Welcome to the Gamer Dad Podcast where we talk about all things
Magic the Gathering and gaming. We strive to keep things fun fit
into our busy lives because gaming's worth finding time for.
I'm Gamer dad Bob, a 30 year Magic Gathering veteran, format
hopper, nonsense deck Brewer, and someone who still gets way
too excited about clever card design.
And I'm Jesse Hoagy, a 30 year Magic Gathering vet, A2 time
girl dad, and still in a Thanksgiving food coma.
Pretty sure I'm exiled. Leonard Enchantment called too
much Turkey. Are you sleepy, Jesse?
I'm very sleepy. I, I, I, I'm a little sleepy
too. We had a rough day in our
household, but it's OK. It's because it's my birthday
and we're going to, we're going to get through this.
So happy birthday. Oh, thank you.
I'm I'm 44 today, so 44 years young.
Today we're joined by someone who has carved out a really
distinct niche in Magic the Gathering content space.
Josh, or as many of you know him, JMR Game design.
If you've seen his Spellify solves or his short form card
breakdowns, you know the appeal. He understands how Magic speaks,
the templating, the cadence, the structure, all the tiny
linguistic patterns most players never notice.
And before we dive in, Please remember this podcast is powered
by you, our listeners. If you'd like to support what we
do, head on over to Patreon. Most of what's there free is
free. Words are hard.
It's where I post my blogs, essays, and deeper thoughts
around Magic Gathering, podcasts and production work.
And if you want to chip in a few bucks, it helps keep everything
running. The podcast, the gear, the time
it takes to get this stuff right.
It's completely optional, but greatly appreciated.
And don't forget to stick around for flavour text or song lyrics.
At our midway point. Will Jesse try to stump me with
something obscure like you did last time, or pull something off
my playlist? And before we jump in, let's
talk about who's sitting down with us today, because Josh is
someone who's brought something genuinely fresh to the card
knowledge side of content. So Josh has built a growing
corner of YouTube with over 1100 subscribers and climbing, mind
you, almost entirely through sharp, focused card level
insights. He's become known for
recognizing cards from almost nothing, decoding templating
patterns in real time, and breaking down what Magic's
language. What makes Magic's language
tick? That is hard to say.
And I stumbled on it even practicing, and here we are
live. And I did it again.
You got through it man, it's all good.
And what's wild is that this depth came together fast not
long ago, and we'll get into this and into the timeline.
He first picked up Magic, but he approaches the card file like
someone who's been studying it for years.
His work isn't gameplay, isn't discourse.
It isn't hype. It's clarity.
It's pattern recognition. It's seeing the bones of the
game translating into the content that people actually
want to watch. We're excited to talk to him
today about Magic, cognition, and what it means to carve out
your own lane in a crowded community.
Josh, welcome. Thank you for having me guys, I
really appreciate it. I'm excited to have you on
Jesse. I know this is going to be an
interesting one for you too as, as we kind of work through this.
I, I, I can't wait to see what you come up with here as some
fun follow-ups and everything, because this is, this is unique,
right? Josh has a unique space that
he's carved out. I haven't seen anybody else
doing this either. So you know, this is where it
gets fun. So Josh, when you, what, what
drew you to Spellify in the 1st place, right?
And when did you realize it was the format where your brain just
clicked? Oh, if I my own timeline might
be a little goofy here. I remember I was came up on like
EDH Rex thing about like I think it was who God, who was it like
I think script or scrimp on a on TikTok had put out the first
like couple spellifies there. I was like, Oh, that's kind of
cool. So I you know, I started doing
it and it's like, OK, this this seems like a cool little game to
do. I think when I started doing it,
it may have been like really early and when they actually
started doing like Spellify game stuff between that and like this
is around the time when I think they finally were pushing Wardle
really hard into Discord. So like everyone's trying to hop
into their own world games. So I started doing it figured
OK, the problem, I wouldn't say a problem per SE, but like on my
channel, the content I was trying to focus on the time was
somewhere between like long form and not quite risk study style
content, but more just like longer form videos.
And my frustration was like, well, I don't think I have the
time with my particular editing style.
I don't know if you guys looked too far in my other videos, but
most of it's like 0 punctuation style, like animatic kind of
stuff. That's just harder.
That's just harder to like mass produce compared you just
sitting in front of a camera and just gap it for a while, right?
So I thought, OK, it's a way to make some daily content.
Hopefully I can whittle this down into a fastish enough
system, I can actually have some good content put out and it just
kind of, I wouldn't say it became my life, but it is now
actively a part of my daily routine.
Like it is. I work in LGS, so part of my
schedule turns into, all right, I work like 12 to 10, get home
at like 10:00-ish, chill for a while, midnight rolls around and
that's when it like the clock hits on Spellify.
Like awesome, do you spellify? Let's see.
OK, so these are happening like midnight.
This is these. Are these are happening like
most of the time? Unless it's like a lazy day for
me, which sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't, but I am
generally doing them somewhere between like a minute to like 10
minutes after the cards gone live.
Adam. Not tired or anything.
I. Jesse.
That doesn't compute. Yeah, just that doesn't compute.
For just enough if you noticed on if if you go back far enough
to when the earlier spellifies before I really I made I try to
tighten up my editing in like the zone in stuff.
It has like the, you know, time till next spellify over there
and it's more than likely ever like 20-3 hours and like some
kind of minutes. Oh man, I I don't.
The last time I stayed up past midnight was like this week, but
it was because I was sick. I I wouldn't say I'm a night owl
but I'm also just like owl. It just makes sense to stick her
out for it so I can do it in the evening, record everything, then
edit in the morning before I go to work.
Wow. And it and is that something
that you just picked up doing come like quickly or is it that
you kind of gradually build up to it over time?
It's something I just kind of decide I OK, I'd say is more of
like stubbornness. I I kind of describe at least
just my attitude, something like, OK, I am on a project,
some cost fallacy be damned. I'm, I'm just gonna, you know,
I'm gonna see the project through and with Spotify, I just
turned into doing it and like, OK, I can keep, I can keep this
up. And then it turned to, OK, well,
I want to keep consistently having daily content.
And I've done this enough now that I'm aware, aware of enough
of my rhythms and how to put it all out.
So just kind of became the consistency because obviously on
a social media video stuff, whatever they will, they reward
consistency. And I figured, all right, well,
if I can't have consistent long form, damn it, I'm going to have
consistent short form. I kind of pivoted to that
myself, you know, with what we're doing and how I'm putting
shorts on my channel. And you're right, consistency is
definitely rewarded, although my short today is not performing
very well and I'm kind of bummed because I thought it was funny.
Anyway, you live, you learn, right?
So how did you train your brain as you were doing these to
recognize these templating so quickly, right?
Was it intentional practice? I mean, you mentioned
stubbornness, right? Or did it kind of come together
naturally as you got more engaged with magic's language
so. I'd say it's a combination.
For one, I have a massive card game background.
History wise, I've been playing TCGS for upward like 15 plus
years. My first game was Yu-gi-oh.
Then I got into Magic and just my brain's kind of always been
like dialed and geared in for the card game stuff.
With Magic specifically, part of it was, I work at an LGS and a
lot of my job is going and entering our bulk and like
putting, going through bulk and just grading through cards.
So over the course of the day you see a bunch of cards.
They might be the same ones, but you still see a bunch of them.
And I, I don't remember exactly when, but it was from doing
enough spellifies and just all the card and stuff you just got
to pick up on like, wait, hold on, this is all formatted about
the same. And I don't know, pattern
recognition just kind of kicks in after a while.
Yeah. And now I wouldn't say it's very
easy, but it is probably more consistently keeping streaks now
compared to the early days. So when that new spell, if I
loads at 12:01 AM, mind you, what's the first thing you're
reading? Is it the spacing?
The punctuation, The templating? What's kind of your entry point?
What are you looking at first? So entry point, I'm usually
checking the name. Generally if a card is talking
about a named character, usually it's an apostrophe somewhere in
there for a possessive. So I think the one that came out
today, if you don't want to do it in the next 3 1/2 hours, 3
hours, it's Saunders Ignition. So it's like taking a look at
the name. It's like, all right, if it's
possessive, what magic characters kind of fill in for
about that name? Like it's not Jessica's because
it's not Jessica's will. It's formatted differently.
Another important thing is, I mean, stupidly enough for like
OK, card type instant sorcery artifacts, trying to narrow it
down from there, Magic design branching out into like all the
other weird stuff of like, OK, like nowadays colored artifacts
are a pretty common thing, but they're not as common if you go
further back from like Core 19 as a for instance.
So it's stuff like the name, it's stuff like the card types.
It's stupidly stuff like, you know, from that point, looking
the text for specific, this is going to get like really, really
specific, but like particular symbols.
So generally if something has like A-IN it, for instance,
that's almost always like a choose X number type effect
because the way Magic cards are formatted, it's going to go
like, oh, choose one big hyphen and then like bullet points down
the side. If there's a slash somewhere in
the text, then it's either talking about a power and
toughness change, so like a pump spell, or it's talking about 11
counters. In that case, it's like, cool,
there's a little slash there, there's your digits.
And then if you look to the next of it, that's, you know, your
kind of next inference for if it's talking counters or a
different pump. It's kind of like adding up all
these little language inferences kind of thing to them in my
head. Go, OK, it's not talking about
counters. It's talking about a power
toughness pump. It's a creature, it's a
legendary or, or it's not legendary.
We're like, OK, this has like 15 card types here.
What it you know, what is this going to be?
It's just kind of taking the amalgamation of not as maybe not
necessarily starting in one particular spot, because
especially I wouldn't, I'm really trying not to brag on
this because I think this is a very niche section of knowledge
that I don't think anyone should reasonably have.
Just like, yes, I, I could deduce a magic card from no text
whatsoever, But like, it's, it's these little things here and
there of like, all right, what other, like if you're trying to
like vision it in your head, like the big one that I'm always
kind of locked in looking for is an ETV trigger that's almost
always formatted the same. It's always like whatever, you
know, this creature enters or for legendaries, whatever card
name enters, you know, do XYZ things.
And those are almost always like the easiest to kind of pick out.
