GenCon 1993

Date: Wed, 8 Sep 93 02:26:00 -0700
From: David Howell <snark@omnigroup.com>

                       Enchanting the Masses,

                                 or

                   What the Wizards did at GenCon.


We arrived on Wednesday and managed to get people into the hotels w/o
much trouble. Setting up the booth was more interesting, since we'd
bought a new backdrop, and the first anybody had actually seen it was
sitting in it's black boxes in our booth. We managed, somehow, and
were pretty ready for opening day on Thursday. New products were
_Thystram's Collectanaea,_ _Chessboards: The Planes of Possibility_
(written by yours truly), and, of course, _Magic: The Gathering._

We had airshipped about 600K cards over from Carta Mundi, our printer
in Belgium, and had the whole shipment sell out to distributors
before we left for GenCon. As a result, the last week before we went
we were running around scraping together every deck we had left, so
we'd have something to show on Thursday. We were supposed to have the
rest of our first 2.5 million cards by then, but they were shipped to
Oakland instead of Seattle, and would arrive by train on Thursday,
after we were at GenCon. After dazzling footwork and frantic phone
calls by Lisa Stevens, we found we'd have about 3000 decks for sale
at GenCon. They would be air shipped from Seattle, and arrive Friday.

Thursday, we sold out what we had around noon, and started a reserve
list. By the end of the day, we had reserves for about 100 decks.
Nobody really pushed a product we didn't have yet, so it was a
relatively quiet day, which was good. It gave our staff some time to
settle into a routine.

Friday at 10:30 our shipment arrived, and we already had a line. That
line lasted until noon, and picked up again around 3. There was a mad
rush right at 6, when the hall closed. We were playing 2-3 demo games
at a time in the booth, so people could see the cards moving around.
This proved to be unnecessary on later days.

We started running two challenges Friday afternoon. At the booth was
a "Challenge the Masters" competition, where one of our experts
(usually Rick D.S. Marshall, the husband of Wizard's editor and a
fanatic at assembling deadly decks) would offer all comers the chance
to take him on. Why would someone challenge a person going by the
title of "master?" Because the challenger would ante up a card from
their deck, as normal, but we were ante-ing two booster packs. The
final record was 1-18 for our master players. Each card that was won
by the master was mounted on the wall behind him as a kill record.

[WARNING: SEMI-SPOILERS]

As anyone who saw these challenges can tell you, there were four
decks that were being used, three of Rick's and one of mine.
Generally considered the most dangerous was the 'decay' deck, which
consisted almost entirely of swamp, sinkholes, and plague rats. Lots
of plague rats.

The second worst deck was the "walk into this" deck, which had no
creatures, no direct damage spells, really no offensive capability at
all. What it had were counterspells, power sinks, black vices,
brainguysers, and psychic venoms in abundance. In effect, the deck
caused the opponent to kill himself. Tremendously frustrating.

The third deck was the 'white weenie' deck, and contained holy
strength, benalish hero, and pegasus, along with plains. They all
band, the pegasi fly, and they needed so few plains to cast that the
challenger was usually quickly overwhelmed by the little buggers. The
banding is a key to this strategy.

My deck goes by "The X Deck," which was originally eXperimental. It
consists of forests, Llanowar Elves, wild growth, and sol rings to
allow a lot of mana to hit the table fast, and mountains, fireballs,
and disintegrates. A typical game against this deck has me playing
mana cards on turns one-three, and doing a 6,7, and 8 point fireball
on turns four through six.

Most such decks (we call them degenerate decks), have critical
weaknesses, and if you know that's what you're up against, they're
easily defeated. However, against a general deck, they're
devastating.

It should be noted that one of the playtesters managed to come up
with a deck at the con that makes all four of these look like dirt.
I'll just say it was very green.

You might also note that of the five decks listed, the colors are
black, blue, white, red and green, and green. You can make a killer
from just about anything...

