I'm pulling a driveway. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work.

Okay, today I'm going to tell some stories, but from way, way back when, in fact, I'm going to tell

three stories today that all happened before I became a full-time employee at Wizards of the Coast.

In fact, back in the day, back when I used to freelance,

wizards flew me to three different events. And I'm going to talk about those three events today,

in chronological order. So the very first event I've ever flown to by Wizards of the Coast

was the Ice Age pre-release. So let me explain for those that might not understand. When I say the Ice Age pre-release, I do not mean a pre-release. So let me explain, for those that might not understand,

when I say the Ice Age pre-release, I do not mean a pre-release for Ice Age.

I mean the one and only pre-release for Ice Age,

which, by the way, was also the very first pre-release.

So off to before this point, we hadn't had pre-releases.

And so Wizards had this cool idea of, what if we had this tournament where players could play with the cards for the first time?

Cards they'd never seen before.

And the idea was to do this big tournament, and they chose to do it in Toronto, Canada.

In fact, it was held at a comic convention.

But they had, like like one whole, the second

floor, the whole, like, major part of the floor was set up. So now, probably looking back,

it was probably only hundreds of people. And I know when, you know, recently we had like

Grand Prix Vegas where there were 8,000 people. So hundreds of people might not sound like a lot,

but at the time, it was the biggest thing I'd ever seen.

I never seen a tournament like this.

It was, in my mind, huge, because I was used to playing, you know,

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