There's a lot of stuff has ETB effects or dies effects or all
that. And it's really like kind of
just finding like an anchor and then using that as like a, to
use like a code analogy, like a binary search tree of like, OK,
every little new piece of information keeps whittling down
the available card pool and just kind of going from there down
until finally cool. It's like XYZ card.
So each time you're, you're able to kind of infer something, you
reach like a pivot point where you're like, OK, now we go here.
Yeah, reasonably because of. Now we go here because of.
OK, you got that's, that's interesting.
So you mentioned in your panel in Atlanta that the templating
repetition teaches you how Magic speaks basically, right?
How much does that inform your spellify guesses?
Because there, there's clearly the right way to template cards,
right? For ease of reading, for, for
ease of understanding and stuff. So just the flow of the, the
text on these cards teaches you how Magic speaks.
So how does that help with your Spellify guesses?
I you talked a little bit about enters the battlefield and stuff
like that, but what else? What else is there?
I mean, the big like I'm trying to like as like I guess point
out some specific things, but like generally like card
formatting is it's one, I mean, I think the the panels on
YouTube, like the big part of it is like how Magic organizes
information physically on the cards.
So generally it's even doing things way before like an ET BS
trigger or leaves. It's doing like here's a static
thing that might be changing how you actually cast the card or an
additional cost to cast the card.
And then from down there, it's talking about static effects.
It's talking in there about like sometimes it changes between
some cards, but it's like generally goofiness flying.
Yeah, first static, static parts of the cards and then going to
the things that I, you know, maybe we as players more pay
attention to like, you know, ETV's, dyes, triggers, leaves,
triggers. And then the really goofy stuff
down below, which I thought was really weird that like Threshold
and Metal Craft tends to just like sit towards the bottom of a
card, which I guess makes sense because it's something that's a
little more fluid and not as maybe not always as relevant to
a board state. They're also.
So conditional abilities, right? Because they might not always be
turned on. Metal Zack, for example.
Yeah. So I guess in terms of how that
has taught me styling of a card, maybe not so much as styling
just more as helping to recognize per SE, just like of
all the how to say just like just kind of like how like the
big one, maybe that isn't as realized.
Strifell uses because they pull EDA truck pulls from Strifell to
make the text of the cards they're pulling from the most
recent Aradas, which doesn't seem super relevant.
But then there's the thing that happened pretty recently that
now, well, the the enter stuff, but more specifically, instead
of saying like when entire card name enters, it'll just whittle
down to when this artifact, this creature enters.
I. Missed that which?
Is it's not, it doesn't always come up, but it's a thing there
where it's OK now it's like a more recent dish print kind of
thing or just more recent errata.
I guess trying to I've realized I keep deviating away from the
question, but for like, how is it?
I don't know. I I get you, yeah.
But just like where it keeps with the, I guess the to boil it
down, it's less that it's teaching about necessarily for
me how cards are set up just more of like reinforcing like,
OK, here's how all this information is spread out
necessarily for players and just understanding the cards that.
Idea that is magic having a language.
When did that start to like click for you maybe?
Like maybe. I don't think necessarily ever
clicked per SE. It was, I think more of like
when I was actually putting the stuff together for the Spellify
panel and, you know, trying to organize all my, I mean,
genuinely, because it's like a thing that in the moment,
because when I'm, when I'm doing spellifies, they take, I've had
some, I've had some longer ones, but the like the most amount of
time that Spellify generally takes me is somewhere between 15
to 20 minutes on average, probably more like 5.
So it's really small chunks that I don't, you don't really kind
of sit on at that point. It's like, all right, you did
it. It's like, it's like potato
chips. It's candy kind of thing.
You consume it. And then he goes to the editing
Bay to start being worked on. But it wasn't until I was
actually sitting down to try and articulate my thoughts for
Spellify because I realized, OK, this is like kind of a goofy
little game. What are the points I actually
want to talk about? And then I kind of sat down kind
of thinking through like, OK, what's like, you know, how to
explain to people, hey, here's how a magic card is organized.
Like, if it seems super like niche, but then again,
especially with stuff like secret layers of people having
their own thoughts nowadays for how stuff like Universes beyond
should be, you know, expressed in the game.
You have maybe not a massive push, but a a rise of people
wanting to make custom cards and not to be like, oh, well, you
know, people should make like counterfeit cards and put that
into the atmosphere and have people like, you know, it's a
fake leak. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah. But I think it's warranted.
Like, hey, if you want to actually have something kind of
legit that have to be taken seriously as a design by the
community, you should know how to format it.
It's kind of like if you're writing like an essay, you know,
you should have some semblance of proper punctuation, proper
annotations, kind of thing, like kind of going back the the
language lock and really came up when I was organizing my
thoughts on the Spotify panels. Like, OK, how am I explaining
this? And then realizing, wait, hold
on a minute. There's just a bunch of little
like really tiny things like, all right, here's this giant
graph of oddly important words based on letter counts.
So like, all right, 4 letters. What's what's important in that
you don't realize? All right, Josh.
Had like 4-4 slides of that like with just words on and he's like
these are the four letter counts, these are the five.
I they were just riddled these slides.
I realized in hindsight that was awful.
Who The Who the hell is gonna look at all that actually try to
like All right, let me try to look at this for my seat 30 feet
away. I.
Was sitting in the back too. But it's like little things
like, OK, a four letter words of magic that like are relevant to
understanding a card. It's like, OK, does it draw?
Does it talk about a card is talking about that?
If it's talking about, you know, targeting and all that, or even
6 letters targets different colors because Magic doesn't do
things like the card games where it'll have like an iconography,
it'll just ward out most of the pertinent text.
Or like if it's single digit, that's, you know, the whole
numbers game with like the counters and pumps and all that.
I I keep like loop around the questions basically when I
started actually making my panel then I realized wow this is
actually way deeper and I hope I can better explain this to
people they can understand it I. Think that's pretty interesting.
I think it's pretty cool actually, in a sense, because
you've kind of backed yourself into a corner.
You're like, oh shit, I'm committed to this panel now how
do I, how do I get this information to my audience?
I'll. Be so real with you.
I submitted that panel on my creator badge applications
thinking they're not. I'm thinking like, I, I mean,
like my, my creator badge records been kind of crap.
They're not going to take the panel because who cares about
Spellify of all things? And then I got the I got the
e-mail back. I'm like, oh I have to make this
PowerPoint now. Yeah, I feel that in everything
that you're saying lead. I mean, we we kind of got that.
That's where that was that was going there.
That's so funny. So what about Spellify that lets
you showcase your magic brain, right?
That like normal gameplay or playing a game of commander on
spell table or or something like that.
How does this let you show showcase the way that you think
more than gameplay or other content?
So for me, the way I like to play Magic is, bluntly put, I
love combo decks. I am a combo aficionado at
heart. And I wouldn't say part of this
is to show like, yes, I'm just that I'm so much smarter.
I know more about the game kind of thing.
I like with Spellify that you can kind of demonstrate just
kind of like, I'd say brute kind of card knowledge.
It's very, it feels good when it's like, oh, here's maybe a
card you haven't heard about kind of thing, even though it's
pulling as as Andy talked about in the panel.
Yeah, it's pulling from not an unknown list of cards it's
pulling from, I think like the top 500 or so.
So it's not stuff you probably haven't heard of, but there's
still a couple here and there that are like, oh, I've never
heard of this card before. But for me, at least personally,
it's very I like being able to express just kind of my raw
knowledge of a game. As much as I said before, like,
Oh, I'm so much smarter. It's just more of like the the
niche interaction stuff. When I got into Magic, one of
my, I wouldn't say formative experiences, but when I moved
out to actually live on my own, buy my own magic cards, one of
my more formative experiences was hopping into a pod with my
friends who did, Hey, let's do a six Man Group hug game, which is
I'm not the one of group hug, but it's like, all right, five
guys on group hug. The stack is the the stacks of
Jenga tower like every interaction you're getting sunk
into the rules and I think it's really cool to be able to like
kind of show off like hey, here's like my just general card
knowledge. And I think from there it lets
you expand into, well, if the cards, then maybe you understand
how they interact with certain decks.
And that's how you can then get some cooler stuff in deck
building where it's not just like here's your typical
attraction deck, here's your typical or dragon deck.
There's at least some novelty you can bring into otherwise
exhaustive decks. That's Jesse and I have talked
about how we don't really feel that EDH rec is good for the
game in several places. So kind of that full on amalgam
of same, same decks is really exhausting to us from time to
time. So it's interesting that you say
that. I can agree on like the some
levels of of agreeing that definitely, yeah.
The problem, the problem I think is more, I think like Sylvia
Snell that people talked about, it's more so how people use EDH
rec because like a lot of times people just kind of pull from
like the average deck. Basically.
It's like, well, throw all these into the list and I don't like
like on the one hand, it's great that there's such a big resource
that if you have no idea where to start with something, you
have a pretty easy template or something to run off of.
The problem is, I think when people zone in way too hard into
that and don't bother to really expand out.
I mean, people expand out with their pet cards, but it's more
so when you're just not considering.
I mean, Magic is a game with like 10,000 plus game pieces.
It's like, why limit yourself to the top 288 track?
Kind of thing. That's that's that's where we're
at also in that sense. And and newer players may not
have that nuance or that curiosity either and they just
get what EDH rec just feeds to them and they're like well these
are obviously good cards so must put them in my deck.
Prices be damp. There's a fine, there's a fine
line that I think people need to draw.
And then maybe something needs to be expressed to newer players
more. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say
forcefully. That's the threat.
We're like more out there to be like, hey, guys, like EA track
is a great resource to understand where like the the
player hive mind consensus is. But make sure you know, and then
from there you can start digging to like some of the other stuff
of like, OK, the stuff that's like the negative percentage
list kind of thing where it's like, OK, actually this might be
kind of interesting to throw it. Yeah.
So do you have changing gears
back to the cards? Do you have a favorite like I
know exactly what this card is moment or or one that like you
have just. Blanked OK, so my my favorite, I
think was like chromatic Lantern and that was like, OK, there's a
couple and it's like a lot of times I feel like when it's a
car that I know I feel like I have I'm more I'm more have to
talk to pad time to be like. So I was just going to say.
