger or dragon Quest. Dragon Quest would be a lot
harder though, I think to like translate into Final or
into Magic Gathering, because it does use so many different
tropes and archetypes and like recycles over time, so many

(01:33:30):
different tropes and archetypes. You're showing mery picture, yeah and
so sick.

Speaker 3 (01:33:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:33:38):
Yeah. So this is this is the print I have. Actually, sorry,
this is a complete derail. I was looking for it,
so Alison Mackenzie, Ali mac Art. I'll probably link it
in the show notes. This is her Tara and Maud design,
and I just I just really think it's super super cool.
And then I ordered it and she included like I

(01:33:58):
got like bookmarkt stick and all this other stuff and
like a personal note of like this Espertara, like her
art style is just super super cool and she's got
a ton of you know, other the illustrations and what
Eye and this is the kind of stuff that here
in Canada it's so hard to get because I'd order
it and it would be it just ends up being

(01:34:19):
like one hundred and thirty percent more expensive because of shipping.

Speaker 1 (01:34:23):
It's so good, amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:34:25):
Yeah, So anyway, yeah I might, I might. I might
email that to Gavin afterwards, because I meant to kind
of show him and be like, Hey, if you're looking
for secret layered or like like home, check out this
lady because her stuff rips.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
Yeah, so good. Anyway, I can't remember saying, oh, just
like it's it's really hard, like they've hit on three
of my like all time favorite things. Like I think
something like Brandon Sanderson's miss Borne would translate really well.
It seems like kind of a generic answer, but I
do think like Brandon is such a huge magic fan
and he has those like deeply like thought out magic

(01:35:02):
systems that you know, love him, love him or hate them.
They're important to his writing, and I think he thinks
about magic systems the same way magic designers think about
magic cards, and so I think you'd have that transition.
And because of the Cosmeer stuff being so broad, you
could get like a lot of cards in the same way.
Final Fantasy has such a deep well to pull from.

(01:35:22):
I think Brandis Anderson's work would be you know, right
for that sort of thing would be kind of cool.

Speaker 2 (01:35:29):
Well, that's a great shout. And now I'm like, okay, okay, okay, books, books, books,
you know, because it's like the range is absolutely gigantic.
And then especially if you're thinking about rendering some of
the stuff visually for the first time, and it would
have to be kind of big to make sense for
universes beyond and not like a secret layer or one off.

Speaker 1 (01:35:49):
Yes, and that's a totally different thing. Like I could
think of a million different you know, like give me
a studio ghibbling secret layer, you know, like I buy
a million copies, you know, stuff like that. But when
it's like filling out a whole set, like you know,
there's got to be a lot there to draw from.
Star Treks, Star Wars obviously have a lot. World of
Warcraft would be a good one, but they kind of

(01:36:11):
have their own hearthstone. Yes, so that's that, you know,
that would be kind of hard, But but yeah, a
lots out there. I'm curious to see where they go,
because I don't think this is going away anytime soon.

Speaker 2 (01:36:22):
And actually Game of Thrones, Game of Thrones would be fun.

Speaker 1 (01:36:26):
Game of Thrones could be cool. Yeah, there's that depth
as well. Yeah to that world if anyone cares about
Game of Thrones anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:36:34):
Is that like a thing that's the wildest thing is
like it's it's completely memory hold almost like like that
the final season of the show is season and down
the decade long.

Speaker 1 (01:36:47):
Wait between books. It's just that feels like it's really
like a lot of momentum. But oh yeah, but yeah,
lots of stuff out there. I'm excited about Final Fantasy,
but I'm excited to also go back to like, you know,
original ip for Magic, Edge of Materney looks really cool.
And then Avatar of course will be a big one.
One of the things that I really love about Final

(01:37:09):
Fantasy Lord of the Rings, I can't really get it.
It's behind me, but like I just like building in
the universe decks in those and one of the things
like so I'm holding up my Choco deck and it's
got like probably sixty percent like magic or Final Fantasy
cards or Final Fantasy printings of cards. But it also
makes it in a bunch of regular magic eyp stuff. Terra,

(01:37:32):
which I made like thirty adjustments to is all Final
Fantasy cards, and it just feels more like pure to me,
Like yes, that is like okay, this feels like it
exists in its own little thing. It feels really like
comfortable having just Final Fantasy cards. I have a Froto
and Sam deck, which is all Lord of the Rings cards,
so I bought the pre con and then I upgraded

(01:37:53):
it with only in Universe cards. But then my Tom
Bombadle deck has like Tom Bombadle, you know, fighting alongside
Odin and you know, like crazy you know, like just
funny stuff. Terra's in there, and then Garnet's in there
and Tom Bombadilla, and it's just like kind of goofy, right,
seeing like not only like characters Liket, like you know,

(01:38:16):
fighting alongside Magic the Gathering and like characters, but like
seeing Lord of the Rings people fighting alongside Fallout cards
for you know, like being able to build like in
the Universe decks is really fun for me. So I'm
excited for Avatar to come out and build a really
cool in universe Avatar deck. We'll see how that goes.
Because I'm sure it'll be going. I'm sure it'll be fun.

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
Yeah, all right, well, Aiden, I think we have to
wrap this because this is I think we can wrap this. Yes,
thank you for everyone who's stuck with Lust Magic the
Gathering And just to explain, this isn't about retro video
game magazines, but one of the most active channels on
our discord is the tabletop RBG and Card Game Discord channel.

Speaker 1 (01:38:58):
We talk about Magic the Gathering lot. I know this
set has been super popular with our listeners, and so
this was a fun opportunity to talk to Gavin, who
is one of the best out there when it comes
to representing magic. And I hope you guys enjoyed, you know,
listening to us gab about magic cards, and maybe they'll
inspire you to kind of reach out and look into
the new set or just go back and enjoy your

(01:39:20):
favorite final fantasy again.

Speaker 2 (01:39:22):
And hey, maybe this bonus episode will convince you to
buy the whole podcast. Leave us a review at Apple Podcasts,
posted a comment on YouTube, and we will read the
best ones on air, and hey, go ahead and pass
this show around to all your friends like it's third
grade and we're on the playground, shut us out on
Blue Sky YouTube and TikTok at fun Factor Pod. Special
thanks to Millennium Felk for all our amazing original music.

(01:39:44):
Check out his work and his incredible Windows ninety five
website at Millennium Falck dot com. And unlike the old
magazines we review, you won't have to wait a whole
month for your next installment. We drop new episodes every
two weeks. So go to Funfactor pod dot com to
follow our show on your podcast or choice, and please
insteader becoming a member of fun Factor Ultra, our premium
tiers with unlock ad free episodes, bonus episodes, and the

(01:40:06):
swanky members only channel of our discord. Just go to
Funfactor pod dot com and I promise you you won't
miss up the sign up widget on our home page.
If you do, you and we will have a maximum
score in fun Factor

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy, with set designer Gavin Verhey [S1E9]

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Dateline NBC

24/7 News: The Latest

All Episodes

Magic: The Gathering Final Fantasy, with set designer Gavin Verhey [S1E9]

On Purpose with Jay Shetty