Episode 74 - Richard Garfield Deep Dive

An episode without Frank? But what about all the history? Well, thankfully, history in this case starts in around 1993, with the publication of Magic: The Gathering, because we're reviewing the career of its designer, Richard Garfield.

We discuss:

• Not one, but two of Garfield's notable ancestors.
• An interview where he talks about how MtG has drifted away from what he wanted it to be, along with some rather salacious stories from the early days of Wizards of the Coast.
• A Usenet post from WotC founder Peter Adkison, dating to shortly before MtG was released, with a surprisingly candid overview of the company's history to date.
• Was Magic directly responsible for the '00s anime boom? Mike says yes.
• Joe is weirdly obsessed with the word "Deckmaster".
• There are so many Star Wars collectible card games that none of us know which one we're talking about at any given time.
• Attack Yahtzee!
• And some ridiculous Keyforge deck names.

What have we missed? Who else deserves a deep dive? How are we wrong? Come visit our Discord server to chat with us and other like-minded game nerds!

As always, thank you for listening. Please consider writing us an iTunes review if you like what you hear! We'd also love to have you visit our website and let us know what kinds of games we should discuss next. You're also more than welcome to comment on the episode page, or our Discord, or our Facebook page, or tag @ascentofboardgames on Bluesky. Whatever way you prefer to share your opinions with us, we'd love to hear them.  As always, we appreciate your listening - stay safe out there, and happy gaming!

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Intro and outro music is "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under a Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.

The Ascent of Board Games is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Some rights reserved.

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