Do you just, have you ever just dove in and been like Chromatic
Lantern? Like, yeah, I know that.
That's the short. I I've never had it where it's
just that short because I think that's a bit of a like like
disservice to it to not breakdown what's going on.
But there's some words just like, OK, I know what this is.
I got up at the time and explain like where, why I know it's XYZ
thing. There are two that stand out as
like almost shattering the streak whatsoever.
There is serif Viper's Fang from midnight hunt.
It's a green drop that like your tap guys have death touch.
Your untapped guys have hex proof.
You can pay 1 and tap it to untap something.
That one. I just was like, OK, I just kind
of hell married on like the the last part of the name.
I just wasn't sure what it was. More recently, I think it was
like last month or so. Kazul, Tyrant of the Cliffs from
I think originally Worldwig. It's like a it's a red legend.
Card. It's like a it's like anti
ghostly prison where it's like if you want to oh, you, oh, you
have the copy, you have a copy over there.
It's. Sitting on my desk.
Hell yeah, yeah, it's like it's like anti ghostly prison.
It's like you pay 3 or you or yeah, you just like fill out the
the crack pack for it. There's a bunch of ogres and I
vividly remember I was staring at my computer for like I I
think that one might be the longest raw footage for a
spellify like 2 minutes where I'm just like staring at my
screen going you got to be kidding me.
I'm going to die to this dumb ass red creature.
And I I something clicked of like, OK, I think I know what
this is. I know what the effect is.
The name is stuck here and I just sent Kazul and I got I was
like, I'm not dead, let's go. Kept the streak alive.
Everyone blanks on cards obviously sometimes.
Do you have a white whale that? So thankful like cuz Zool's the
closest I think to being the white whale of like net of like
not getting it. I am, I, I, if I did hard mode,
I'd probably have a couple more there.
If I I'd want to be more hard mode with the problems that I
act, I want to like be able to edit my stuff out in timely
manner. And I think hard mode would just
be too much editing for me, not too along with the regular yeah,
stuff I should do hard mode. It's just because I'm starting
to see some duplicates actually pop up that I've seen before on
Spellify. So I think I keep seeing some
duplicates. I'm going to go, OK, let's see
what hard mode does and if I can get something fun here from
there. But like at the panel, I don't
God, I think in the panel I don't know if I would have
gotten the IT was like some random land like one of those
game lands from. God, that's right, it was from
Bloomborough. Yeah, no, it was the yeah, it
was Lilypad Village or something.
Lilypad. Village, Yeah.
I don't know if that's. One that would have been like
the white whale, but that's where I was like, I don't got a
clue what this is. Audience.
Give me your. Give me your best.
Bet we got there. We got there.
I I was blanking really hard on that.
The rest of the audience helped us out there.
That's my buddy. Jordan, Yeah.
So you touched on this a little bit, but let's let's dive in a
little bit deeper here. So how did your Spellify videos
evolve over time, right? So obviously you, you, you kind
of dove in, you, you threw some editing together and you're
like, OK, this is going to work. But what changed from your early
attempts to the rhythm that you've settled in now?
So the the bones remain about the same.
The meat is I think where it's a little different because before
it was just vaguely just like recording just the Spellify
screen and then just kind of going from there and just my, my
audio and that event. Cuz at that point I was still
trying to be like a faceless YouTube type just cuz like I, I
not that I'm like, oh, I don't want to show my face online.
I have my own website that has my face from LinkedIn from like
five years ago. So it's not like it's a, it's a
privacy thing. It's just more of like, well,
how long should I keep the face thing going to like face reveal?
But it turned it for more of that into like, OK, let me add
like my face Cam into this to then have like my reaction cuz
maybe that'll like look better kind of thing.
And then another part of it that happened was captions.
Surprisingly, up until recently I I always do my captions all by
hand to like. Yeah, you'd go.
In the editing, you'd go back and oh man, yeah.
And he's just typing. Them out.
Yes, I mean actually I'm now using different software for the
reason why is because I don't use cap cut for my videos.
I use Sony Vegas, but I don't have Sony Vegas.
The version that I'm using doesn't have a like an auto
caption feature. If I watch you then it's like
cool, I got to drop 300 on like Sony Vegas 23 or something like
that. So for a while it was like all
right, cool, I want captions in here because captions seem to do
well socials wise. Let me just type those up and
then like some other little things like OK, like positioning
where the camera is having a little border on there.
Up until recently, I got some help from a girl at the green
suit to like kind of help with like how the setup of things is.
And then the the one that I'm I'm genuinely the most happy
about kind of recently. If you know deep pocket monster,
he does the should I open it or keep it sealed Pokémon openings.
Yep, Yep. And I decided, well, I should
have a jaunty musical intro in my videos too.
So I have the little the little spellify intro in there now 13
gets for courtesy. It's Spellify in 60 and I have a
little like logo kind of pop in kind of rolling for it.
I don't know if I want to change it more from there.
I'm liking where the formatting and just kind of how everything
is set up right now. I mean, look, most of it, like I
said, has been just kind of like meat and presentation, rather
like the bones. The bones have always been the
same. It's been all right.
Can I like get this done as fast as possible?
I'll be honest, the in 60 is kind of a misnomer.
I think in reality, like most of the videos, the raw footage is
probably like 4 to 5 minutes because it's like half the time
me yapping about the card at the end and cutting stuff out or
it's like just, you know, taking a little bit longer to solve the
thing. But I try I was trying in the in
the beginning to really keep it down to 60 seconds and then
YouTube shorts opened it up to be 3 minutes long.
So they're cool. I have some breathing room to
like make some more edits and actually let this breathe a bit
instead of just going like all right see you guys next time
that's. That's kind of like Voldemort.
It just over my head. Exactly.
That's how it. Goes.
Does it feel different going back and watching those early,
early videos compared to the ones that you do now?
Oh. Yeah, I look at this and go,
wow, I can't believe I'll let these out.
But that they're an archive, right?
That is historical footage that you used to stay there.
Oh. Man, if we're talking like
looking back on things, I was checking just out of rock
curiosity today, I've been adding to the playlist on
YouTube since I've been publishing them out.
There are now almost 600 spellify shorts that would hurt
just a little bit. Like God, I've been doing this
for all those two years now. What are you talking about?
That's. A trip that is a trip that's
that's a hell of a streak too. I mean, if you think about it, I
mean, you said you got into a rhythm.
This is just what you do everyday.
Clearly in three hours, Josh is going to be doing the next one
after this podcast. So you are.
Absolutely correct. I don't like you clock and be
like that but you are 100%. Correct.
I mean, this is where we're at. That's all right.
We're gonna give you a little bit of a buffer and a lead in
you get to chill after this and then boom, right into it.
We'll be looking for it next. So do you ever think of Spellify
as like a form of design training?
Like sharpening your ability to understand how Magic
communicates through card language.
I'll be honest, it's one of those things that also probably
didn't come up till I was actually working on the Spellify
panel, because at that point it's just like, OK, just like
knowing the card information. But obviously as I'm going into
it, to kind of want to explain to an audience why they should
care about this thing as much that I care about it as much as
it is like a little bit of bragging rights.
Like cool, I know a lot about Magic, but also like, OK, it's
just bragging rights. You know, why should I care
about this? Like I said kind of before
earlier, there's a growing sentiment and just group, you
know, group of fans that want to make their own cards.
And it makes sense that they should have an idea of the
design language and design etiquettes of Magic in order to
express those designs properly. I mean, bluntly, if you ever go
on like R slash custom Magic, I'm pretty sure for a while they
had like a post that was like 5 the five worst rated submissions
this week. And part and part of the like
the poorness of the submissions for some of them is like, yeah,
these designs are like bad or not good or just not healthy for
the game, but happens the formatting's bad.
They don't they haven't set it up correctly.
It just looks like a very sloppy attempt to design a card.
And I think on some level Spellify helps for that, at
least for presenting cards to people, because you obviously,
yeah, it's still pulling from like a very well known list of
cards. But I mean, in that case, like,
well, cool, these are so well known.
These are probably the ones that people really like.
So not only are you learning on some degree how to properly
format a card, there's also the level of why do people like
these cards? It's not something that that
specify like makes public like, oh, hey, this is the 500.
I mean, I, I literally only found out the whole 500 like
account information at the panel with everyone else slide news to
me too. But I think it just helps people
by exposing them to the language and kind of like with me, like
for going through it so much you pick up if you want to like kind
of sit down and just go through every day.
Eventually something's going to stick.
You're going to recognize how Magic organizes their
information. And by knowing how that
information is organized, you can better express yourself with
your cards to the community at large.
And whether whether the ideas are good is up for debate, but
at least your forming will be correct and people won't give
you People won't have an easy out to discredit your ideas
right because something isn't formatted properly.
Kid can't even read a. Little Billy.
That's just cardio players though.
A. Little Billy Madison for you.
So you talked about this a little bit, right.
So a lot of the 62nd boundary just became out of shorts,
needing to be 60 seconds or anything.
But do you set your own actual constraints in your head?
Like do you have a clock that's going off as you're doing this?
And you're like, Oh no, I'm over 5 minutes.
I got a lot of anything to do. Oh no.
It's it's like in my head, it's me looking over OBS and seeing
like the recording time and I'll be half the time the recording
constraints are more so me going like, Oh my God, I have to edit
this in the morning. But I mean like the, the
constraints are really more so just like the combination
bragging rights more just like wanting to like show off, show
off that knowledge of I can get this done kind of quickly.
I'd, I'd say the comfortable amount is somewhere between like
3 to 4 minutes of like the entire thing of solving the card
and then yapping about it for a while.
I tried my constraints that I tried to basically like spend
not a lot of time solving the card and then maybe a minute or
two talking about it later. So then like whittle back down
and editing and then however much time between like add reads
or anything else that I want to throw into the video.
Initially the kind of the time constraints were like oh man, I
like really hard and fast like I got to do.