[END SPOILERS]

Far more interesting was the "weenie pack" challenge. We gave three
of the playtesters a total of three decks and three packs. With just
this raw material, they assembled three decks, and took on
challengers, one card to one booster pack. The challengers, of
course, were given no restrictions on their decks. They could play
from a deck made from 20 booster packs, and enhanced by trades with
anybody they could find. Despite this supposed handicap, the win-loss
record was 28-4.

Lesson: Even if you only get one deck and one pack, and trade with
only two friends, you can still put together a competitive deck.

Saturday we really got into gear, with our tournament starting at
noon. Not surprisingly, there were a lot of rules confusions, and one
round of 2 out of 3 ran for almost two hours. Someone recorded a
blow-by-blow of the final set, but I don't have it here. The
finalists were showing an excellent grasp of the game. The winner,
Alex Parrish, was playing a red and black deck, and the 1st runner up
was playing green-white. Alex took home a free membership in the
Duelist's Convocation, our Magic Dueling organization, a Magic
T-Shirt, a certificate, and a display case of (36) booster packs.
That's 540 cards. Finalists got the membership an shirt, and the 1st
runner up also received 5 booster packs.

Sunday, we were even more swamped. About 10:30, we started running
two receipt books, and still had a line until closing.

What many of our staffers reported, and I experienced first hand, was
that you could wander the Mecca halls and spot a game of Magic just
about everywhere you went. Wearing a Wizards exhibitor badge gave me
a celebrity status that was intoxicating to experience. Retailers
were telling us that they were tremendously excited to have a hot new
product. The last big seller, 2.5 years ago, was Vampire. Gamers
would say "This is such a great game" over and over, until I walked
away. Darwin Bromley, the head of Mayfair games, called Magic "The
Babe of the Con."

Of course, what really stands out are the other company's reactions.
TSR did nothing, of course. White Wolf had already expressed interest
in the game, after just seeing prototypes. They reaffirmed their
desire for a Deckmaster game based on Vampire: The Masquerade. It
goes to playtest soon, and should be out early next year. R.
Talsorian signed a letter of intent for a Cyberpunk game. Both they
and the FASA Shadowrun team lamented that there isn't any good way to
simulate network warfare, so the Cyberpunk Deckmaster is hopefully
going to be a netrunner game. The Camarilla had already given serious
thought to using Magic as an optional method of resolving battles
between vampires. Presumably they'll switch over when the vampire
Deckmaster is out.

Unfortunately, R. Talsorian beat FASA to the punch, so the Shadowrun
Deckmaster that FASA wants will probably not be out in '94. The
status of a Battletech game is still iffy, but an Earthdawn expansion
set for The Gathering is very likely. I had more than one FASA artist
tell me how excited they were about that, since their contract
prohibits them from taking outside work on a competing product.

Other too-soon-to-say-for-sure items would include distribution in B.
Dalton and Waldenbooks, and what might come from the Marvel (or was
it DC?) rep that was seen around our booth.

But enough blue-sky speculation. Cold hard facts, that's what we
need. Remember that shipment that came into Seattle? Well, a bit less
than half of it was already spoken for before we left for GenCon. On
Tuesday, the day before it actually reached our warehouse, it was all
sold, and more. Some distributors called three times that day to
increase their orders. The bad news is we won't have the rest of the
print run until mid-September.

At the present time, our near-term plans for Magic include a new
edition of the Gathering, visibly different on the face of the cards
to distinguish them from the first edition, and a Collector's Edition
complete boxed set of the cards, marked on the back so they can't be
used w/o an opponent knowing of them. We're hoping to get all of the
above out in time for Christmas. Also scheduled for a mid-December
release is 1,001 Nights, the first expansion set for The Gathering.

The company hopes to maintain a strong presence at cons throughout
the country. Those we can't get to ourselves we will cooperate with
local people to provide prizes for tournaments and such. If you're
involved with a con and wish to run such a tournament, call Wizards
at 206 624-0933 and ask for Steve, our Convention Coordinator.

I will see some of you at WorldCon. Drop by the booth and say hi.

I'm having so much fun!

Dave Howell, aka Snark       snark@wizards.com
Production Manager, Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
Keeper of the Magic FAQ


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