It this fast? I think there was one where it
just took like 10 minutes to solve and I'm staring at it
later that morning. Like how do I get this down to a
minute? Because part of the problem of
the time was and like YouTube Shorts having to be a minute
long and right at that point, it's not even out of like, oh,
can I show something the card in a minute?
It's like me wanting to show the thought process too.
Because I think like if it was just, I'm pretty sure we'd
agree. If it's just like me looking the
card and then going like, ah, this is the card.
That's not really good. That's not an informative video.
That's not like, that's not an April.
Fool's one, by the way. And that's, that's a good one.
That's, that's the thought. Just like, all right, here's a
card. Bye guys, I'll just see you next
time. Cut the black.
But no, like the, the constraints are more of like
kind of kind of going to brag. And also just like for
conveniences, convenience sake of wanting to kind of get
everything down into a nice format.
One of the things that I I think I'm at least kind of good at is
taking a bunch of information and getting it down really into
like a bite sized chunk. I was working on one of my long
forms is the Sammy deck profile or the the deck tech on like the
Sammy from edge of eternities. And I'm reading through with my
with girl, the green suit. Actually, she's helped me write
the script for it. And I'm kind of going through
and by this point I've gone through like the mana base, the
creatures it's getting to like the, it's, it's probably about
like 4 or 5 pages of script that I've gone like in my recording
about that points maybe like 4 or 5 minutes.
And she goes through with me. She's like, how did you, how did
you explain all that in like 5 minutes?
Just too much information. But like the time constraints
are really more like combination recording and more of me wanting
it to be kind of fast because I'm really short.
It's just like, OK, you can't really be lingering way too long
on things. So my timer is really the amount
that I am comfortable trying to edit down later.
And if it's too long, then I will.
It's not a bad, it's not like a bad outcome.
It's just more of me being angry with myself of like, come on
dude, it's a. Rougher morning get it together
I get it I get it so you you kind of answered my next
question come on Josh, you're killing me so you talked a
little bit about striking that balance right I want to yap a
little bit about my thought process, but we also need to
solve the card and I need to edit that down so that's that's
important. I think you strike the right
balance right. I think you found that balance
I. Tried to I honestly, one of the
things that I hope people actually do is stick around pass
solving the card most because like I'm starting my YouTube
analytics for like, OK, where are people like engaged with
this? And I can't deny the the the
links, the graphs are very similar across most of the
spellifies. It starts like kind of big, does
like a little thing and then about where you saw for the
card, it just like not a quite like like not a 90° drop
doesn't. Crater it's not.
A crater, But it's like, let's do a half pipe kind of thing.
I'm like, all right. So I found that too with my
Pendragon decks of the week once once I've named the Arthur and
the Excalibur, they get it and they're they dip.
So the payoff is the guessing the card, right?
Yeah. So and how do you work that into
your analytics? Like, well, I can't not guess
the card. That's my sticks.
So how do I slow roll it? Do I slow roll it?
It's tough it. Actually is another thing I
should have mentioned earlier for how it has evolved.
I have now for better for worse is the way because I realized
what happened before was towards the end of the video.
That's where I would do some advertising like OK, subscribe,
please check out my affiliates about the channel.
So for better or for worse, I I've been putting a little bit
like right before I saw the card of like all right, and it is and
then it like little tension bit and it goes before you do the,
you know, before you see what it is.
If I'm right, you know, hit the bell affiliates, yadda yadda,
and then finish it off and then go yapping about the card.
Thoughts. Yeah, the.
The payoff matters. It truly does.
And and that's that's what you get from looking at analytics.
So I mean, you're doing it right.
I hope I. You realize that Yeah, this
format feels like me I. Don't think there's ever really
a point where I was like, oh, this is me.
I think it was more of AI have been doing this so long that
it's just kind of been like attached to me, if that makes
sense. Like it is something where I
didn't really realize, I guess like that is because that is
like a bit absorbed into me until I'm until kind of sitting
after. I was like, huh, I've been doing
this a lot. Like I was counting up the
results, I think from a, another part of the panel where I was
checking the like my win rate between like last year and it
was like, OK, my win rate was like 65% of getting it in zero.
And then otherwise, you know, never having missed one.
And then the numbers, I think up until I think the numbers might
be slightly better now, But at least when I was editing the
PowerPoint, it was like 81% or some crazy like get it in zero
rates. And at that point I was like,
oh, this is me now. It wasn't a thing.
I'm like, ah, yes, this specify is my thing.
It's more of a being, being in the weeds so long you're like,
ah, I am a weed. I'm I have become part of the
Meadow. Has working in these quick
structured bursts right that that you're asking your brain to
do for these, right? Yeah, Midnight.
I'm gonna keep emphasizing that. Chat Midnight.
Has it taught you anything about your own strengths as a person,
as a creator, as a player? As a creator, I think it's
taught me like, I guess just like once I figure out the
process, I can get it down pretty, pretty well.
Like on one side, yeah, it's all midnight.
But now it's a maybe it's combination of process, maybe
it's combination of routine, but it is a very like structured
process that it is now. It is literally like cool, like
spell if I goes up record it, it now goes back through OBS to get
remuxed because it records as MKV and I have to put it to like
an MP for specifics drag into my editing software, throw in some
couple plug insurance to help break up the edit out the
silences, make a couple other edits and then go cool.
I'll let out the rest of this in the morning.
And now that I have like a thing to actually make my subtitles
for me. So I'm not just, you know, doing
it manually like a maniac. I guess creator wise thing.
It's taught me just like how to actually keep a process and keep
the systems going as a player. I I think it just reinforces
like the, the Cardinals that I have, it's, it's nice to be able
to like know what cards and what people are talking about,
especially like it maybe gets a little granular, but like
working in a game shop where it's like people are trying to
feel like, hey, what's like a good card for this thing?
What's something you'd recommend?
It helps people to be like, Oh yeah, you know, XYZ card.
Do we have it? OK, we have it or we don't.
At least now they have like a good direction to go off of or
something else for a deck recommendation.
What was the third one that was player creator?
What was the third one? I was.
Just saying as a person, a person.
Is also maybe a little bit tougher to like pin down
exactly. Maybe honestly, I'd say just
like consist, like my ability to be consistent and maybe that's
making me feel good for like, all right, I've been able to
consistently keep this one video type going regardless if like
I'm on vacation or if I'm like, you know, not necessarily at my
full editing grade to do this. I remember there was a trip I
went out to for a different card game competition and I realized,
oh, I have to record. Let me learn how to use the
screen recorder on my phone real quick because I still have to
fill in for Spellify. Do you feel like it highlights
part of your personality that doesn't always come through in
long form play? I think it.
Does there's? I don't think I've necessarily
tried to exert a different persona of myself within my my
long form stuff. I think the person I at least
try to give off is like maybe a bit smarmy, but someone that
knows what they're talking about and is, you know, competent in
the skills as in in the game of magic.
And I think maybe some of that kind of bleeds through in
Spellify. The other part that maybe
Spellify gets to show off that I don't get to show off my regular
content is just like meeting getting to like kind of gush
about cards without having to necessarily go off a script.
Because sometimes like the Draco Genesis video or just like the
other, there's some other like hard focus videos I did a couple
years ago when it was like all the the out outlaws Thunder
junction commander decks. I try to like find an
interesting card from each of those decks and highlight it or
just something different about it to talk about.
And obviously that's like one kind of different because it's
yeah, it's stream of conscious, but I also want to edit it so I
can like, you know, make it be good for the video kind of
thing. As much as I want retention and
all that for Spellify, I do like that I kind of get to sit around
for like, you know, 3-5 minutes, edit it down later, just like,
yeah, this card's all right, I guess.
So we're like, it's got a dog water, it's got a good, you do
some goofy stuff with it. OK, OK, so we've reached kind of
the midway point. So this is where Jesse and I
like to do flavor text or song lyric.
So what Jesse and I do is we will read some words at each
other and we have to guess whether it is Magic the
Gathering flavor text or a song lyric.
Jesse, I have like 4 to choose from.
Tonight I came prepare. I have 3.
You are equally prepared. We were down to like zero last
time. So we did our homework.
I think I'm going to go with this one and I think.
I'm curious if Josh is going to be able to identify it with his.
Knowledge, Josh, you get to play along, but we don't, we don't
share our answers till the end. OK, Yeah, get some.
Time to kind of Stew on it. Yeah, yeah.
Do you want to read first or second, Jesse?
It doesn't. Matter to me.
I will read first, all right? As the red day is dawning and
the lightning cracks the sky, they'll raise their hands to the
heavens above with resentment in their eyes.
Josh. Immediately smiled as soon as he
just I. Know this?
All right, mine is If it comes for you, die boldly or die
swiftly, for die you will. OK, I don't recognize that I.
Don't either, but I think I have a good guess.
Yeah, it's if he. Gets both of them.
That would be hilarious. That would be.
Great, again, that just tells us how his brain works, right?
I'd be fine with it. That feels forrexian.
And I say this every friggin time because Jesse.
Jesse's got a theme. I mostly.
Because my heavy metal lyrics are very forrexian.
I guess for me it sounds like something not forrexian but it
does sound like something that'd be on a like an old border side
like pre modern. Yeah, yeah.
All right. Diving back in.
So when you think about how process games or puzzles in
general, like how you think about them, what parts of your
background or interest do you feel show up in the Magic
content? I'd like to hope.
For. Going to school for four years
for it. My game development decree shows
off a little bit for it. I wasn't like a big puzzle
gamer. The the most I did was a project
that me and a bunch of friends worked on our sophomore year,
like a little puzzle game called Valo.
You like changed the the idea was basically you would like
freeze and unfreeze different colored platforms.
That was like just a puzzle game.
So obviously a bit of a different mental metric of a
puzzle compared to like a lot of the magic stuff.
But like one of the things I've really hoped for my content it I
don't. That is one thing I am a little
nospellified. I don't think I'm able to really
show off as much of my game designer content or like my game
developer brain just because of the time restrictions.
I don't think you really have as much liberty to kind of dive
into the cool mechanicalness of a card unless you make it super
brief. In that case, you probably
deserves a more long form video to talk about it.
But a lot like the puzzle stuff, I think just kind of boils down
with like less of how do I say I'm losing track of the
questions for sure. This also paints a picture of
how Josh's mind works my. Mind is a hamster wheel that
sometimes gets unbolted and just starts rolling down the road.
But now with at least so far at the puzzle game side, I hope
that my game designer stuff gets to pop through is like, OK,
here's kind of how I'm understanding and where it's all
piercing together from. But like I said, I think that's
not crosswords. I don't think that's like any
space. I can really show off the
Spotify stuff maybe a little bit towards like the end on card
discussions. And I wish I kind of wish there
was a better game out there EDH. I could work on that to show to
show off on that kind of side of things to the design standpoint.
There you go. So every creator brings a
certain toolkit, if you will, with them.
What do you think yours looks like?
My toolkit's probably somewhere between.
It's something that I don't think I'm going to try to not be
braggy about it, but just like, it's not a thing a lot of Magic
content creators have of just having played other games.
Bluntly put, being at a game shop, people are very, I don't
think the word's possessive, but just like very like like very
intense about the games that they like especially, you know,
like unfortunately so much for like Yu GI or Magic where it's
like, yeah, no, the other, you know, Yu-gi-oh player, it's like
you play magic, you know, bad game or like especially more so
with Magic where it's like they look people that play Magic, at
least from some of the game shops have been to really look
down on like Yu-gi-oh players, that kind of thing.
But at least the the part of my tool kit that I'm particularly
proud of is that I've just played a bunch of different card
games and I just don't think that's something a lot of other
Magic players have really done. Part of that's just from like
working at the game shop where it's like, OK, well I have to
play these games so I have an idea of what I am physically
selling to somebody to give them an idea of what they do.
Part of it's also for my work helping on some other games here
and there and also just playing other games like if I was to
name the games I've probably played the most besides Magic
Yu-gi-oh for years I was a massive Hearthstone gamer.
Like from high school onwards, Olestrals.
I've helped out some parts here and there design wise which have
been really fun. Kind of besides that like Battle
Spirits Saga, which is a Bandai game that they unfortunately
killed off way too soon in my opinion.
Now you're good enough. Now that's like one of the major
parts of my tool can I'd say the other part is just bluntly like
being having the game development background.
I think one problem that the community has sometimes,
especially with just like the fervor that gets wrapped up for
like a card reveals kind of thing for like this card's
crazy. It's going to nuke the game.
It is the it's blindly to say it is a lack of understanding.
I think the community has for what goes into designing Magic
product in general and having any sort of, I don't want to say
like, Oh, well, you've never been there, so you know what
you're talking about. But there's also a level to it
of like, not having the awareness of what goes into it,
despite the massive amount of stuff online from Rosewater and
Gavin Verhey about what goes into designing magic products.
Yeah. And and when Aaron Forsythe was
writing articles as well from from R and DI mean really
pulling the curtain back on all that it it's very important.
That's a really good point. It is.
It is shocking because I think Magic has some of the most
publicly documented information on a card game like Konami for
you yo. You'd have to like water board
them to get any information out of what goes on behind the
scenes. Design wise.
Pokémon I don't think really focuses as much the design side.
There's probably more out there about like what gets decided on
what Pokémon get like art done for them, or what cards get made
for a set, rather than the gameplay decisions or the design
decisions and intentions that go into these games.
Bandai is maybe a little bit better on their games because
they actually have some breakdown on why certain cards
get banned versus limited in their games and have some sort
of breakdown explanation there. Konami has maybe a tiny bit for
like the Yu-gi-oh mobile game stuff.
Like I said, it's shocking with just how much stuff there is out
there for magic that they're still like, I guess the fervor
for like they don't know what they're doing.
There's a lot of things I could personally disagree with for
what decisions get made, but it's, it's, it's not like an
attitude of like, oh, they're ruining the game.
It's like nuking it down. It's like, no, like the maybe
that's another thing I can at least point to.
I try to not get super fervored into like overall discussions.
There are cards I will get extremely passionate about for
saying if they suck or not Draco Genesis is one of I literally
just recorded a thing about the walls of bossing.
Say that card slight miter tangent, that card is $25.
You're paying 8 minutes to get time walked by an abrade.
I refuse. True the cards good.
It's true anyway, might not just like the I guess the between
stuff, the toolkit, just like the the general ability to
discuss a game design concepts to an everyman.
One of the things I was doing through college and even like
afterwards was producer work. So kind of a lot of like being
the person to translate different disciplines to other
people. So it's like, OK, art needs
something. I don't explain that to the
design team. Design team needs something.
I need to spend the programmers. Programmers need something.
Explain it back to the art team in all the context that they can
understand between code switching and just like what
everybody needs to be able to do.
And I'd like to think I can bring that with my general
contents and my scripting of you don't maybe, yeah, you need to
have some magic knowledge to understand like some of the
combos or just kind of the explanations for why something
is there. But I'd like to hope I can also
explain it well enough that you don't need all the background
knowledge to understand, oh, This is why this concept is good
in this particular deck, this particular strategy, etcetera.
Josh brings a lot. That is what I'm hearing.
So I'm a lot of. Yapping too.
Everyone has a thinking style, right?
What? What do you default to?
What's yours? Are you structure first?
Are you a pattern person? Do you go logic first?
Is it option D? Something else?
When? It comes to spellify.
Obviously that's something that's like just pattern based
just from like how much I've been doing it when it comes to
if I was kind of give an example of like another one, I guess
maybe it maybe it does overall like kind of go patterns.
One big one was a video I put out like last year.
I'm hoping to make like a follow up for it.
But it was basically converting Yu-gi-oh cards into Magic and
then having them playoff other Magic decks in that same time
era. So part of it was kind of going
like, OK, a Yu GI card is organized like this.
So it's like, OK, how can I interpret the level, the
attribute, the stats, the effect?
How can I translate that into Magic and still have it retain
the essence of Yu-gi-oh card kind of regardless of the of the
power balance to be honest. So I guess from that side, more
pattern based, more interpolation of going like, OK,
so like this card is level 4. So that means it's probably for
CMC and Magic, the stat lines of stuff.
So like blue eyes white dragon is like the capstone for
Yu-gi-oh. It like 3K attack stat.
What is 3K translate to in Magic that still is representative of
that general CMC power level card types.
One big thing I was struggling for with that with like mad with
Yu-gi-oh trap cards is like, OK, how do you you translate this
into Magic is a card that you can't necessarily cast from the
hand. It needs to be played down.
Set first should maybe be interacted with potentially, but
otherwise how do you translate that?
And that turned into making the track cards have to be foretold
first or cast from exile to be able to be activated.
So I guess in that vein the it's combination of like mostly
patterns, but then like some logic and just like how to
interpolate something from one set to another or just from 1:00
dialect to another does. That same style show up and how
you handle other work and and other hobbies.
Hard, hard to say only just because I guess like in the in
the dialogue kind of side when I'm trying to talk with people
about different card games at the shop where it's like, OK, if
you've played like one thing, here's how this can translate
over to or like kind of a more surprising one.
When people come in wanting to like pick up magic and it's
like, Oh, my friends, get me into this.
I just want to get a commander deck.
Then I kind of been defaulting to like, OK, so like, do you
play other video games? What other what types of stuff
do you play? What type of character or
gameplay style do you like? And then part of us trying to
pick out the like the little bits from what information they
can give to me from there to then go, OK, you like, you want
to help people, you're a healer in a game, Go take the Bumble
Flower commander deck from Bloomberg.
Or like you like to be really aggressive or you want to like
Paul, take the table, then probably take blame game from
Carloff Manor. Or like another one where it's
just the case of like, all right, well, I've never, it's
like, well, I've never played a game.
It's like, all right, cool. So let me like take you over
here and let me break down how kind of like how a commander
precon is kind of set up. There's like 3 styles of it.
You have like something based around a card type, you have
something based around a mechanic type, or you have
something that's just kind of based around a general strategy.
And then just trying to fill their brains with all that kind
of information. So I guess in that same vein,
it's all the same interpolation like, all right, how can I
express this information to somebody in a way they'll
actually understand it? Are there traits or habits from
your non magic life that you notice influencing how you
create or solve things Stuff. My non magic life.
Unfortunately, most of my life is pretty dominated by magic,
but that doesn't exist. There's no sense, yeah.
Yeah, no, but like I'm trying to, I'm trying to think here,
not not to like, I guess like people like push the joke
further at least like a lot of my outside life has kind of been
around magic for a good choice around the people that I've been
just like the the places I'd say like the stuff that probably
bleeds into my magic life is I wouldn't say like
competitiveness, but it's kind of like the way I want to, the
way I'll say it is like the way I kind of expect people to want
to operate. Maybe it's off like my
competitiveness, but my my journal style when I want to
play Magic is I'm going to play to the best of my ability.
This is to win, but I'm also expecting you to have the
courtesy to do the same because I want to.
Maybe it's like a personality. I want to see people performing
at their best. I don't like it when it's like,
OK, don't kneecap yourself. Don't like don't dumb yourself
down. Oh man, Josh would not like.
Playing with me then, yeah. There is there is a level, I
guess, in gameplay etiquette of sandbagging of like, OK, like,
you know, you want to still make a fun experience at the table.
And I've definitely done that myself too, where it's like, all
right, I recognize that maybe I've brought like a little bit
too much heat, so I got to tone down the spice.
But kind of the attitude is like I want people to I want to see
people their best. And it's a little disingenuous
if you're going to, for one, I guess, complain to me about
like, oh, why, like, you know, why are you pushing so hard to
win? I don't want to win.
I just want people to do their best.
And it doesn't it doesn't preclude anybody when you were
actively kneecapping yourself. You should be trying it.
I understand that magic is not a serious of a crap for some
people. I am and I probably someone
takes magic probably too seriously.
We all might be people that take magic too seriously because we
have surrounded ourselves knee deep into this murk, this swamp
of magic. But Despite that, I don't think
you should be the type to complain if like, oh, like if
someone's going to our kind of thing, it's like, well, no, it's
something you need to learn from, something you should
experience. You should be able to take
something away from that to hopefully improve your own
mental, improve your own like attitude on this thing.
And if not, then hey, that's on you.
But I, like I said, I personally just want to see people run at
their best. I want to see, I want to see
people run their their optimum. So could that also be like, Josh
wants to bring out the best in people?
I'd like to hope that I try to is there.
Something outside of gaming that ended up translating really well
into the way that you approach magic.
Maybe just like personality wise, I've had some friends tell
me where it's like, yeah, you do play, you know, kind of more of
the spiky kind of attitude, but you're not a, I'm not sure, I
guess on how cool we are with a swearing on here or if it's too
much. We're PG13 so you get 1F bomb.
All right, basically, just like, hey, you know, you're not a jerk
when you're playing Maddox. You're actually enjoyable to be
around. Just I guess a lot of my stuff
going through like college was doing like student ambassador
work. So a lot of that was like
commute was like talking with parents and students like, Hey,
is this right for you? And not being importantly, not
being the person that's trying to sell them on the school.
That was that was financial aid's job.
And like the other parts of the college, my job was to be honest
as a student and to give people the actual presentation of what
it's like being a student of the school, what the experience is
like. And I wouldn't say blunt honesty
per SE, but it's like honesty, like hey, this is the real of
how it is. And just like the way carrying
myself personality wise, I guess that has helped to lead me into
some decent stuff magic wise. Were you also an RA or anything
at school? I was not an RA.
You were. Not an RA, OK, because sometimes
those go hand in hand. No, I was.
I was just an ambassador. OK, OK, so you wanted to to show
off all the cool things, but you didn't want to like be that guy.
I don't want to be. Someone's parent in an in an
apartment. My OK my college was not like a
massive campus. It was 1 three story building
out in Redmond, WA that like was previously like a Nintendo or
Microsoft building and the student the student housing was
like apartment complexes that the school rented out and then
sold back to the students. Interesting.
Wow. OK, What parts of magic excite
you the most right now, today, November 28th, 2025?
Is it the mechanics? Is it design trends?
Is it card types? Is it what what approaches
Wizards is taking right now? Is it nothing?
Are we critical right now? You know, where are we at?
Where's the pendulum for you, right?
Now I think if if Avatar didn't succeed as well as it did I'd be
way more critical. However, design wise, mechanics
wise, I love what Avatar is doing A I'm still frustrated
with how spider man turned out just cuz I think that had a lot
more potential and I think a lot of it got wasted.
That's an entire video in itself, honestly, of like, I
mean that. I mean it is the is the
colloquial drum to beat. It is the dead horse that we all
must collectively kick. But I think like right now I am
I like what Avatar did. I like a lot of the stuff that
came out. It was probably one of the more,
despite my pool being garbage, probably one of the more
interesting pre releases I've done.
I'm over the moon excited for Lorewin.
Eclipsed Horde of Notions is like my favorite commander of
all time. I'm so close to building that
but I'm waiting now till the elemental deck in the new ones.
I feel so bad of like a horde buddy.
I love you. It's gonna.
Get out class. Put you out of.
We know. It we know it is.
That's why I haven't built it yet.
I was this close to building it a couple months ago, and then I
saw the commander deck in Atlanta.
I was like, well that's out, but.
I'd say right now it's definitely like mechanically.
I think surprisingly all the bending stuff feels kind of
cool. Maybe water bending's the worst,
but it's still like very interesting for the
applications. The one part I am annoyed about
is that more than likely the bending stuff is going to be
isolated to solely Avatar, right?
Unless it's funny, I I heard this decision get done of like
them changing web slinging to in web on arena, which is I'm
annoyed by that because like, cool, you're making a diff,
you're making it more complicated to get people from
arena into paper. What's the point of that?
But then it's funny because like, well, I guess if you want
to make more bending cards, you have to change the keywords to
remove the avatar connotation. And I don't want to say I'm for
it, but I would love an excuse to get more bending cards into
the game because the all the bending mechanics are really
cool. Like genuinely it's like if if
they want to errata awaken to just be earth bend X.
Honestly that might be that might be the way to go about it.
Right. So there's been obviously a lot
of variety in in the recent Magic sets.
Is anything standing out to you that's especially fun to dig
into? Let's see out of.
Other than Avatar I. Mean we got to gush about all
the bending, right but is there anything else that that's jumped
out or is that it that's also OK, right so.
Not that like mechanics haven't bad kind of thing.
Unfortunately I'm the kind of person that doesn't always do
deck building. I have cats around the same 678
decks for a while now and like most time I've just kind of like
been adding and like subtracting stuff.
The last new deck I built was Sammy Wildcat, Captain from Edge
of Eternity because I read Affinity.
Your spells of affinity for artifacts and went I'd saw
dollar signs because I thought this they could not have legally
printed this on a card. I refused to believe that and
artifacts besides elementals like one of my favorite card
types, and I said cool, I want to break this in half if
possible, and that's been really fun to do.
I mean, affinity is an easy mechanic, but in Boros, turns
out it's a little, well, it's not that difficult because
there's so many artifacts. But like, yeah, that that's been
like 1 cool thing beyond that. Surprisingly, because I did, I
made a video about it because I made the deck for the
Professor's deck building challenge Symbiote Spider man
from the from the spider man set with the whole thing about like
exiling from the graveyard to then put a 11 counter on a
creature and then giving it his abilities is really cool.
Like the I don't think they accounted for the interaction.
You could put that on a land creature like creeping Tarpit
and do it repeatedly and now you have multiple instances of the
symbiote spider man's effects. So that's been really cool.
It's been little like one off mechanics here and there.
I think it'd have been really interesting to grapple onto.
I think overall I haven't been completely sold to a lot of the
other mechanics, but like maybe overall set trends like Tark
here, Dragonstorm, love seeing the return of like here's an
excuse to just have like a bunch of mana colors on something but
also have all the hybrid costs. That entire cycle of you can
either pay the clans mana or just pay like a generic 6.
Yep, I think is really cool and I'm kind of surprised we haven't
been seeing more of that lately. I think station but.
Josh, all the hybrid talk right now.
Careful, be careful. Okay, that's actually, it's on
the mechanical side. I I'm torn of the hybrid mana
argument because on the one hand, I think it's really cool
that opens up literally an entire new level of deck
building. However, the problem is that you
will run into a problem of just now everything's even more
generic because now there's like consistently new best options to
include into your decks. It's cool, but also it removes,
I think, a genuine element of deck building that people
gravitate to, which is restrictions breed creativity
limitations. It's I I like the hybrid stuff
is cool, but I don't think it'd be healthy for the long for the
long term creativity and just like overall deck building goals
of the game might be cool for like some pre con stuff.
So Wizards now has like a wider pool of stuff to actually add
in. But I think on once you've
elevated out from a pre con status to upgrading or just like
more stuff, you are significantly diluting the card
pool and I think more decks just become good stuff files than
actually like anything kind of remotely creative.
I agree, it's like he read my blog post the 1st.
I don't think I did actually. That's all my thoughts.
It's very close. I was.
Gonna say, I think I have very similar arguments in there,
actually pros and cons that you went over.
That's pretty funny. So you're kind of tight with EDH
rec, right? So a little bit.
How do you see your role in that space in evolving, maybe what
they're doing or how they're influencing Spellify, right?
Because as I think about this and you touched on it, they're
going to run out of cards eventually for you, for you, for
Josh, for me. Specifically, I unfortunately, I
don't know, I guess what direction they want to take into
Spellify. And obviously I'm super, I'm
super stoked. I can say that I've gotten to
work with EDH rec on stuff like the I'll be 100, much like the
initial panel submission for Atlanta.
I was also equally going like this isn't going to get me
anywhere submitting my little request e-mail to EDH checker
like hey or space com media, because that's the parent
company of like, hey, I'm doing this cool thing.
If you can, if any of the people that worked on spell if I want
to talk with me on this, I'd really love it.
I get if you don't want to have anybody and when Andy got back
to me, like, yeah, I'd love to and it's like, all right, cool,
let you know if I get a response back and then I had the response
back and said, all right, Andy, we're in business.
Let's let's like get on a discord call at some point.
So I, I guess it's weird to think that I actually might have
some influence for what EE Shrek wants to do.
I, I don't want to say that I'm the sole audience that they are
building games for, but I, I don't know, I would hope that
there's at least some direction and maybe like a couple other
things. Like I know with the crossword
stuff, they sent me the beta one right before, like the week
before it came out. So I got the chance to talk with
Nick, who's like their content creative and I might have the
wrong title there, but he's one of the head guys helping build
content. So I got to actually give him my
feedback and say, hey, here's some stuff I thought usability
wise was bad versus good and. That taps into your game design
background too, yeah. A little, I mean that less game
design, more of I guess, like the UI, but that's still that's
still a moment of game design for like, you know, is your is
your website usable kind of thing.
But the for where I think hopefully my influence to
spellify goes to and what that influences EDH rec to do may
honestly, I'd I'd be interested to see if they want to bleed out
the the card pool to just be wider to start going into like
instead of like the top 500 or so, maybe drop into like the top
1000, just like expand things out, have a little bit more
variety, because, like I said, you know, I've been starting to
see some duplicates. I think they, I'm not sure like
how much it's going to be like, oh, I've definitely seen these
kind of thing or it's more of that.
But I I hope that it encourages them to expand it out, make
things a little harder for people.
OK, just. For just to have a little bit
more fun there, listen. Feedback is important to anyone
who's who's trying to build something, so the fact that
you're able to have those conversations is a big deal.
Jumping changing gears here. So Josh listen, my anime era
ended with cartoon networks lineup like Dragon Ball Z outlaw
star, cowboy Bebop, right that whole wave.
So the newest the newest anime I've watched is Dragon Ball
super. That kind of tells you where
where I live right? So when you posted this Gojo
card on your YouTube in a Magic frame, I'm like, I have
absolutely no idea who this is. And then immediately I looked at
the card and I went, holy shit, this card is strong.
So when you translate a character idea into a Magic card
like Gojo, how do you decide where it actually lands inside a
Magic's framework? You touched on that a little bit
with Yu-gi-oh, right? But I'm talking color, identity,
mana cost, size of the effect, basically, like, how do you
anchor something that's that wildly powerful?
I'm like asking Google, who is Gojo?
Is he truly unbeat? Like, I'm not even kidding when
I was researching this stuff, right?
So how do you do that? So part of it is from I'm not
gonna be like reading the source material, but also on the topic
of like anime, I am I, I, I'm always up to date on Shonen
Jump. I I love reading manga.
It's definitely when my pastime's there.
And just kind of pulling from that for like how to adapt
characters was one thing for something like Gojo, where like
I broke down a bit in the video, but it's like, all right, the
elements of match color pie, which on the one hand, yeah, you
have all these colored bleeds and all these types of effects.
But what's nice is that I mean, it consistently kind of talked
about like, OK, here's kind of what each of these colors
represents. It's like white kind of revolves
around a lot of like unity community.
Blue is a lot of intelligence and like quick wit.
Red is more passion, black is more ambition.
Green is like nature versus nurture type attitudes.
It's like with Gojo, I kind of broke down the short there, but
it's like, all right. So like, you know, kind of
breaking down as a characters personality.
Gojo is a character that is insanely battle smart.
He's constantly rivaled and hyped up as like one of the
smartest characters in the series.
He's definitely like, you know, passionate, his attitude from
parts in the story and just, you know, all of the I mean, you've
probably seen bits of the anime here and there where he looks
like a maniac just trying to, you know, like running up
through a through the nature guy, yes.
As I was, as I was researching this and during your short, we
saw some of that Yep and. Then just the like the this one
that specifically caught to me that maybe wants to who put him
into black was just like ambition is like his kind of
overall encompassing attitude. He wants to be the best
sorcerer. That is his like kind of modus
and he's constantly hyped up as the greatest sorcerer, but
ambition like constantly drives him.
And part of the reasoning with part of the reasoning, at least
specifically with Gojo was because I have another couple
wanting to come out and I want to make a dichotomy with him and
the main villain Sukhana. So part of it's not just of like
also houses character represent in the story.
It's also, I guess more so how I, I want you representative
cards where I can make kind of cool cycles or cool references
and like kind of the character relations and bring that from a
show or series into custom card design.
So in that Gojo design specifically, right, we, we, we
looked at it, the hybrid setup and everything.
You could cast him for two black, black, black, right?
Yeah. So that that's a deliberate
choice when you think about hybrid pips, when you design
this card, you talked about ambition, right?
And he's this borderline untouchable character.
How did you come up with your Magic pips for Gojo in
particular for me? I'll be honest, this is maybe
hurt some people. It was very much vibes based,
more so than from a hard design standpoint, because when I think
of a pure Grixus character, I think of someone that is like,
you know, for unfortunately part of how magic is typecasted.
But Grixus tends to center around being diabolically evil
and just kind of that entire framework of character design.
It's annoying that they haven't really, I guess maybe I think
maybe in the God, what is it the edge of Eternity story, Because
I know there's like one of the main characters, Alpha Rail or
something. He's he's a mono black
character, but I don't think he's necessarily a villain in
the context of the story. But the problem is that most of
Magic's villains have fallen somewhere into the color pie of
black plus red plus blue shake up combination pretty much, but
always folks around black. Again, part of it was the
decision of like, OK, well, I want this to tie in with a sook
and a card later. So I want that dichotomy to show
there at least with Gojo specifically for the hybrid pips
partly was like, OK, I want to make this like not feel too bad
to have to cast in the world of being commander given the fact
also that to get him out and then his abilities are all like
different colors of mana type thing.
So you can just isolate it into black that it makes it a little
easier to do the other parts of the cards.
The other part, again, is a character whose entire like
personality and overall attitude is defined by ambition.
I think that's at least a kind of cool way to express through
the card itself without having to necessarily shout into your
ear. Excuse me, Sir.
This character's goal is being ambitious here.
You know, it's, it's a nice little like it's a, it's a
design off the cuff hand gesture kind of thing.
Like, hey, you can tell this is what this character's all about.
Like it is, despite having these other elements to them, they're
defined by this one thing that takes up the majority of their
mana cost. So let's talk about the other
half of the card, right? What's the line between honoring
flavor Gojo being Gojo and keeping the design from becoming
completely unreasonable in Magic context?
There's probably a level just from the get go.
It's like, okay, this can't be just like an indestructible
character. I have come across too many
copies and versions of Goku on custom Yugioh sites were like,
it's like 5 billion attack at level 12.
It can blow up the moon. Yeah, there's a level, I guess,
as a player of like, well, do I want what level am I OK with to
play against this car? And maybe that's a bit of a that
puts some bias in me because what I think is OK, maybe a
little too tame for somebody versus somebody else.
There might be like Gojos. Busted as you built in.
Let let me be crystal clear, but.
Obviously the thing of like, okay, well, to try to keep
something here and there, well, to represent the Infinity stuff.
Like okay, he's not completely indestructible, but he just
can't take combat damage, but you can still hit him with a
dismember and break him up that way.
There's the level of like what you think other people who
engage with that type maybe so much for on the universe of
beyond side, more so than like like a custom character,
different custom card where people understand the impulses
and the powers of a character and like what their attitude is.
But something like that, where it's like, OK, this needs to be
at least at a level where people can agree, yeah, that's probably
how they would be expressed as a Magic card.
I still had, like, a couple of comments, but people are like,
actually here's how this would be expressed and, you know, be a
little bit better. But I think it really much
circles around, like, what I would personally think is OK to
see as a card, even if it's a little more overpowered.
And also, what is colloquially OK to bring in and adapt from a
work of media into the game of match?
Interesting. Gojo strong.
I'd play the hell out of that card.
I mean, for what it's worth, it's a strong card, right?
The. One part of that card that I'm
still kind of bugged about is having to include the fight
stuff on it for Black Flash. I like how it works, like
flavorfully. But I do recognize, yeah,
fighting as a mechanic isn't really a thing in Grixus, but
it's like, God, I needed some way to like have it in there.
And the other part too, for like with hollow purple, for like
having everything like collide together, there wasn't a good
way to do that either with like, well, like, you know, creatures
make themselves give each other stats or Midas stats facing
their power. It's like there's not a, it's
not a clean way to do this. And I could also do the little
bit of like, Oh well, Gojo can like choose himself in something
else. He fights it, he gets to untap
and do stuff again. I thought that at least be kind
of cool. That's another thing too, just
like whether it seems fun to actually play.
Of course, that's the factor of cards like whether you can
create cool little synergies with the card versus something
else and right encouraging some stuff.
Right as a stand alone that's that's one thing.
But if you're going to have like a series on this in the.
Context of a whole set, Yeah. That's something entirely its
own thing to it, though. I think that would be kind of a
funny excuse to give black fight spells.
There you go. Are there areas of Magic the
Gathering that you want to understand more deeply?
How long have you been playing again?
I got into this isn't a. Credentials Check No.
No, you're way. This is I got into Magic around
2018 or so because college had no Yu-gi-oh scene and I was
like, well I want to try something.
So my students, the students store I was working at also sold
Magic cards. So one of the first packs I ever
got was like Core 2019. That was like responded Angel.
And then I think maybe a little bit before that, there was a
that was one part of like the more early experiences.
The earliest part was going to the University of Washington for
like their gaming Expo and they were doing drafts of almond KET
for free. They could just like pop and get
the cards for it. I in hindsight, like the fact
that I vividly remember someone pulling in order to procession
and someone someone else also pulling an invocation from that
like draft, like the invocation special cards, those like the
masterpiece equivalents. Yep, kind of funny that I like
locked it on that, but the that's like my first.
Maelstrom pulse of one of the hieroglyphs from that.
The like I I pulled like the simic Nisa that I thought like,
oh, this is super cool, but I don't know anything when I'm
drafting, it's like, well, I don't know what I'm doing.
Sure. That's everybody's experience
basically, are there? Any like old sets that you want
to really get your arms around? Oddball mechanics, rules, layers
that you want to dig deeper into?
Different templating arrows? Oh God, I.
Think I'm I'm a little biased because I just saw there were
six studies video on it, but Fallen empires would be kind of
interesting. Like really I need.
To watch that still. It like just for all the
weirdness that it has in the set, like all the little
goofiness and like all the different game elements that
just didn't really pick over like, OK, here's like odd level
counters. So instead of just a straight 11
counter, here's a 12 counter. So all the different elements
there. I mean, it helps.
We're like going back to that same block in like a month or
two. But Lorwin I this might be weird
to say I have gained a larger appreciation for the older sets
of magic because a lot of my work has been going through
older sets and like pricing out bulk to enter into into our
system of the shop. So I'm talking stuff like
original Rabnica, Lorwin block, original comma and even like
some of the the old border stuff too.
Like I feel like I really want to dig into that old stuff
because as it turns out, obviously a lot of it's built.
A lot of it's the foundation for like modern magic.
Like like literally when you think of it, Ravnica itself is
just so it's defined like the color parish the past 20 years.
It's insane that like something from that longer talk.
About color Parish, it's which Guild is it?
Yeah. It used to be I think just like
with the OR like the color abbreviations, but now it's the
guilds and even like old Kamagawa has a bunch of goofy
stuff. I was just talking to some
friends earlier today about I was talking with Jose host
Beacon and he built out like a bracket one Amane deck from
Champions of Kamagawa. It's a like a 12 drop golgari
legend that like if you cast it from your hand you can get a
spirit. I know what you're.
Talking about and then if you like when it dies, you can exile
it and then get like any number of spirits back to your hand.
Like those are cool mechanics. They suck in the modern day, but
it's so cool. It like it's really cool and
that's the kind of stuff that I want to try to maybe at one
point dive more into for like just how to maybe get some of
that stuff that was maybe kind of I wouldn't say malformed per
say, but it's like it was still new prototype.
It was still in the oven at that point and try to make it work
more into the with modern sensibilities, I.
I think Design, Morrow, Gavin, all of them, they, they have no
problem admitting their swings and misses and what they learned
from them. And you know, that's, that's a
really good point because you get to go back and then you see
that evolution, you see the stumbles, you see the
corrections, you see how they're moving forward.
So that's, that's, that's, that's a good place.
I would recommend that if you have some free time, go go dig
into the crappy mechanics in Kamagawa.
Like tell me what the sweep mechanic does.
I don't remember. I know it's a keyword.
It's is it return a land? So.
So it's one of those, OK, so I call them spellify, I call them
fake keywords because if they were like a full real keyword,
it would just have the keyword there.
But instead it's like keyword hyphen.
Do the thing here and sweep out things like return any number of
lands to your hand to do this effect which.
Is that's it? It's crazy, right?
You look at that and you're like, is that a real keyword?
No, it's a fake keyword. There's only.
Like 7 cars. 3/4 is what I'm counting and then there's other
car and really. Limited apparently 2IN white.
One in red, one in black. Crazy.
So when when you look ahead, what kind of magic content or
exploration interests you? And you touched on this a little
bit, right? Like with the custom cards and
everything, but is it more puzzles?
Is it more breakdowns? Do you want to go deeper dives?
Are you going to maybe go a little bit further into short
form next? So my, my current like goals and
stuff that I have in my head is definitely, yeah, I want to do
more the custom cards. I use Magic set editor for
design my cards. And I have about like 10 or so
cards right now that are in some phase of either like I like
where this is at and I'll make a video about it or like currently
in the design stages. And a lot of that's because I
want to give an excuse to talk about things that I like.
Like there's some manga out right now for Shonen jump, like
Akane Banashi, which is shonen manga about rock ago acting.
If you have an Andy that does it's a it is a it is a form of
acting in Japanese theater where it is just one person kind of
kneeling on a little pillow and they only have themselves.
They have a little like red handkerchief and they have like
a fan and by changing what they're holding and how they're
saying things is how they're switching between characters but
otherwise functioning one man show and you're like telling a
story or adapting something about it.
It's is shockingly good and I think it's going to be anime at
some point, like either end of this year or like next year.
It's one of my it's been one of my favorite mangas.
There's another one each of the witch.
It's another shown in manga. It kind of plays like monster of
the week in a world where only women can be mages.
We have like the first male mage and he's basically been living
in the boonies as like hunting animals and just like living off
the fat of the land. And he's still like, all right,
you have to be like a witch now and like have all this magic
power. Have fun with that.
It's a really fun story. So stuff like that or stuff
like, so I can have some cards set up right now for like Edward
and Alphonse for Full Metal Alchemist.
So talking about those. That's inventive design stuff.
Continuing to do more stuff with like converting other games into
magic or Magic into other games. Some friends in real life know
because I've talked about this for like a year now.
There is another video in that same vein of like converting
from goat to goat format, Yu-gi-oh to Magic, except it's
for the 2013 Dragon Ruler deck from Yu-gi-oh to Magic.
And that's only pertinent because Dragon Ruler at that
time was like considered one of the end all be all best decks in
the entire game's history, and I wanted to see how would fare
into 2013 Modern. So that's like probably my next
interesting. So there's.
That there's some other little things here and there.
A friend of mine at work has a commander cube and I've noticed
hey, there's not really like a big commander cube or any like
kind of cube kind of focus on YouTube in the same.
I wouldn't say the same being of like game nights because I'll,
I'll be honest, I my personal thing is I want to stay away
from necessarily full commander content as possible.
I love commander content, but fact of the matter is, is
diluted. It is everywhere on YouTube and
it's like, what do you do to make it different?
Like, OK, you have like chaos points.
You have, you have like little gameplay elements into it, but I
think it might for me, I think it's better if the community
could express more formats and that would be more of a regular
thing like like shuffle up and play where it's not just
commanders, just people literally just sitting down
playing magic. I'd love to make more content in
that same type of vein of just, and that's kind of what I'd want
to do with like the the conversion content because I
obviously have recorded gameplay for it, but it's like, I want to
be able to sit down with my friends and just shoot it about
just like goofy stuff and magic or just like fun little gameplay
bits. So like I said, it boils down to
just wanting to do more to involve game design stuff into
my content. My my my channel is called JMR
Game design for God's sakes. It can't just all be on the I
love Spellify, but also I need. I want a way to better show off
what I think I know about game development and game design so.
Is there? Is there something you haven't
had a chance to try yet, but you want to experiment there?
Is a It originated out from Yu-gi-oh, from a guy named CMO
who's one of the bigger creators in that space.
It's called the Program. On shuffle up and play, it's.
Called the Progression series. Basically the idea is you start
with both players or both people or however many people in the
game, open up a box of a Yu-gi-oh set and then build out
a deck from it and then you know, progressing through the
entire history of the game. I want to do something like that
for Magic. I know there's like 1 channel
that's done some variation of it with like just from the start
from. And also like with Modern,
basically you're using like pack opening simulators to build out
your collection online because obviously who the Hell's to be
able to get a full box, 2 boxes, let alone of alpha or beta?
Let's be completely real here, Nobody.
I haven't won the lottery yet, so.
But it's, it's stuff like that where it's like it, it's, you
know, this whole idea of like limitations through creativity
and especially in like a 60 card format where and there's also
like the element of like people getting to kind of watch the
collections grow over time and people getting to mess with the
decks. It is a series that I would love
to do but also recognize. It is a massive time commitment
between everybody involved. I got all of 20. 26 No big deal.
I got to find people for it too. Yeah.
So if someone's new to your content and wants a wants a
starting point, what's a video or project that you'd say go
here first? I would pin my Yu-gi-oh or
Yu-gi-oh to magic video. It's like, I think one of the
top rated if you go to like popular on my channel from
converting from go to go to magic.
It's a video that I'm personally very proud of just because one,
it's lovely put it as one of my more successful videos, but two,
I put a lot of work into it and it's I it combines 2 of my
greatest loves you go magic, and it's something that I like to be
able. I think it encapsulates my stuff
where I want to be able to educate people on all the card
games that I love. And obviously after that, go
check out some spellify shorts. Is there a specific one that you
would be like? This is the one.
If you are ever going to get hooked on spellify, this is the
short to watch. Does anything come to mind?
There's 600 that I'm asking to parse through now.
Honestly I wanna say it's the one with Kazul to be completely
honest cuz that one is like cool.
OK, I. Mean it's more recent ones, it's
at least using some of the new editing.
And it's like, I don't even know if it's a car that I don't think
a lot of people would even be able to recognize, like with
just all the blanks. I mean, you have the deck for
it, but I don't know if I just showed you the blank card.
It's like, yeah, this is the card, figure it out.
Right. This is the second deck I've put
him in now. So this is going to be a Joel
and Ellie. That's two more.
Decks than I ever put him into I'm going to be completely real
of you the. Other one is Thantis the war
Weaver, which makes a lot of sense.
That makes. More sense that makes that makes
a lot of sense they're. Both jum decks.
Jessie. You should love that, John.
'S my John. Jum out, John.
That's my.
Playmat is. Josh, absolutely fantastic
having you on. Thank you for coming on, talking
to us about how you, how you think, what you notice, how
you've carved out such this fun lane and magic content.
So the floor is yours. What's the best place for people
to follow your work and keep up with what you're doing?
Well, if you want to follow me what I do, I am almost everyone
on social media. You can find me on YouTube,
TikTok, Instagram, blue sky Twitter at Jmar game designer.
I think blue sky is like jmar game design dot blue sky dot
app, because blue sky wants to just add the random things onto
the end of there. I have the link tree too.
I think that was just like the link tree slash jmar game
design. You can find all my other links
there, including all the affiliate links to the companies
I work with. If you want to support the
channel, check those links out. I know a couple of them are
doing Black Friday stuff or like Christmas stuff.
So throw me a couple bones if you want to.
And I also have my own website that's really more of like my
professional game development stuff from when I was working
more in the industry, jmargames.com.
Hindsight should probably throw out some like some blogs about
like game design and stuff that that probably be kind of cool to
put out. But yeah, really the best place
to find me is primarily like YouTube, Instagram and Twitter.
Those are my big ones to reach out to you.
Awesome. Everybody go, go find Josh.
Like subscribe, hit all the buttons, just not at the same
time. That gets dangerous.
So we're now back to we're now back to flavor text or song
lyrics. So, Jesse, as the red day is
dawning and the lightning cracks the sky, they'll raise their
hands to the heavens above with resentment in their eyes.
It. Feels like a red card but I
can't figure out what. But it definitely feels like a
magic card. I'm thinking of the red card
that gives you like 4 red mana for some reason, but.
I'm thinking like a seething song or something.
Yeah, something like. That yeah, but I'm probably
wrong. It feels like a red card though
I. Finally got him, guys.
I finally got Josh. You know what this is?
I know what this is. You want you want him to go,
Jesse. Yeah.
What is it? It's.
Song where he's dragon force. It's through the fire and flame.
See, you had some lyrics. Last week I didn't think you
were gonna do two in a row. So what, So what, what he said
that I got so happy because one of the first concerts I've I
went to moving out to Atlanta here was Dragon Force and that
that show was awesome. What happened was like they
didn't they didn't sing it for the entire day.
And then at the very end they had everyone like chanting
encore for like 3 minutes. They finally came back on board,
sang it out and you don't get to live till you get to crowd surf
during the solo. Not gonna listen.
Wow. So mine is if it comes for you,
die boldly or die swiftly, for die you will I.
Think that's a magic card? It doesn't sound sing songy.
I'm leaning to say a magic card as well.
That feels like something from like a pre modern.
You're right. Like it feels like it's
something like Ice Age or or homelands.
It still feels Forexian to me like.
It's all Forexian to me like. Frexian Devour or something like
that, That's where my mind's going.
It's a Magic card it. Is a magic card.
It is not forexing though it is not old.
It is Balefire dragon get. Out.
Interesting. Great card.
Well, I got both, so I'll take it everyone.
Listening. Go follow Josh where he's
active. We'll get the links in the
description and everything. Jesse, any words of wisdom this
week? Magic players love puzzles,
mostly because we create 90% of them ourselves.
But whether your brain is rearranging letters or trying to
understand why someone cast a spell before combat, just
remember the real solution was blaming variants all along.
Be awesome out there and we'll see you next time.